ABSTRACT
Internationally, within the field of cultural heritage conservation, increasing interest and attention over the past two decades have been focused on urban areas. This is timely, given that there is ‘a veritable explosion of urban populations, increasing each day [and] populations living in urban areas increase by 1.25 million every single week’ (UNESCO 2008a: 4). This has particular relevance for the study and practice of urban heritage conservation in Asia. As the call for papers at a 2010 conference suggests, ‘by almost all conventional measures, Asia is the urban centre of the world (…) [with] almost as many people [living] in urban areas in Asia as in the rest of the world combined’. It is also noted that ‘the current total is projected to double over the course of the next generation (…) [with] more than half of the world’s most populous cities and urban regions (…) found in Asia’. 1
