Historical cities as an object of protection: approaches to the preservation of urban planning heritage in Russia

Abstract

The historical city is one of the most complex objects of research, being a “living” organism, the environment of modern man, a combination of natural and man-made, tangible and intangible elements. The relevance of the study of the historical and urban planning environment is caused by the ongoing search for the most effective approaches to preserving the heritage of cities and the sustainable development of their territories. Systematic and structural analysis of such a phenomenon as a historical city, identification of internal relationships of elements that make up the historical and urban planning environment; comparison of existing tools for the protection of urban planning heritage and determination of the most effective mechanism for its preservation, proposed by modern Russian legislation. Based on the analysis of existing tools for the protection of the historical urban planning environment, the authors propose to consider the procedure for determining the boundaries and subject of protection of historical settlements as one of the aspects of the implementation of the international approach to the preservation of historic urban landscapes (HUL approach), and identify ways to improve the national tools in the field of urban planning heritage protection.