In urban planning, heritage has until recently been handled as a separate sector through which certain buildings, monuments and spatial elements are managed by heritage specialists, historians and archaeologists. Valuation of heritage has therefore focused on individual and groups of buildings, monuments and objects in isolation of the built environment of a city. This focus has sometimes been broadened when the surrounding environment of an object revealed a historic significance. Conservation of heritage has also ideologically been steered by ideas of passing specific physical heritage to future generations. These practices of valuing and conserving heritage have partly been promoted in local and national policies for heritage conservation through international treaties starting with the Venice Charter from 1964.
A series of new perspectives, tendencies and criticism have recently influenced the understanding and professional practices of heritage. One change concerns the construction of heritage meaning. A central issue here concerns the raised awareness regarding the different memories and meanings that are embedded in a city and how this diversity may result in competing claims on what to value as heritage and how to conserve it. Another change concerns the growing conflicts underpinned by competing ideologies within heritage management that range between conservation and modernisation. Rather than seeing heritage conservation as a hinder for urbanisation and modernisation, heritage is increasingly seen as a resource for city branding and marketing. A third change responds to the criticism of the employment of international heritage standards worldwide with little attention to local and regional specificities. Finally, there are growing criticisms of the reification of heritage and the objectification of memories, calling for a broader understanding of the intertwined relations between tangible and intangible aspects of heritage.