14 C O N T E X T 1 1 5 : J U LY 2 0 1 0 approaches have resonance less with development managers (for whom the listing system works well), than with spatial and forward planners and, if captured early enough, with developers. These people all need the bigger pictures and wider views that are offered by a historically-informed view of how a place works, physically and in terms of perception and landscape. A rounded understanding of a whole place (and the concept of the view can be a vehicle for presenting this) is of more use to forward strategic planners than a map showing listed buildings.The latter tends to shout only ‘constraint’, but the former offers a view based on overall historic character that can be used creatively to improve development or regeneration plans. It can be debated with residents who relate quickly to something grown from a local view rather than from external and expert criteria. The alternative ideas of character and landscape which underlie and perhaps help to resolve the knotty issue of views is reinforced by new international conventions. The Grenada and Valetta Conventions (grown in 1980s if not 1970s seedbeds) offer mechanisms for protecting things: the architectural and archaeological fabric of the historic environment. In contrast, the well-known Florence Convention (European Landscape Convention, ELC, published in 2000 and in force in the UK since 2007) and the so far less well-known Faro Convention (on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society, published in 2005 and not yet signed by the UK) start with people not with things. They focus on people’s perceptions of their world (the ELC definition of landscape is ‘an area as perceived by people…’) and the uses they find in social terms for cultural heritage. Both these conventions adopt holistic definitions (landscape absorbs all aspects of the material world, and cultural heritage knows no boundaries including, as it does, the intangible, the ordinary and the living). They are mutually supportive, each containing the other as landscape and heritage do. Faro (www.coe.int/t/dg4/ cultureheritage/heritage/Identities/default_en.asp) has a view of heritage as a common resource as well as a private asset. Florence (www.coe.int/t/dg4/cultureheritage /heritage/Landscape/default_en.asp) has a view of landscape that fosters human development and quality of life. In Faro, ‘heritage’ can be seen as a process not an object, perhaps even as a verb, meaning to understand and celebrate something inherited, to change and modify it, destroy and replace it, share and use it, and sometimes (but not necessarily) to protect it. The ELC insists on people’s ‘ownership’ of their own landscapes. Faro promotes the view that everyone (and each group – ‘heritage communities’) has, first, an equal right to participate in cultural life and cultural heritage and, second, responsibilities to respect and look after other people’s heritage. This has relevance wherever different communities co-exist, including in the balance between national expert criteria and the views of local residents. It is one of the main directions in which the debate about views leads, away from setting or the ambience of heritage assets towards a people-centred, landscape-based and character-based approach to heritage as a way of living with the historic environment. Graham Fairclough is head of English Heritage’s characterisation team. Views are not always formal. Usually they are snatched in passing or in unusual places.They can be indirect, as here (in the CLG Thames Gateway Unit offices) in a view seen through one window and reflected from another.The link between viewer and viewed is not as simple as sometimes imagined.
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