Revealing built Heritage through social media

Abstract

Society conveys values to cities and their buildings, the key to sustainability, only in part recognized as heritage values, when protected by urban and/or heritage planning. There is a growing recognition of the importance of acknowledging the values conveyed by locals and tourists in heritage management and urban planning. However, the knowledge and tools available today remain predominantly expert-based. Their contribution to heritage listings and conservation plans is therefore limited. Moreover, some cities tend to unbalance locals and tourists’ needs, leading to overly touristic areas, gentrification and communities’ exodus. Although research on the values conveyed to cities and buildings is growing, there is seldom research comparing them. Hence, how do the attributes and values of Faro’s heritage conveyed by locals and tourists set the frame for transformation? This research aims to reveal the cultural significance (values and attributes) conveyed by locals and tourists, taking the neighborhood São Francisco (included in an Urban Rehabilitation Area) in Faro, Portugal, as case study. And will provide a masterplan as a visualisation of the results gathered by this research. The guidelines provided by the masterplan address the current challenges of the neighbourhood further than the actual policies in place. By using multiple methods to perform spatial analysis, which includes (1) photographing, mapping and categorization of the facades and their attributes in São Francisco, and, (2) social media analysis, where hundred Instagram posts were manually collected following strict guidelines, heritage attributes could be identified. (3) Public engagement was used in the site survey game in which pictures of the attributes would be shown to locals and tourists who would connect predefined words to them in order to collect the heritage values. By following these methods, this research aims at revealing patterns and relations between: a) attributes, in particular, buildings’ facades and their characteristics and b) values (distinguishing local and tourists). After the fieldwork, results showed clear concurrences and contradictions between both communities. Results revealed low values for contemporary apartment complexes and higher values for pre-existing typologies in both groups. Furthermore, attributes such as the street art, the materialisation of facades, and the authenticity of attributes developed into design guidelines for a masterplan in which these relations are portrayed. By understanding these relations, the Municipality of Faro can improve their awareness of who values what, and why, in order to support their strategies about how to accommodate new functions in historic buildings while respecting the limits of acceptable change of built heritage according to these stakeholders. Hence, the expected impact is to raise awareness about the cultural significance of both societal groups in order to better inform heritage management and urban sustainable planning.

Keywords | cultural significance, urban rehabilitation, building attributes, tourism, São Francisco - Faro