A Suggestion On The Legal Mechanism Of Historic Heritage Designation And Protection

Cultural relics are the physical link of our memory of the past, our reflection on the present, and our perspective of the future, a break thereof, will lead to the lost of culture, tangible or intangible, that embodies in the relics. Therefore, how to protect cultural heritage in an effective way has become a question that we need to address. As local governments tend to let go historic preservation due to the enthusiasm of city modernization and commercial developments, the problem is demonstrated by various conflicts, that between the interest of cultural preservation and the interest of economic developments, between private property right and private development right, and between cultural preservation and property right. As current historic preservation law persistently fails to protect historic heritages against city planning, the problems of the historic preservation legal system are revealed:the dependence of preservation agencies, the unclear designation standards, the lack of public participation, the lack of impetuous designation against property taking, the lack of subsidies and grants to persons who have interest in the listed heritages. By comparison, the historic preservation laws in the US and UK have shed some light on the improvement of our preservation laws, through establishment of vertical administration, encouragement of public participation in cultural heritage designation, the clarification and publication of designation standards, the sub-permission of constructions on, in, and adjacent to cultural heritages, and the issue of subsidies and grants to persons who have interest in cultural heritages.