Problem Statement: The conservation of historic cities has progressively moved beyond object-centred, fabric-focused perspectives toward understanding the city as a dynamic milieu shaped by the interplay of natural, cultural, and social processes. Nevertheless, the existing literature still lacks a coherent theoretical account that integrates historical values with environmental values in pursuit of sustainability goals.
Research Objectives: Addressing this theoretical gap, the present study examines the mediating role of the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) approach in fostering synergy between two distinct domains — urban heritage conservation and urban ecology — and seeks to articulate the shared theoretical foundations of these two fields for an integrated understanding of the historic city.
Methodology: The research adopts a qualitative–exploratory approach grounded in the interpretive analysis of theoretical texts. Drawing on grounded theory logic, shared categories between the two domains were extracted and formulated through theoretical sampling, systematic concept coding, and comparative analysis of the literature.
Conclusion: The findings reveal that the two domains converge toward a shared understanding of the historic city — one that conceives of it as the outcome of non-linear, multi-scalar, and cumulative interactions between human and environmental processes. This convergence crystallises around five foundational common grounds: a relational understanding of the historic city; a multi-scalar and context-sensitive reading of the urban environment; adaptive continuity in place of static preservation; accumulated memory and knowledge as the infrastructure of continuity; and the interdependence of heritage, environment, and liveability as the basis of sustainability.The principal contribution of this research lies in articulating the mediating mechanism of the Historic Urban Landscape approach for linking the logic of heritage conservation with the ecological understanding of the city — an approach that, by redefining the unit of analysis from an aggregate of discrete elements to the unified totality of the landscape, provides a theoretical foundation for future research in historic urban conservation and sustainability.