Introduction

In twentieth-century Australia, a growing number of urban sites and areas were found to be valuable by a range of communities and urban professionals, including architects, planners, historians, politicians, and activists. Places perceived to have value were often conserved. Places perceived to lack value became subject to modernisation, redevelopment, and renewal agendas. Ideas of value shaped both professional and public understandings of the historic environment and associated conservation management and governance. From the 1970s, the values-based model emerged for managing the aesthetic, historic, scientific, and social significance of heritage places. Values thus transitioned from an implicit to an overt component of conservation, which also centralised heritage experts in decision-making. Meanwhile, conservation had a broader role in celebrating the Australian nation and in reconciling settler-colonialism for the twentieth century. The chapter introduces the idea of value for urban, architectural, and planning heritage conservation, identifies the book’s overall contribution to scholarship in urban history and heritage studies, and provides an overview of subsequent book chapters.