You raised a very important question. I was born and raised in Hungary but the last 5 years I spent in Sweden and China, and whenever I go home I look for the places and the feelings I had when I lived there.

I think it is quite tough to keep the identity of old places in developing countries because in those places somehow the focus is so much on growth and money these days that they easily forget about their heritage. Just think of how many hutongs Beijing demolished in order to build skyscrapers. Or that they have actually removed the old city wall and build the second ring road instead.

The reason for such behavior is quite simple though and I believe it is related to the Maslow pyramid of human needs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs). I think developing societies are often focused on the lowest levels of the pyramid such as psychological needs and the need for safety. At the same time keeping your heritage belongs to the need of love and belonging which only comes up as an important thing for societies when they have satisfied their psychological needs and their need for safety. But developing countries have not necessarily done that.

So your question could be rephrased to: how can we help developing countries get to satisfy their two basic needs so that they can also focus on the need of love and belonging? (And I wish I had the answer because then we would be able to erase extreme poverty and violence in the world)

Very nice inspiration and great question Jenny. It reminds me Sherry Turkle's work on Evocative Objects: http://www.amazon.com/Evocative-Objects-Things-We-Think/dp/0262201682
or Marcel Proust's famous little madeleine: http://www.haverford.edu/psych/ddavis/p109g/proust.html
 :-)

Thoughtful provocation, Jenny.