What Matters & What's Missing: Competences, skills, and tools for urban conservation: A case study in Qingdao

This book builds on the experience of an ILAUD workshop held in Qingdao, China, in the summer of 2024. The workshop addressed the tensions between heritage conservation and urban development through an educational approach that combines the ILAUD “tentative project” methodology—process-based and open-ended design—with scenario planning and foresight tools used in sustainability and policy studies. While reflecting on this experience, the book seeks to raise a broader question: what competences, skills, tools, and actors are needed to intervene in historic cities without falling into the pitfalls of “business-as-usual”? What could be done differently, which stakeholders could be involved to ensure the success of preservation projects, and—most importantly—what new competences should be acquired or integrated into the process? The authors engage in a critical examination of the Qingdao workshop by, so to speak, “inverting the telescope.” It is precisely through such retrospective examination that this experience gains relevance beyond its specific context and outcomes—revealing “what was effective” and “what was missing,” to better understand why, how, and for whom this experience truly “mattered.” Through its approach, methods, and framework, the book directly supports the International Network for Urban-Rural Heritage Conservation in Higher
Education Institutions (UHC-HEI) spearheaded by WHITR-AP and Tongji University, as well as UNESCO’s dual agenda for innovating heritage education emphasizing people-centered, context-specific, and future-oriented practices.