This article explores new research on the place of heritage in the city.

What is it about?

By focusing on recent work on heritage and the city, this article explores how a new generation of historians has continued to explore the relationship between the urban environment and the often challenging concept of heritage. Though diverse in geography and time period, the theses reviewed here all represent attempts to understand how notions of heritage are integral to British towns and cities physically, culturally, economically and socially. The review is divided into two parts that deal with the mutually constitutive relationship between discourses of heritage and the material environment of urban Britain. The first section considers theses that explore narratives of heritage in the city as created, embodied and articulated through individuals, infrastructure and institutions. Attention then turns in the second half of the piece to the ways in which heritage shapes the contemporary urban sphere, even as it is itself contested by a host of urban actors and interested groups.

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Why is it important?

The article draws upon new research on heritage in the city against the backdrop of an increased emphasis in academia on collaboration, co-production and the need for academics to engage beyond the academy and with the wider world.