The UNESCO 2011 Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) states community participation is a pivotal tool for integrating heritage practices into sustainable urban development. While community participation is significant but limited in China, various participatory methods have been developed, tested and evaluated worldwide. For example, inspired by HUL, the Ballarat Imagine in Australia has successfully used public engagement in the development of a community vision for local conservation and development. This paper aims to contextualise community participation in China, by testing and adapting a community participatory method, the (Ballarat) Imagine. Imagine was tested in the Old Town of Lijiang as an academic scoping exercise, to critically examine its viability and potential for contextualisation to the Chinese context. During the fieldwork, three workshops were organised with residents in Dayan, Shuhe and Baisha, which are the three housing clusters constituting the World Heritage property. In the workshops, residents responded to three sets of questions focussing on their feelings about local historic urban landscape as well as their ideas about future public engagement in local heritage management. This paper discusses the contextualised approach of community participation tailored to the management of the Old Town of Lijiang, and also China as a whole, seeking to find a balance between top-down and bottom-up processes. This academic exercise confirmed that the community participatory method, the Imagine, can be further adapted to the Chinese context. Further research could test it in other cities, to better face the challenges of rapid urbanisation.

In order to construct a shared body of knowledge, research involving the relationship between the psychosocial learning environment (PSLE) and the physical learning environment (PLE) needs a commonly-accepted conceptual framework. By means of a thematic literature review, we collected the main aspects of the PSLE and PLE, their definitions and their relations as identified by earlier research. These findings led to a conceptual framework that structures the dimension of the PSLE into the sub-dimensions of personal development, relationships, and system maintenance and change, and the dimension of the PLE into the sub-dimensions of naturalness, individualisation, and stimulation. For each of these sub-dimensions, the framework distinguishes an intended, implemented and attained representation. A conceptual PSLE-PLE Relationship (PPR) model enables relations to be visualised. The review confirms that PSLE and PLE are interrelated in interactions between different sub-dimensions and their representations. However, evidence regarding these relationships is still weak because of the limited number of studies and their methodological limitations.

To better face the challenges of rapid urbanisation, it is recommended urban heritage management is carried out through community participation. In the Chinese context of state centralisation, however, inclusive participatory governance for urban heritage has remained limited, and effective ways of engaging residents in decision-making have yet to be explored adequately. This paper aims to explore community participation within Chinese urban heritage management, taking the Old Town of Lijiang as a case study. During fieldwork, in-depth semi-structured interviews were carried out with both native and migrant residents as well as administrators. Based on a community participation assessment framework, the interview guide was developed and then built on four aspects: community participation in decision-making; the competence of participants; the right to social justice and confidence of participants; and community empowerment and equity. This paper reveals the current state of participatory practices in the Old Town of Lijiang and, specifically, discusses the roles of residents, elites and community-based organisations in decision-making concerning urban heritage management, in the contexts of state-centralisation. Chinese urban heritage management needs to raise public awareness and willingness as well as give residents more responsibilities and power to face the challenges of rapid urbanisation, but currently, the degree of participation is still minimal, only between informing and consulting.

Community participation is a key part of heritage management. However, in practice, unlike natural heritage, the nature of community participation within cultural heritage is seldom assessed, nor are there theoretical frameworks developed to baseline such assessments. To fill this knowledge gap, this paper developed and tested an assessment framework, to assess community participation within cultural heritage. Based on the conceptualisation of community participation from heritage management policies, a literature review was conducted to develop an assessment framework, including four criteria and 23 indicators. This assessment framework was tested on the management practices of 36 Chinese cultural heritage properties inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List from 1987 to 2018. Using content analysis as a method, this research applied this assessment framework to UNESCO documents, reporting on the state-of-the-practice of heritage management as applied to Chinese World Heritage. The results provide an overview of the current situation on how community participation is positioned within World Heritage management in China. Several World Heritage properties in China have reported relatively high community participation in examples such as Honghe Hani Rice Terraces and Kulangsu. However, most of them demonstrate minimal community participation, such as the Yungang Grottoes and Lushan National Park. Moreover, the assessment framework of community participation in heritage management has been extended and improved, which is relevant to heritage management practices worldwide.

Community participation is an essential issue in heritage management. The international heritage organisation ICCROM published a guidance document discussing people-centred approaches to heritage management in 2015. Cultural heritage management is recommended to be carried out through a community participation process. Despite the growing literature on community participation in cultural heritage management, little research has been done on comparing Chinese to international approaches. Although in China several pilot projects have conducted effective community participation and achieved excellent outcomes. This paper aims to fill this gap by providing an overview that compares and discusses the similarities and differences between Chinese and international approaches. A systematic literature review of the state-of-the-art was conducted to explore these differences based on four themes: engaged communities, participatory methods, degrees of participation and steps taken within cultural heritage management. This review concludes both Chinese and international practices seek to collaborate with and empower local communities in their approaches, with Chinese pilot cases, such as Tianzifang in Shanghai. However, in general, Chinese cultural heritage management is government-led, in which community participation is happening to a minimal degree. China is encouraged to learn from international practices when developing contextualised management approaches, to better face the challenges of rapid urbanisation.