Spatial anchoring in heritage curation: optimizing land use and social sustainability in historic districts through a mixed-methods approach

Introduction Rapid urbanization in the Greater Bay Area has precipitated a “spatial decoupling” between historic built environments and local social practices, posing challenges to sustainable land use. This study investigates the re-integration of these dimensions through “Spatial Anchoring.” Methods Drawing on Lefebvre’s production of space theory, we employ a convergent mixed-methods design focused on Shawan Ancient Town. Data were triangulated from 25 stakeholder interviews, policy documents, and a computational sentiment analysis of 1,281 online reviews using a BERT deep learning model. Results Qualitative findings identify two key mechanisms: “Commercial Anchoring” and “Governance Anchoring.” Quantitative results confirm a significant positive interaction effect between tangible and intangible heritage presence on human-environment sentiment (β = 0.098, p < 0.001). Conclusion The study concludes that sustainable urban regeneration relies on the curated re-assembly of spatial relationships (“Assembled Authenticity”) rather than static preservation. It provides a scalable framework for optimizing the social sustainability of historic districts.