Urban Commerce and Protected Cultural Landscape

María Griñán Montealegre,Mónica López Sánchez

doi:10.3390/heritage2010006

Abstract

By analyzing the urban landscape, this investigation focuses on some commercial typologies that exist in historical urban areas and its relationship with the urban landscape and its heritage values. Trade plays an essential role in historical urban areas, both in the past and in the present, since it is part of the urban landscape—creating it and modifying it, but also preserving it. Historical protected urban areas contain diverse elements reflecting the impacts of commercial activities that have existed in cities throughout history. At present, the urban landscape of commercial activity is made up of a multiplicity of typologies and formats which interact with the historical landscape and its values, using them to strengthen its strategies of attraction, differentiation, and sales. Shop owners contribute to the preservation of historic urban areas by maintaining the commercial functions within them. Therefore, we affirm that the role of commercial activity in the preservation of urban protected areas is essential. However, further research is needed because this aspect has not been addressed in depth by the scientific community specializing in the management of cultural heritage.

Highlights

Choay called the conquest of the disciplinary status of the conservation of historical monuments [1].This was a process that was shaped during the first half of the 20th century, and consecrated in the 1960s, as a consequence of the restoration of numerous urban areas following the devastation caused by the two world wars.From this period onwards, the milestones that were to establish the doctrine of cultural heritage in relation to the city, and the consequent task of preserving the values that make it worthy of that condition, began to occur
The milestones that were to establish the doctrine of cultural heritage in relation to the city, and the consequent task of preserving the values that make it worthy of that condition, began to occur
The notion of a protected urban landscape was established by the jump from the isolated monument to the historic area; it was already implicit in the concept of setting of a monument

Summary

Introduction

Choay called the conquest of the disciplinary status of the conservation of historical monuments [1]. The broader 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 urban structure It includes social and Heritage 2019, 2, 72–85; doi:10.3390/heritage2010006 www.mdpi.com/journal/heritage. The importance of commercial activity would increase, placing it at the heart of the new models of urban growth that began to develop in the United States in the first half of the century [24] These models pursued the perfect commercial city and materialized as residential areas in the suburbs, whose centre of community life is the shopping centre [25]. How the historic buildings and their uses that are part of the commercial urban landscape, create and modify it, and preserve it as it acts as a cultural element of prestige and attraction of the consumer

Line of Work and Methodology

Analysis and Preliminary Results