The City Shaped by the Rhetoric of Heritage: Imagining Standardization Away

Cultural heritage is a value that seems to count for something in our urban societies. Beyond the professional field of the conservationist, it is above all the idea of a common physical or incorporeal property signalling a form of belonging or of dependence. Arising from the domestic universe and long related to Historical Monuments, cultural heritage has experienced exponential social demand and has undergone significant semantic metamorphoses. It no longer serves the construction of nation states as in the 19th century, nor the invention of symbols by summoning up the memory of what is legitimate to preserve. It has become a subject of communication, much like the development of cultural and artistic events in the public space, because it is useful for economic and touristic attractiveness and for the characterization of social spaces. Are we living in a regime of heritage values related primarily to consumption, materialized by the growing display of heritage for the enchantment of urban spaces? If so, are we also witnessing the emergence of multiple heritage causes induced by a socially fragmented society? Are we confronted with a common property calling for heritage democracy? This paper attempts to answer these questions drawing on the strength of examples from the urban region of Lyon, France.