Reframing China’s heritage conservation discourse. Learning by testing civic engagement tools in a historic rural village

Abstract

Urban heritage conservation in China has been subject to severe criticism, although there is now a sense of paradigm shift. Charters, declarations and agendas had the merit of filtering down the international discourse on heritage, while more innovative approaches were arising. The UNESCO Historic Urban Landscape recommendation, offers a new angle from which to observe this process of change. The underlying argument of this article is that HUL can provide a platform to achieve greater sustainability in transforming historic sites in China, particularly in rural areas, overcoming, at the same time, the easy shortcut of the East–West discourse of difference in respect to heritage conservation. This is primarily due to the shifting focus from the materiality of heritage to its role in sustainable development with increasing attention on the role played by local communities. By presenting the proposal for the protection of the historic rural village of Shuang Wan in the Jiangsu Province, this paper aims to reflect on this shift showing its advantages but also some of the risks. These are inherent in a discourse of heritage in danger of legitimising mere pro-growth development approaches, if not accompanied by participatory practices considerate of the specific social reality of China.

Keywords:

• Urban conservation
• historic urban landscape
• Chinese villages
• local development
• civic engagement

Acknowledgment

The research was made possible through the generous support provided by the Administration of Wujiang District. A special thanks goes to those involved in the research and the participatory design workshop: Prof. Paolo Ceccarelli, Prof. Pierre-Alain Croset, Mr. Harry den Hartog, Mr. Feiran Huang, Prof. Etra Connie Occhialini, Prof. Heini Shi, Mr. Peiao Tan, Mrs Ting Wang, Mrs Xiangyi Wang, Dr Claudia Westermann, Mrs Cai Xu. An earlier version of this paper was presented by the first author when invited to talk at the CNR-ICVBC International Conference on the UNESCO Recommendation on Historic Urban Landscape at Ara Pacis Museum, Rome (October 2015) and, later on, at the Asia-Pacific Region Training Course on HUL at WHITRAP, Shanghai (December 2015). The meaningful contribution of the anonymous reviewers is gratefully acknowledged.

Notes

1. The latest version of the Australia Burra Charter was adopted in 2013. Text available at: http://australia.icomos.org/wp-content/uploads/The-Burra-Charter-2013-Adopted-31.10.2013.pdf

2. The HUL Recommendation is an official document adopted by UNESCO in 2011 with the intention of supplementing existing heritage conservation tools. It is regarded as a soft-law to be implemented by Member States on a voluntary base. According to the Recommendation ‘the historic urban landscape is the urban area understood as the result of a historic layering of cultural and natural values and attributes, extending beyond the notion of “historic centre’ or ‘ensemble’ to include the broader urban context and its geographical setting” (par. 9). For more information: http://whc.unesco.org/en/activities/638

3. This can probably be regarded as one of most advanced experiences on HUL at the international level, hosted at WHITRAP, the World Heritage Institute for Training and Research in the Asia-Pacific Region. I refer here to the discussions that happened a few months before the International Conference in Shanghai on ‘Historic Urban Landscape’ (12 December 2014) until the approval of the third revision of the ‘Shanghai Agenda’ in May 2015. The document is available on-line at: http://www.historicurbanlandscape.com/themes/196/userfiles/download/2016/3/25/jwjg2hpjzrdcr9s.pdf

4. A selection of cases has been published online in www.historicurbanlandscape.com and recently the first HUL Guidebook has been released. The text is available at: http://historicurbanlandscape.com/themes/196/userfiles/download/2016/6/7/wirey5prpznidqx.pdf

5. The discussion regarding this point was influenced by the construction of the Three Gorges dam, which would have led to inevitable flooding of historic sites in a vast region.

6. Members of the International Advisory Board are mainly Chinese scholars in the field of heritage and landscape conservation from top Chinese Universities and/or affiliated to China ICOMOS, China IFLA, China Academy of Social Science, Urban Planning society. A presence of China-based international scholars and international experts with long-lasting commitment to China was also ensured.

7. In this respect the recent opening of a high-speed train stop along the line Guangzhou-Guiyang, in the Guizhou Province, which serves the Qiandongnan Autonomous Prefecture famous for its remote historic Miao and Dong villages, is quite paradigmatic.

8. This is also witnessed by the recent launch of a new scientific journal regarding the rural villages in China at the Tsinghua University in January 2015 (Traditional Chinese Villages Bulletin).

9. This has often resulted in the establishment of a system of ticket payment for tourists entering the central area of a village, de facto privatising its public realm.

10. The action-research (also called practitioners-based research) is here conceived as the focus of the research, rather than the methodology itself. It is a tool to gather data, capturing the real needs of affected stakeholders and to co-produce knowledge with them. The final public presentation is instrumental to ‘close the loop’ of the research process by getting impressions and informal feedbacks from gathered people on the final outcomes (Somekh 2006). In absence of formal participatory arrangements, as it was in the case of Shuang Wan, action-research supported by local government can partially supplement soft forms of participation, although normally they might not go beyond the level of ‘tokenism’ of the Arnstein’s ladder of citizens participation (1969). See also Table 2 in this respect.

11. According to the Suzhou ‘Four Million Mu of Farmland’ policy, released in 2012, each district of the city, and therefore each village, has to reclaim a quota of land for staple productions, in order to ensure the overall national food security. In the Tai Lake areas this often implies the conversion of fishponds into arable land.

12. This recognition comes in response to the shortlisting of the proposal for Shuang Wan Cun, for the ‘2015 Asian Townscape Award’ organised by UN-HABITAT, Asia and the Pacific Office, during the summer 2015. Although the proposal was not eventually awarded, this has resulted in the nomination as ‘China Beautiful Village’ from the District of Wujiang.

13. This is an atypical situation, given the no-profit involvement of the University in the project, and cannot be regarded as the norm.