ABSTRACT
The revitalization of historic urban quarters involves two processes which inevitably conflict: the rehabilitation of buildings and areas which seeks to accommodate the consequences of economic change and preservation which seeks to limit change and protect an historic building and an area's character. Nevertheless, as Lynch (1972, p. 39) states: ‘The management of change and the active use of remains for present and future purpose are preferable to an inflexible reverence for a sacrosanct past.’ Thus, physical change is inevitable in historic urban areas: ‘An environment that cannot be changed invites its own destruction. We prefer a world that can be modified progressively against a background of valued remains, a world in which one can leave a personal mark alongside the marks of history’. Any intervention into the physical fabric of a building irreversibly changes its history for all time, becoming part of that history. The act of planning in historic quarters therefore is the process of managing change in a sensitive and appropriate manner to preserve the character of the locality while permitting necessary economic change. As Burtenshaw et al. (1991, p. 159) describe: ‘There is a need to plan for cities which are capable of evolution and can welcome the future and accommodate the present without severing the thread of continuity with the past.’
