Heritage values: Community
Heritage Memory and Belonging Section
Community
Beyond their architectural quality, there are buildings that play an important role in everyday life in its local environment. For the citizens who use them, those buildings represent the sense of community. Consequently, their loss could give rise to the dissolution of this notion of community. Having a significant role for society or being intensively used is always desirable for a monument, as the Venice Charter says: “The conservation of monuments is always facilitated by making use of them for some socially useful purpose.” For a building to be considered for being referential in citizen’s live means that its conservation and integrity is ensured by its community. Social valorization and intensive social use are the best means to protect and keep heritage buildings alive and well maintained, on the other side, heritage buildings that despite its protection lose their social use and purposes are more likely to fall into degradation and abandonment processes.