Is this Heritage?

The Buildings at Risk Register has been in operation in Scotland since 1990 in response to a concern at the growing number of listed buildings and buildings in Conservation Areas that were vacant and had fallen into a state of disrepair. But who decides whether a building’s worth being on the at risk register?

On the whole it’s older buildings that tend to be there, and generally are listed-but what does that mean to ordinary people? Apparently the older a building is, the more likely it is to be listed so it’s more common to find that those current listed tend to reflect early 20th Century styles. Is this then the architecture of the elite?

We have, in many ways, a socially constructed heritage landscape, which excludes or ignores certain communities who did not, and may find it uncomfortable to, engage in what is a statutory and legislative processes. While I believe that many of the buildings selected are worthy of protection and should be listed, are there others that better reflect the diversity of the suburbs population and histories?

What is true is that some of the buildings chosen to represent a community’s heritage will exclude or alienate some members of that community, so who decides?