Evaluation of a value based approach to urban conservation: colonial built heritage in new Delhi and Pondicherry India

Values-based approaches to. heritage management are generally considered to be more effective than the traditional approaches for managing complex heritage res~urce issues. Urban built environment is a testament of change and transformation may be more radical in colonial urban built environments which are symbolic landscapes representing the period of colonialism. Urban conservation is influenced by the underlying contexts. It also operates at various spatial scales; city, area and even individual buildings and involves large numbers of actors. The planning and decision-making process is therefore complex, difficult and problematic. Further the existing methods may be generally ineffective in engaging with real life contexts, complex stakeholder interactions and project uncertainties. Building on this conceptual framework, this thesis developed a novel Value-Based Approach (VBA) which can guide urban conservation decision-making. Believing that sound conceptual work requires interplay of theory and practice this thesis has tested the new VBA in project' evaluation. The two study areas, New Delhi (British planned colonial city) and Pondicherry (capital of French India)provided the thesis an opportunity to evaluate the VBA in a cross-cultural perspective. The methodological design for project evaluation in this thesis involved explorative research related to the case studies of Gole Market(Delhi) and Bharati Park (Pondicherry), developing value assessment methodologies and integrating stakeholder analysis tools in heritage management. The research findings confirm the main assumption that urban conservation decisions are governed by contexts and urban heritage is a highly contentious terrain which involves multiple stakeholders. The project evaluations reveal that the main issues related to current practice is the failure on part of the practitioners to respond to these complexities related to urban heritage. In future, practitioners should therefore approach urban conservation with a more explorative or constructivist philosophy which involves integrated value assessment and stakeholder participatory action and dialective decision making processEThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo