CSMs | City Scape Materials and Materiality. Redefining urban heritage materiality: a conceptual study of Jerusalem

The city of Jerusalem is identified by many as Umbilicus Mundi—the centre of the world. Its image is world-renowned in art and literature, and its unique stony appearance derives from the mountains “round about Jerusalem” (Psalm 125: 2), from which the Jerusalem stone was quarried. Jerusalem’s image, both the earthly-tangible one and the heavenly-intangible one, is revealed in the cityscape’s materials and materiality. Materials refers to the tangible attributes of the cityscape, the stone, while materiality refers to the intangible values of the cityscape that contribute to its urban heritage. This study addresses the broad topic of cityscape materials and materiality by concentrating on urban heritage using the case study of the city of Jerusalem, and proposes how materials and materiality can be sustained and remain significant in the urban heritage of a place and its cityscape despite rapid and extensive urban regeneration processes. Guided by the UNESCO Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscapes, the research comprises two specific objectives: to provide a contemporary definition for materials and materiality as contributing attributes and values in urban heritage, and to suggest an assessment tool for evaluating the components of materials and materiality in historic urban areas as part of impact assessments during urban renewal processes. Ten key conclusions, based on the leading research assumptions, offer proposed future directions that consider the significance and relevance of implementation for heritage conservation and urban development worldwide. Characterised as multidisciplinary research, this study applies knowledge from various fields, including geology, archaeology, architecture, and urban design—all seen from a cultural heritage perspective. Using specific primary and secondary case study sites, materials and materiality are explored on varying scales in Jerusalem’s urban environment: from the micro scale of building materials, their mineralogical, petrographic, and chemical composition assessed through stone sampling; to the intermediate scale of buildings, structures, their technologies and architecture, explored through fieldwork and mapping; to the macro scale of the urban fabric with its spatial and environmental characteristics, addressed through spatial humanities tools and Geographical Information System platforms, and semi-structured expert interviews representing varied attributable interests. The obtained findings of the research present a thorough understanding of materials and materiality within urban heritage, while offering answers to both its theoretical objective of a proposed definition, and its practical objective of a proposed assessment tool for historic urban areas. The research clearly points to the central role that materials and materiality have in urban heritage as part of its values and attributes. The analytical methods within this multidisciplinary research provide a deep understanding of the mineralogical and petrographic characteristics and the chemical composition of the city’s most common building stone to understand the component parts of the term “Jerusalem stone” in order to recognize their types and subtypes. Materials and materiality should first be incorporated into statements of significance of heritage properties, sites, and historic urban areas, particularly in places where they are central to the cityscape and its urban heritage. Furthermore, they should be integrated into any protection, conservation, and management plan and system. The study combines processes of impact assessment and the use of Strategic Environmental Assessment and Environmental Impact Assessment tools to examine, inter alia, material compatibilities in historic urban environments that are currently under urban renewal processes. The work on Jerusalem can thus be applied to other historic cities.