International Journal of Urban Sciences

Accessibility and Heritage

Heritage plays an important role in preserving cultural identity, collective memory, and the historical continuity of places. Historic districts, monuments, traditional settlements, archaeological sites, and cultural landscapes also contribute to tourism, local economies, community identity, and quality of life. However, heritage value depends not only on conservation but also on how much people can access, experience, and engage with it.

Accessibility to heritage is multidimensional. It encompasses physical proximity, transport connectivity, walkability, universal access, social inclusion, spatial equity, affordability, and digital access. These dimensions are particularly important because heritage assets exist in diverse spatial contexts, ranging from metropolitan areas and historic city centers to small towns, traditional settlements, peripheral areas, and cultural landscapes. Different places and population groups may therefore experience substantially different levels and forms of access to heritage.

At the same time, improving accessibility can create new challenges. Transport infrastructure, increased visitor flows, tourism development, and redevelopment may enhance access while placing additional pressure on culturally and historically sensitive places. Therefore, a key challenge is balancing accessibility, conservation, inclusion, and sustainable development.

Building upon earlier discussions on heritage and sustainability in urban environments, this Special Issue extends the debate beyond conventional urban settings by placing accessibility at the center of the relationship between heritage conservation, mobility, and sustainable development across diverse spatial and cultural contexts. It welcomes interdisciplinary research examining how heritage can remain accessible, inclusive, and connected while preserving its historical, cultural, and spatial values. The Special Issue encourages theoretical, methodological, empirical, and policy-oriented studies from planning, transportation, geography, architecture, heritage studies, tourism, and related fields. We particularly encourage studies using GIS, spatial analysis, space syntax, big data, artificial intelligence, digital technologies, and comparative approaches.

The Special Issue will focus on topics including, but not limited to:

• Accessibility and connectivity of heritage sites, historic settlements, and cultural landscapes
• Sustainable mobility, public transport, walkability, and active travel related to heritage
• Spatial equity, social inclusion, and universal access to heritage resources
• Historic spatial structure, urban morphology, and pedestrian accessibility
• GIS, space syntax, big data, AI, and digital technologies for heritage accessibility
• Tourism mobility, visitor accessibility, and management of heritage destinations
• Adaptive reuse, public space, and place-making associated with heritage
• Governance, planning policy, resilience, and community participation in heritage accessibility

This Special Issue aims to advance understanding of accessibility as a key dimension of heritage conservation and sustainable development by highlighting both methodological innovations and empirical applications across diverse geographical, cultural, and spatial contexts.