Management of UNESCO heritage city and local community involvement: A case study of George Town, Penang

Although at the international level studies on community involvement in the management of UNESCO heritage sites have begun since 1945, in Malaysia such studies only started in 2000 . To fill this gap this study examined the extent, form and challenges of community involvement in the conservation of Penang’s world heritage site of George Town. In-depth interviews with 27 respondents revealed that only 20.6% of them had been involved in conservation activities thus denoting the low level of community involvement is still low in current heritage sites conservation. In-depth interviews with officials found that numerous conservation programmes or projects were implemented but that they mostly focused on particular groups such as owners of homes or buildings, contractors, academicians and bureaucrats, to the exclusion of interested members of the local community who. Given the relative absence of tangible community involvement the commitment of stakeholders with respet to management, monitoring and funding became all the more important in ensuring heritage sustainability. Hence the relevance of these findings to the National Heritage Department in factoring future community involvement into the conservation task of heritage sites.