ABSTRACT
Sustainability discourse in conservation can be studied from two points of view: understanding the role of historic environments and cultural heritage and their conservation for sustainable development; and sustainability of the historic environment itself. This chapter engages with this discourse in the context of historic cities of developing countries to arrive at Equity Principles (Haughton, 1999) as a platform to develop a framework to analyse conservation processes and the role of heritage. Cultural heritage, in its broader meaning, provides a sense of place to the inhabitants of a historic city and is a non-renewable cultural resource. It also plays an important role as an economic driver for historic cities. ICOMOS (2016) has identified cultural heritage as a potential enabler of social cohesion and equity. The chapter looks at these various roles of heritage in a historic city to classify them with reference to equity principles. This is done with an understanding that values and meanings of heritage are held by different stakeholders and each brings a unique relationship that can influence the inter-generational equity, intra-generational equity, trans-national equity and procedural equity. The equity framework detonates the accessibilities (or lack of them) of urban heritage. The attributes of heritage identified in the framework become indicators of connect or disconnect between the places and people/stakeholders.
