Conservation and Maintenance of Modern Urban Architecture: The Need for Long‐term Maintenance and Sustainable Management of Metropolitan Housing Areas

Abstract

A problematic legacy of challenging issues – technically, materially, economically, environmentally, and socially – in this context with regard to European built environments, calls for an academic trans‐disciplinary, systemic and problem driven methodological approach in order to achieve a needed breakthrough in pro‐active and sustainable management of involved housing areas, contributing to sustainable development and increase of quality of life in a town as a whole. This approach is relevant to elaborate in accordance with the currently developing sustainability discourse and the concept of integrated conservation, with its physical and social dimensions, which enables identification of appropriate means to deal with contextual and complex issues, such as e.g. valorization, planning, interventions and identification of human needs related to urban structures of a general building stock – i.e. ‘ordinary’ recent buildings and environments. The crucial comprehension of urban fabric as an integrated material, economic and social resource highlights the need for a strategic and holistic, long‐term approach to the management and conservation of modern metropolitan housing areas as an important aspect of sustainable urban planning and development at large.

Keywords:

• Integrated conservation
• sustainable development
• long‐term maintenance
• lack of pro‐active strategies
• prefabricated multi‐dwelling blocks
• material deterioration
• social degradation

Notes

1. Quote: Rosvall et al., 2006

2. “Conservation may be defined as dynamic management of change in order to reduce the rate of decay…Conservation requires comprehensive socioeconomic, legal and cultural planning, integrated at all levels” Sir Bernard M. Feilden, 1982.