Objective  The insufficient cognition of historical park heritage makes it impossible to effectively conserve such heritage in case of reconstruction, so it is necessary to form a relatively perfect view of historical park heritage from the level of epistemology. On the one hand, faced with the change of external environment brought by the rapid urban development, the current conservation and renewal measures cannot cope with the problems existing in historical parks. The reason is that the stakeholders’ conservation consciousness has not kept up with the progression of heritage concept in time, leading to improper conservation and renewal of historical parks. On the other hand, the historical parks are discussed from different heritage perspectives, however, there are complex relationships among these perspectives such as overlapping or inheritance development, which is easy to cause confusion. Some researches only introduce a certain heritage perspective as the background without further analyzing the cognition of heritage, failing to promote the in-depth conservation of historical park heritage.

Methods  Based on the theory of heritage conservation, this research analyzes the heritage attributes of historical parks from the perspectives of cultural relics and monuments, built heritage and living heritage by using the methods of induction, deduction and comparison. Specifically, the induction and deduction methods are adopted for the perspectives of cultural relics and monuments and built heritage. Firstly, several heritage types are classified into the two perspectives above. Secondly, the historical parks selected are analyzed one by one by type through the deduction method. From the perspective of living heritage, the deduction and comparison methods are adopted to distinguish the historical parks from the two dimensions of nature and culture.

Results  The perspectives above are derived from the new development and new trend of heritage conservation, for which the underlying reason is that new ideas and concepts of heritage conservation are disseminated in the academic circles, along with the exchange and collision of diversified cultures and local practice in the field of international heritage conservation, which further affects our cognition of historical parks. Based on the proper combing and induction of various perspectives, the following three perspectives are formed in combination with specific time development context and correlation: The perspective of cultural relics and monuments extends the contents of cultural landscape and 20th century heritage on the basis of the original concept of cultural relics and monuments; the perspective of built heritage includes relevant contents of urban heritage and architectural heritage; the perspective of living heritage forms the personality cognition of heritage attributes from the dimensions of cultural living and natural living. These perspectives basically cover all perspectives involved in the current research on historical park heritage. The three perspectives have different entry points. The first perspective starts from cultural relics and monuments, taking historical parks as point-like single cultural relics and monuments for generalized cognition. The concept of historical park as a heritage has been gradually accepted, thanks to the classification of historical gardens and parks into the heritage types of “cultural relics and monuments”, “cultural landscape” and “20th century heritage”. The second perspective, starting from the built heritage, believes that historical parks are an important part of the historical built environment. The relationships between historical parks, urban heritage and architectural heritage are constructed through the cognitive logic of correlation between built heritage, making historical parks go beyond single cultural relics and monuments and rise to the level of historical built environment. On the basis of this, two clues are formed: “Built heritage−expanded urban heritage−public open space−historical park” and “inclusion or juxtaposition relationship between historical parks and architectural heritage”. The third perspective is the living heritage. Historical parks are regarded as the a “living organism” of the city’s natural and cultural system. The “living heritage perspective” of historical parks originates from their essential attribute of “change”. Therefore, this perspective constructs the individualized cognitive logic between historical parks and living heritage from the dimensions of cultural and natural living. Although these perspectives have different entry points, they do not exist separately. In terms of chronology, these three perspectives are generated along the development course of heritage conservation theory, reflecting a certain chronological sequence. Logically, cultural relics and monuments serve as the theoretical basis of built heritage and living heritage, and the latter two serve as a critical development based on cultural relics and monuments. The built heritage can be understood as the horizontal expansion of the original types of cultural relics and monuments; the living heritage is based on the vertical mining of the original attributes of cultural relics and monuments from the living dimension. We can obtain different cognitions of historical parks from these three heritage perspectives: The cultural relic and monument perspective focuses on the common cognition regarding historical parks as point-like historic sites; the built heritage perspective focuses on the correlation cognition by establishing connections between historical parks and landscape heritage, urban heritage and architectural heritage; the living heritage perspective focuses on the individual cognition of the heritage attributes of historical parks from the dimensions of cultural living and natural living. Although the three perspectives have different entry points, there exists a chronological sequence as well as a relationship of inheritance and development in the conceptual category between them.

Conclusion  The above multi-perspective cognition can help correct the cognitive bias of historical parks in the past, further clarify the heritage attributes of historical parks, gather the consensus of stakeholders, and provide theoretical guidance for the conservation and utilization of historical parks. The process of constructing and analyzing the multiple cognitive perspectives of historical park heritage is also the process of re-defining the concept thereof. It tries to answer the fundamental question of historical park research, that is, what is a historical park? Only when the abstract heritage value of a park is obtained in the process of temporal and spatial deposition, such value is continuously inherited and evolving in the long history, and the park is still open to the public, can the park be called a historical park. It is not difficult to see that the “historical” attribute is only a necessary but insufficient condition for a park to become a historical park, while the “heritage” attribute serves as the root of historical parks.