ABSTRACT
The town of Chamba in Himachal Pradesh has a rich diversity of cultural heritage. The town’s identity and value for both residents and visitors draw from its vernacular built fabric, cultural landscapes, protected monuments and traditional practices. The chapter shines a spotlight on the importance of heritage conservation in small-town settings throughout India, and especially in hazard-prone and rapidly developing regions where the vernacular built environment and cultural landscape remain vulnerable to damage, transformation and erasure. We argue that the existing policies around heritage conservation need better implementation to ensure that the town’s heritage remains for posterity.
