Abstract
This paper intends to assess a Historic Urban Landscape (HUL), considering cultural heritage to play a major role in the development of a city due its diverse and adaptable nature towards change over time socially, economically as well as environmentally that in turn forms the basis for Sustainable Development (SD). Urban heritage has the potential to become one of the key drivers of socio-economic development sustainably, if preserved and managed in the right manner. This calls for the application of statistical multi-dimensional evaluation methods to spatially assess the social and economic conditions of Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) in an urban fabric, especially for regions with limited social resources and infrastructure to comply with the needs of the growing population, but possess an abundantly rich reserve of tangible and intangible cultural heritage. Multi-criteria evaluation tools together with GIS can help in attaining a structured evaluation of the multi-dimensional parameters of socio-economic assessment of spatial heritage and then help in projecting areas to be intervened spatially through maps based on the vulnerability of each area. This study focuses on spatially assessing socio-economic conditions of the residents of the HUL Fort Kochi, India.
