ECONOMICS UNIQUENESS

214 ■ THE ECONOMICS OF UNIQUENESS
Introduction
Th e scope of urban cultural heritage conservation has broadened considerably
since the adoption of the Venice Charter of 1964, with the United Nations Educational,
Scientifi c and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and International Council
on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) at the forefront of this change. Th ere has
been a shift away from the conservation of objects and sites as an end in itself,
to also considering the environmental dimensions and social factors of heritage
conservation as well as the intangible values of heritage assets. However, there are
still varied approaches to the rehabilitation and conservation of cultural heritage
in historic urban cores, oft en using in their operational applications the concept
of cultural heritage as spatially well-identifi ed sites or as a series of discrete groups
of remains. Within these diff erent types of interpretations, cultural heritage areas
are still sometimes mainly seen as belonging to the past, disconnected from the
present and from each other within the urban landscape (Moylan et al. 2009).
Worldwide, at both national and regional levels, there are also notable diff erences
in the scope and thus the legislative framework dedicated to urban heritage
conservation; for instance, in China, heritage is defi ned as “immovable physical
remains […] that have signifi cance” (ICOMOS 2000), whereas in Vietnam cultural
heritage comprises both tangible and intangible elements (ASEAN 2000).
Th ese diff erences in defi nitions and approaches contribute to the diffi culty of
attracting fi nancial support, particularly from the private sector, for cultural heritage
conservation (Starr 2010). And so, it can be a challenging and complicated
task to devise creative fi nancial solutions for the revitalization and rehabilitation
of historic urban areas by leveraging a combination of available resources from
the private and public sector.
If one interprets urban heritage as an evolving interrelationship between history,
ecosystems, and culture, this interaction must be seen as a multilayered
integration of natural and cultural heritage. However, projects concerned with
urban natural assets—which include soils, geology, and geomorphology—tend
not to suff er the fi nancial obstacles and restrictions that urban cultural heritage
projects do. In fact, over the past 20 years, an extensive set of best practices has
been developed for the rehabilitation of urban natural brownfi elds, including
a thorough range of fi nancial supports and mechanisms for site management
(RESCUE 2004; U.S. EPA 1999). 1 From this perspective, the present chapter aims
to extend the interpretation and approaches applied to urban natural brownfi elds
to the regeneration and conservation of historic districts.
An urban brownfi eld can be defi ned as any land in a city that has been used in
the past and is not now available for immediate use without some type of intervention
(Alker et al. 2000); urban brownfi elds are areas that may be partially occupied
or vacant. Th is chapter extends the defi nition of brownfi eld oft en used in the United