The Shifting Dis-economy of Industrial Heritage
As with most forms of tangible heritage,owners and managers must deal with the on-going depreciation of the material structures involved.For many industrial sites the costs not just of preservation and restoration but also those of on-going maintenance can be high.Dis-used mines invariably require the continued extraction or water,while canals require periodic dredging,exposed metalwork needs protecting and any machinery requires rigorous checking.As in their working lives,industrial heritage sites require monitoring for their health and safety,particularly if there is to be any public access.For industrial heritage to be made safe for visitors,considerable and on-going investment is required.Sites are often complex and varied and unlike the management of single building museum,the skills and materials needed for care and structural conservation can be specialist,in short supply and consequently expensive.
One of the distinctive aspects of industrial heritage is often its sheer scale.Buildings,whether blast furnaces,chimneys,or warehouses could be huge,monumental structures with whole industrial plants often covering many hectares of land with associated long transport links.Even the preservation of part of a site is challenging.It is this scale which on the one hand is impressive but on the other hand makes normative on-going repair work difficult and costly.While funding may well be available for initial preservation and stabilisation work,the point is that these are on-going costs and relatively few industrial heritage sites build-in contingencies for these when they are in their initial stages of development.
For policy makers and managers engaged with industrial heritage,while the historic and symbolic values of a site may be demonstrable and indeed worthy of capital investment to protect and preserve,the critical issue needs to be that of long sustainability.Across Europe,though not exclusively,industrial heritage has been heavily supported through public sector investment.Indeed,for many sites the scale of operations involved and the contingent risks attached,there has been little alternative but for government support.A cursory analysis of European industrial heritage sites—mainly consisting of museums and visitor attractions—quickly reveals that the vast majority are heavily dependent upon state support.On one level this indicates the importance that industrial heritage has across European societies but it also signifies attempts to remedy the structural problems of the closure of factories and production plants;problems that not only involve the redundancy of associated infrastructure but also the unemployment and changing social structure of industrial communities and the environmental re-shaping of landscapes.The rise of industrial heritage based tourism has been part of and a response to a wider shift to post-industrial,service sector led economies but largely founded upon state intervention.(https://www.daowen.com)
There are some aspects of industrial heritage that have attracted private sector investment,though mainly after initial public investment for securement of sites or in partnership with governmental agencies.As one would expect,the private sector has taken a hard commercial look at the fabric of former industry and examples of investment have tended to be those of purchase and preservation of industrial buildings for adaptive reuse.There are now many examples of former industrial buildings that have been preserved through conversions to residential,business,retail and mixed use.Though invariably selective and involving some degree of compromise in both form and function of industrial structures,it has resulted in successful and popular re-integration of former industry into daily life.
But while the adaptive reuse model has been valuable in dealing with some of the economic problems generated through the recognition of industrial heritage value,it still remains the case that for much of the industrial heritage sector operating as museums and attractions,revenue and on-going capital funding is a challenge.This challenge is accentuated by the ever-increasing squeeze on public funding in the heritage sector and compounded by increasing competition between an increasing number of heritage sites in general.