The Burra Charter, drawn up by Australia ICOMOS in 1979, included for the first time the ‘cultural significant’ concept to describe the importance of a site by the aggregate of values attributed to it. Since then, the Heritage concept has been under revision in an attempt to widen its predominantly Western hegemonic definition. An increasing number of authors (e.g. Smith, Lowenthal, Harrison) have drawn attention to the issue of intangible values within Heritage and questioned the consequences that the dominance of the aesthetic value and material authenticity have had for our cities. These critiques have changed the conceptual focus of cultural heritage from the aesthetic-historic to the anthropologicalcultural axis (Pereira, 2007: 15).
 
However, despite the evolution of the concept of heritage and its advancement in academic literature, architectural and urban heritage preservation policies and intervention in West countries are still, in the main, based on mainstream approaches, which only emphasize the recovery of the tangible values of built heritage. These practices are guided by conservation principles that privilege the idea of ‘monument’ and facilitate the commodification of Heritage. The incomplete transfer of the intangible values that constitute the inheritance of a place leads to a disconnection between heritage and the contemporary urban and social context. This is identified as one of the main factors of globalization and the generic city.

Post-Industrial landscapes provide a clear dialectic between the tangible – the industrial landscape itself – and the social and human interaction with that landscape – the uses to which it’s put, the emotional response to it and so on. Lefebvre points out that reading landscapes of industrial ruination serves to highlight the idea that the spatial is socially constituted and the social is also spatial, (cf. Lefebvre 1991: Massey 1995: Soja 2000).
This research explores the redefinition of heritage by drawing the meaning of intangible value within the frame of Lefebvre’s socio-spatial theories and through the analysis of the work developed by the photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher, the Monuments of Passaic essay by Robert Smithson and the presentation of two case studies: Poblenou in Barcelona and Butetown in Cardiff.

Finally this research argues the need to address the issue of value in international policies and its political and social implications translated through conservation praxis. This research aims to contribute to the search for more dialogically democratic heritage decision–making processes