Crowds on the Great Wall of China. One of
the world's most famous monuments, the Great Wall is visited
by large numbers of tourists each year. In sites with so many
visitors, the sheer number of people, combined with the pressure
for commercial development, can threaten both the monument
itself and the surrounding landscape. To better preserve heritage
sites in China, the country's State Administration for Cultural
Heritage and the GCI—with the Australian Heritage Commission—have
collaborated to develop and promote national guidelines for
site conservation and management. Photo: Guillermo Aldana.

Looking after a heritage site would appear to be pretty straightforward.
Keep any buildings in good repair using traditional repair techniques.
Mow the grass. Install some tasteful interpretative signage for
visitors and maybe a discreet shop. But is that all? What happens
when the local community takes offense at the site's interpretation—or
a developer wants to build a shopping center adjacent to the site?
Perhaps the marketing manager of the organization responsible for
the site wants a bigger shop to increase revenue. Or the last battle
reenactment event went wrong and blew a hole in a historic wall.
Or the site's ecologist has brought vital roof repairs to a halt
because of endangered bats.

Managing heritage sites is more complicated than it seems, in part
because such places come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes.
They may be town centers, landscapes, or underwater sites. Sites
can range from a crop mark invisible to the naked eye to a vast
stately home, an industrial complex, or an open area, full of ruined
buildings and remains. Visitors may be welcomed at some, while others
may be closed to the public.

What separates the management of heritage sites from other forms
of property management is that the fundamental purpose of cultural
heritage management should be to preserve the values ascribed to
a site—be they aesthetic or historical or social. Heritage sites
are not simply visitor attractions, there to provide customer satisfaction
and a reasonable profit. Such places are defined by the values we
attach to them. Value is what justifies their protection in the
first place, and it is the basis of any public support and grant
aid—or of the restrictions placed on them. Indeed, conservation,
at its most basic, is about a declaration of public interest in
property, be it private or government owned.

Conservation Management Plans

Many people who are responsible for historic places manage them
by the seat of their pants—they know a site well, there may
not be much money, and decisions need to be made quickly. Nevertheless,
heritage organizations are increasingly recognizing that they need
a more formal management planning process, usually in the form of
a written conservation management plan. This is especially important
when they need to be accountable for public money or have to reconcile
potentially conflicting interests.

The Parthenon on the Acropolis and a view
of the Acropolis itself, surrounded by urban development and
the haze of air pollution. Managing the archaeological heritage
of Athens—which includes 57 sites—is a particular
challenge, given its location in the heart of a large city.
A major program for restoration on the Acropolis has been
under way since the 1970s; in addition, the government is
creating an archaeological park that will link the major ancient
sites in a vast pedestrian network, closed to all vehicles
but public transport. Photos: Guillermo Aldana.

At its simplest, a conservation management plan is a document that
sets out the significance—or values—of a site and how that
significance will be retained in any future use, alteration, repair,
or development. The plan development process usually involves several
stages, which include understanding the site, assessing values,
looking at issues or vulnerability (e.g., condition), and identifying
policies and strategy. Sometimes the plan will be accompanied by
an impact assessment of a particular strategy. The entire planning
process should begin with the identification of stakeholders, which
includes all the groups with an interest in the site.

Value or significance lies at the heart of a conservation management
plan. Such plans are only one part of a cycle of managing value,
which begins with research and designation and then involves planning,
impact assessment, and, finally, monitoring.

When a site is selected for preservation, it is usually because
it is outstanding in some way—for instance, as something very
old, beautiful, or historically important. But in order to manage
a site on a day-to-day basis successfully, you usually have to take
into account a much wider bandwidth of values. This is why it is
important for conservation management planning to be sensitive to
issues such as community concerns.

For example, an English cathedral may be a highly significant piece
of architecture, but it is also a spiritual place that requires
a living community to sustain it. Its importance goes well beyond
the narrow designated values. Speaking at a conference on conservation
planning, the former dean of Hereford Cathedral declared that "Hereford
Cathedral's history is much older in human terms than any of the
building's fabric, and my first responsibility is to the care of
that human community. I need to protect the life of cathedral organists
and masons, singers and librarians, schoolteachers, archivists,
and vergers, and to emphasize that heritage resides in the pattern
of their lives, in their liturgies, in their scholarship, in their
singing. All those things have to be understood by the person who
is to help develop and manage the change of that heritage."

Aerial view of Palenque in Chiapas, Mexico,
one of the largest Maya cities of the Classic period. The
site, part of a national park, is surrounded by a substantial
indigenous population. As part of national legislation enacted
in early 2001, indigenous peoples are to be given education
and training with respect to sites such as Palenque, and they
are granted free access to sites, use of sites as ceremonial
centers, and a portion of the revenue derived from sites.
Implementation of these requirements will mark a departure
from past management practice. Photo: Guillermo Aldana.

St. Mary's in Wotton-under-Edge, Gloucestershire,
England. English parish churches like St. Mary's—often
among the oldest buildings in a community—are not only
significant architecturally but are also important as places
of active worship that provide a sense of continuity for a
community. An understanding of both the historic and societal
value of such buildings is essential for effective conservation
management planning. Photo: Kate Clark.

Values also need to be considered in making particular decisions.
The process of impact assessment can be used to decide the best
options for a site. An understanding of values and how particular
decisions will impact them is central to the process. For instance,
in spring 2001 at Manassas, Virginia, outside Washington, D.C.,
the U.S. National Park Service conducted a value analysis study
focused on one of only three surviving structures located on the
site of one of the most important battlefields of the U.S. Civil
War. The objective of the value study was to develop several different
preservation approaches to the structure, to evaluate them, and
then to select the alternative "that would best serve the public,
the park, and the resource."

All of this may seem like common sense, but for many organizations,
the move toward more value-led planning means rethinking how things
are done.

Value-Led Planning

Site management planning is, of course, nothing new. In his history
of how nature has been preserved in the U.S. National Park system,
Richard Sellars notes that it was as early as 1910 that the secretary
of the interior called for complete and comprehensive plans for
national parks. The Park Service, which had to tread a difficult
line between nature conservation and enabling people to enjoy places,
developed a formal planning system to balance these two objectives.
The natural model was then broadly adopted for cultural heritage
sites.

In recent decades, there has been something of a reversal of this
process. Some of the ideas coming out of heritage management are
beginning to influence the way natural sites are managed.

Two views of the same section of Emmitsburg
Road in Gettysburg National Military Park—one taken in
the 1940s and the other in June 2001. In the years after the
critical 1863 Civil War battle of Gettysburg, some key terrain
features were altered or obscured, making it difficult for
visitors to understand how the battle unfolded. A major component
of the site's current management plan is battlefield rehabilitation.
On Emmitsburg Road, the billboard and overhead power lines
were removed, and a fence was added, returning the property
to what it may have looked like in the 1870s. Photos: Courtesy
Gettysburg National Military Park, U.S. National Park Service.

One important influence has been the changes in heritage practice
that are, at least in part, a consequence of Australia's Burra
Charter. In 1979 members of Australia ICOMOS came together at
a small mining town called Burra, in South Australia. Frustrated
by the European heritage charters, which were typically based on
traditional ideas about value, inappropriate in an Australian context,
they developed an alternative. The 1981 Burra Charter—which
emphasizes the process of decision making more than the formal rules—places
significance or value at the center of conservation: "Conservation
of a place should take into consideration all aspects of its cultural
significance without unwarranted emphasis on any one at the expense
of others." Using the principles in the Charter, James Kerr
wrote a practical guide to writing conservation plans, and as a
result conservation planning is now well established in the Australian
system.

This emphasis on discovering significance as part of the planning
process chimes with the sustainable development of natural sites.
The 1992 Rio Conference on Sustainable Development noted that development
and nature conservation should work together, rather than be separated.
In Agenda 21, the plan of action adopted by the conference, the
delegates also acknowledged that conservation was as much a "bottom-up"
as a "top-down" process and that successful conservation
meant working with, rather than dictating to, communities.

The Australian Heritage Commission now provides a set of materials—based
on the Burra Charter and the Australian
Natural Heritage Charter—that integrates conservation planning
for both natural and cultural values. The materials are aimed at
introducing values-led planning to people who have to deal with
the issues of balancing and effectively managing a range of values
at a place. The Protecting Heritage Places Kit includes materials
such as a trainers kit, a workbook, and a CD. The commission also
has a Protecting Heritage Places Web site (www.deh.gov.au/heritage/)
that presents a 10-step process for developing a plan to protect
the important natural and cultural heritage elements of a site.
As the Web site states, "This information is an important step
in bringing the approaches to natural and cultural heritage conservation
closer together."

Nature conservation could probably benefit from the experience
of site managers who have been taught by the conservation process
not to make assumptions about value. In Australia, Canada, and the
United States, heritage professionals have had to learn to work
closely with indigenous and minority communities. As Sharon Sullivan,
the former director of the Australian Heritage Commission, has noted,
"in most cases, the white Australian practitioner can have
no way of really assessing the value of a site, except in European
terms, unless there is a process of real consultation, and a genuine
attempt to accept as equally valuable the views of another culture."

Thornberry House, Manassas National Battlefield Park, in 1936 and
1965. Built in the 1840s—and one
of only three surviving structures in existence since the two Civil
War battles at Manassas—the house was altered significantly
from its original form between the 1930s and 1960s. In assessing
how to preserve the house, the U.S. National Park Service determined
that the building's greatest significance lay in its role as a shelter
for wounded and dying Federal troops during the first battle of
Manassas in July 1861. To this end, Thornberry House will be restored
to its Civil War-era form and become an interpretive center for
visitors. Photos: Courtesy Manassas National Battlefield Park, U.S.
National Park Service.

In England, similar pressure for consultation has come from immigrants
and their descendants who—from Roman times onward—have contributed
to the development of English culture. Leading academic Professor
Stuart Hall reminds heritage practitioners of their responsibility
to recognize the diversity of England's heritage; he says that "national
heritage is a powerful source of meaning: those who can't see themselves
reflected in that mirror are therefore excluded."

All of this means new ways of working for heritage practitioners.
We have had to become facilitators rather than dictators. Site management
planning has become a process of articulating rather than imposing
value, of learning to stand back and listen to people.

The difference between the old and the new approaches can be seen
by looking at the content list of any management plan. Does it assume
that we know what matters and why—or is there a whole section
that explores the values of the site? Is the document the work of
one "expert," or has there been an active consultation
process? Is there a thread running through the document that connects
everything back to significance?

A good example of a plan that evolved from the concerns of Aboriginal
groups is the Kulpitjata Management Plan, compiled by the Anangu
Rangers for an area containing important places to them, south of
Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, in the Northern Territory, Australia.
The plan was structured around seven emu footprints and sets out
the traditional owners' own ideas about how to look after the area.
In this case, the role of the conservation adviser was simply to
ask questions and facilitate discussion, rather than to dictate
answers.

This approach—often called "conservation" or "value-led"
planning to distinguish it from more traditional approaches to management
planning—has spread around the world. In New Zealand, the heritage
charter introduces ideas about the role of family and tribal groups
in identity and defines an even stronger role for indigenous groups
in decision making that goes beyond legal ownership, public interest,
and academic research. The China
Principles project—a collaboration of China's State Administration
for Cultural Heritage and the GCI, with the Australian Heritage
Commission—is developing broad principles for use in China, based
on the ideas in the Burra Charter. In the United States, the Rapid
Ethnographic Assessment Process (REAP) provides a way of mapping
local values which can be fed into management plans.

Conservation planning has been adopted in England, Scotland, and
Ireland, where the vast majority of protected buildings and sites
lie in the hands of traditional owners and where conservation, in
the past, was seen as a conflictual process. Mary Hanna, architectural
adviser at An Chomhairle Oidhreachta, the Heritage Council of Ireland,
says, "Conservation planning has helped us to work much more
closely with owners of historic buildings and local communities."

Conflicting Values

What happens when values conflict? This is not as rare as it may
seem. Indeed, most of the damage that happens to sites is not usually
a result of deliberate mismanagement but, rather, arises from the
need to reconcile different priorities.

Robben Island in
South Africa was recently designated a World Heritage Site for its
association with Nelson Mandela and his colleagues involved in the
struggle against apartheid. As well as having a rich cultural history,
the island is also a significant ecological and marine environment.
Inevitably there are conflicts. For example, the local penguins
often choose grave sites on the island as suitable nesting areas.
Zulaiga Roussow, a social ecologist who coordinates the heritage
training program on the island, says, "Ecologists and archaeologists
need to learn to work together much better if we are going to manage
sites successfully. The landscape of Robben Island has both natural
and cultural values, and we can't ignore one at the expense of another."

Robben Island, near Cape Town, South Africa.
Although best known as the former site of a maximum security
prison for anti-apartheid activists, including Nelson Mandela,
Robben Island is also a significant wildlife habitat, home
to over 70 species of birds, including African penguins that
have recently reestablished breeding on the island. The challenge
for conservation professionals lies in managing the site in
a way that addresses equally the island's natural and cultural
values. Photos: AFP Photo/Cape Argus (aerial); AFP Photo/Andrew
Ingram-Cape Argus.

So many management issues involve this type of juggling act—
whether it's providing access to grand old houses for people in
wheelchairs or finding ways of generating the funding needed for
vital repairs by developing a site. There is no simple way of reconciling
conflicting values in site management, but there are things that
can help.

One way is to talk the same language. There are a large number
of different professions and interests involved in managing heritage
sites, and too often they use different terms. In dealing with a
big iconic site—for example, Stonehenge, Chaco Canyon in the
U.S. Southwest, or Grosse Île in Canada—it might not be
unusual for an engineer, a planner, an archaeologist, an ethnographer,
a landscape designer, a curator, an ecologist, and the local community
to be involved in the process. The recent Australian Natural Heritage
Charter represents a breakthrough in communication, because it uses
some of the same concepts for ecology that cultural heritage specialists
use, including the idea of conservation planning. Given that most
places have more than one type of heritage, a common language and
a common working framework are good first steps in reconciling conflicting
values.

Impact assessment is another way of dealing with conflicting values.
Almost everything we want to do on a cultural site—from erecting
a new visitor center to managing vegetation—will have an impact
on site values. Impact assessment enables you to explore what those
impacts might be before making a decision. Obviously, if a new visitor
center, for example, is going to be hugely damaging, then it may
not be appropriate. But more often, by understanding the values
associated with the site, ways of mitigating or reducing impact
can be found.

How do we know whether we are preserving values effectively or
not? One way of evaluating the success of what we do is through
the idea of "commemorative integrity," developed by Parks
Canada. Commemorative integrity is based on the idea of the health
and wholeness of a site and rests on three basic questions:

Are the resources that represent its importance impaired or
under threat?

Have the reasons for the site's designation been effectively
communicated?

Has the site's heritage value been taken into account in decision
making?

Commemorative integrity assessments are a very good way of monitoring
value-led planning in the long term, and of ensuring that we are
sustaining sites effectively.

Preserving for the Future

All of this may seem a long way from the practical business of
repairing a roof or cutting the grass. But conservation is about
handing on what we value to future generations, and that requires
us to look not just at what we have but at what is happening to
it. Site management planning lies at the heart of the conservation
cycle, helping us to find out what matters and forcing us to look
closely at what is happening to it. It is a process, not a recipe,
which involves looking backward and looking forward. There is no
point in fixing the roof if that dodgy-looking tree is going to
fall on it tomorrow.

There is no single approach to site management planning, but what
is common to many countries is a move toward a value-led approach
that recognizes that caring for the important places requires experts
to rethink their role. It means listening to, working with, involving,
and, ultimately, empowering communities. It means managing, not
stopping, change. For all its superficial familiarity to many older
heritage professionals, a value-led approach to site management
planning does require us to rethink some of our practices.

Of course, as Jeanne Marie Teutonico, associate director of the
GCI, reminds us, there is a danger that the whole exercise can become
an end in itself and not the means to an end. She says that the
challenge is to "try to make sure that pre-project preparation
stages are appropriate to the scale of the project's complexities
and values."

In 1996, Australian historian Peter Read published a book called
Returning to Nothing: The Meaning of Lost Places. In it he
investigates what it means to different communities to lose a place,
perhaps as a result of a natural disaster, a planning decision,
or a change in economic fortunes. He reminds us not to "underestimate
the effect which the loss of dead and dying places has on our own
self-identity, mental well-being, and sense of belonging."
However we do it, good site management is, at the end of the day,
about caring for places that matter to people in the best way that
we can.

Kate Clark is head of Historic Environment Management at English
Heritage. She is the author of the recent book Informed Conservation:
Understanding Historic Buildings and Their Landscapes for Conservation.