Conference: HERITAGE 2012
Porto, Portugal
Heritage 2012, 3rd International Conference on Heritage and Sustainable Development follows the path of the previous editions: it aims at establishing a state of the art event regarding the relationships between forms and kinds of heritage and the framework of sustainable development concepts.
Environment, economics, society and culture, the four dimensions of sustainable development, are brought here to define a singular approach on how to deal and go beyond the traditional aspects of heritage preservation and safeguarding. On our today’s world, heritage is no longer just a memory or a cultural reference, or even a place or an object. Heritage is moving towards broader and wider scenarios, where it becomes often the driven forces for commerce, business, leisure and politics.
Nowadays, sustainable development was brought much forward than the concept expressed in the book “Our Common Future”, commonly known as “The Brundtland Report”. The role of culture and social aspects enlarged the initial statement where environment and economics took the main role, guiding the earliest research on sustainable development.
The environmentalist vision of the world as a whole ecological system, and the world economical trades and product and service flows, enhanced the idea of a globalized world, where different geographic dimensions of actions, both local and global, emerged as the main relationships between producers, consumers, and cultural specificities of peoples, philosophies and religions.
In such a global context, heritage becomes one of the key aspects for the enlargement of sustainable development concepts. Heritage is often seen through its cultural definition. However, sustainable development brings heritage concepts to another dimension, as it establishes profound relationships with economics, environment, and social aspects.
Nowadays, heritage preservation and safeguarding is facing new and complex problems. Degradation of Heritage sites is not any more just a result of materials ageing or environmental actions. Factors such as global and local pollution, climate change, poverty, religion, tourism, commerce, ideologies, war, are now in the cutting edge for the emerging of new approaches, concerns and visions about heritage.
Thus, Heritage 2012 – 3rd International Conference on Heritage and Sustainable Development is proposed to be a global view on how heritage is being contextualized in relation with the four dimensions of sustainable development. What is being done in terms of research, future directions, methodologies, working tools and other significant aspects of both theoretical and field approaches will be the aims of this International Conference. Furthermore, heritage governance, and education are brought into discussion as the key factors for enlightenment of future global strategies for heritage preservation and safeguarding.
Two new chapters are included in this edition of Heritage conferences: one on Preservation of Historical Buildings and another dedicated to Early Stage Researchers.
The first chpater will deal with the specific tasks of preservation, rehabilitation and maintenance of historical buildings and sites. Key issues are preservation and rehabilitation techniques of structures and materials, adaptive reuse of historical buildings, sustainability goals, assessment tools, among others that night be proposed by the researchers.
The second chapter is dedicated to research students willing to share the results of their research projects, namely post-graduation projects and doctoral projects among others.