World Heritage and Urban Politics in Melaka, Malaysia

A Cityscape below the Winds

Pierpaolo Giosa, Pierpaolo De Giosa

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2025
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781040787335
• Subtopic: City Planning & Urban Development
• Index: History

Already celebrated as a busy entrepôt and the most glorious of the Malay kingdoms of the past, Melaka has been on the UNESCO World Heritage List (together with George Town) since 2008 on the strength of its multi-ethnic and multi-religious urban fabric. Yet, contrary to the expectations of heritage experts and aficionados, the global mission of safeguarding cultural heritages has become a tumultuous issue on the ground. In World Heritage and Urban Politics in Melaka, Malaysia: A Cityscape below the Winds how the World Heritage 'label' has been, and continue to be used by different actors, such as international organizations, nation states, and society at large, to generate new economic revenues as well as to attract tourists and investments for large-scale real estate development projects is analyzed, revealing the complex and often contradictory stories behind heritage designations in urban milieus.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• Starter: Into a World Heritage City
• Note on Language(s)
• 1 A Cityscape below the Winds
• World Heritage on the Ground
• On Melaka
• Fieldwork in and beyond Melaka
• Outline of the Chapters
• 2 Heritage Affairs: Mouse-Deer, White Elephants, and Watchdogs
• Antiquities: The Beginning
• Museumification and Replication
• Projects of a Developmentalist State
• ‘Where There Is Sugar, There Are Ants’
• Restructuring National Heritage
• Society and Heritage Affairs
• A Multilayered Heritage Haze
• 3 UNESCO and the City
• Tentative Steps: World Heritage Ambitions
• The Hybrid State of Nomination
• The State Party of Inscription
• The Negeri of Conservation
• Learning in the World Heritage Arena
• 4 Melakan Row Houses from the Ground Up
• Row Houses of Old Melaka: A Background
• Forsaken Buildings: The Post-war Period
• Revaluation: From RUMAH Kedai to Rumah KEDAI
• Housing Heritage: Some Approaches to Conservation
• Modellers of Conservation
• Mr. Chwee: A Lifelong Resident
• Mr. Billy: A Returnee 168
• Façadomy of Private World Heritage Properties
• The Malleability of Conservation Rules
• What Is the State of Conservation for the Row Houses?
• 5 Divide and Brand: Public Space, Politics, and Tourism
• ‘To Visit Historic Melaka Means to Visit Malaysia’
• Branding Streets in the Consociational Way
• From Jonker Street to Jonker Walk
• A Walk for Cari Makan
• ‘We Do Not Need a “Harmony Street” – We Are the City of Harmony!’
• A Political Tsunami in Jonker Street
• Politicized Heritage
• 6 A Melakan Ancestral Village beyond World Heritage
• The Chetti Community: A Background
• The Properties of the Ancestors
• The Making of a Kampung Warisan
• ‘We Are Sitting on a Gold Mine!’
• The Kampungscape and the High-rise
• ‘See You on the Thirteenth Floor!’
• What World Heritage Thresholds Do
• 7 Epilogue of a Blessing and a Curse
• Ethnographies of World Heritage Cities
• A Transnational Mis(s-)understanding
• World Heritage Topographies of Exclusion
• Postscript: Inheriting the Cityscape
• Bibliography
• Index