Tackling tourism-driven development in World Heritage cities: A comparison between Macao, China and Evora, Portugal

World Heritage cities, all over the world, are a centre of tourist attraction. In many of these cities, tourism is one of the main driving forces of local economies. As a result, these cities come under intense pressure to accommodate tourism-driven developments; summed up with the pressure to fulfil the needs of local communities. How development in World Heritage cities can be tackled is, thus, an important issue for both heritage management and urban development. This paper presents two World Heritage cities – Macao, a former Portuguese colony in China and Évora, the capital of Alentejo region in Portugal - as case studies and discusses and compares the way tourism-driven development is being tackled in these cities. Macao’s economy depends almost entirely on tourism-driven activities. While the World Heritage status has added additional attractiveness to Macao, the main attraction there is gambling. On the other hand, Évora is much less dependent on tourism. Similar to Macao, the World Heritage status has raised the attractiveness of Évora as a tourist destination; however, the university plays also a fundamental role. Consequently, despite the efforts of the local authorities, the city is losing its local community. Even if for different reasons, in both case studies, heritage is often sidelined in the urban development agenda. The case studies identify the raise of cultural-driven tourism and the consequent urban developments and illustrate the role of legislations and regulations and the impact of their variation per heritage protection zones. Moreover, it identifies the resultant urban development scenario that enhance or diminish the heritage values of the cities and, therefore, help retain or cause destruction to the very cultural capital that has brought and can bring many more benefits to these cities of outstanding universal value

Tackling tourism-driven development in World Heritage cities: A comparison between Macao, China and Evora, Portugal

World Heritage cities, all over the world, are a centre of tourist attraction. In many of these cities, tourism is one of the main driving forces of local economies. As a result, these cities come under intense pressure to accommodate tourism-driven developments; summed up with the pressure to fulfil the needs of local communities. How development in World Heritage cities can be tackled is, thus, an important issue for both heritage management and urban development. This paper presents two World Heritage cities – Macao, a former Portuguese colony in China and Évora, the capital of Alentejo region in Portugal - as case studies and discusses and compares the way tourism-driven development is being tackled in these cities. Macao’s economy depends almost entirely on tourism-driven activities. While the World Heritage status has added additional attractiveness to Macao, the main attraction there is gambling. On the other hand, Évora is much less dependent on tourism. Similar to Macao, the World Heritage status has raised the attractiveness of Évora as a tourist destination; however, the university plays also a fundamental role. Consequently, despite the efforts of the local authorities, the city is losing its local community. Even if for different reasons, in both case studies, heritage is often sidelined in the urban development agenda. The case studies identify the raise of cultural-driven tourism and the consequent urban developments and illustrate the role of legislations and regulations and the impact of their variation per heritage protection zones. Moreover, it identifies the resultant urban development scenario that enhance or diminish the heritage values of the cities and, therefore, help retain or cause destruction to the very cultural capital that has brought and can bring many more benefits to these cities of outstanding universal value

The cultural significance of World Heritage cities: Portugal as case study

World Heritage cities are at the highest level of cultural significance, as their significance has been acknowledged of Outstanding Universal Value for the whole mankind. This recognized value needs to be kept monitored while managing the development of the city. Otherwise, local authorities might not be able to prevent it from being irreversibly damaged, and removed from the WH list. To be able to monitor the Outstanding Universal Value of their cities, local authorities need to have a clear understanding of what defines the Outstanding Universal Value, which being a broad notion of various interpretations, its definition often relies on the chosen selection criteria and justification for nomination. Value-based assessment has a deep influence on how authorities protect and preserve their World Heritage properties. Thus, the identification of the values that define the significance of a property can be most crucial to help monitoring the significance and achieve a better management

Taxonomias do significado cultural do património: valores e atributos

Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Heritage & Value

The cultural significance of World Heritage cities: Portugal as case study

World Heritage cities are at the highest level of cultural significance, as their significance has been acknowledged of Outstanding Universal Value for the whole mankind. This recognized value needs to be kept monitored while managing the development of the city. Otherwise, local authorities might not be able to prevent it from being irreversibly damaged, and removed from the WH list. To be able to monitor the Outstanding Universal Value of their cities, local authorities need to have a clear understanding of what defines the Outstanding Universal Value, which being a broad notion of various interpretations, its definition often relies on the chosen selection criteria and justification for nomination. Value-based assessment has a deep influence on how authorities protect and preserve their World Heritage properties. Thus, the identification of the values that define the significance of a property can be most crucial to help monitoring the significance and achieve a better management

Bridging Heritage Conservation and Urban Development Planning Policies: Exploring Research Methodologies in the Literature

Cities are the main drivers in the race to sustainable development, and the needed transformations would affect their built environment. Transformations through development plans or projects are often regulated by local planning policies, which are assumed to simultaneously enable transformation and the conservation of irreplaceable resources such as heritage. Earlier research, however, denounces a different reality, where local planning policies omit heritage or a share of these resources e.g., intangible, or even when local planning policies acknowledge heritage as a whole, but their guidelines of transformation are unrelated to heritage and/or their attributes. This paper is part of doctoral research that aims to discuss the dynamic between heritage conservation and urban development in planning policies and tools. It introduces the results of a systematic literature review crossing both fields. Focused on the methodology adopted recent researches, it discusses the outcomes of an in depth analysis of 37 publications, with a detailed methodology description. The analysis explored the type of data sources, actors addressed and heritage categories, values and attributes. Results confirmed the recent trend in which the relation between heritage and planning is shifting, from being considered a threat to a crucial resource to development. Although still far from the leading role as promoted by international documents as the UNESCO 2011 Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape. The results of this research are relevant for science, but also for society, by highlighting how these approaches can raise the efficiency of planning policies, the results assist citiesdeveloping more sustainably.Heritage & ValuesArchitectural Engineering +Technolog