International Journal of Environmental Science and Development

Abstract—In the last few decades in Jordan, several rehabilitation projects were established in heritage cities as tourism developing projects, (such as As-Salt city) with international funding support. These projects are concerned with conservation of historical buildings. The current paper highlights the hidden aspects of these projects; which mainly neglect Modern Heritage buildings focusing on older historical sites. The paper focuses on As-Salt city as a case study where significant buildings are not recognized as Modern Heritage, although they played an important role in the city’s life including commercial buildings and one school, dating back to 1961, and were demolished. This study investigates the important values and the role of some of these buildings within their urban context, including the effect of their loss on the local community; socially, functionally and economically. It suggests some evaluation criteria as a frame work to determine Modern Heritage buildings that need to be conserved. The study uses both quantitative and qualitative analysis. 200 structured interviews were conducted to address the impact of demolition and to reach a conclusion about the other unaccountable effects. The study shows that the demolition of Modern Heritage buildings had negative effects on the local community, due to their important role in the collective memory of the city. The study recommends developing a Jordanian rating system for evaluating, listing, classifying, and protecting Modern Heritage buildings.

Index Terms—Modern Heritage building, urban conservation, heritage site planning, memory of the city.

The author is with Architecture Department, Al-Balqa Applied University, Salt city, Jordan (e-mail: m_alshomali@bau.edu.jo).

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Cite: Maisa Ali Al-Shomali, "Establishing Evaluation Criteria of Modern Heritage Conservation in Historic City Centers in Jordan," International Journal of Environmental Science and Development vol. 11, no. 12, pp. 561-571, 2020.

Copyright © 2020 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).