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The fifth international cultural landscape conference (INCUL 2014) urban cultural landscape: past, present and future

The conference was held in the auditorium of Tehran’s National Museum, organised by the Iranian Society of Landscape Architecture Professionals (ISLAP). There were 220 participants, with 50 from 18 countries outside Iran. Of more than 200 papers submitted, 84 were selected and only 18 gave an oral presentation, the rest were poster presentations. The talks focused on the definition and history of the use of the term ‘cultural landscape’ in the Western World, its adoption by UNESCO and IUCN and its use in Iran’s world heritage sites and issues related to their listing and management. Iran’s efforts were showcased. Bam was listed as Iran’s first Cultural Landscape World Heritage Site in danger immediately after the earthquake in 2004, but was removed from the danger list in 2013 through effective management. Isfahan’s Nakshe Jahan Square was in danger of being removed from the world heritage list because of a high rise building in the vicinity of the world heritage site, affecting its visual authenticity. The Persian garden has also been listed in World Heritage, in the cultural landscape category (2011). At the outset, the audience was reminded of the difficulties of preserving a historic cultural landscape in conformity with world best practices, when persuasive economic interests are pressing for change. The conference was divided into three thematic sessions, Historic Urban Landscape, Contemporary Urban Cultural Landscape and Future Urban Cultural Landscape, with six papers presented in each session. Unfortunately, the papers, or their abstracts, are not available online or in a proper publishing format in either print or online. The collection of papers were distributed in the form of a CD. Keynote speeches do not form part of this collection. Papers have not been edited and compiled for publication, there is no table of contents, some papers do not have the figures provided. These defects are regrettable. A keynote speech by Prof. Maria Theres Albert on, ‘40 years of world heritage convention – on the popularization of a protection concept of cultural and natural assets’ stressed the relative newness of the subject, the long way it has come and the importance of protection of cultural and natural heritage. This is a developing concept which continues to include new meanings such as cultural landscapes. In 1992, the World Heritage Convention became the first legal instrument to recognize and protect cultural landscapes, ‘as the combined works of nature and of man’ and adopted guidelines for their listing as world heritage [1]. Annex 3 of the the ‘Operational Guidelines 2005’ (Revised 2008), for nominations to a world heritage site listing, defines 3 main categories of cultural landscapes.