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On September 4-8 of this year, Ilia State University hosted the Ph.D. School “Neighborhood Heritage, Urban Layers, Physical Environments, and Living Communities in the Post-Socialist/-Soviet City.” This event was part of the research project “Cities, Buildings, Culture’’ which was initiated and authored by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), RWTH Aachen University, and the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe in Leipzig (GWZO).

The school aimed to explore various approaches in the analysis of neighborhoods and their layered heritage: urban morphology, construction and perception of values, civic engagement, and urban governance, local memory, and place attachment, the meaning and impact of processes such as revitalization, redevelopment, gentrification and down-grading, mechanisms of heritage protection, but also the loss and destruction of heritage. The scope of the project's research includes the study of both historical areas and modern buildings – such as modernist housing or large housing estates.

During the Ph.D. School and the discussion with local experts, crucial questions were raised: How did the economic and demographic changes in the last decades impact the built legacy of residential districts? How are they reflected in the construction of local memory and heritage values? What are the moments of rupture in the life of the neighborhoods, and what kinds of responses have they generated at institutional and community levels? In which ways did the local communities appropriate the inherited built environment and what does this tell us about processes of heritage-making (identity) from below? How can we conceptualize mass housing districts as heritage? Which strategies would facilitate a more sustainable approach to their preservation and how could communities become more involved in decision-making?

Heritage is a dynamic process, the purpose is not so much on adopting one perspective alone, but on identifying intersections between these strategies of analysis. Also, of particular interest are contributions trying to bridge theory and practice when analyzing specific case studies that demonstrate how heritage is conceptualized, perceived, negotiated, contested, or ignored in residential districts.

2023