UNESCO World Heritage

Communities in Time

Abstract

This article presents an experimental historical-critical examination of underrepresented local community values dormant within the nomination, evaluation and inscription of ‘The Old and New Towns of Edinburgh’ UNESCO World Heritage (WH) site, drawing a spotlight on urban communities historically outwith heritage-institutional consideration.

To this end, this article examines the institutional evolution of the concept and relevance of “community” in the context of WH theory in the thirty years since Edinburgh’s 1995 WH inscription. Drawing upon archival, institutional and secondary sources, this research brings together scholarship from critical heritage studies, cultural anthropology, social and political science, architectural history and systems thinking, to reframe the concept of ‘community’ in the context of living urban WH sites. 

More broadly, this research foregrounds the transformative potential of the concept of “community” within institutional future-making heritage instruments such as the UNESCO WH system, in light of such instruments’ direct material impact on a wide range of living human and more-than-human communities.