IHBC Chair James Caird’s recent Context article – ‘When history’s mistakes become today’s heritage’ – has been featured to the 9000 registered users on the email Newsletter of Designing Buildings Wiki (DBW), host partner of the IHBC’s Conservation Wiki, and one of the most popular construction industry websites.
DBW writes:
This article originally appeared as ‘When history’s mistakes become today’s heritage’ in IHBC’s Context 153, published in March 2018. It was written by IHBC Chair James Caird.
James Caird writes:
A heritage place must be valued for what it is in the round, not just what it is physically. This issue cropped up in another recent world heritage site designation: the English Lake District. There is a school of thought, led by George Monbiot of The Guardian, that it should not have been designated because of its long history of ecological degradation. But this misses the point that historic agricultural practice, the call of the wild for walkers and the romanticisation of the place by the lake poets are all part of the designated heritage.
Erosion by three-peak challengees, as with New Zealand’s Milford Trail and other bucket-list adventures, is a matter for management, just as it is for historic cities. So I have some sympathy with the views of Liverpool’s Lord Mayor, Joe Anderson, in wanting heritage to be a driver and not an inhibitor of regeneration. Of course, the opposing perspectives of the city and Unesco should be capable of resolution.
One hopes that the recently established task force will be able to achieve this, whether or not its formation was driven by the dogged campaigning of the late Gavin Stamp writing as Piloti in Private Eye.
