Building on experience: The potential of oral history to conserve the ‘deep city’ in Australia’s national capital

This chapter aims to demonstrate how professional oral history practice illuminates the nature of lived experience and deepens heritage practice. It suggests that investigating and responding to these interweaving layers of use, meaning and attachment - building on experience - is fundamental to sustainable heritage management and liveable urban futures. The chapter argues that oral history’s capacity to provide understanding of changing and diverse lived experience is a potent force for sustainability in heritage conservation, policy and management. It explains the potential to reconnect heritage values with community values and the emotionally and culturally sustainable development of cities. In the 2000s another era of community in the paddock/park emerged with a new generation of young families who incorporated heritage listing into their sense of place and community. Regular community events included activities for children and exercise classes mainly attended by young women.