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What’s Wrong with Fakes? Heritage Reconstructions, Authenticity, and Democracy in Post-Disaster Recoveries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2020

Francesca Piazzoni
Francesca Piazzoni*
Affiliation:
School of Architecture, University of Liverpool, United Kingdom; Email: piazzoni@liverpool.ac.uk
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Abstract

Natural and human disasters continue to destroy historic urban fabrics worldwide. While residents would often like to see their cities rebuilt “as they were,” most scholars of heritage fiercely reject identical reconstructions by arguing either that they are “fake” simulations, or that they epitomize undemocratic urbanization processes. Challenging these arguments, I first draw from literature on theming to argue that it is precisely “fakeness” that allows people to construct a sense of authenticity in rebuilt urban spaces. Next, I show how preoccupations with participation and justice can paradoxically lead professionals to advance the same universalistic, undemocratic heritage approach that they claim to contest. By enabling diverse people to negotiate a sense of the past, confront each other, and share new aspirations for the future, identical reconstructions are heritage as much as, if not more than, other “historic” urban fabrics.

Type
Article
Information
International Journal of Cultural Property , Volume 27 , Special Issue 2: Special Issue: Authenticity and Reconstruction , May 2020 , pp. 239 - 258
Copyright
© International Cultural Property Society 2020

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Footnotes

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and Cornelius Holtorf for providing crucial feedback on this piece. I would also like to thank ICOMOS for funding my attendance at the Authenticity Forum (Paris, 2017), which is where an earlier version of this article originated.

References

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