Towards a New Heritage Regime?

Over the last decades, urban heritage has been the subject of significant investment by both public authorities and private actors, both national and international. They concern new projects, the preservation of defined urban perimeters (ex. Unesco) or single objects (ex. buildings) as well as the refurbishment of housing. The rise of new actors, such as real estate funds and real estate service companies, identified as financialization, has been accompanied by an internationalization of markets and homogenization of properties turned into comparable, standardized commodities, especially in the housing sector. In Vienna and Budapest this phenomenon can be observed around Gründerzeit housing estate which has been experiencing strong pressure by private developers, leading to increasing rents, transformation, destruction, commodification and social transformation of neighbourhoods. Gründerzeit housing stock refers to the industrialization period taking place in the Austro- Hungarian Empire starting in 1840 and ending in 1918. These architectural buildings are particularly predominant in Vienna and Budapest and represent part of the urban identity. Linked to the question of heritage, the emergence and the acceleration of this financialization of housing raise new questions in terms of object selection, demolition, preservation and practices. This research project aims at identifying how financialization and housing regulations act on the tangible and intangible dimensions of the preservation of Gründerzeit housing stock and its social dimension. It looks at two cities, Budapest and Vienna, with similar architectural building, strong housing market pressure but following different urban development trajectories. The hypothesis is that different socioeconomic transformations within the two cities lead to different implications for the social dimensions that form the intangible part of heritage, challenging social inclusion and cohesion. Investigating both cities with their different trajectories although being embedded in similar globalisation, allow us to improve knowledge and theory on housing regulation and heritage processes. The project answers the question of how housing transformation informs practices and processes that shape human experiences and representation globally as well as locally. As such, it draws on urban geography, planning, heritage studies and communication studies using a transnational comparison and mixed-method approach including intensive expert interviews, quantitative analysis, media analysis, non-intrusive observation, spatial analysis, and collaborative research with the implementation of living labs.