An Analysis of Issues and Inscription Pattern of World Heritage for Industrial Heritage

Abstract

Globally, types of the inscription of World Heritage have diverged from monuments, group of buildings, and sites, but spread to concepts of living heritage, cultural landscape, and industrial heritage. Moreover, as new concepts like series heritage and trans-national heritage emerged, the inscription of world heritage turned into an essential issues of national competitiveness. In this kind of the stream of times, this paper has 3stages which have focus on industrial heritage. First it draws ambiguous arguments of the inscription of World Heritage found in ‘Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution -Kyushu·Yamaguchi and Related Areas’, which Japan aims for the inscription in 2015. These are as follows; What constitutes industrial heritage? Is a certain period of time the only criterion for the inscription? How should we define a buffer zone? Can some parts of complex type industrial heritage be intended for the inscription? Can we inscribe the industrial facilities which are still working today as a World Heritage site? The second stage investigates and evaluates the criteria and grounds of the inscription of 59 industrial heritage sites which have been inscribed as World Heritage after 1978. Based on these 2 stages, the third stage reasons out abjective principles that industrial heritage should have as World Heritage. This study may not be the results which reflected the views of international experts of industrial heritage or passed the discussion stage, however it is judged to be the expansion of the province and th grounds of both quantity and quality level of activation of industrial heritage as World Heritage.