Indulging in Preservation and Sustainable Management of Land and Maritime Cultural Resources in Current Times

A special issue of Heritage (ISSN 2571-9408).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 September 2021) | Viewed by 19632

Special Issue Editors


E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Geography and Regional Planning, School of Rural and Surveying Engineering, National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), 9 Iroon Polytechneiou Str., 157 80 Zographos, Greece
Interests: sustainable development; urban and regional planning and policy; spatial planning; participatory planning; smart cities and communities; e-planning; foresight methodologies; ICT and urban/regional development; cultural/tourism planning
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
M2C Institute for Applied Media Technology and Culture, Bremen, Germany

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Sustainable exploitation of land and maritime Cultural Heritage (CH) in contemporary societies constitutes an inseparable part of the urban and regional policy agenda, targeting outcomes that crosscut all three pillars of sustainability (economy, society and environment). Furthermore, CH has a prominent position in local communities, being grasped as a critical resource and a key driver for achieving future sustainable development objectives, acquiring also a pivotal role in the effort to pursue each single goal of the UN Agenda 2030. Such objectives are today strongly marked by the effort of both policy makers and local communities to exploit cultural resources in a sustainable and resilient way for: maintaining cultural integrity, preserving local values and ecosystems, generating new opportunities for employment and income, and responding to the rapidly escalating experience-based cultural tourism paradigm, i.e. an already quite noticeable and dynamic trend in the evolving tourism market in alignment with demand-driven patterns as to new, meaningful and authentic tourism experiences.

Preservation and sustainable management of cultural resources is, additionally, largely marked by radical technological developments and the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and their applications. These are perceived as enablers of digital cultural content creation, visualization and management; identification, mapping and monitoring of cultural resources; civic engagement in CH management and crowdsourcing; effective marketing of cultural tourism products; to name a few, being currently considered as an integral part of cultural tourism management and planning initiatives.

In such a decision-making environment, the proposed Special Issue aims at hosting a multi- and interdisciplinary group of contributors and respective works, elaborating on the aforementioned dimensions of CH management and having at their heart issues of preservation, cultural content creation in a digitized era, participatory planning and management approaches of CH, as well as the remarkable developmental potential of CH especially for remote and peripheral regions.

Prof. Dr. Anastasia Stratigea
Dr. Martin Koplin
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Heritage is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Published Papers (6 papers)

Order results
Result details
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

20 pages, 5597 KiB  
Article
Understanding Bunker Architecture Heritage as a Climate Action Tool: Plan Barron in Lisbon as a “Milieu” and as “Common Good” When Dealing with the Rise of the Water Levels
by Maria Rita Pais, Katiuska Hoffmann and Sandra Campos
Heritage 2021, 4(4), 4609-4628; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/heritage4040254 - 10 Dec 2021
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 3476
Abstract
Abandoned on the coast as skeletons, bunkers are the last theatrical gesture in the history of Western military architecture (Virilio, 1975). Technically obsolete, this military territory has fallen into extinction and is now generally forgotten. We present the Plan Barron of [...] Read more.
Abandoned on the coast as skeletons, bunkers are the last theatrical gesture in the history of Western military architecture (Virilio, 1975). Technically obsolete, this military territory has fallen into extinction and is now generally forgotten. We present the Plan Barron of Defense of Lisbon and Setubal case study, a mid-twentieth-century set of bunkers, recently declassified, as a case study to discuss the future of this heritage facing the climate crisis. Can oblivious historical war heritage be an opportunity to fight climate emergencies? We present four theoretical concepts to fundament this environmental positioning: (i) Heritage Management and Climate Governance, (ii) Techno-aesthetic (Simondon, 1992): panopticon territorial cluster; (iii) Military: camouflage as design, and (iv) Civil: inheritance as future potential. The results allow us to look at military architecture in the form of a bunker, as a set of territorial, architectonic, cultural, and social interests. We demonstrate that the counterpoint of its invisibility is a singular naturalized “milieu”, a place where the memory of war can be transformed as a buffer zone that combines characteristics of climate and coastal resilience with cultural and social interest as a “common good”. Full article
Show Figures

Figure 1

21 pages, 7967 KiB  
Article
Transfer of Development Rights and Cultural Heritage Preservation: A Case Study at Athens Historic Triangle, Greece
by Dionysia-Georgia Perperidou, Stavroula Siori, Vasileios Doxobolis, Fotini Lampropoulou and Ioannis Katsios
Heritage 2021, 4(4), 4439-4459; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/heritage4040245 - 22 Nov 2021
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 3990
Abstract
History and the modern world co-exist in Greece’s landscape. The urban spaces of Greek cities contain structures from ancient history alongside contemporary constructions, but intense urban development from the 1960s onwards, as in the historic center of Athens, has led to imbalances with [...] Read more.
History and the modern world co-exist in Greece’s landscape. The urban spaces of Greek cities contain structures from ancient history alongside contemporary constructions, but intense urban development from the 1960s onwards, as in the historic center of Athens, has led to imbalances with respect to cultural heritage protection. The 1975 Greek Constitution defined the preservation and protection of the cultural environment as a constitutional mandate, and severe restrictions on the exploitation of private properties deemed to be of historical or architectural importance were imposed. Property owners were deprived of their property development rights (DRs), whereas the preservation and conservation of protected constructions became costly, resulting in abandoned buildings and a downgraded urban environment. As the debate over cultural heritage protection and urban regeneration is more topical than ever, the recent legal reintroduction of the transfer of development rights (TDRs) provides new opportunities for property exploitation with respect to cultural heritage protection legislation. Herein is presented a methodological framework on the classification and 3D visualization and representation of DRs and TDRs in relation to the cultural heritage protective framework and its implementation in a selected area of Athens’ historic center. Legal and technical aspects that affect 3D DRs and TDRs are emphasized as key elements in the successful implementation of the TDR process. Full article
Show Figures

Figure 1

21 pages, 2426 KiB  
Article
Shipwrecks’ Underwater Mysteries—Identifying Commonalities Out of Globally-Distributed Knowledge
by Dionisia Koutsi and Anastasia Stratigea
Heritage 2021, 4(4), 3949-3969; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/heritage4040217 - 26 Oct 2021
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 4191
Abstract
Tourism trends towards authentic, experience-based products have brought to the forefront lesser-known destinations, e.g., small and medium-sized Mediterranean islands. These can gain competitiveness on the ground of their distinguished land and Underwater Cultural Heritage (UCH), thus opening up new directions for their future [...] Read more.
Tourism trends towards authentic, experience-based products have brought to the forefront lesser-known destinations, e.g., small and medium-sized Mediterranean islands. These can gain competitiveness on the ground of their distinguished land and Underwater Cultural Heritage (UCH), thus opening up new directions for their future sustainable development. Sustainable exploitation of UCH, though, calls for dedicated planning endeavors and respective UCH data acquisition/management. However, while the planning discipline can offer effective approaches and tools for properly handling cultural heritage, a deficit of sufficient, pertinent and well-documented UCH data is noticed, e.g., data on shipwrecks as part of UCH. The latter is the focus of this work, aiming, as a first step, to illuminate aspects of a shipwreck database, relevant to planners’ requests. Towards this end, global-wide distributed knowledge is explored in an effort to identify potentialities and limitations, content commonalities, shipwreck attributes so far recorded, (spatial) planning requirements, to name but a few. Knowledge acquired from this exploration can feed conceptualization of a planning-oriented shipwreck database. This can be replicable to various national/regional contexts; and is capable of providing well-structured shipwrecks’ content that can steer strategic planning efforts towards authentic ensembles of people’s history and culture in remote and less-privileged Mediterranean islands. Full article
Show Figures

Figure 1

29 pages, 7821 KiB  
Article
Assessing the Performance of Current Strategic Policy Directions towards Unfolding the Potential of the Culture–Tourism Nexus in the Greek Territory
by Vasileios Lampropoulos, Maria Panagiotopoulou and Anastasia Stratigea
Heritage 2021, 4(4), 3157-3185; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/heritage4040177 - 08 Oct 2021
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 2261
Abstract
In the UN Agenda 2030, tourism acquires a salient position as a critical sector, directly or indirectly influencing a number of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The pursuit of Sustainable Tourism (ST) is founded on the respectful exploitation of the sector’s core ‘raw material’, [...] Read more.
In the UN Agenda 2030, tourism acquires a salient position as a critical sector, directly or indirectly influencing a number of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The pursuit of Sustainable Tourism (ST) is founded on the respectful exploitation of the sector’s core ‘raw material’, i.e., the precious and vulnerable nexus of natural and cultural heritage, and a cooperative multi-actor endeavor of all those having a stake in this shared good. Strategic tourism policy decisions, formulated at the state level, frame actors’ actions, favoring a balance among economic, societal and environmental goals; and a transparent, concrete and supportive investment landscape, allowing the tourism sector to blossom. But how successful are these policy decisions in promoting a sustainable, resilient and durable tourism model by instigating the entrepreneurial community to invest in the vibrant culture–tourism complex? An effort to respond to this concern is made in this work, grounded in the ‘Culture–Tourism–Policy’ triptych and their interaction, the ‘policy cycle’ as a means of assessing policy performance towards establishing a sustainable/resilient ‘marriage’ of ‘Culture–Tourism’, and GIS-enabled spatial data management for an evidence-based assessment of policy outcomes. These three factors are closely intertwined in the assessment of strategic tourism policy decisions’ performance in a culturally vibrant and highly reputed destination, Greece. Full article
Show Figures

Figure 1

13 pages, 5499 KiB  
Article
Identifying the Industrial Cultural Heritage of Athens, Greece, through Digital Applications
by Niovi Andrioti, Eleni Kanetaki, Hara Drinia, Zoe Kanetaki and Alexis Stefanis
Heritage 2021, 4(4), 3113-3125; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/heritage4040174 - 05 Oct 2021
Cited by 10 | Viewed by 2579
Abstract
In Greece, the appreciation of industrial buildings is relatively recent, with the legal authorities having recognized their historical value by listing them as monuments. Nineteenth century industrial buildings can be identified as cultural monuments of the past, as well as assist in the [...] Read more.
In Greece, the appreciation of industrial buildings is relatively recent, with the legal authorities having recognized their historical value by listing them as monuments. Nineteenth century industrial buildings can be identified as cultural monuments of the past, as well as assist in the reconstruction of urban landscapes. Additionally, individual initiatives, organized by volunteers, present the necessity for documentation through relevant research projects. The reuse of industrial buildings for cultural activities has lately become a common practice. In Athens, a large number of buildings dated to the industrial revolution and that present historical and architectural features worthy of being preserved have been recorded. Following the philosophy of smart cities, this paper presents a digital inventory of the industrial buildings located in the historical center of Athens; many of which have recently been adapted to host cultural activities. Τhe use of smart technology, by creating a digital application for smart phones, will provide access to a continuously enriched registry, via interactive maps. This initiative will promote the buildings’ past and present use and, moreover, the creative concept of their multiple functions. The suggested model of cultural management is applicable to every industrial building in Athens. Full article
Show Figures

Figure 1

24 pages, 69573 KiB  
Article
Co-Creation of Narratives for “Minor” Sites of Cultural Heritage in Euro-Mediterranean Peri-Urban Areas: Conditions of a Small Temple on the East Coast of Attica, Greece
by Attilio Torre and Charis Christodoulou
Heritage 2021, 4(4), 2918-2941; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/heritage4040163 - 30 Sep 2021
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1965
Abstract
The protection and enhancement of places of cultural heritage in their contemporary context stand as major challenges in Euro-Mediterranean peri-urban areas, where heritage is vast and urbanization pressure is extremely high. This article refers to those historical and archaeological sites that are considered [...] Read more.
The protection and enhancement of places of cultural heritage in their contemporary context stand as major challenges in Euro-Mediterranean peri-urban areas, where heritage is vast and urbanization pressure is extremely high. This article refers to those historical and archaeological sites that are considered “minor” as they lack “exceptional character”, or they appear in the shadow of major monuments and, thus, fall marginally within the scope of mainstream cultural policy priorities to protect and enhance significant monuments and heritage sites. This study presents the results of exploratory qualitative research that addresses questions about the in situ actual future and potential role of “minor” sites in cultural heritage awareness-raising and management. In a sustainable perspective, this article discusses the value of heritage fragments and public involvement in their enhancement within their territory with the use of digital resources and ICT. This study focuses on the alienated Small Temple on the beach of Loutsa within the wider archaeological area of Vravrona on the east coast of the metropolitan area of Attica/Athens. It concludes that co-creation of shared narratives can create a dynamic interface and constructive involvement of stakeholders and local communities provided that smart applications are combined and adapted to the specificities and conditions of the wider context. Full article
Show Figures

Figure 1

Back to TopTop