Urbanization impact on landscape patterns in cultural heritage preservation sites: a case study of the complex of Huế Monuments, Vietnam
2021
Pham, Van-Manh | Van Nghiem, Son | Van Pham, Cu | Luu, Mai Phuong Thi | Bùi, Quang Thanh
CONTEXT: The late 20th and early twenty-first centuries saw massive urbanizations across the world, leading considerate changes in land-cover/land-use, and posing significant threats to UNESCO recognized heritage. OBJECTIVES: The Complex of Huế Monuments, one of World Heritage Site in the centre of Vietnam, is now facing such challenges. This paper conducts a systematic spatial and temporal analysis for a better insight into the contemporary conflict between preserving the historical landscape and developing the urban areas. METHODS: The analysis involves: (1) classification of land-cover/land-use between 1995 and 2016 using SPOT data; (2) investigation of the urbanization intensity index; (3) identification of key metrics of landscape, spatial index, and natural hazard indicators to build a risk map of the heritage sites; and (4) a final assessment of the risks, as results of urban expansion, on the Outstanding Universal Values (OUV) of these selected samples. RESULTS: The results show that monuments are under threat as risks increased from 1995 to 2016 with a considerable correlation between urbanization intensity index and the risks to OUV. In particular, the area with high risk to OUV increased from 19.78% in 1995 to 23.74% in 2016, and the increasing percentage for the area with very high risk was from 1.26% to 6.67%, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: The study area is an example of many similar worldwide cultural heritages that might be threatened by socio-economic development. The successful implementation of the approach for assessing heritage risk presented in this study can be used for other areas with similar characteristics.
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