Summary
Cultural environment in town planning — Value judgement in conservation planning in the Oulu city center in 50 years time span
This article concentrates on cultural heritage, especially cultural environment, value judgement and decision making in the context of town planning. The article examines how decisions about cultural heritage have been made in town planning and the concrete criteria communities use to assess their heritage. The area of study is the center of Oulu, and it focuses on the period 1963–2012, from the beginning of Antiquities Act to the consolidation of municipalities in Oulu, with a focus on the city council minutes as source material.
Value judgement considering cultural heritage are quite complex. One site can have multiple values and those values can even be in contradiction between each other. Also, not all values are consistently measured or compared with one another. Values are not inherent or unchangeable, so the values of cultural heritage should be studied often. In this article values are defined in the way Randall Mason has studied them as both sociocultural and economical values.
There are not mentions of values in every case in this study. Value judgement is not clearly something that has been done consciously. It is possible, however, to identify values given to the site from the description of the site. In cases where it is possible to find out values, the three most commonly invoked values were cultural historical value, architectural value and townscape value. Also, in many cases the site was thought to be simply valuable without further explanation. All three acknowledged values are sociocultural values, according to Mason. Economical values were rarely used, although they clearly have a role in decision making. Decisions have been justified by aesthetic and information based values. Social, spiritual and economical values have not been used in town-planning decision making. It is possible that those values used are more commonly agreed upon and thus easier to use, but value judgement was not a conscious act during planning process — although it has become more conscious
