Autism Spectrum Condition and the Built Environment:Perspectives on Place Attachment and Cultural Heritage

Values have long provided essential foundation for cultural heritage policy and practice. Traditionally these values were determined by heritage experts and employed by agencies responsible for managing and protecting heritage for society and the future. Such values tended to focus on authorised and normative views of the past. More recently, heritage values have been applied with greater flexibility but to be effective this more flexible approach requires a good understanding of different perspectives. Only through understanding such differences and their implications can heritage genuinely have relevance to everyone in society. In some areas, we think this understanding may be deficient. In this paper we set out new findings which demonstrate that individuals with autism form different types of attachment towards buildings and places and create and respond to heritage values in different ways to neurotypical people.