The politics of conservation planning: a comparative study of urban heritage making in the Global North and the Global South

Urban heritage is the category of heritage that most directly concerns the environment of each and every person. Conservation or the integration of the built historic environment in city planning is typically viewed as a desirable undertaking, and policies to this effect are established as an integral element of planning in many countries. Our paper investigates the complexities at play between conservation planning structures, their applications and how these vary between contexts. It asks: how does conservation compare between planning systems of the North and South and what does this suggest about heritage value? Based on a survey of conservation planning systems in 5 countries, focusing on 5 city case-studies, this paper studies conservation’s position within planning in current urban policy in different contexts. Our paper analyses how different planning systems have adopted and integrated urban heritage definitions and accordingly, how zoning techniques, governance levels and planning constraints have resulted in quite varied conservation planning outcomes not only between the North and South but between European examples alone. In exploring contexts where the desirability of conserving and enhancing the historic environment is overlooked, overturned or simply ignored despite the existence of conservation policies, this paper also explores the limitations regulation has in pinning down heritage values.