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| Historic Urban Landscape | |
|---|---|
| Name | Historic Urban Landscape |
| Established | 2011 |
Historic Urban Landscape
The Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) approach is an integrated strategy for managing historic cities, towns, and districts that balances heritage conservation with urban development and social needs. It synthesizes values from archaeology, architecture, urbanism, conservation, planning and governance to guide interventions across cultural landscapes. Emerging from multilateral dialogues and pilot projects, HUL connects actors such as United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, United Nations Human Settlements Programme, World Bank, International Council on Monuments and Sites, and municipal authorities to mediate change in places like Athens, Rome, Istanbul, Alexandria, Beirut.
HUL defines a city as an ensemble where built fabric, Acropolis of Athens, Colosseum, Hagia Sophia, Alhambra, Taj Mahal sightlines, archaeological strata such as in Pompeii, and intangible elements like festivals in Venice interact with surrounding ecosystems like the Nile Delta or Ganges Delta. Core principles emphasize understanding values through inventories exemplified by projects at Montreal, Quebec City, Lima, Cusco, Quito, and promoting participatory governance involving institutions such as ICOMOS, ICCROM, UNESCO World Heritage Committee, and local councils in Paris and London. HUL advocates context-sensitive interventions influenced by charters like the Athens Charter (1933), Venice Charter, and instruments developed by ICOMOS International Scientific Committee on Historic Towns and Villages (CIVVIH), while integrating risk preparedness from agencies like United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction.
The approach originated from debates after conservation casework in cities such as Jerusalem, Beijing, Kyoto, Seville, Florence, and Mexico City where modern pressures threatened heritage values. Influences include early urban conservation movements tied to figures and institutions like Camillo Sitte, Le Corbusier, Patrick Geddes, Jane Jacobs, and programs by UNESCO in the mid-20th century for sites like Mohenjo-daro and Chaco Culture National Historical Park. HUL emerged formally in policy discourse during meetings in Venice and Xian, and through pilot studies supported by World Monuments Fund, Getty Conservation Institute, European Commission, and national ministries in China, Italy, Spain, India, and Peru.
HUL is embedded in international frameworks including guidelines promulgated by UNESCO and tools aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, the New Urban Agenda, and conventions such as the World Heritage Convention (1972). It interfaces with legal instruments in jurisdictions governed by laws like the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1958 in India and urban conservation statutes in Italy and France. Multilateral financing from World Bank, Asian Development Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, and bilateral programs by USAID and DFID supported implementation in cities such as Buenos Aires, São Paulo, Jakarta, Manila, and Cairo.
Methodologies include multidisciplinary inventories, GIS mapping used in projects for Istanbul Archaeological Park and Old Havana, historic landscape assessments applied in Lima, Quito, and Cusco, and participatory mapping exercises pioneered in Port-au-Prince and Dhaka. Tools range from conservation management plans exemplified by Historic Cairo Conservation Project and Petra Archaeological Park to impact assessments aligned with environmental policies of European Union programs and resilience frameworks from UNISDR. Digital tools include 3D scanning used at Pompeii, remote sensing in Angkor, and archival research in libraries such as the Biblioteca Nacional de España and Library of Congress.
Notable applications span continents: revitalization in Granada and Seville, adaptive reuse in Liverpool and Rotterdam, waterfront renewal in Baltimore and Valparaiso, post-disaster reconstruction in Kobe, Port-au-Prince, and Christchurch, and integrated conservation in Luang Prabang, Zanzibar Stone Town, Meknes, Fes, and Fez. Municipal examples include planning processes in Barcelona, Vienna, Bologna, Havana, Beirut, Alexandria, Shiraz, and Isfahan. Development-financed initiatives were carried out with partners like World Bank in Stone Town, Zanzibar, UNESCO in Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls, and UN-Habitat in Khartoum.
Critiques address potential co-optation by development interests in projects financed by institutions like the World Bank and controversies involving heritage tourism in Dubrovnik, Venice, and Machu Picchu. Scholars from University College London, Harvard University, University of Cambridge, Columbia University, and University of California, Berkeley debate trade-offs between conservation and gentrification witnessed in New Orleans, San Francisco, and Rio de Janeiro. Debates also engage NGOs like Friends of the Earth and advocacy groups in Istanbul over demolition and in Beirut over reconstruction priorities, questioning whether frameworks such as HUL sufficiently redress social justice issues highlighted by activists in Johannesburg and Cairo.
HUL is applied alongside planning tools from institutions such as the European Commission and frameworks like the New Urban Agenda to align heritage with climate adaptation in river basins like the Thames Estuary and Ganges–Brahmaputra Delta. Cross-disciplinary linkages involve transport projects in Rotterdam and Hamburg, housing programs in Lisbon and Athens, and green infrastructure initiatives in Berlin and Stockholm. Implementation requires collaboration among urban planners from municipal offices in New York City, Chicago, Shanghai, Seoul, cultural agencies such as National Trust (United Kingdom), and international researchers at centers like Getty Conservation Institute and ICCROM to operationalize sustainability goals across social, economic, and environmental dimensions.
Category:Urban conservation