What is Social Value?
- James Lesh
- Nov 10, 2019
- 1 min read
Updated: Apr 23
Social value and the conservation of urban heritage places in Australia
Across the world, researchers and practitioners are recognising the potential of social value to bolster the conservation of heritage places. Operating alongside aesthetic and historic significance, the integration of social value into conservation practice seeks to enhance the assessment and management of cultural heritage by dissolving divides between practitioners and communities. Australia has long been recognised as a trailblazer in the development of social value due to its inclusion in the 1979 'Burra Charter', but social value's adoption in identification processes and its implementation in practice has undergone various evolutions in the past four decades. Its current meaning is far more disputed than either aesthetic or historic value. To provide stronger foundations for ongoing examinations of social value, this article historicises notions of social value in the Australian urban conservation context. It focuses on Melbourne and draws on extensive heritage literature and urban history archival research to suggest that social value was a tangential inclusion in the 1979 'Burra Charter'. It relates examples of where social value has come to the fore in heritage practice, including Flinders Street Station in the 1970s-80 and the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) in the 1990s-2000s. Social value has been reworked to meet changing urban and heritage priorities but has never quite achieved its potential: placing people at the heart of conservation practice and heritage places.
James Lesh, “Social value and the conservation of urban heritage places in Australia”, Historic Environment 31, no. 1 (2019): 42–62.
