Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Abbreviations
- Acknowledgements
- Starter: Into a World Heritage City
- 1 A Cityscape below the Winds
- 2 Heritage Affairs: Mouse-Deer, White Elephants, and Watchdogs
- 3 UNESCO and the City
- 4 Melakan Row Houses from the Ground Up
- 5 Divide and Brand: Public Space, Politics, and Tourism
- 6 A Melakan Ancestral Village Beyond World Heritage
- 7 Epilogue of a Blessing and a Curse
- Bibliography
- Index
4 - Melakan Row Houses from the Ground Up
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 July 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Abbreviations
- Acknowledgements
- Starter: Into a World Heritage City
- 1 A Cityscape below the Winds
- 2 Heritage Affairs: Mouse-Deer, White Elephants, and Watchdogs
- 3 UNESCO and the City
- 4 Melakan Row Houses from the Ground Up
- 5 Divide and Brand: Public Space, Politics, and Tourism
- 6 A Melakan Ancestral Village Beyond World Heritage
- 7 Epilogue of a Blessing and a Curse
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Abstract
Chapter 4 deals with the old townhouses and shophouses of Melaka's World Heritage site. It first traces the reasons for their decline in the post-war period. Things started to change in the 1990s with the repeal of rent control. This period coincided with the revaluation of these buildings as heritage and economic assets, but not without side effects, such as illegal demolitions, the displacement of residents, and tourism gentrification. The authorities have always been reluctant to interfere with private property, but during the application for the World Heritage inscription they were forced to step in with stricter conservation rules. Instead of a homogeneous approach, this chapter displays the diversity of discourses and practices of conservation as encountered on the ground.
Keywords: vernacular architecture, shophouses and townhouses, tourism gentrification, urban heritage, approaches to conservation
Vernacular architecture, particularly in the form of shophouses and townhouses, played a crucial role in the justification of criterion iv for inclusion on the World Heritage List. While the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) noted that similar buildings are present in other Asian countries, the justification was considered pertinent because Melaka and George Town displayed a number of different architectural types from distinct periods. Furthermore, ICOMOS pointed out that ‘they are also preserved in great numbers, forming large coherent areas, and still keep their functions, which make them an outstanding example of an architectural ensemble’.
Shophouses and townhouses – mostly two-storey – form the silhouette of Melaka's World Heritage site. A familiar part of the urban fabric all over Southeast Asia (especially in port cities), there are hundreds of such buildings in Melaka (from the pre-war period as well as the post-war one). Approximately 600 historical buildings located in the site are mentioned in the nomination dossier (see Malaysia 2008: 32), but many more are located outside it. At the beginning of the 1990s, as specified in an inventory, there were a total of 2177 buildings recognized as ‘historical’ (built before 1948) in the state of Melaka, 10.5 per cent of Malaysian historic buildings (Idid 1995).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- World Heritage and Urban Politics in Melaka, MalaysiaA Cityscape below the Winds, pp. 139 - 192Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2021