Multi-criteria decision aiding for built heritage value assessment: Model and application in Québec City, Canada

Founded in 1608 and once the capital of France’s vast empire in the New World, Québec City (Canada), a UNESCO world heritage city, is one of the oldest in North America. Like many cities, it is faced with various economic pressures to allow new profitable real estate investments, sometimes at the expense of buildings with potentially a high heritage value. In order to avoid such undesirable situations, the City recently identified a need for an unambiguous and transparent process to assess the heritage value of a building. This led to our decision aiding project where we conducted a socio-technical intervention to develop and validate a multi-criteria assessment model, based on the method MACBETH, which we implemented in a simple decision support tool. The approach and model developed are, to our knowledge, a first in heritage evaluation and can be extended and applied to different cities, with the potential of rendering heritage value assessment more explicit, rigorous, and transparent.