Approaches to Urban Landscape Transformation vs. Heritage

1. Introduction

Cities are systems composed of urban and natural landscapes with intangible and tangible layers, continuously developing and overlapping [1]. Based on this perspective, the layer of heritage is inherent to urban transformation and is a part of the continuous process of urban change. However, urban transformations can have different, possibly unwanted outcomes.

As cities today are facing the consequences of rapid population growth and uncontrolled urbanisation [2,3], as well as the impacts of environmental changes and disasters, there is a growing pressure in terms of land resources and limited usable land being available in urban areas. Within this rapidly shifting, everchanging, and globally evolving urban context, rethinking the role of heritage as an integral part of urban landscapes and land usage requires new attention, definitions and comparisons.

The Special Issue titled ‘Urban Landscape Transformation vs. Heritage’, therefore, employs the term ‘heritage urbanism’ [4], an internationally recognised research approach for the restoration and revitalisation of cultural, natural and mixed heritage in order to address the following questions:

• How can urban landscape transformation contribute to the protection and preservation of heritage?
• Does urban landscape transformation, in fact, transform heritage?
• Can urban landscape transformation generate, create, and develop new heritage?

This Special Issues invites manuscripts that address the following themes:

• Urban landscape transformation through heritage preservation;
• Urban landscape transformation through the active use of cultural and/or natural heritage;
• Urban landscape transformation as an opportunity for using heritage to support change towards sustainability and resilience;
• Urban landscape transformation as a catalyst for creating new heritage;
• The evaluation and prediction of heritage-related issues in urban landscape transformation;
• Assessing the impact of environmental factors on cultural and natural heritage sites amid urban landscape transformation;
• Cultural and natural heritage between climate change and urban landscape transformation.

2. Observing Heritage in the Context of Urban Landscape Transformation: Architectural Heritage, Urbanscape as Urban Heritage, and Landscape as Cultural Landscapes

The fifteen papers within this Special Issue book cover a range of valuable research topics, observing urban landscape transformation and heritage from various perspectives and spatial contexts.

All examples (

Table 1. Overview of topic “Urban Landscape Transformation vs. Heritage”.

Heritage Type	Research Location (City, Country)	Key Research Aspects (Based on Keywords Provided by Chapter Authors)	Contribution to Redefining Heritage
Architectural Heritage	London, UK	urban regeneration; critical system dynamics; heritage transformation; urban dynamics; deep cities; participation	Urban public space Methods and criteria for understanding layers and values in urban dynamics
	Xi’an, China	urban landscape transformation; heritage sites; heritagisation; multi-value	Reuse modes on heritage sites Enables detection via multi-value evaluation
	Split, Croatia	heritage; urban transformation; urban landscape; imageability	Architectural and urban cultural heritage Criteria for understanding urban change
	Shanghai, China	Muslim; historic urban landscape; minorities; adaptive reuse	Reuse of religious architectural complex Enables detection via case study
	Dubrovnik, Croatia	urban transformation; archival sources; visual sources; hypothetical reconstruction; medieval urban life; social values	Social aspects and urban cultural heritage Redefine understanding of lost and preserved values
Urban Heritage	Beograd, Srbija	urban landscape transformations; mass housing estates; landscape quality assessment; heritage assessment criteria	Modernistic urbanism Criteria for understanding and assessing
	Uppsala, Sweden	car traffic; compact cities; green space; infill development; neighbourhood satisfaction; open space management; perceived qualities; planning	Modernistic urbanism Redefining understanding of lost and preserved values in densification
	Beirut, Lebanon	historic urban landscape; cultural heritage; natural heritage; landscape heritage; heritage identification; modern heritage	HUL method review and contextualized Redefining understanding of lost and preserved values
	Pittsburgh, USA	urban heritage; urban morphology; urban palimpsest; heritage urbanism; historic districts	A city as a system and urban integration (space syntax) Redefine our understanding of heritage
	Sarajevo, BiH	urban landscape; architectural heritage; contemporary interventions; social tolerance; transformation	A city as a system and heritage protection Criteria for understanding
Landscape Heritage	Beijing, China	world heritage site; plant landscape change; multitemporal; historical photographs; mono-photogrammetry; georeferencing	Summer villa and landscape heritage Redefining our understanding of lost and preserved values
	Dubrovnik, Croatia	summer villa landscape; protective zone; urban integration	System of summer villas Redefining our understanding of lost and preserved landscape values
	Hangzhou, China	titled landscape; cultural landscape; Ten Canal Scenes; Grand Canal; eight-scene culture	Criteria for understanding and redefining heritage Methodological research on canalscape
	Krk, Croatia	park heritage; heritage urbanism; urban transformations; climate change;	Landscape heritage of islands Redefining our understanding
	Isfahan, Iran	urban design; walkability; pedestrian friendly; pedestrian movement patterns; place making; social interactions; cultural heritage site; space syntax	Historical landscapes Criteria for understanding walkability issues via space syntax

) explain that urban landscape transformation influences heritage and its relationship to wider urban contexts, thus redefining heritage.

The gathered research observes examples of architectural heritage and protected urban and landscape settings. The comparative approaches enabled the following research contributions. First, some contributions define the criteria for understanding the relationship between urban change and heritage layers in scales of architecture, urban planning and cultural landscape. Second, some contributions enable the detection of heritage reuse modes. Third, some contributions redefine our understanding of lost and preserved heritage values within their specific processes of urban transformation.

3. Recent Developments and Open Questions for Future Research

In the contemporary context of diverse “urbanisms” theories, common planning goals can be found in the concepts of integration instead of fragmentation in order to increase quality of life [5]. As such, the integration of heritage into urban landscape transformations is seen as an inevitable basis and evaluation criteria. Increasing quality of life through urban transformation and planning resilient urban infrastructure systems [6,7,8] includes exploring and solving walkability issues and preserving the urban and architectural values of historical cultural heritage. In the case of the landscape values of summer villas and their gardens and surrounding cultural landscapes, it is questionable if the lost values can be regained or if urban devastations can be mitigated.

Recent research presents dynamic shifts in urbanism where cities, as well as projects, are not observed in their static states but instead are designed and explored as processes [9,10,11]. The aim is to predict the possible scenarios and their role in a constantly changing world where reuse and multifunctional criteria apply [12]. Rethinking heritage from a dynamic urban perspective remains a constant question when connecting the past, present and future.

Modernistic and functional urbanism is required knowledge for understanding the 20th-century city and its development, and as such, examples of modernistic urban planning have been established as heritage, so their contemporary situation needs careful consideration [13,14,15].

Altogether, the mentioned theories and presented research (chapters) raised important issues for future research and design practice in the context of urban landscape transformation:

• Climate change vs. landscape conservation strategies where cities are observed as urban ecosystems balancing natural and human habitats while carefully protecting landscape values for raising biodiversity [16];
• Connecting various cultures into coherent tolerant communities where urban memory is supported by participatory and other mixed planning practices [17,18].

Perception and awareness of previous layers is important because they can guide planners and designers towards understanding contextual limitations and solving spatial and social problems by achieving stronger interconnections (Figure 1). Each urban landscape transformation builds on previous layers, and through the rediscovery and reinterpretation of these layers, we can form a basis for achieving new values such as heritage for future generations.