Abstract

An increasing concern about ‘keeping traditions alive’ and a growing interest in ‘using the past to built a better future’ is more than a nostalgic movement or a search to redefine cultural identities in a globalising world (Friedman 2008). Creating more awareness about the irreversible process of disappearing ‘values’ has recently become an important objective of academic research, conservation policies and spatial planning. However, values are mental constructs, changing over time and historically rooted in variable geographical and ethnic contexts. ‘Universal values’ and ‘collective values’ tend to be widely questioned, whereas more consensus is possible in identifying and mapping local and individual values. There even is a possible controversy between global values and their projection on the local level (George et al. 2009).