Not always nice: The effect of a whole-life perspective on heritage and redevelopment

Abstract

This paper investigates the effect of a whole-life, or whole history, perspective on heritage and redevelopment and the potential implications for urban regeneration. It examines how heritage preservation and protests to protect certain buildings are selective in their choice of history of a place and how these are valorised and used for particular goals. It uses the former Jessop Hospital, Sheffield, UK and a series of events within its history to investigate how the heritage-making process surrounding the hospital has been selective and proposes that practitioners and scholars need to understand this and the valorisation of certain historical moments as part of the urban development process. Through the Jessop Hospital case study, it examines how selective framing was formed by different stakeholders at particular points within the hospital’s history and how other events and moments were ignored by that framing. This case study approach considers what this means more widely for heritage redevelopment and how this might impact on developers, urban regeneration practitioners and scholars.