As a modern concept of cultural practice, “heritage” reflects the ways through which different nation-states understand and construct their own values. Accompanied with the emergency and development of “cultural landscape” concept, the relevance between heritage and landscape has greatly changed how people recognize heritage values, and cultural landscape becomes a specific type of heritage in related research and practice. From the holism perspective of Historic Urban Landscape, practices attempt to interpret the values of heritage by regarding landscape as medium, which helps integrate heritage resources into the overall planning of urban development. From the diversity perspective, the emphasis of the relevance between heritage and landscape promotes the academic system construction on landscape-based heritage research and practice. Heritage landscape research in digital era sees promising potential, meanwhile needs more efforts to address basic technique problems.

As a method of the systematic conservation of historical, cultural, and natural landscape resources, heritage corridor integrates contexts of humanism and nature and provides the public with continuous linear spaces for recreation, leisure, and fitness activities. Most traditional studies on heritage corridor route planning focus on the analysis of physical spatial conditions, while ignoring public perception and public participation mechanisms. Based on the concept of Historic Urban Landscape, this research excavates modern landscape resources that are closely connected with traditional heritages and analyzes users’ digital footprints to incorporate public preferences of recreational behaviors into the process of heritage corridor route planning, realizing the combination of physical and social semantic data analyses. Basically, this study consists of three parts: 1) through analysis of digital footprints, select urban traditional heritage sites and landscape resource spots into the process of heritage corridor route planning, and fit the preliminary routes of urban heritage corridors with minimum cumulative resistance model; 2) construct a co-word matrix consisting of users’ movement flows and online textual data in the digital footprints, to complete the route planning upon social semantic data analysis; and 3) superimpose the results of heritage corridor route planning generated by the above two steps, and optimize according to the reality of urban environment. The study realizes an effective integration of urban landscape resources with public recreational behaviors and spatial perception in the process of heritage corridor route planning, offering reference to the overall protection of urban heritages and the systematic improvement of public space.

In China, national parks represent the country’s most unique natural landscapes. Scientific evaluation of landscape resources is significant for preserving the authenticity and integrity of national parks. Taking Qianjiangyuan National Park System Pilot Zone as an example, this research investigated the willingness of internal group (residents and administrative staff) and external group (tourists) to pay for a hypothetical market project based on the pilot zone via Contingent Valuation Method to acquire the monetized value of landscape resources in the national park, and applied Logistic Regression to analyze the influencing factors. The results show that the payment rate of external group is higher than that of internal group, and people with different demographics have different payment rates. Both internal and external groups are willing to pay to improve ecological environment, but there are significant differences on reasons for refusal—having a low income is the main reason for the internal group, and the external respondents refuse mainly because of the belief that the payment is owed to government finance. The total monetized value of the research area is 135 million yuan, of which the external value is much higher than internal value. The attitude factors influence landscape resource value more significantly than demographic and environmental factors. The assessment of landscape resource value of national parks is affected by perceptions and demands of multiple interest groups. This research suggests accelerating the construction of a standardized assessment technical system to support the establishment of national park system in China.

Social impact assessment is a practical requirement for the construction of the national park system, but there is still a lack of comprehensive conceptual frameworks, theoretical explanations, and systematic evaluations. Considering the distinctive characteristics of China’s national park system construction, this study improves the existing framework and indicator system for social impact assessment. It conducts a comparative analysis of three typical communities—the inside community, gateway community, and fringe community—surrounding the Giant Panda National Park (Tangjiahe area). Through questionnaire surveys, semi-structured interviews, factor analysis, and One-way ANOVA analysis, we find that the comprehensive perception value of social impacts by the Giant Panda National Park was relatively negative. Respondents’ perception values ranked from high to low were social relations, local culture, equity and rights, economy and livelihoods, and knowledge and education. Moreover, except the dimension of economy and livelihoods, there were significant differences in the perception of impacts by the three types of communities. Specifically, the gateway community has the most positive perception of social relations, local culture, and equity and rights; the inside community has the most positive perception of knowledge and education; while the fringe community perceived the most negative impacts in all four dimensions. Furthermore, the primary causes of social impact perception are conservation policies, economic development, and location and transportation. This study suggests that non-economic social impacts should be given more attention, such as equity and rights, and knowledge and education. Also, to ensure that the fringe communities can benefit from the construction and development of national parks, more attention and support from the governments and management agencies are necessary. This study can provide theoretical insights and case-based evidence for the improvement of social impact discussions on protected areas.

Today, for the first time in human history, more than half of the world’s population lives in cities. Coincidentally, within the field of cultural heritage conservation, increasing international interest and attention over the past two decades has been focused on urban areas. This is timely because the pressure for economic development and for the prioritizing of engagement with the global economy have accompanied rapid urbanization. In many societies, economic development has privileged modernization efforts leading to the loss of traditional communities. Accompanying this has been a concentration in the field of urban conservation on famous buildings and monuments rather than seeing cities as communities of people with values and belief systems that are reflected in a city’s overall setting: its cultural landscape. The Historic Urban Landscape approach is intended to address this distinction by critically discussing city communities, and how they are reservoirs of human memory and identity. This raises the question of the role of nostalgia in the field of urban conservation studies: is nostalgia an important phenomenon in understanding how the past is both brought to bear on the present and on the development of social and political agendas for the future? This article explores alternative ways of seeing cities particularly through the Historic Urban Landscape paradigm.

Aya Kubota stands out in studies of community development projects ranging from small historical towns to major metropolitan areas, covering topics on urban planning, townscape preservation, and environmental improvement and conservation, etc. In this interview, she shares thoughts on historical environment preservation and regeneration, taking her practices in Japan for example. From her point of view, local subjectivity is essential. The dynamism of localization supports the preservation and regeneration practices, presenting an alternative way of urbanization. There might be conflicts between the local and non-local subjects in such practices, but the conflicts are healthy. Regarding the preservation and utilization of the “Legacy of Catastrophe,” she holds that city planning taking historical environments into consideration is an important progress. It is vital to engage local residents in the planning process and weigh up what should be preserved, how should they be conveyed, and to whom. For the regeneration of urban historical resources, the most challenging aspect is the need to examine the current situations, where our lives and ways of life have been completely influenced by external forces, and reevaluate our values. Although there are always risks associated with professional involvement, it is necessary to take some measures to preserve or repair the historical environments, in which process the ability to think as own self as the local residents is an important ability.

This article first identifies the current definition of urban heritage that includes both “old” and “young” monuments. Their protection has also shifted from solely preserving “old” values into a more holistic process to retain “old” values and manage the change in their adaptive reuse to gain “new” values, towards a more people-centered and landscape-based approach. Furthermore, a concept of ecosystem for urban planning and development is introduced, involving both the worlds of people, flora and fauna, and the sphere of spatial biography as well as other (in)tangible contexts, aiming to develop sustainable human habitats. The management of the change in human habitats as an ecosystem is built on the protection of place identity, which is the manifestation of historic urban landscape’s tangible and intangible attributes. Public participation is also recognized to be an important tool. To implement such a landscape-based approach, experts need to play an active role in promoting wide public participation while digital technologies open new ways for outreach, co-creation, and citizen-led decision-making platforms such as social media, (gamified) apps, and digital urban commons. Through public participation, local spatial biography can also be better identified, which extends people’s footprints from the community to local individuals at micro-scaled features within urban tissues. Finally, this article proposes recommendations for landscape architects to share the responsibilities of urban planners and heritage professionals, integrating heritage management into long-term sustainable urban development.

The intense changes in our modern society and the associated challenges are constantly increasing, not least due to the meta-crisis of climate change. Yet our approach to cultural heritage is still strongly influenced by the narrative of preservation. The article aims to find solutions within the interplay of preservation and change. Based on the psychological impact on society resulting from the current challenges, it is argued that cultural heritage experts need competencies in dealing with uncertainty and tolerance of ambiguity in order to provide security of action. The article applies insights from multiple disciplines to urban environment studies and advocates for a systemic understanding of cultural heritage as a prerequisite for sustainable and resilient adaptation to current challenges. It also contributes to a body of knowledge on what skills cultural heritage professionals need to be competent and confident in their daily work. The case study provides some valuable examples from Regensburg of Germany by taking an integrated and holistic approach that views the city as a multi-layered system in cultural heritage management.

In recent history, built environment practices have accepted a paradigm which underlines the land’s static quality, prioritizes immediate utility, and consequently adopts design processes that inevitably accelerate assimilation. With the capitalist propensity to obtain control and enhance efficiency, those processes nevertheless privilege certain cultures while rejecting other forms of knowledge or living specific to the land. The design discourse, confronted with the rising pressure of global climate challenges and environmental inequity, suggests a shift of design pattern from static to responsive as a means to an end that is part of nature’s transformation.

Located amid the semi-arid playa of Nevada in the USA, Fly Ranch sits on land remote yet crisscrossed by industrial activity, with extreme climatic conditions yet teeming with life and traditions. Working with these contradictions, “Lodgers,” the project to be constructed in Fly Ranch, is grounded in three key approaches to challenging contemporary architectural practice. Firstly, prioritize the well-being of all plants and animals species, including humans, by creating cohabitation spaces. Secondly, utilize local or nearby building resources to minimize waste, maintain ecological balance, and rebuild the material cycle. Finally, integrate Traditional Ecological Knowledge with modern building practices and employ low-tech construction techniques to encourage community participation. As a pilot project goes into construction, the authors offer critical reflection on contemporary architecture practice, the design process, and the meaning of “unbuilding” as a response to climate challenge.