ABSTRACT
The City of Ballarat in the Australian state of Victoria became the first municipal government and the only Australian city to join the pilot phase for the implementation of the UNESCO Recommendation for the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) in 2013. The city government articulated its need to find and develop a guiding approach to managing change. Since that time, the HUL approach has enabled the city to develop its strategies for rapid change with community-based heritage values and new participatory tools taking centre stage. Building on that experience, this chapter recognises the HUL as more than a programme – and considers the impacts of a HUL approach on urban conservation in Australia. Through the co-evolution of the Australia ICOMOS Burra Charter alongside national and state legal frameworks for heritage, a broad values-based approach to heritage management was developed from the 1970s. Practice has continued to change in response to new global and local understandings of heritage and emerging pressures impacting heritage assets. Based on the experience of applying the HUL approach in the City of Ballarat, the chapter sets out to explore its application in a range of urban contexts in Australia.
