Alternative perspectives? The implementation of public participation in local heritage planning

Abstract

Recently, increased attention has been paid to the importance of everyday landscapes in the Western world, and a stronger political will to involve local participation in planning processes has emerged. The authors discuss the implementation of the political will to engage the Norwegian public in local heritage planning and whether or not this new role can have a mobilising effect on heritage protection. In Norway, cultural heritage managers have established methods for identifying valuable heritage assets in cultural historic landscapes. As increased responsibility for cultural heritage management is given to municipalities, more municipalities are making their own heritage plans to improve local heritage management. The article investigates how cultural heritage management in everyday landscapes is taking place, how heritage plans are developed, how local knowledge is involved, and what assets local residents appreciate in their environment, based on an in-depth study of two medium-sized Norwegian regional towns. The results show that local stakeholders were often invited to participate in planning processes, but that their contributions were largely kept out of official plans at the final stage. Further, the study revealed that memories and personal histories related to heritage appreciations are important elements in building identity, both at a personal level and at a local level.

Keywords:

• cultural heritage
• everyday landscapes
• landscape planning
• user participation

Acknowledgements

The project ‘Local heritage values and cultural heritage plans in urban fringe areas’ was funded by The Norwegian Research Council (2008–2010) and carried out in cooperation with researchers from the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU), the Department of Landscape Architecture and Spatial Planning at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, and the Urban Programme at Oslo University College. An early version of the paper was presented at an international conference on Landscape Legacy held in Wageningen, Netherlands in 2010. We thank the informants for kindly sharing their knowledge with us. We also thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.