Editorial: Wedding cultural heritage and sustainable development: three years after

Purpose – This paper is an editorial to JCHMSD's Volume 4, Issue 1 and its selection of papers. The purpose of this paper is to reflect upon the first three years of editorship, reporting a critical self-assessment on the progress achieved today in relation to JCHMSD's initial aims and objectives, embedded in the state-of-the-art. Design/methodology/approach – The paper builds upon editorship observations exchanged among the editorial team over the last three years and a literature review on the 42 papers published in JCHMSD. The literature review focuses primarily on: purposes and design/methodology/approaches. The ways forward sets a research agenda, challenging those contributing to the unexplored questions with their research and/or practices, to join the JCHMSD community and enable a broader audience to, at least, learn from them. Findings – JCHMSD's three aims have been achieved. The journal is publishing innovative research and practices, relating cultural heritage management and sustainable development, developing both skills and knowledge, with contributions from authors worldwide. A global aim being targeted by a rich variety of disciplines and approaches, from factual economy to critical anthropology. Approaches so far have been primarily qualitative, exploring pilot projects or case studies. Unfortunately, some conclusions of the papers lacked self-reflection, contextualizing findings to the explored case study, methods and sources. Originality/value – More than providing answers or secret recipes, this paper aims to raise questions and draft a research agenda of relevance for JCHMSD's readership, reflecting on the state-of-the-art and selected papers in relation to their purposes and design/methodology/approaches. It also positions 2011 UNESCO Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape in this challenging discussion.