Urban Heritage: a transformative concept for the continuous city

Discussing the human scale of the city, we indirectly talks about the layers of the city - the temporal city. Through the layers of the city - its urban heritage - we experience and understand not only the development of the city and society but also our own, through which we build an identity. The perceived layers - atmospheric, tangible and intangible - are strongest in the urban areas where we can experience the continuous city.

The experience of continuity in the social and physical structures of the city ensure the human scale. It is through the experienced continuation – the continuum - that humans are anchored physically and mentally in the city.

This continuity in the development of the city, as a means of ensuring the human scale, formed the basis of my research on the transformation of a former working-class neighbourhood in the Danish city of Vejle.

Through the research, I sought continuity and the human scale by introducing the urban heritage as a transformative concept. Based on the concept of qualification, I have investigated how to introduce urban heritage as a common understanding – a transformative concept - of a given area connecting civil, professionals and politicians in a qualification of urban heritage.

Today, we evaluate the urban heritage - what has value for tomorrow. The purpose of the research is to investigate how a change towards qualification can introduced the urban heritage as a transformative concept creating the continuous city ensuring our own understanding and the human scale.