All rights reservedCexiang, Foo2024-04-172024-04-172014978-83-7493-892-1https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14235/1568Sustainability in heritage protected areas : Book of Proceedings of the 5th AESOP European Urban Summer School Tours, France, from 1st – 8th September 2014Within the current climate of macroeconomic uncertainty, social unrest and global environmental risks, nation states have worked furiously but often with little consensus on the sustainable development agenda. Instead of relying solely on nation states and politicians, this paper argues for resilient local communities to drive this agenda from the local level by developing sustainable local economies, strong social networks and environmentally friendly ways of life. This bottom-up approach will complement any top-down Government or inter-Governmental agenda, but cannot be replaced by the latter. We are guided by the American philosopher Lewis Mumford (1938) in our definition of resilient local communities: “We must create in every region people who will be accustomed, from school onwards, to humanist attitudes, cooperative methods, rational controls. These people will know in detail where they live: they will be united by a common feeling for their landscape, their literature and language, their local ways, and out of their own self-respect they will have a sympathetic understanding with other regions and different local peculiarities. They will be actively interested in the form and culture of their locality, which means their community and their own personalities.” This means that resilient local communities are made up of people steeped in the local heritage.EnglishopenAccessconferencePaper147-154