Heritage planning and rethinking the meaning and values of designating heritage sites in a post-disaster context: The case of Aceh, Indonesia

Abstract

Heritage has become a driver of development as stated in the New Urban Agenda 2016 report. A starting premise of most recent studies of the concept of heritage suggests that its nature is not as a static inheritance with fixed and enduring values. Rather, the identification of sites as heritage requires a process of identification, or heritage creation. Heritage is a fluid phenomenon rather than a static set of objects or sites with fixed meanings. This paper uses theory from Smith [1] who argued that there is no such thing as a heritage; heritage is essentially a cultural custom and social process. Today, site-based heritage planning only considers the values of old towns and lacks clarity in terms of values that create criteria for the designation of cultural heritage sites in another context. Yet, this approach is needed as a way to maintain urban assets that significantly contribute to the establishment of values and quality parts of the city. Heritage planning is also the act of communicating and remembering the past for the present and the future in the public domain. This paper aims to formulate a conceptual heritage planning of designating heritage sites that challenges the traditional notion of heritage which considers age as a key element in heritage, the privileges monumentality and grand scale, with scientific/aesthetic expert judgment as a requirement of heritage designations. The limited idea of heritage based on exclusive values as something ancient, grand-scale, historical, and with other exclusive values has excluded many places as heritage in communities emerging from disasters. Debates within the critical heritage studies movement argue that heritage is a cultural product linked to activities of remembering and is an act of communication. The dominant hypothesis is that heritage values cannot remain to exist if the physical or material aspects of sites are destroyed and this hypothesis feels flawed. This paper asks us to acknowledge the importance of understanding how local values create heritage, that heritage is not only about material and physical aspects but it is also a cultural process. The methodology used is ethnography with in-depth interviews to uncover meaning and values in this context. This paper uses the examples of how the sites in Aceh that were affected by the tsunami disaster in 2004 such as the PLTD Apung ship and the Mosque of Ulee Lheue are sites that a mutual and role of historical city relating to the potential as signs of civilization, historical values, commemorative values, religious values, and values of consensus within the community as outstanding local values, as a basis of consideration in rethinking the designations of heritage sites of less than 50 years old.