Beyond the Postcard is my OWHC Young Travelling Scholarship project across seven World Heritage Cities: Amsterdam, Bruges, Brussels, Luxembourg, Strasbourg, Bern and Nice.
The project looks at heritage not only as something to preserve, but as something that is still lived every day. My focus is habitability: how historic areas function as places to live, move, work, meet, adapt and belong.
In each city, I will follow the same simple workflow:
Walk → observe → talk → follow → map
I will explore the World Heritage area and its surroundings on foot, document places and transitions, speak with local residents and heritage professionals, and follow some of the places, issues and perspectives that emerge along the way.
GIS will help me connect these observations spatially. The map below starts with the seven cities and the route between them, but it will gradually become a record of the places, encounters and urban stories that shape the journey.
Interactive map – Beyond the Postcard route, from Amsterdam to Nice. The map will grow throughout the journey as new places, observations and encounters are added.
The aim is not to rank cities or arrive with fixed conclusions. It is to use the same exploratory approach in very different contexts and see what each World Heritage City reveals about the relationship between heritage and everyday urban life.
First stop: Amsterdam.