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The paper explores the potential value of urban assemblage theory as a conceptual framework for understanding the role heritage has in social sustainable urban placemaking. The authors conceptualise urban placemaking as a dynamic and complex social assemblage. Heritage is one of the many dimensions of such a complex and dynamic urban assembly. Based on the approach to urban assemblage theory, the authors aim to uncover how postindustrial city-making unfolds. When approaching the case studies, the authors ask the following: Whose city for which citizens are visible through the selected case studies? How is social sustainability achieved through heritage in urban placemaking?

The main research material is derived from theoretical literature and the testing of an assemblage methodological approach through three Norwegian urban regeneration case studies where heritage partake in urban placemaking. The three case studies are the Tukthus wall (what is left of an 19th century old prison), the Vulkan neighbourhood (an 19th century industrial working area) and Sørengkaia (an 19th century industrial harbour area) in Oslo, Norway. The three case studies are representing urban regeneration projects which are common worldwide, and not at least in a European context.

The paper reveals the dynamic factors and processes at play in urban placemaking, which has its own distinct character by the uses of heritage in each of the case study areas. Placemaking could produce “closed” systems which are stable in accordance with its original functions, or they could be “open” systems affected by the various drivers of change. The paper shows how these forces are depending on two sets of binary forces at play in urban placemaking: forces of “assemblages” co-creating a place versus destabilising forces of “disassembly” which is redefining the place as a process affected by reassembled placemaking.

For research, the authors focus on the implications this paper has for the field of urban heritage studies as it provides a useful framework to capture the dynamic complexity of urban heritage areas.

For practice, the authors state that the paper can provide a useful platform for dialogue and critical thinking on strategies being planned.

For society, the paper promotes the significance in terms of fostering an inclusive way of thinking and planning for urban heritage futures.

The paper outlines dynamics of urban regeneration through heritage which are significant for understanding urban transformation as value for offering practical solutions to social problems in urban planning. The assemblage methodological approach (1) makes awareness of the dynamic processes at play in urban placemaking and makes the ground for mapping issue at stake in urban placemaking; (2) becomes a source for modelling urban regeneration through heritage by defining a conceptual framework of dynamic interactions in urban placemaking; and (3) defines a critically reflexive tool for evaluating good versus bad (heritage-led) urban development projects.

This paper aims to analyse the key Faro notions of “heritage community” and “democratic participation” as defined in the Faro Convention, and how they challenge core notions of authority and expertise in the discipline and professional practice of cultural heritage.

This paper examines notions of “heritage community” and “democratic participation” as they are framed in the Faro Convention, and it briefly introduces two cases (Finland and Marseille) to explore their application. It then focusses on the implications of these two notions for heritage administration (expertise) in terms of citizen agency, co-creation of knowledge and forms of decision-making processes.

The Faro Convention favours an innovative approach to social, politic and economic problems using cultural heritage. To accomplish this, it empowers citizens as actors in developing heritage-based approaches. This model transforms heritage into a means for achieving socioeconomic goals and attributes to the public the ability to undertake heritage initiatives, leaving the administration and expert bodies as mediators in this process. To bring about this shift, Faro institutes the notion of “heritage communities” and fosters participative governance. However, how heritage communities practise participation may follow different paths and result in different experiences due to local and national political circumstances.

The Faro Convention opens up a window by framing cultural heritage within the realm of social and democratic instrumentality, above and beyond the heritage per se. But it also poses some questions regarding the rationale of heritage management (authority in governability), at least as understood traditionally under official heritage management discourses.