Abstract
To better face the challenges of rapid urbanisation, it is recommended urban heritage management is carried out through community participation. In the Chinese context of state centralisation, however, inclusive participatory governance for urban heritage has remained limited, and effective ways of engaging residents in decision-making have yet to be explored adequately. This paper aims to explore community participation within Chinese urban heritage management, taking the Old Town of Lijiang as a case study. During fieldwork, in-depth semi-structured interviews were carried out with both native and migrant residents as well as administrators. Based on a community participation assessment framework, the interview guide was developed and then built on four aspects: community participation in decision-making; the competence of participants; the right to social justice and confidence of participants; and community empowerment and equity. This paper reveals the current state of participatory practices in the Old Town of Lijiang and, specifically, discusses the roles of residents, elites and community-based organisations in decision-making concerning urban heritage management, in the contexts of state-centralisation. Chinese urban heritage management needs to raise public awareness and willingness as well as give residents more responsibilities and power to face the challenges of rapid urbanisation, but currently, the degree of participation is still minimal, only between informing and consulting.
Highlights
Today, the concept of heritage includes isolated artefacts and historic buildings and larger-scale ensembles, districts and landscapes (Veldpaus, 2015)
This paper reveals the current state of participatory practices in the Old Town of Lijiang and, discusses the roles of residents, elites and community-based organisations in decision-making concerning urban heritage management, in the contexts of state-centralisation
This paper reveals the current state of participatory practices in the Old Town of Lijiang and, discusses the roles of local residents, elites and community-based or ganisations in the government-led decision-making process within Chi nese urban heritage management
Summary
The concept of heritage includes isolated artefacts and historic buildings and larger-scale ensembles, districts and landscapes (Veldpaus, 2015). Urban heritage management is requested to include different stakeholder groups in the decision-making processes, e.g. identification, programming and execution steps (Veldpaus, 2015). The Old Town of Lijiang was built 800 years ago and is located in northwest Yunnan province in the southwest of China (see Fig. 1) It was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1997, under the se lection criteria (ii), (iv) and (v). While a World Heritage property, the Old Town of Lijiang is a place where residents continue practising daily socio-economic activities. This is significant as residents’ traditional activities and daily needs are of importance when developing heritage management schemes (Shao, 2017; Su, 2015)
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