As demands grow for heritage to support sustainable urban development, tensions emerge between entrenched professional practices and circular and relational, future-oriented planning logics. This chapter offers a critical examination of how cultural-historic value, long institutionalised as the dominant mode of evaluation in Swedish heritage practice, shapes what heritage is, what it does, and what it excludes in planning contexts. Drawing on recent research into circular and art-led, relational approaches to heritage, the chapter analyses how cultural-historic value, typically defined through documentary, chronological, and architectural criteria, continues to dominate assessments, policy frameworks, and professional routines. While this framework provides institutional stability, it narrows the scope of what is considered valuable and hence frequently omitting ecological functions, emotional connections, social practices, and adaptive reuse potential. Moreover, the kinds of heritage most often addressed tend to centre on well-preserved and visually legible sites, particularly those whose adaptive reuse aligns with dominant planning ideals and established aesthetic preferences, thereby marginalising less coherent or socially diverse environments from serious consideration. As a result, heritage-led development risks reinforcing static preservation models, that are disconnected from the regenerative, inclusive, and systems-based strategies central to circular urban transformation. Through a value-pluralist lens, the chapter explores the “value regimes” embedded in heritage assessments and how they delimit what heritage can be and do. The chapter concludes by proposing a reframing of heritage as a dynamic cultural-ecological resource embedded in circular systems. Rather than abandoning cultural-historic value, this analysis points towards repositioning it as one element within a broader, more inclusive value ecology, opening space for adaptive, affective, and cross-sectoral practices more attuned to contemporary ecological and societal urgencies.