**1. Introduction**

All United Nations (UN) member states unanimously adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015. This resulted in a comprehensive set of 17 goals and 169 targets aimed at reducing poverty and advancing health and wellbeing for all by 2030, Agenda 2030 [1]. The compelling need for action to create inclusive cities has been recognised in commitments and recommendations set out in the Sustainable Development Goals, World Humanitarian Summit and the New Urban Agenda from Habitat III (2016). The Millennium Development Goals (MDG) era came to an end in December 2015, and the global community decided to look back at the value of a unifying agenda underpinned by goals

and targets and use the lessons learnt to effectively implement the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) from 2016 to 2030. The SDGs, otherwise known as the Global Goals, build on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), eight antipoverty targets that the world committed to achieving by 2015. The lack of focus on urban areas and disaggregation is addressed at an international level through the introduction of the SDGs [2]. Successful global campaigning by a network of civil society, cities and the United Nations was a campaign that recently culminated in a New Urban Agenda [1] and a specifically Urban Sustainable Development Goal (USDG) as part of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The SDGs were intended to redress many of the shortfalls of the MDGs. While the MDGs committed governments and international agencies to reducing the number of people living in poverty or lacking access to essential services and infrastructure, the SDGs commit these actors to poverty eradication and universal access to these services and infrastructure. The SDGs are a United Nations-sponsored effort to create a common set of development goals for all communities in every country, with a deadline for attainment of 2030. The idea is to get governments, aid organisations, foundations and NGOs on the same page about what global problems most urgently need to be solved and how to measure progress and solutions.

While these efforts symbolise an important start, similar to the UN system, the platform lacks any data on indicators related to cultural heritage. Consequently, reflecting the challenges in attaining adequate data and developing systematic methodologies on cultural heritage is needed to realise the SDGs [3]. In this paper, we argue that the availability and harmonisation of data from member states is central to localising SDG 11.4.

The purpose of this study is to better understand if the taxonomy used by different databases allows consistency in the classification and valorisation of the different assets categories. In this context, the potential for a common approach to the protection and safeguarding of European heritage [4] is explored with the aim to feed into a methodological framework for the calculation of the 11.4 target. In order to do this, national heritage databases and inventories are identified for a cross-comparison review of what these states recognise as heritage and how they assign value to it. There are an increasing number of studies investigating the development of harmonised data in order to successfully achieve the SDGs [5–8]. Similarly, there is an established discourse on the documentation of cultural heritage and the development of heritage databases in implementing sustainable development for urban and rural areas [9–13]. However, there is a paucity of studies that have explored the development of a heritage database in Europe with the aim of harmonising data for the achievement of the SDGs. This paper argues that the way in which cultural heritage is perceived and conceptualised by national and local government and heritage stakeholders has a direct effect on the way it is managed, interpreted and understood. Consequently, this impacts how local communities associate themselves with heritage and value it. Acknowledging the crucial role of enforcing and monitoring the implementation of the legal heritage framework, it is also important to understand how common frameworks designed to protect and safeguard cultural heritage have translated into the local management practice of heritage assets and databases. It is anticipated that this review has two possible applications: (1) supporting national authorities in finding a suitable conceptual framework and methodology for the development of SDG culture indicators and (2) supporting the UN in understanding inconsistencies that may arise from different system of calculations of heritage-related targets according to different databases in Europe.

This paper is structured into six broad sections. Section 1 introduces the background of the paper, while Section 2 discusses the overall methodology used for developing this paper. Section 3 explores the classification of cultural heritage, culture in the Sustainable Development Goals, current heritage indicators and efforts to move beyond it through the development of heritage indicators. This is followed by the results in Section 4, which is divided into four thematic areas: (1) cultural heritage's multidimensional impact; (2) safeguarding built cultural heritage; (3) safeguarding intangible heritage; and (4) culture and environmental sustainability. Section 5 discusses these areas, and Section 6 concludes the paper.

### **2. Methodology**

Based on this paper's research aim to develop an understanding on the role of culture in sustainable development its implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals with reference to cultural heritage, the methodology of this paper can be understood in three parts: (1) scientific discourse analysis; (2) database cross-comparison analysis; and (3) a heritage expert informal online survey.

### *2.1. Discourse Analysis*

In order to facilitate the exploration of the conceptualisation and the role of culture in sustainable development with a focus on countries in the European region, an academic and policy discourse analysis was conducted. A document analysis was conducted of documents linked to the databases found on the national authoritative agency website. The main aim of this analysis was to provide a broad picture of cultural sustainability in the context of Europe and the challenges of integrating culture in sustainable development. Targeted internet searches were conducted for documents through snowballing, identifying publications in reference lists and through expert recommendations. NVivo 10, a well-known qualitative data analysis software tool, was used to help the systematic storing, retrieval, evaluation and interpretation of the texts.

### *2.2. Database Cross-Comparison Analysis*

As a first step for this analysis, known websites of national agencies responsible for the management of cultural heritage in Europe were explored and searched to determine the existence of heritage databases. Other websites were also used for this initial search, such as UNESCO, COE and ICOMOS. Any noteworthy details related to the conceptualisation of heritage were tracked and archived. As a second step to support add accuracy, the HEREIN database was used to identify and verify sources for heritage databases, information and management. HEREIN is a European Cultural Heritage Information Network developed in 2014 within the Council of Europe, which brings together European public administrations in charge of national cultural heritage policies and strategies to form a unique co-operation network in the domain of Cultural Heritage [14]. A comprehensive search for the details of the authoritative database was conducted of the heritage national report submitted from European members. The national reports on cultural heritage are based on information collected by HEREIN Coordinators among resource persons in all ministries and cultural heritage entities as well as additional experts in the field. Each national heritage report contains information about the inventories and databases developed by the nation state, including details about the content and level of detail. The search was supported by information from country profiles from the monitoring system, Compendium of Cultural Policies and Trends [15]. Each national report (29) and country profile (44) was reviewed for details about the national database and the classification and value system used. Searches were carried out in the language of the report aided by translation. The key search words included "inventory", "database", "Classification", "Values". "Repository", "Data", and "Geoportal". Resulting from this search, 20 countries were identified with national inventories and databases that were publicly accessible. Following this, we accessed each database and navigated with more detail through the site and the documents found on the site. We began this review by specifying important attributes to ensure comparability. Four attributes for the review of heritage databases were prioritised that would be essential for this methodology as highlighted below:


According to the above criteria, we eliminated results that were ineligible for comparability, such as those that (1) were inaccessible due to permissions or site issues or other reasons and (2) lacked comprehensive information to support the purpose of the paper. After this review, 16 national heritage databases were found to be meeting the criteria as represented in Figure 1. These 16 online databases have been chosen to contain information to different extents of the conceptualisation of cultural heritage. As part of the analysis, a search for the classification and conceptualisation used in the database was conducted by analysing the list of heritage and categorisation used. Details concerning tangible and intangible heritage were identified. The values, significance and interest used for the listed cultural heritage in the database was explored in parallel to the step detailed above. Additionally, the inclusion of the public in determining the database was noted where mentioned. Other details include the access to a geoportal and spatial data. The databases were assessed against the conceptualisation of cultural heritage used by the UIS UNESCO Framework for Cultural Statistics for the SDG 11.4 target: "artefacts, monuments, and groups of buildings and sites that have a diversity of values including symbolic, historic, artistic, aesthetic, ethnological or anthropological, scientific and social significance."


**Figure 1.** Heritage databases.
