Conserving Europe's Historic Towns: Character, Managerialism and Representation

Author(s): T. R. SLATER
Source: Built Environment (1978-), Vol. 23, No. 2, Conservation in Western Planning
Systems (1997), pp. 144-155
Published by: Alexandrine Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23288314
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Conserving Europe's Historic Towns:

Character, Managerialism
and Representation
T. R. SLATER

Europe's historic towns have a complex geography and a very long history
which give them distinctive regional character. However, management systems are often
insufficiently sensitive to these distinctions and often fail to represent the toivnscapes of
groups lacking cultural and political power.

Trying to gain a European perspective

on
conservation
management - different 'char
and what is it that constitutes those
the conservation of townscapes throws acters',
up a
large number of questions; it is in trying
to
characters?
As an academic geographer with
find answers to even quite simple questions
a special interest in urban forms, my first

that interesting differences between recourse

Euro
in seeking out the causes of char

pean countries are thrown into sharp relief.

acter naturally looks to those themes first.
This paper is intended as a contribution
to
Environmental
determinism is deservedly
understanding something of the enormous
deeply unfashionable but that does not
variety in the ways of thinking about, mean
and that local environments do not con
tribute to local character. The winter rain
doing, urban conservation across the countries
of Europe over the past twenty years. It
is the wind in Galway or Bergen have
and
concerned with the geography and history
produced a very different response from
of Europe's towns, and the way in which
people in the buildings they construct for

variations in that geography and history

the daily business of living and working,
produce differences in the characterfrom
of the hot summer sun in a French
towns; it is concerned to explore variations
bastide, such as Monflanquin, or in Tuscan
Lucca.
in conservation management, and it is
con The 'character' of Bern or Durham
cerned with the representativeness ofbuilt
the on dramatic incised meander cores, of
parts of towns which are conserved as against
Edinburgh on its volcanic crag and tail, of
those which are destroyed or redeveloped.
Naples overlooked by Vesuvius, or of Venice
in its sheltered lagoon is inevitably coloured
The Geography of Difference

by these dramatic physical landscapes;

whilst the presence of the sea, marshland, a

The first simple question to ask is large
whylake, or a major river cannot help but
towns in Ireland are different from those in
influence our aesthetic appreciation of par
Norway? Norway from south-west France? ticular towns or be one of the things that
South-west France from central Germany? give them their particular identity.
Central Germany from Umbria? Umbria from
A second theme in any answer to the
Poland? Why do they have - to use that question of why places are different must

much-loved and little-understood word in

144

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concern the economic basis by which the

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CONSERVING EUROPE'S HISTORIC TOWNS: CHARACTER, MANAGERIALISM AND REPRESENTATION

bastides of south-west France. The sub

majority of the citizens of a town earn their
living. Where the economy of a moderatelysequent evolution of the townscapes of these
sized town is dependent upon the services it
regions has been conditioned in part by
provides to a surrounding agricultural area:these initial plot characteristics. A further

shopping, financial, marketing, legal, adcharacteristic of some significance is the

means of access to the interior of the plots.
ministrative for example, this complex
service economy generates and maintains anUrban streets where access to the plot is
equivalent complexity of buildings to acfrom the street frontage have very different
characters
commodate these uses. Many of those

from streets where access is from

back lanes (Slater, 1987, 1990). Such plan

buildings will accommodate more than one
characteristics are just as important to urban
use and can easily be adapted from one use
to another. By contrast, a moderately-sizedcharacter as the degree of geometrical
town whose economy is dominated by aregularity of a planned street system. Even
here, however, at this more general level of
single industrial use will be a very different
sort of place. The Pennine textile manuplan recognition, there is often a failure to
facturing towns of northern England are
distinguish the subtleties of medieval plan

dominated by two particular buildingning in places such as Southampton or

forms, the factory steam-powered mill andFreiburg-im-Breisgau and to accept only the
industrial terraced housing (Caffyn, 1986), geometrical regularity of Cracow as evidence
neither of which is easily adapted to other of a planned development in the past
(Kalinowski, 1972).
uses and both of which are, today,
Finally, there is a geography of difference
effectively redundant economically.
in the third dimension of towns, namely in
These first two themes in the geography
their buildings. Leaving aside the par
of difference might seem obvious (but that is

no reason for not setting them down and

keeping them in mind). The third theme is

much less obvious and few people in the

ticularities of dominant buildings in the

townscape which can easily become iconic

in the identities of particular cities - Pisa's

English-speaking world pay much attention

to it, and that is the difference of urban plan

leaning bell tower, or Granada's Alhambra

form. The sheer complexity of most Euro

pean town plans consequent on their long
historical development deters some com

characteristics of building forms, and build

ing materials, and building elements are of

mentators or leads to simplistic analysis on

the part of others. The usual representation
of historical town plans is to show only the
street plan (e.g. Morris, 1995); the necessity

is to represent the plot pattern and, some

times, the block plans of buildings. In com
bination, the street-plan and the plot pattern

Palace, for example - in all towns, the

crucial importance in local character. The

gable-end-to-the-street houses in Liibeck,

headquarters town of the medieval Hanseatic

League, with their great attic storeys six or

more floors from the street level, steeply

pitched pantile roofs and early brick-built
walls (figure 1) (Fehring, 1991) are a Euro
pean world away from the crossways-to

can be 'read' as part of the character of

places (Conzen, 1960; 1968). The very long,
narrow plots of the Bryggen harbour front

the-street courtyard houses, brick and stone

built, with shallow tile roofs of Lucca or

different townscape from the broad, shallow

it is not sufficient to say that the national

map is all that is needed; the towns of north

age of Bergen produce a fundamentally

plots of Aigues-Mortes, and these places

stand as representatives of two regional
types: the early medieval port towns of the
North and Baltic Seas and the high medieval
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Dubrovnic. Study of the regionality of

Europe's townscapes has hardly begun and

east France are as different from those of

south-west France as they are from those of

northern Italy, whilst those of eastern

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CONSERVATION IN WESTERN PLANNING SYSTEMS

2), an observer is faced by a structure first

erected a hundred years or more before the
birth of Christ, spectacularly refurbished in
late-Roman times, gated against city enemies
in medieval times, surmounted with an airy

Renaissance pavillion in the fifteenth cen

tury, and still used by modern traffic in the
late twentieth century to gain access to the

city. How is that temporal span to be

valued, conserved and presented today?

Three other themes on time can be pre

sented as significantly affecting our appreci

ation of the character of European towns.

First, though there are many common themes

in European urban history, the ideas or the
economies that gave rise to particular built
forms arrived in different places at different

times. The Renaissance may have begun in

Florence in the late fourteenth century but,
Figure 2. The Etruscan gate, Perugia, Italy (photo:
author).

Figure 1. Late medieval merchants' houses,

Lubeck, Germany (photo: author).

Germany have much in common with towns

in northern Poland. Within just one of these
regions, the medieval bastides of south-west
France, recent work has shown there to be at
least five distinctive sub-regional plan types
for this one historical period (Lauret et al.,

1988). If these towns are to be properly

conserved, this regional distinctivness must

be recognized by the planning system as

worthy of preservation and enhancement.

What Time are These Places?

If geography produces one set of differences

in European towns, then history provides

another set of complex differentiations in

plans and built forms. Nowhere is this made

more plain than in Italy. Standing, in the city
of Perugia, before the Etruscan Gate (figure
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CONSERVING EUROPE'S HISTORIC TOWNS: CHARACTER, MANAGERIALISM AND REPRESENTATION

in the north European fastness of London, and

it religious maelstrom of Bosnia. In
central and northern mainland Europe, the
did not really find urban expression until
Thirty Years War of the seventeenth century
Inigo Jones designed the Co vent Garden
is a defining presence in the form of towns;
development for the Earl of Bedford in the

similarly the Eighty Years War of the pre

1630s (Borer, 1967). That is a significant
century for the towns of the Low
temporal difference which is reflected vious
in
Countries. Even quite small places were
buildings and urban design at every scale
heavily fortified with massive bastions,
from townscape, through individual build
ramparts and moats and these fortifications
ings such as churches, to the details of

windows and even door knobs.

remained in place and operational until the

early nineteenth century at least (Duffy,

Reversing the temporal flow, urban

1979). The necessity for clear fields of fire

industrialization began in Britain in the mid

outside such fortifications leads to the

eighteenth century and specifically (and
usually unlovely) urban industrial towncharacteristic Ringstrasse zone of towns in
these regions into which institutions could
scapes were commonplace in British cities
be
by the mid-nineteenth century. Even in inserted in the nineteenth century and
inner ring roads in the twentieth century.
Germany, and still more so in France and
There is also a characteristic temporal dis
Italy, such industrial townscapes are the
continuity between building styles within
product of the late-nineteenth and early

the fortifications, which are generally pre

twentieth centuries and have very different
1750 and styles outside the Ringstrasse
architectural expression and plan forms. The
which
are generally post-1870. By contrast,
neo-Classical and Art Nouveau styles of the
in
Britain,
with the sole exception of Berwick
1870-1914 period reach their apogee in

places such as Lodz (Poland) or Pest

(Hungary), where industrialization came

upon Tweed, only the dockyard towns had

bastion fortifications and they did not sur

adapted equally quickly (Koter, 1990). One

majority of British towns did not, therefore,

very quickly and towns needed to be

vive into the nineteenth century. The

have areas of open space into which new

through time is that in Britain almost street systems could be inserted, nor are
nothing of local vernacular tradition has there the temporal discontinuities in

clear consequence of this economic variation

survived in industrial cities, whereas in

central and eastern Europe this is not so (in
central Lodz for example, there are still one
or two of the original weaver's cottages of
the first manufacturing settlement) and still

nineteenth-century housing styles. Here the

temporal discontinuity is a product of the
slum clearance policies of the post-1945 years
so that inner Birmingham, for example, is

now characterized by a ring of 1960s local

less is it so in southern Europe where the authority tower blocks on either side of a

main thrust of industrialization is a phenom dualled middle-ring road (Whitehand, 1996).

This, then, is something of the history of
enon of the post-Second World War years
and has generally been suburbanized away difference. The big question on this theme
for urban conservationists is what times do
from historic urban cores (Vilagrasa, 1990).
A third major theme is the difference in we value? Is the medieval townscape best
political and social history between different because it is the oldest to survive in modern

parts of Europe. Conflict has been an

towns? Or is it best because it makes for

endemic part of European urban history good 'heritage' marketing? - it sells in our

through to the present and towns, as centres consumerist culture and no-one dislikes it.
of political and cultural power, have been at But, if we had lived in eighteenth-century
the forefront of such conflicts: witness the
Britain, Roman would have been the most

recent destruction of Sarajevo in the ethnic favoured period of history; and classical
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CONSERVATION IN WESTERN PLANNING SYSTEMS

design dominated everything, particularly

built by Irish craftsmen and builders and
that
they are just as much part of Ireland's
the new townscapes of fashionable
Bath
(Cunliffe, 1986). The medieval world
was as they are of England's. As that
history

cultural transformation of values takes place,

regarded as 'primitive', Gothic architecture
then so does the transformation of con
was not understood. Now, in our classically
untrained and classically undervalued serving
world, the historical townscape.

temporal question that can be

the Roman is of antique value but isAnother
not

central to our urban value systems (despite

observed taking place today is the 'trickle
the fact that, as we have seen, in southern
down' effect of such revaluations of history.

Europe, substantial elements surviveAlmost

from always they begin with the intel
lectuals of a society. This was certainly so

towns of Classical times).

with Georgian architecture in Britain, it is

equally so with the unloved architecture and

townscape of the 1960s. Why cannot the

majority of people appreciate the historical

value of Birmingham's New Street signal

box (figure 3) in all its Brutalist concrete
magnificence? And is it right that it should
be listed for preservation, as it was in 1996,

given that level of public antipathy? The

same goes for 1960s local authority estates
such as Sheffield's Park Hill which, again,

was listed in 1996. There are difficult time

based question marks here and not enough

research has been done on the psychology of
appreciating the urban temporal dimension

as it is expressed in buildings (Hubbard,

1993).

Managerialist Perspectives
The history of European urban conservation

Figure 3. New Street signal box, Birmingham, UK

is a single
(photo: G. Dowling).

theme with minor variations.

Most countries began by deciding to pre

serve
a few historical monuments as a result
Why did it take more than 100 years,
until

the 1930s, before Georgian domestic

ofarchi
the lobbying of elite pressure groups

tecture in Britain was revalued until it

some time at the turn of the twentieth cen

tury. In some countries the 'value' of these

eventually became the epitome of refined

structures
English domestic taste? In Dublin
that was in their antiquity, in others it
was and
their aesthetic value, in others the people
process of revaluing is taking place now
associated
the despised 'English' Georgian terraces
are with those buildings (Larkham,
1996, de
chapter 2). In most countries, aspects
at last being conserved rather than
of all three themes come together to re
molished (McCullough, 1989). It is of interest
to observe this process of revaluation inforce
going the case for state action to preserve

on because it is part of a general

buildings from the actions of individual
Systems of management
'Europeanization' of Ireland in general decision-making.
and
that 'listed' historic buildings for protection,
of Dublin in particular. People are at last

and which sometimes provided limited

beginning to realize that these terraces were
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CONSERVING EUROPE'S HISTORIC TOWNS: CHARACTER, MANAGERIALISM AND REPRESENTATION

funds to ensure such preservation, haveparticular areas of these towns rather than
continued to be developed and enhancedothers? The answer, of course, is that the
until the present but, in the 1960s, beginning
very high standards of restoration of the

in France, new ideas on the conservation ofurban fabric, which undoubtedly takes place

areas of historic townscape began to be in these cases, have equally high costs and
choices therefore have to be made. More
developed. Indeed, the word 'townscape'
entered the English language at about this
recently, decentralization legislation of 1983

time, as planners began to think in this areahas enabled a few innovative local
authorities to use the Plan d'Occupation de

based way (e.g. Cullen, 1961). In some

countries this area-based conservation was

Sols, a legally-binding commune land-u

plan which is part of the Code d'Urbanism

the perogative of the national state, in others
to take control of the form of new buildin
regional government, and in others the local
in historic urban areas and to establish
authority. Since the 1960s there has been

parameters which enhance the existing local

much fine-tuning of these area-based systems
character of places (Kropf, 1996).
of management and massive expansion of
the areas deemed worthy of preservation or The systems of east European countries
conservation.
before the collapse of state socialism in 1989

were also centralized ones, as might be

The geography of urban conservation
expected, but the decision-making was
management shows much greater differ
devolved to the academy within a set of
ences. In Great Britain, for example, the

close links with the economy and culture legal

of
and political parameters. To the
North America, meant that Modernist func
historians, architects and archaeologists that
dominated the conservation offices of towns
tional rationalism, land-use-based planning,
in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, the
and a two-dimensional, drawing-board view
historic town became their research labor
of the town predominated. It was in reaction

to this view of planning that Cullen's

atory. This was to the considerable detri

ment of the inhabitants of these areas, since

Toivnscape was published in 1961. This is not
the research deemed necessary before work
to say, however, that the British and

could begin on conserving historic town

American planning systems are similar.

for modern living was painstaking

They are fundamentally different because scapes
of
and time-consuming (Zina, 1986; Hammersley
differences of law. The British system is also
a decentralized one with most of the
and Westlake, 1994). It also ensured that the
decisions on the creation of conservation

academics concerned were employed for

equally long periods. This is not to say that
areas, and then their subsequent manage
some of the completed schemes were not
ment, being taken by local authorities within
extremely impressive, though they often
a broad legal framework provided by the

national government.

suffered from poor-quality materials. Most

distinctive of all, of course, has been the

In France, the management of historic
reconstruction of the war-damaged centres
townscapes is a reflection of highly-cen
of cities such as Warsaw and Poznan.
tralized government systems and, until
Today, the problem in these countries is
recently, local authorities have had little
funding urban conservation at a time when
input. Consequently, there are a few areas
their economies are being fundamentally
restored to very high standards (Kain, 1975).

However, it is noticeable that

These secteurs sauvegard.es are impressive,restructured.
as
the long-established concern for, and under
summer visitors to Sarlat or Perigeaux, for
of, the place of historic townscapes
example, can vouch. But the questionstanding
is
in the identity of these restructured nation
raised as to why these towns have been
states has enabled their governments largely
conserved rather than others, and why the
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CONSERVATION IN WESTERN PLANNING SYSTEMS

to channel western investment into re

living in the town centre. What is especiall

furbishing existing buildings, rather characteristic
than
of managing the conserved
replacing the historical built fabric withtownscapes
new
of these town-centre residentia

areas in countries such as Germany is

The big questions here are those to concern
do
with environmental quality. This is
with efficiency, efficacy and representation.
manifested in extensive traffic-calming

structures.

Managers like efficient systems that run like

measures and the planned provision of play

clockwork, but urban conservation is generally

areas for young children, of small green

messy and requires a lot of negotiation if spaces,

the
and the retention of services such a
most favourable outcome is to be reached.
shops, nurseries and social facilities integrate

One interesting variant here is where ainto the conserved townscape (Millarg

1978). The conservation of the historic core

community pays for its urban conservation
manager directly, as happens in some of the
of Regensburg is one example of this
poorer countries of Europe. In Portugal, for
distinctive type of management which saw
example, central government will pay for the
a clearance of extensive back courts of
conservation architect to develop a frame
nineteenth-century tenements to make space

work urban conservation policy for afor

such facilities behind the conserved

particular place for two years; thereafter the

street frontage buildings of earlier periods

community must take over the cost of

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft Bamberg, Liibeck,
employing such a professional itself. Regensburg,
In
1981).
many instances this happens because the

conservation plans are effective in bringing

new finance to insert modern facilities into

Representation: Whose Towns?

historic buildings, enabling people to con

Under all political systems, urban managers
tinue living there. They are also effectively
are ultimately answerable to politicians.

linked to heritage management policies

They can therefore avoid questions of
which bring visitors into these towns
representation by saying that this is what
enabling businesses to develop and expand. the politicians are there for. Similarly, the
Systems do have to be effective, therefore,
for particular circumstances.
The Modernist ideals which dominated

vast majority of the very extensive academic

literature on the conservation of Europe's

historic towns is concerned to describe or

British planning through to the 1970s had

a
analyse
the variations in management
strong tendency to plan for exclusive land
policies and legal systems (Larkham, 1996).

However, the key questions are about

mercial in character whilst the property
representation. Why are we doing what we

use zones and saw town centres as com

sector followed this lead and perceived

are doing in conserving historic towns? And

single-use developments cis more

easily
who
are we doing it for? Quite clearly the

managed than multi-use buildings (Freeman,

governing political groups and the

1986). Many local authorities are

now
managerialist
planning systems are not
beginning to reverse these policies
and
conserving
historical townscapes for people

encourage residential uses back into

town
in the
past; they are not conserving because
and city centres. However, almost
it all
creates
such
jobs for planners, architects and
attempts in Britain are characterized
by
conservation
officers; nor are they
gentrification of housing or the provision
necessarily doing it because it makes good
economic sense; sometimes it does, but
only of high-value houses for professional
occupants. In central European towns
this it does not. Rather, they are
frequently
policy began much earlier, in the 1970s,
and historic towns and cities for
conserving
there was really no break in the tradition
people now,
of
because our societies have
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CONSERVING EUROPE'S HISTORIC TOWNS: CHARACTER, MANAGERIALISM AND REPRESENTATION

Poland in 1945 for the first time since the

invested them with meaning and cultural
fourteenth century, a much more difficult
and social value. These meaning and values

are not fixed and unchanging, but areconundrum for Polish urban conservation
was produced. As a consequence, the restora
constantly being renegotiated and re
evaluated. The way in which Georgian, then tion and conservation of the provincial
Victorian, then inter-war buildings have capital, Wroclaw (Breslau), proceeded much
been successively despised and then valued more slowly than did the equivalent policies
by succeeding generations in Britain is a in Poznan. In smaller towns in Silesia,
simple example of this renegotiation and restoration work proceeded hardly at all. In
revaluing but, in studying the phenomenon

of urban conservation, academics keep

forgetting or neglecting to go back to this

question of social value and social identity.
Five brief examples will illustrate some of

part this was a consequence of their

essentially Germanic character which could

not easily be erased or transformed, and in

part it was a consequence of the new

population of the region after 1945 which

consisted mostly of poor peasant farmers
moved from areas of formerly eastern

the complexities here. They are posed as

question and answer, though the answers
are necessarily mediated by my own per
ceptions of these complex matters. First,
why did the totalitarian socialist post-war

Poland ceded to the Soviet Union after 1945

Polish state decide as a matter of priority to

planned town and eighteenth-century spa of

rebuild the cores of its historic urban

and unused to urban industrial living. To

give just one example: the fine medieval

Jelenia Gora at the foot of the Sudety

is now dominated by a highly

patrimony destroyed by the retreatingmountains
Nazi
polluting
cellulose
mill and huge estates of
forces in places such as Poznan and Warsaw;
high-rise
housing
blocks,
whilst its historic
a policy culminating in the reconstruction of
fabric
has
been
neglected
and demolished
the royal castle in Warsaw in the late 1970s?
except
Answers to this question must explore
the for the main town square.
How, then, does the conservation of these
way in which Polish national identity had

been tied into these and other historic towns

Polish towns contrast with German cities

by both the inter-war Polish state and the which suffered extensive war-time damage
very different post-war government. Also it from allied bombing? In Germany the post
is essential to understand the way in which war priority was to restore the economy
and, consequently, war-damaged cities were
these places were deliberately destroyed by
the occupying German army as a way of rebuilt as quickly as possible in modern
breaking the Polish national spirit. One con styles using cheap materials. In part this was
sequence of this playing-out of nationalist an economic imperative but it was also a
identity in the historic townscapes of Poland consequence of war-time defeat and the
is to be seen in the rebuilding which, in policies of the occupying powers of Britain,
France, and the USA. Planning advisors
Poznan, for example, saw the deliberate
decision not to rebuild those elements of the
from these nations brought with them a
fabric which were derived from the period
preference for Modernism and modernist
of Prussian government of the city through

planning solutions which, in effect, re

the nineteenth century. In the rebuilding,

the city was deliberately made more 'Polish'

enforced a desire amongst many Germans to

than it had been previously (Kondziela,

1971).

To remove a century's influence on the

urban fabric was possible in Poznan but, in
the province of Silesia, which became part of
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forget the deeply-troubled past and move

forward to a new age. However, by the late

1960s, in Germany, as elsewhere in the

western world, a desire to conserve the best

of the built fabric of the past began to

manifest itself and plans began to be made

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CONSERVATION IN WESTERN PLANNING SYSTEMS

to recreate the best of the destroyed

generations
past are to know the three

dimensional character of such a court, then

(von der Dollen, 1979; Soane, 1994). An
example is the cathedral city of Hildesheim one will have to be new-built in the future.
which, before the 1940s, was regarded asThere have, however, been controversial
one of the most beautiful of German cities
decisions taken in conserving Birmingham's
with its early Romanesque churches and past. The dominating residential experience
medieval timber-framed buildings standing of the twentieth century in the city is the
harmoniously around squares in an intricate inter-war council, or speculatively-built semi
urban fabric. Almost all of this was

detached suburban house. The city has a

obliterated and, though the churches
conservation
were
area which encompasses a rep
meticulously rebuilt, the rest of the resentative
city was sample of such houses (probably
a classic piece of 1960s system-built the
modern
first such designation in the country).

ism. In the 1980s work began on reconstructing

The professional managerialist world laughed,
the most famous of Hildesheim's town
but this is a genuine attempt to capture the
squares in front of the city hall to its pre-war
spirit of an important time for the develop

appearance. This began with the rebuilding

ment of this place (Slater and Larkham,
of the huge sixteenth-century timber-framed
1996). However, it is the middle-class pri

Wedekindhaus and the 1490s Tempelhaus,

vate houses which have been captured

and concluded with the reconstruction of

within the bounds of the conservation area,

the Knochenhauer-Amtshauses, widely re

not a council estate where, paradoxically,

garded as the most beautiful of all Germany's

management might have been easier. A
many timber-framed town houses. This
third example is a row of the 1940s prefabs
which were such a characteristic feature of
desire to recreate the destroyed past is also
manifest in the plans being made to rebuild
the edges of parkland and open spaces in
our cities. Listed for conservation in 1996,
the city centre of Dresden following the

unification of the country (Soane, 1994). In

the last standing in the city, a photograph of
both these cases a resurgent nationalism
these buildings never fails to elicit responses
unencumbered by the guilt of the Second
from the audience at public lectures, and a
World War has led to the decision to re
prefab preserved in the Avoncroft museum
create the old, despite the enormous expense
of buildings is the most popular of all the
of doing so.
buildings on display. In both cases this is
Closer to home, in Britain, commentators
because it is a remembered experience of
have often remarked on the class-based
living in our cities.
nature of the conservation policies of the
A brief final question is what of the losers
majority of cities. Conserving the urbanin
past
history? If even the past of the working
is a middle-class preoccupation, so that it
is winners of history can be wiped out by
class
middle-class townscapes that are preserved.
thoughtless managerial planning, then what

What, for example, is being conserved

in is there that the experience of the
hope
unlovely Birmingham? To begin with, only
losers will survive? For example, to return to
one poor example of the thousands of back
Poland, Lodz was one of the great Jewish
cities of the world until 1942. The vast
to-back courtyard dwellings which domin

ated working-class living experience in the

majority of its citizens today have no
city between 1760 and 1960 has beeninterest
pre
in preserving the memory of that
served. Two centuries of history and millions
Jewish past. The vast, beautiful and deeply
of lives have been erased from the cityscape
moving Jewish cemetery lay largely
and forgotten about except in books, despite
neglected, hidden, rightly difficult of access

the fact that it is the lived experience

of therefore unknown to most people
and

many of the city's older residents. If future

(figure 4). Paradoxically, it has been young
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CONSERVING EUROPE'S HISTORIC TOWNS: CHARACTER, MANAGERIALISM AND REPRESENTATION

Jewish cemetery, Lodz, Poland (photo: author).

Germans who have encouraged German

buildings. The pressures of the heritage
companies to provide small sums to begin
tourism industry are also global (Ashworth
work on the restoration of this special urban
and Tunbridge, 1990), providing money for
space.

maintenance but also demanding inappro

Conclusions

priate levels of access to many fragile sites.

Other forces are European; large sums of

money from the European Community are

European towns are intricately varied; they
already being channelled into urban con
carry an enormous weight of socialservation,
and
often in the guise of development
cultural value for our societies. Their
grants to economically-deprived areas such
meaning is part of our identity and therefore
as Ireland, Portugal, Greece and parts of
of our well-being. If those meanings are
Italynot
and Spain. However, if the cultural
to be overwhelmed, or used for ill rather
diversity of Europe gives meaning to

than good, then we in the academy and in

the professions need to ensure that

politicians and people are aware of the

scales of forces acting on our towns. Some of

those forces are global - particularly the

economic forces. If European national
economies fall upon hard times our historic
towns will be preserved, but they will not be
maintained. If economies flourish, there is

pressure to reconstruct and replace valued

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Europe then that diverse cultural heritage

needs more money for its preservation,
especially in those fringe areas, and still

more in the newly-emergent states of

eastern Europe where so much has been

preserved for 40 years, but preserved in an

increasingly poor condition. Such a call is a
continuation of the economic theme which

has been the driving force of the European

Community since its founding. However,

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153

CONSERVATION IN WESTERN PLANNING SYSTEMS

what is really needed is an new mental Conzen,

map M.R.G. (1968) The use of town plans in
the study of urban history, in Dyos, H.J. (ed.)
of Europe where nationalities recognize their

differences but also their commonalities

The Study of Urban History. London: Arnold.

G. (1961) Townscape. London: Archi

(Ashworth and Larkham, 1994). To takeCullen,
an
tectural Press.
example: are we all sure what is uniquely
Cunliffe, B. (1986) The City of Bath. Gloucester:
Scottish about Edinburgh? What is a varia
Alan Sutton.

tion on the theme of urbanism in the British

Isles? And what provides links to the com

mon European urban heritage? Edinburgh's

classical New Town plays this 'theme and

variations' particularly well if educators and

interpreters want it to, and from it an

orchestral accompaniment can be provided
from the scores of eighteenth-century re

planned estate towns all over Scotland

(Adams, 1978). But these same places can

also play an exclusive, nationalist, tune if

those interpreters and educators wish. We
do have to ask ourselves if we wish to be

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