Authenticity and the Sense of Place in Urban Design

Abstract

Urban conservation has drastically changed its theory, practice and even basic definitions over the last 50 years. The definition of human heritage has been evolving since the 1931 Athens Charter to cover historic towns and urban areas as well as natural landscape and community-valued natural and man-made artefacts. The complexity of the field stems from its parallel theoretical and practical developments from the fields of archaeology, architecture, urban history and urban design as each discipline has a different area of interest in conserving human urban heritage. After being the realm of archaeologists for a long time, urban conservation is currently an interest for urban designers and city administrators concerned with providing a historical urban identity as much as an authentic urban identity. The increased role of urban designers and the new understanding about urban heritage that covers whole city districts have brought new professional and theoretical approaches to urban conservation during recent decades. The latest of these approaches aims at the creation of enjoyable urban experiences and not at the mere retention of authentic urban history for succeeding generations. In doing so, attention is given to the creation of a sense of place more than to the exact restoration of urban details, through selectivity in deciding the locations to be conserved, selectivity of the urban elements to be recognized for conservation and selectivity of the sitescape features in need of retention. This paper presents two urban heritage conservation projects focused on creating a sense of place, dealing with the issue of authenticity as secondary to the issue of creating an enjoyable overall urban experience. The paper discusses, in addition, the impact of the internationally enforced standards of urban conservation on the overall urban experience.