Modernising Dutch Heritage Conservation: Current Progress and Ongoing Challenges for Heritage-Based Planning and Management

Over the last decades, Dutch heritage conservation shifted from a preservationist and object-focused to an area-based and development-oriented activity. Today's heritage management looks not only at the monument itself, but at its spatial context. The Belvedere Memorandum in 1999 has played a key role in getting the heritage onto the spatial planning agenda. Linking heritage to the spatial challenges of cities and regions was also the primary goal of the ‘Modernisation of Monuments Care’ in 2009, resulting in a revision of the heritage preservation act. However, now that heritage values will be accounted for at the planning stage, spatial planning finds itself in disarray. Area and property development are at a standstill, there is less money, and more and more empty buildings. The heritage community will therefore need all its creativity to maintain the quality of heritage preservation and renewal.