Towards a Historic Urban Landscape approach: community engagement through local population's perception on heritage values and attributes

The Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape is strongly committed with the implementation of ‘community engagement’ approaches, oriented to the empowerment of local population into identify key values in their urban areas, develop future’s visions, set goals, agree on actions to safeguard their heritage and promote sustainable development. Departing from the methodologies applied in the cities of Mozambique Island, Cuenca and Ballarat, this paper proposes a “synthesis” approach, adapted to the context of the Historic Centre of Porto World Heritage. The paper presents the survey results undertook to local community of the WH core and buffer zone, which aimed to assess their knowledge about WH status, what they appreciate most and less, and the recommendations to improve the place where they live and work. This is expected to contribute to enrich the knowledge over the potentials of local communities’ participation into the definition and management of sustainable urban conservation processes. Individual (face-to-face) interviews despite being the most time-wasted method, enable to catch the responded without be prepared and being alone, feeling free to give any answer. The background knowledge is irrelevant as the aim is to gather generalist and non-expert visions. The interviewer should make the respondent feel comfortable and anonymous on their answers. In between these two approaches, is placed the role played by social media, achieving to-day a high relevance due to the massive extension of its use. Also, it entails a “pretended” anonymity which enable to get more honest answers. The recently adopted UNESCO Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscapes (UNESCO, 2011), hereafter referenced as “HUL”, assumes the integration of urban conservation into wider development strategies as the conclusion of a long path of conflicts between conservation and development. To achieve it, this new approach stands out the exploration of strategies integrating community engagement as fundamental. In fact, the process proposed may take form by inquiring the local community for what is important to them, assuming that elements’ value relies on it valorization by community. Change is also a crucial matter, which as unavoidable should be also object of community thinking (City of Ballarat, 2016). Within the six “critical steps”, which according to HUL approach, every sustainable and integrated urban intervention should follows, the integration of community concerns over projects is a crucial target. In order to integrate heritage actives into the wider urban development strategies and policies, those should result from a gathered consensus between all city actors, from who lives, visits, invests, manage and thinks the city. Therefore, among other toolkit sets, the community engagement tools are defined by this recommendation and might achier several forms, e.g. publicity, dialogue and consultation, community empowerment, cultural mapping, etc. Departing from the analysis and lessons achieved by former experiences in three HUL pi-lot cities – Island of Mozambique (Mozambique Republic), Cuenca (Ecuador), and Ballarat (Australia) – where community engagement approaches were at the center, this re-search introduces the results gathered from a survey approach applied to population from the nine parishes covered by the 1996 World Heritage (WH) property “Historic Centre of Porto, Luiz I Bridge and Monastery of Serra do Pilar” (hereafter abbreviated to “Historic Centre of Porto WH”). Besides to surveying local population (residents, former residents, workers and sellers) perception on WH values and attributes (Outstanding Universal Values | OUV), the inquiries outcomes will enable to identify recognized limits, threats, opportunities and recommendations for a more sustainable preservation of their home city. Gathered outcomes will enable to enrich the knowledge over the potentials of local com-munities’ participation into the definition and reach the consensus over the values (why) and attributes (what) in urban conservation and development processes. The utmost objective lies on to contribute to enhance the subjective perspective on current implemented strategies and policies in urban conservation management (e.g. Municipal Master Plan (PDM) and the WH Management Plan). 2 THREE EXPERIENCES SETTING COMMUNITY AS A CRUX OF MATTER OF AN INTEGRATED URBAN DEVELOPMENT MODEL Built in Vienna Conference (UNESCO, 2005), the HUL recommendation gathered from the very beginning a range of countries from all around the world. Each of it, accepted to explore the HUL approach according to their own development aims, needs and conditions, adapting proposed action plan and tools to their very specific context. Among those we opted to stand out three experiences Island of Mozambique (Mozambique), Cuenca (Ecuador) and Ballarat (Australia) which despite being contrasting, they commonly assumed the perceptions of local community as a crucial element on their methodologies into built a sustainable urban development strategy. Thus, the contact with communities followed the three main questions raised by HUL approach: What they love in their city? What they want to protect? What they thing for the future of their city? (Fig. 1). Fig. 1 IMAGINE approach themes (adapted from City of Ballarat, 2016). The research undertook in Island of Mozambique was framed on the first follow-up project, in 2011, resulted from HUL recommendation WH Committee ratification, integrating other eastern African cities, such as Zanzibar (Tanzania). On Mozambican case, the research was focused on the assessment of the ownership property status and condition of this WH city (1991), and how this will have implications on future expected changes on the island. The fieldwork divided in two phases, teams and Island zones (“stone town” – TU/e; “Macuti town” – Unilúrio University), and developed in collaboration with local authorities (Town Hall and GACIM), interviewed and visit every occupied parcel. The semi-structured face-to-face interviews, besides ownership related issues, embodied the questions raised by HUL approach, settled on two scales the island and the building and enable to understand what they most value and predict the changes that might would be seen on the island. Cuenca, an WH city since 1999 adopted a mix approach, starting by an in-depth characterization of the place undertake by multidisciplinary team of academic experts, which defined the landscape units embodied in city territory. Local population, divided according to defined landscape units were further invited to think about the values and attributes present in their place (Fig. 1) and discuss the defined units, through workshops and focus groups. The city of Ballarat is an outsider, which despite not being yet a WH site, the city’s local authorities were the first in the “world to become a signatory to implement UNESCO's Historic Urban Landscape approach” (Buckley, et al., 2016). In fact, the contribution and support gave by local government has been crucial to develop its strategy. Integrated on the Asia-Pacific Region Training Center on Historic Urban Landscape (WHITRAP) a WH project created in 2011, this collaborative project between academia and local authorities started the initiative “IMAGINE Ballarat” (City of Ballarat, 2013), in which local community was invited to participate into city’s planning trough postcards, social media, workshops, contests, personal meeting with local technicians, into answer the three HUL approach questions (Fig. 1). Unfortunately not all the experiences were successful, meaning, that not all had reached the purpose to be a tool to be implemented into wider development policies. While Ballarat, had been from the start a commitment from local authorities and resulting on a depth change of local planning policies strategy (City of Ballarat, 2015; 2016), the experience in Cuenca, despite the initial support by local authorities, they ended to abandon the process, resulting however on an interesting and rich academic exercise (Rey-Pérez et al, 2017). On the case of Mozambique, the results failed into be publish together, they derived in a series of papers, focused on the ownership property status (Tarrafa Silva et al, 2013) and the threats affecting its tangible heritage (Damen et al, 2013). Local community Love