The Imaging of Heritage Conservation in Historic City of George Town for City Marketing

The Historic City of George Town in Penang, dubbed „the City of Living Culture’, has been gearing her development towards living up to the image. This paper examines the imaging of the Historic City of Georgetown for heritage tourism and city marketing tool by the public agencies involved. A short introduction to city marketing, imaging and heritage tourism is offered due to sparse literature in the built environment literature and to serve as a foundation to the main discourse of this paper. The rest of this paper discusses the conservation of heritage as image dimensions in the marketing of Georgetown. We submitted that Georgetown has successfully utilised and capitalised on its cultural diversity and tangible heritage based on its colonial legacy to promote the city as evidenced by its inscription into UNESCO's World Heritage Site list in 2008. Nonetheless, building and maintaining the synergy between the government, the private sector and the people is essential for sustainability of Historic City of George Town's heritage tourism industry.