Preserving Cultural Heritage as a Condition of Development: Economic Claims, Living Practices, Justice and Resilience in Critical Perspective

Abstract

Cultural heritage is increasingly treated as an instrument of sustainable development, yet the proposition that preservation generates development obscures variation in what is preserved, who has authority, which outcomes are measured and whose welfare changes. This critical narrative review examines how the protection and continued practice of built, intangible, landscape and digitally mediated heritage intersect with livelihoods, urban regeneration, identity, institutional legitimacy and environmental resilience. A thematically organised appraisal of verified scholarly literature and authoritative policy instruments examines competing causal explanations rather than assuming that designation, tourism growth or investment constitutes development. The evidence supports a conditional rather than automatic relationship. Tourism-related benefits differ across places and study designs, while gains at the destination scale may coexist with displacement, insecure cultural labour and reduced community access. Sensitive adaptive reuse offers plausible material-efficiency and place-making benefits, although few evaluations establish whole-life environmental or distributional effects. Living-heritage transmission can sustain knowledge and belonging, but institutional safeguarding may standardise practices or shift control away from custodians. Climate exposure and digital documentation create further pressures: hazard screening cannot substitute for site-level adaptation, and a digital replica cannot substitute for the authority and relationships through which heritage remains meaningful. A cross-sector evaluation framework is therefore proposed in which cultural continuity, equitable benefit, ecological performance and accountable decision-making function as concurrent tests rather than interchangeable policy aspirations. Priority evidence gaps concern causal attribution, long-term welfare, participatory authority, life-cycle comparisons and community-governed digital heritage. Preservation can contribute to development when policies secure cultural rights, maintain the conditions for living practice, manage environmental risk and demonstrate benefits beyond visitor counts or property values. Conversely, economic expansion that destroys those conditions should not be classified uncritically as heritage-led development.