Is heritage really important? Is history really important?
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Date
2010
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AESOP
Abstract
‘Is heritage really important’ and ‘is history really important’ are two separate but related issues. They are also two enormous questions for which the following brief examination is only a very small response and one which is directed to the way in which heritage and history have a role in urban design.
Heritage motivates people to travel in order to quench their thirst for knowledge, to reinforce their place in history and contextualise a place geographically and socially. In doing so they spend considerable sums of money to the benefit of the place.’
The UK planning system arranges shopping into two types: convenience shopping and comparison shopping. Although planning might wish it to be otherwise (for the sometimes over-simplistic notion that everybody should just use the corner shop) it is understandable that when shopping for the usual bulk food needs, ease of shopping and parking often take priority over the physical appearance of the place. This is not to say that the many large retail parks in the UK are perfectly good – on the contrary, whilst they might combine the bulk shopping needs with easy parking, they are unsustainable. They are frequently associated with traffic congestion problems and have contributed to the decline of the traditional shopping street. The point I am making here is that the quality of the immediate physical context is frequently not the determining factor for the convenience shopper.
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Book of proceedings: Urban change : The prospect of transformation
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