Background Living heritage sites in the Global South face the intertwined challenges of conserving cultural continuity, meeting present-day development needs, and ensuring equitable governance. Methods In this systematic literature review, we synthesize findings from 24 peer-reviewed studies (2013–2025) on governance models, community impacts, and adaptive reuse strategies in living heritage sites in the Global South. The search of Scopus, ProQuest, and EBSCOhost databases under the PRISMA 2020 guidelines returned 563 records. After a two-stage screening process, 24 of these records met the inclusion criteria. 16 studies were rated as high quality, 7 as medium, and 1 as low using an adapted CASP checklist for quality assessment. Results The review identifies 3 types of governance: state-led centralized management (10 studies), collaborative multi-stakeholder partnerships (8 studies), and community-driven bottom-up approaches (7 studies), with one study spanning multiple typologies due to documented governance transitions. The findings indicate that top-down governance often exacerbates gentrification and displacement, as evidenced by 14 studies, while participatory approaches that include indigenous knowledge systems yield more sustainable outcomes. Adaptive reuse is a double-edged sword: tourism-oriented conversion risks cultural commodification, while community-functional adaptation and culture-climate integration offer more equitable pathways. Conclusions This review proposes a conceptual framework integrating governance accountability, community resilience, and cultural sustainability, with special implications for palace-city heritage sites. The study is contextualized through the Keraton Yogyakarta palace complex and the recent UNESCO inscription of the Cosmological Axis of Yogyakarta (2023), offering implications for Indonesian living heritage governance. This research contributes to SDG 11 by offering evidence-based recommendations to policymakers on how to navigate the governance of living heritage in the Global South.
Subhi et al. (Mon,) studied this question.