A GIS Based Character Appraisal Toolkit

The Historic Environment : Policy and Practice, 2019

In 2000 the (then) English Heritage was asked to lead on a review of policies relating to the historic environment in England. Rather than simply draft something in isolation, English Heritage launched a wide-ranging and inclusive engagement process involving the private sector, natural and cultural heritage organisations, faith groups and many others supported by a MORI survey of peoples' attitudes to the historic environment and the value they placed on it. The resulting document, Power of Place-the future of the historic environment, anticipated many issues that have subsequently become mainstream elements of policy and practice including conservation-led regeneration, tackling heritage at risk, reviewing public parks and publishing regular state of the historic environment reports. Other recommendations still remain challenging in policy terms-including encouraging better maintenance, promoting craft skills, putting heritage at the heart of education, understanding what people value and why, enabling more participation, managing change, making the regulatory system work better and supporting local leaders. This article simply sets out to raise awareness of that initiative, as a contribution to the history of heritage policyin England.

Historic Landscape Characterisation (HLC) and Historic Land-Use Assessment (HLA), the English and Scottish versions of historic landscape characterisation respectively, take systematic representations of landscape components such as boundary and land use patterns and use transparent processes of assessment and interpretation to abstract or characterise the essence of the history that established the form, and feel, of the present-day world. Time-depth is introduced when either earlier or archaeological mappings are subjected to similar assessment, allowing people to appreciate the trajectory of past change in ways that are useful for guiding future change. Some attributions and interpretations can, like those in all other forms of historical study and discourse, be debatable and some see the broad-brush approach as oversimplifying a complex world. However, if HLA and HLC are regarded as problematising frameworks within which secondary more detailed and critical work can be located, then many of these issues evaporate. Applications include supporting, informing, framing and stimulating further historic landscape and archaeological research; informing landscape assessment, policy, strategy and management; and developing dialogue with a wide range of partners.

Portfolio of Research and Projects of Sustainable and Creative Villages in SW China, 2020

1. Abstract In China, rural villages and towns have gone through rapid changes in the process of urbanization. Many rural settlements have evolved with long histories and are closely related to local natural environment and adjacent urban developments. Rapid changes, however, have led to different needs for protecting the natural environment and cultural heritage, and there is also a need to improve the built environment for daily life and to develop new job opportunities. This paper studies the methods that Natural England uses to assess the local environment in the Yorkshire region of England. Their guidance documents aim to protect natural landscape, retain the distinctive character of the place and the sense of history, and to encourage new developments that maintain the interplay between rural and urban characteristics in the region. The study then focuses on a case study of a World Heritage Site, Saltaire in Yorkshire. Saltaire was built as a successful textile production urban village during the Industrial Revolution in the 19th Century when the rural communities of previous centuries were superseded by urban townships and cities. The settlement experienced cycles of prosperity and recession over its history, with revival after the start of new cultural activities in the 20th Century. The paper studies changes during the last 150 years in Saltaire that reveal complicated influences from architectural design, social, cultural, and economic changes that affected long-term and short-term development of the place. This will provide useful information for planning strategies for contemporary development.

European Spatial Research and Policy, 2014

The present issue of European Spatial Research and Policy is the first of two numbers dedicated to 'Planning systems facing heritage issues in Europe: from protection to management, in the plural interpretations of the values of the past'. The concept arose from a meeting held in June 2013 at the conference on 'Changing Cities' in Skiathos, Greece, where a group of planners decided to compare the experiences we have at the interface between heritage and planning in a range of European countries. European societies are becoming increasingly fond of the historical dimension of their cities. Traces from the past, both physical and cultural, are cherished because they are carrying territorial identities. This evolution has reached the European discourse, with the Florence convention of the Council of Europe (2000), as well as the Leipzig Charter on Sustainable European Cities, which states in its Preamble that 'Our cities possess unique cultural and architectural qualities, strong forces of social inclusion and exceptional possibilities for economic development' (Informal Council of the Ministers in charge of Urban Development of the European Union, 2007). At the global level, UNESCO promotes a similar vision. The Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape (2011) defines historic urban landscape: […] the urban area understood as the result of a historic layering of cultural and natural values and attributes, extending beyond the notion of 'historic centre' or 'ensemble' to include the broader urban context and its geographical setting. This wider context includes notably the site's topography, geomorphology, hydrology and natural features, its built environment, both historic and contemporary, its infrastructures above and below ground, its open spaces and gardens, its land use patterns and spatial organization, perceptions and visual relationships, as well as all other elements of the

This paper describes English Heritage's national programme of 'historic landscape characterisation' carried out by local government. Historic Landscape Characterisation is a new GIS-based archaeological method for defining the historic and archaeological dimension of the present-day landscape. It can explain how and why the landscape looks as it does, identify landscape's 'time-depth' and facilitate sustainable management. One of the earlier Historic Landscape Characterisation projects, in Hampshire, is presented as an example. Its methods, techniques and results are summarised, and the paper concludes with reflections on the use of Historic Landscape Characterisation in heritage management.