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Comparative Approaches to Urban Conservation in Central and Eastern Europe: Zamość, Poland, and Sibiu, Romania

2010; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 1; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1179/175675010x12662480109199

1756-7513

Dennis Rodwell,

Urban Development and Cultural Heritage

This article examines the ethos and practice of urban conservation in Zamoość and Sibiu against the pre-1990 focus in the Eastern Bloc on the restoration of highly selected monuments and ensembles. Proactive urban conservation was effectively unknown during the socialist period, and the context for the distinctive approaches that have gathered pace in the two cities since 2000 is set against an international background that provides conflicting messages in relation to the technical side of architectural conservation and unresolved ones in relation to the role of historic city centres. This article chronicles the theory and practice of mutually supportive, harmonious coexistence that defines a vibrant, complementary role for the historic cores of cities in the life of their expanding forms, up to and including the metropolitan scale. It relates the conservation and associated policies for Zamość and Sibiu to their wider urban development strategies, and questions the coincidence between the practice of conservation in the two cities and emerging concepts in the fields of sustainable urban development and intangible cultural heritage.