SUMMARY
The research aims at understanding the relationship between sustainable development and
cultural heritage from the perspective of participatory processes, through the revision of the
theoretical framework of participation requirements in heritage processes, the examination
of its transposition into international regulatory documents and operationalization in the
context of the historic urban landscape approach. After clarifying the concept of
participation in its relationship with democracy, sustainability and heritage classification, the
construction of a thematic Thesaurus of participatory terms and expressions anchored in the
content analysis of participatory provisions in thirteen regulatory heritage documents
adopted between 1972 and 2019 and related to the UNESCO 2011 Recommendation on the
Historic Urban Landscape, made it possible to deduce and relate forms of participation,
participants and heritage areas, revealing the recommended participatory relationships.
The application of this methodology to 26 studies on the historic urban landscape approach,
selected due to their relevance to the subject of the investigation, and also to the responses
of UNESCO Member States and Portuguese municipalities to a UNESCO 2018 questionnaire,
enabled the assessment of how researchers perceive participation, and how participatory
heritage processes are developed in different geographical areas.
The investigation revealed the correspondences and discrepancies among the
recommendations in regulatory documents, the results of field investigations, and the
reporting of countries worldwide and Portuguese municipalities. This enhanced the
understanding of participatory processes in the context of the historic urban landscape
approach and heritage processes in general, contributes to the development of more
accurate and objective regulatory heritage documents, to accomplish thorough and detailed
studies about heritage participation processes, and to the implementation of more judicious,
comprehensive and democratic participatory processes, thus contributing to achieve several
Goals and Targets of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
CASE STUDY
_Global