Built Heritage Management Systems: Australia and Germany Compared

Abstract

A recent, unreported, focus group of international heritage practitioners from academia, urban planning, land use management and urban design, found interesting similarities and differences between Australian and German cultural built heritage (CBH) management systems. For validation, a literature review provided a methodological framework and is reported in this paper. Its objective is to confirm the principal themes elicited by the initial work, being: assessment standards, transferable development rights, heritage conservation incentives and private property rights’ management thereby contributing enhanced clarity to the broader relationship between built heritage and stakeholder roles in heritage conservation. This paper is a precursor of more detailed planned empirical, in-country study seeking further insights into stakeholder interests and value systems based on a recent developed analytical approach known as Cultural Heritage Discourse (CHD). It is recognised that this empirical component is a limiting feature of the current research but anticipated as inevitable due to the preliminary stage of enquiry. Keywords: Conservation of built heritage; cultural heritage discourse; heritage management systems; transferable development rights; Germany and Australia