ABSTRACT
The argument of this chapter is that heritage at the local scale is significantly different in content, function and thus management, from nation-state or supra-national heritage. The term ‘local’ covers a wide range of spatial possibilities, extending from a region within a nation-state, which can be an extensive area (for example, the US South) down to the precise locus of an event, which as a geometric point has, sensu stricto, no area at all but only location. In practice, almost all of the subsequent discussion concerns itself with three types of locality, the sub-national region, the city (whether defined as a whole or in terms of its component districts), and the site.
