The social value of urban heritage: the limits to the implementation of the Historic Urban Landscape Recommendation in Shanghai

Lights and shadows are cast over the UNESCO Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) Recommendation since it was passed in 2011. While its encompassing definition reveals multiple potential fields of heritage management and intervention, its loose understanding is jeopardizing its effective implementation. This paper proposal will give an insight into the conceptual gap between the genealogy of the HUL Recommendation and the contemporary theoretical framework that applies to cultural heritage, especially referring to a critique of its biased value-based approach. Its aim is to fill this gap by means of a new definition of authenticity, a surprisingly neglected quality of urban heritage in the drafting of the Recommendation that needs to be brought back to stage in this discussion. The paper will develop an enhanced definition of this concept, pointing at social values and the fulfilment of certain ‘rights to the city’ as a prerequisite for contemporary heritage authentication. Using the urban redevelopment of Shanghai as a case study, the paper will evaluate the potential of the unleashing of social values as the reference for urban heritage management, as well as its chances of success in front of the current marketing and propagandistic efforts to impulse a renovated aesthetic definition of Shanghai as a modern global city. A review of particular cases relating the management of industrial and residential heritage in Shanghai will show how the perceived limitations of authenticity may constitute instead one of the greatest potential impulses for the future development of the heritage city.