Urban Memory and Heritage: The issue of City Heritage in the Reconstruction of the Centre of Baku

Abstract

Urban spaces are public spaces where the society carries out commercial and economic activities, maintains social In a context of globalized urban production, it is common to notice a dissociation between urban memory and urban project; some city districts are transformed into a space-museum, an enclave out of time, while others are destroyed and “Dubaised” allowing the rise to interchangeable places around the world. The city itself consists of material and immaterial elements and the second ones includes what it is called urban memory. Memory can be defined by individuals as the property of retaining and restoring information from the past. Each individual develops his own memory of the city, corresponding to the experiences with the places and depending on its social and historical context. Memory is, by definition, transmitted and therefore it's the transmission of various expressions from the city that allow a person to appropriate the urban heritage. The appropriation of urban heritage is important in the context of the preservation of city assets. This study examines the complexity of the urban memory of human individuals and the difficulty to grasp its sense for decision makers who are engaged in urban policy. Based on the case of Baku city, the results from this study propose to draw attention to the awareness of the consequences of the misunderstanding of urban memory.