Managing historic cities under a new paradigm for urban conservation

This paper aims to present the limits of current urban heritage conservation practices and tools to cope with contemporary challenges and pressures affecting historic cities. It shows how, from the beginning of the 21st century, the international debate on urban heritage conservation has tried to reconcile heritage conservation with development building a holistic and integrated approach to urban conservation and management. The Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) Recommendation, adopted by UNESCO in 2011, embodies the key principles of a new paradigm for urban conservation and management. The paper discusses these principles and underlines the limits of its early implementation attempts. Finally, it identifies a research gap in the existing literature and presents the relevance, design and methodology of the PhD research that is currently being conducted by the author. It aims to stimulate the discussion on these topics and to test the research methodology chosen.