The Routledge Handbook on Historic Urban Landscapes in the Asia-Pacific Routledge International Handbooks Series

The Routledge Handbook on Historic Urban Landscapes in the Asia-Pacific sheds light onto the balancing act of urban heritage management, focusing specifically on the Asia-Pacific regions in which this challenge is imminent and in need of effective solutions. Urban heritage, while being threatened amid myriad forces of global and ecological change, provides a vital social, cultural, and economic asset for regeneration and sustenance of liveability of inhabited urban areas worldwide.

This six-part volume takes a critical look at the concept of Historic Urban Landscapes, the approach that UNESCO promotes to achieve holistic management of urban heritage, through the lens of issues, prospects, and experiences of urban regeneration of the selected geo-cultural context. It further discusses the difficult task that heritage managers encounter in conceptualizing, mapping, curating, and sustaining the plurality, poetics, and politics of urban heritage of the regions in question. The connective thesis that weaves the chapters in this volume together reinforces for readers that the management of urban heritage considers cities as dynamic entities, palimpsests of historical memories, collages of social diversity, territories of contested identities, and sites for sustainable liveability. Throughout this edited collection, chapters argue for recognizing the totality of the eco-cultural urban fabric, embracing change, building social cohesion, and initiating strategic socio-economic progress in the conservation of Historic Urban Landscapes.

Containing thirty-seven contributions written by leading regional experts, and illustrated with over 200 black and white images and tables, this volume provides a much-needed resource on Historic Urban Landscapes for students, scholars, and researchers.

List of Contributors

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Francesco Bandarin

Introduction: Reimagining the conservation of Historic Urban Landscapes in the Asia-Pacific

Kapila D. Silva

PART I: Conceptualising Historic Urban Landscapes

Chapter 1

Cities: Palimpsests of cultural memory and their management

William Logan

Chapter 2

The Ideology of the Urban Cultural Landscape Construct

Ken Taylor

Chapter 3

Conserving Asia’s vernacular water urbanisms

Vinayak Bharne

Chapter 4

Re-imagining Eurasia: Past Flatland stories of urban and landscape heritage

Manu P. Sobti

Chapter 5

Human Aspects of Historic Urban Environments

Jeremy C. Wells

Chapter 6

Historic Landscapes in rapidly transforming Asian cities: Contestations, commodification, and learning from grounded observations

Nihal Perera

PART II: Mapping Tangible Urban Heritage

Chapter 7

Evolution and repercussions of heritage designation process in Sindh, Pakistan: Lessons from Karachi and Shikarpur

Anila Naeem

Chapter 8

Urban morphology and historic urban landscape management: The case of Kolkata, India

Mahbub Rashid

Chapter 9

The Historic Urban Landscape: New methodologies for exploring sense of place

Steven Cooke and Kristal Buckley

Chapter 10

Creating Information Management Systems for cultural World Heritage: Experiences from Central Asia

Ona Vileikis

Chapter 11

Conservation of historic open space urban landscapes of Chittagong, Bangladesh

Maharina Jafrin, Beau B. Beza and Shamsul Hossain

Chapter 12

The role of natural landscape in historic Chinese cities

Junheng Lai

PART III: Safeguarding Intangible Urban Heritage

Chapter 13

The Sensory Heritage of Asian Cities

Nisha A. Fernando

Chapter 14

Ghats on the Ganga in Varanasi, India: The making of a vernacular urban landscape and its conservation

Amita Sinha

Chapter 15

Safeguarding ritual landscape of living urban heritages: A case of Navadurga masked dances festival of Bhaktapur, Nepal

Sudarshan Raj Tiwari

Chapter 16

Intangible dimensions of urban heritage: Learning from holy cities of India

Rana P.B. Singh, Pravin S. Rana and Sarvesh Kumar

Chapter 17

Cultural Routes in China: The urban heritage trails of Chóngqing

Junli Chen and David Jones

Chapter 18

Finding human well-being in historic urban landscapes

Julie Williams Lawless

PART IV: Fostering Sustainable Urban Heritage

Chapter 19

Integrated Management Systems of the urban World Heritage properties of Kathmandu and Samarkand

Kai Weise

Chapter 20

Erasure and Appearance: A critical view on urban heritage management practices in China, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam

John Stallmeyer and Lynne Marie Dearborn

Chapter 21

Sustainable Urbanism and Historic Urban Landscape Conservation

Farhana Ferdous, Julie Williams Lawless, and Kapila D. Silva

Chapter 22

Regeneration of historic urban landscape with pedestrian-oriented streetscape design: The case of Deoksugung-gil Street in Seoul, South Korea

Sung-Kyun Kim

Chapter 23

Towards safer and resilient urban environments

Rohit Jigyasu

Chapter 24

Rural development: A strategy for urban heritage management in the Asia-Pacific region

Dennis Rodwell

PART V: Localizing Heritage Stewardship

Chapter 25

Community-focused urban regeneration: Preserving and activating the HUL in Malaysian cities

Richard A. Engelhardt and Neil Khor

Chapter 26

Community involvement in heritage conservation: The case of Kotagede, Indonesia

Punto Wijayanto

Chapter 27

Transient heritage values, conflicting aspirations, and endangered urban heritage in the Historic Galle Fort, Sri Lanka

Amanda Rajapakse and Kapila D. Silva

Chapter 28

Conserving the Historic Port Town of Tomo, Seto Inland Sea, Japan: Repositioning urban heritage in the ‘shrinking society’

Yushi Utaka

Chapter 29

Understanding community-based heritage values: The case of the Tamil Brahmin Settlement in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India

Vaisali Krishna Kumar

Chapter 30

Wurundjeri-al Biik-u (Wurundjeri Country), Mag-golee (Place), Murrup (Spirit) and Ker-up-non (People): Aboriginal living heritage in Australia’s urban landscapes

Mandy Nicholson and David Jones

PART VI: Assessing Urban Heritage Policies

Chapter 31

The Historic Urban Landscape approach in the Australian context: Evolving heritage practice and city management frameworks

Susan Fayad and Kristal Buckley

Chapter 32

The monument and the city: Examining India’s legacy of monument centric conservation in the context of the Historic Urban Landscape approach.

Jyoti Pandey Sharma

Chapter 33

Historic urban landscapes of China: Issues of conservation and management

Zhe Geng and David Jones

Chapter 34

Conserving historic urban cores in Iran: An overview

Rana Amirtahmasebi and Mohammadsaeid Izadi

Chapter 35

‘Land is a very limited definition of place’: Navigating urban heritage conservation in the Pacific Island nations

Anita Smith

Chapter 36

Historic Urban Landscapes in the Indian Ocean waters: Challenges of urban heritage custodianship for the Comoros, Maldives, Mauritius, Mayotte, Réunion, and Seychelles

Zaheer Allam and David Jones

Chapter 37

A Tale of Two Cities: How tourism development is treated in Yangon and Macau’s urban heritage planning

Hilary du Cros

Kapila D. Silva is an Associate Professor at the School of Architecture and Design of the University of Kansas, USA. He has taught at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA, from which he received a doctorate in architecture, and at the University of Moratuwa in Sri Lanka, from which he received professional training in architecture. He is the lead editor of Asian Heritage Management: Contexts, Concerns and Prospects (Routledge, 2013) and Cultural Landscapes of South Asia: Studies in Heritage Conservation and Management (Routledge, 2017).