Why Does the Past Matter? Emotional Attachments to the Historic Urban Environment

遗产在公共政策中的作用最近在国家和国际范围内都得到了提升。苏格兰政府的战略“我们在时间中的位置”开始了一个“将历史环境纳入国家政府政策主流”的过程（2014:13），而联合国教科文组织的历史城市景观方法（2011）旨在整合“城市遗产保护和社会经济发展的目标”（2014:5）。因此，遗产为一系列议程做出贡献的潜力在公共政策中得到了广泛认可。然而，尽管如此，人们仍然承认，遗产部门并没有充分证明过去对许多人来说很重要的原因。苏格兰政府清楚地表明了这一点，他们在同一份战略文件中表示，他们需要“提高我们对历史环境在我们生活的各个方面所起的作用和影响的理解——例如，它在身份、福祉和地方感方面的作用”（2014:15）。该项目牢牢地坐落在这样的背景下，其中心目标是研究导致人们与历史城市环境之间情感依恋发展的各种因素，以及在英国遗产的指定和管理中考虑这些因素的程度。在这个背景下包含了三个核心研究问题：RQ1：城市环境的变化在多大程度上，以及出于什么原因，暴露了人们与历史场所之间的情感依恋？RQ2：在城市变化时期，个人以何种方式、出于何种原因表达他们对历史城市环境的情感依恋？RQ3：在指定和管理历史城市资产的过程中，在多大程度上以及如何考虑对地点的情感依恋？该项目的核心是通过分析人与历史城市环境之间的情感依恋形成的方式，与遗产研究中的情感转变相结合。之前被描述为“遗产和博物馆研究房间里的大象”（Smith and Campbell, 2016），情感正日益成为遗产研究中一个有影响力的主题。该项目的前提是相信城市环境的变化可以释放以前对历史城市建筑潜在的情感依恋。因此，通过结合私人持有和很少访问的档案文件，以及基于地点的口述历史和焦点小组的新创建数据，对许多城市案例研究进行了检查。然后将对这些现有的和新的数据进行分析，以试图检查过去对从遗产专业人员到非遗产专业人员的一系列个人的影响程度和原因，这些人被定义为那些在当地嵌入历史城市环境的人，如居民和活动家。

The role of heritage within public policies has recently been elevated within both national and international contexts. The Scottish Government's strategy Our Place in Time began a process of "mainstreaming the historic environment across national government policies" (2014:13) whereas UNESCO's Historic Urban Landscapes approach (2011) was designed to integrate "the goals of urban heritage conservation and those of social and economic development" (2014:5). The potential for heritage to contribute to a range of agendas is therefore well recognised within public policy. However, despite this rhetoric there is still an acknowledgment that the heritage sector has not fully evidenced the reasons why the past matters to a range of individuals. This is clearly demonstrated by the Scottish Government, who within the same Strategy document, stated their need to "improve our understanding of the role and impact the historic environment plays in all aspects of our lives - for example, its role in identity, well-being and sense of place" (2014:15). This project sits firmly within this context as its central aim is to examine the range of factors that contribute to the development of emotional attachments between people and the historic urban environment and the extent to which these factors are considered within the designation and management of heritage in the UK. Contained within this context are three central research questions:RQ1: To what extent, and for what reasons, do changes to the urban environment expose emotional attachments between people and historic places?RQ2: In what ways, and for what reasons, do individuals express their emotional attachments to the historic urban environment during times of urban change?RQ3: To what extent, and how, are emotional attachments to place considered during the designation and management of historic urban assets?The central core of the project engages with the emotional turn within heritage studies through conducting an analysis of the ways in which emotional attachments form between people and their historic urban environment. Previously described as the "elephant in the room of heritage and museum studies" (Smith and Campbell, 2016) emotion is increasingly becoming an influential theme within heritage studies. The project is premised on the belief that changes to urban environments can unlock previously latent emotional attachments to historic urban buildings. As such a number of urban case studies are examined through a combination of documents from privately held and rarely accessed archives, and newly-created data from place-based oral histories and focus groups. This existing and new data will then be subjected to analysis to try to examine the extent to which, and reasons why, the past matters to a range of individuals from heritage professionals to non-heritage professionals, defined as those people who are locally embedded within the historic urban environment, such as residents and activists.