THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK ON HISTORIC URBAN LANDSCAPES IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC [First ed.] 9781138598256, 9780429486470

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‘The Routledge Handbook on Historic Urban Landscapes in the Asia-Pacific provides innovative perspectives on urban heritage conservation and development. A must read for students, teachers and researchers interested in contemporary issues facing urban heritage conservation and management in the Asia-Pacific.’ – Sophia Labadi, Senior Lecturer in Heritage and Archaeology, University of Kent, UK ‘The book provides a critical widening of the debate on conservation where Historic Urban Landscapes get resituated in discussions about broader planning processes, enabling us to understand how “change” can be productively embraced and resisted simultaneously.’ – Rahul Mehrotra, Architect and Professor of Urban Design and Planning, Harvard University, USA ‘This is a highly engaging book on an increasingly important topic in international heritage conservation policy. In a region where many cities and cultures stretch back thousands of years, and in contexts where economic development is transforming lives and livelihoods, innovative, contextually grounded analyses are in high demand. Kapila Silva’s exciting and geographically ambitious collection of essays tackles such issues head on. Timely and much needed, it fills an important gap in the study of heritage in the Asia-Pacific.’ – Tim Winter, Professor in Critical Heritage Studies, University of Western Australia ‘As an academic interested in critical heritage studies along with the holistic management approach, I see this handbook as a timely contribution on the HUL idea and associated practices. Spanning the Asia-Pacific region, the chapters, written by renowned and competent authors, navigate through a logical sequence of themes – conceptualizing HUL, mapping the tangibles, safeguarding the intangibles, fostering sustainable urban heritage, localizing heritage stewardship, and assessing urban heritage policies. It is a good reference for learners and practitioners both.’ – Neel Kamal Chapagain, Associate Professor, Director, Centre for Heritage Management, India

THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK ON HISTORIC URBAN LANDSCAPES IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC

The Routledge Handbook on Historic Urban Landscapes in the Asia-Pacific sheds light onto the balancing act of urban heritage management, focusing specifically on the Asia-Pacific regions in which this challenge is imminent and in need of effective solutions. Urban heritage, while being threatened amid myriad forces of global and ecological change, provides a vital social, cultural, and economic asset for regeneration and sustenance of liveability of inhabited urban areas worldwide. This six-part volume takes a critical look at the concept of Historic Urban Landscapes, the approach that UNESCO promotes to achieve holistic management of urban heritage, through the lens of issues, prospects, and experiences of urban regeneration of the selected geo-cultural context. It further discusses the difficult task that heritage managers encounter in conceptualizing, mapping, curating, and sustaining the plurality, poetics, and politics of urban heritage of the regions in question. The connective thesis that weaves the chapters in this volume together reinforces for readers that the management of urban heritage considers cities as dynamic entities, palimpsests of historical memories, collages of social diversity, territories of contested identities, and sites for sustainable liveability. Throughout this edited collection, chapters argue for recognizing the totality of the eco-cultural urban fabric, embracing change, building social cohesion, and initiating strategic socio-economic progress in the conservation of Historic Urban Landscapes. Containing thirty-seven contributions written by leading regional experts, and illustrated with over 200 black and white images and tables, this volume provides a much-needed resource on Historic Urban Landscapes for students, scholars, and researchers. Kapila D. Silva is an Associate Professor at the School of Architecture and Design of the University of Kansas, USA. He has taught at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA, from which he received a doctorate in architecture, and at the University of Moratuwa in Sri Lanka, from which he received professional training in architecture. He is the lead editor of Asian Heritage Management: Contexts, Concerns and Prospects (Routledge, 2013) and Cultural Landscapes of South Asia: Studies in Heritage Conservation and Management (Routledge, 2017).

THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK ON HISTORIC URBAN LANDSCAPES IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC

Edited by Kapila D. Silva

First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 selection and editorial matter, Kapila D. Silva; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Kapila D. Silva to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Silva, Kapila D., editor. Title: The Routledge handbook on historic urban landscapes in Asia-Pacific / edited by Kapila D. Silva. Other titles: Routledge handbook on historic urban landscapes in the Asia-Pacific Description: New York : Routledge, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019024221 (print) | LCCN 2019024222 (ebook) | ISBN 9781138598256 (hardback) | ISBN 9780429486470 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Historic districts–Conservation and restoration–Asia. | Historic districts–Conservation and restoration–Pacific Area. | Cities and towns–Conservation and restoration–Asia. | Cities and towns–Conservation and restoration–Pacific Area. | Cultural landscapes–Asia. | Cultural landscapes–Pacific Area. | Urban policy–Asia. | Urban policy–Pacific Area. Classification: LCC NA109.A78 R68 2020 (print) | LCC NA109.A78 (ebook) | DDC 363.6/9095–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019024221 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019024222 ISBN: 978-1-138-59825-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-48647-0 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Swales & Willis, Exeter, Devon, UK

To Ron van Oers (1965–2015)

CONTENTS

Contributors Acknowledgements Foreword Francesco Bandarin

xiii xxi xxii

Introduction: reimagining the conservation of Historic Urban Landscapes in the Asia-Pacific Kapila D. Silva

1

PART I

Conceptualizing Historic Urban Landscapes

27

1 Cities: palimpsests of cultural memory and their management William Logan

29

2 The ideology of the urban cultural landscape construct Ken Taylor

48

3 Conserving Asia’s vernacular water urbanisms Vinayak Bharne

67

4 Re-imagining Eurasia: past Flatland stories of urban and landscape heritage Manu P. Sobti

80

5 Human aspects of historic urban environments Jeremy C. Wells

98

6 Historic landscapes in rapidly transforming Asian cities: contestations, commodification, and learning from grounded observations Nihal Perera

ix

113

Contents PART II

Mapping tangible urban heritage

129

7 Evolution and repercussions of the heritage designation process in Sindh, Pakistan: lessons from Karachi and Shikarpur Anila Naeem

131

8 Urban morphology and Historic Urban Landscape management: the case of Kolkata, India Mahbub Rashid

149

9 New methodologies for exploring sense of place in the Historic Urban Landscape Steven Cooke and Kristal Buckley 10 Creating information management systems for cultural World Heritage: experiences from Central Asia Ona Vileikis

166

181

11 Conservation of historic open space urban landscapes of Chittagong, Bangladesh Maharina Jafrin and Shamsul Hossain

199

12 The role of natural landscapes in historic Chinese cities Junheng Lai

216

PART III

Safeguarding intangible urban heritage

231

13 The sensory heritage of Asian Cities Nisha A. Fernando

233

14 Ghats on the Ganga in Varanasi, India: the making of a vernacular urban landscape and its conservation Amita Sinha

248

15 Safeguarding ritual landscape of living urban heritages: the case of Navadurga Masked Dance Festival of Bhaktapur, Nepal Sudarshan Raj Tiwari

261

16 Intangible dimensions of urban heritage: learning from holy cities of India Rana P.B. Singh, Pravin S. Rana, and Sarvesh Kumar

275

17 Cultural routes in China: the urban heritage trails of Chóngqing Junli Chen and David Jones

294

18 Finding human well-being in Historic Urban Landscapes Julie Williams Lawless

313

x

Contents PART IV

Fostering sustainable urban heritage

327

19 Integrated management systems of the urban World Heritage properties of Kathmandu and Samarkand Kai Weise

329

20 Erasure and appearance: a critical view on urban heritage management practices in China, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam John C. Stallmeyer and Lynne M. Dearborn

346

21 Sustainable urbanism and Historic Urban Landscape conservation Farhana Ferdous, Julie Williams Lawless, and Kapila D. Silva 22 Regeneration of a Historic Urban Landscape with pedestrian-oriented streetscape design: the case of Deoksugung-gil Street in Seoul, South Korea Sung-Kyun Kim 23 Towards safer and resilient historic urban environments Rohit Jigyasu 24 Rural development: a strategy for urban heritage management in the Asia-Pacific region Dennis Rodwell

363

377 392

406

PART V

Localizing heritage stewardship

425

25 Community-focused urban regeneration: preserving and activating the Historic Urban Landscape in Malaysian cities Richard A. Engelhardt and Neil Khor

427

26 Community involvement in heritage conservation: the case of Kotagede, Indonesia Punto Wijayanto

445

27 Transient heritage values, conflicting aspirations, and endangered urban heritage in the historic Galle Fort, Sri Lanka Amanda Rajapakse and Kapila D. Silva

462

28 Conserving the historic port town of Tomo, Seto Inland Sea, Japan: repositioning urban heritage in the ‘shrinking society’ Yushi Utaka

476

29 Understanding community-based heritage values: the case of the Tamil Brahmin settlement in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India Vaisali Krishna Kumar

490

30 Wurundjeri-al Narrm-u (Wurundjeri’s Melbourne): aboriginal living heritage in Australia’s urban landscapes Mandy Nicholson and David Jones

508

xi

Contents PART VI

Assessing urban heritage policies

527

31 The Historic Urban Landscape approach in the Australian context: evolving heritage practice and city management frameworks Susan Fayad and Kristal Buckley

529

32 The monument and the city: examining India’s legacy of monument-centric conservation in the context of the Historic Urban Landscape approach Jyoti Pandey Sharma

544

33 Historic Urban Landscapes of China: issues of conservation and management Zhe Geng and David Jones

560

34 Conserving historic urban cores in Iran: an overview Rana Amirtahmasebi and Mohammadsaeid Izadi

579

35 ‘Land is a very limited definition of place’: navigating urban heritage conservation in the Pacific Island nations Anita Smith 36 Historic Urban Landscapes in the Indian Ocean waters: challenges of urban heritage custodianship for the Comoros, Maldives, Mauritius, Mayotte, Réunion, and Seychelles Zaheer Allam and David Jones

598

613

37 A tale of two cities: how tourism development is treated in Yangon and Macau’s urban heritage planning Hilary du Cros

631

Index

644

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CONTRIBUTORS

Zaheer Allam has a PhD in Humanities (Sustainability Policy) from Curtin University, Australia, and explores the topic of Smart Cities and the increasing role of technology in cultural, societal, and liveability levels. He is an African Representative of the International Society of Bio-urbanism, an advisor of the International Federation of Landscape Architects, and a member of other international bodies related to urbanism. For his contributions to society, he was awarded numerous commendations, including that of being elevated, by the President of Mauritius, to the rank of Officer of the Order of the Star and Key of the Indian Ocean (OSK), the highest distinct order of Merit in Mauritius. Rana Amirtahmasebi is an urban planner specializing in urban revitalization and cultural heritage. She is experienced in policy analysis and programme design and implementation in projects focused on community economic development, urban regeneration, settlement upgrading, and land governance frameworks. Of special interest to her is designing culture-based local economic development and conservation programmes for historic cities. Rana’s previous professional affiliations include the World Bank; Cesar Pelli and Associates; New York City Departments of Planning and Transportation; and Bavand Consultants. She holds advanced degrees in both City Planning and Advanced Urbanism Studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a master’s degree in architectural engineering from Azad University in her hometown of Tehran, Iran. Francesco Bandarin is an Architect and Urban Planner, specialized in Urban Conservation. From 2000 to 2010, he was Director of the UNESCO World Heritage Centre and Secretary of the World Heritage Convention. From 2010 to 2018, he served as Assistant Director-General of UNESCO for Culture. He is a member of the Steering Committee of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture and a member of ICOMOS Italy. He holds degrees in Architecture (IUAV Venice) and City and Regional Planning (UC Berkeley) and has been Professor of Urban Planning and Urban Conservation at the University of Venice (IUAV) from 1980 to 2016. Vinayak Bharne is Adjunct Associate Professor of Urbanism and Heritage Conservation at the University of Southern California, USA, and Principal and Director of Design at the architecture and urban design firm Moule & Polyzoides, USA. His books include The Emerging Asian City: Concomitant Urbanities & Urbanisms (2012), Rediscovering the Hindu Temple: The Sacred Architecture and Urbanism in India (2012), and Zen Spaces & Neon Places: Reflections on Japanese Architecture and Urbanism (2013). He is also the co-editor of Routledge Companion to Global Heritage Conservation (2019).

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Kristal Buckley AM is a Lecturer in Cultural Heritage at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia. She has qualifications in archaeology, anthropology and public policy, and her work has a focus on global heritage practices, including World Heritage and the implementation of the UNESCO Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape. Ms Buckley served as an international Vice-President of ICOMOS from 2005-2014, and now works as a World Heritage Advisor for ICOMOS. She is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne and is a member of the Board of the Port Arthur Historic Site Management Authority (Tasmania). Junli Chen is a doctoral student and research assistant in the School of Architecture and Built Environment of Deakin University, Australia. Sponsored by the Chinese Scholarship Council, her research interest focuses upon the concept of Cultural Routes in the Chinese urban context. Chen completed her undergraduate and master’s degrees from Chongqing University and was engaged with several applied planning, urban design, landscape and architecture projects in Chongqing during her master candidature. She also won a national student design competition and led mapping of several traditional Chinese Gardens. She is also a performer of traditional Chinese south-western-region folk songs and musicals. Steven Cooke is a cultural and historical geographer with interests in heritage, memory and identity, particularly the memorial landscapes of war and genocide and urban development. He has worked in the heritage sector at some of Victoria’s most significant places, including the Melbourne Maritime Museum and the Shrine of Remembrance. He is an Associate Professor of Cultural Heritage and course director for the cultural heritage and museum studies programme at Deakin University. He is a member of Australia ICOMOS’s National Scientific Committee on Fortifications and Military Heritage, and an Honorary Research Fellow in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Winchester, United Kingdom. Lynne M. Dearborn is an Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Her work highlights and seeks to change inequitable and adverse environmental conditions experienced by vulnerable groups. Her publications explore the relationship of designed environments to heritage and cultural change in marginalized communities, including Inconvenient Heritage (Left Coast Press, 2010). Hilary du Cros is currently an Honorary Research Fellow of the University of New Brunswick, Canada, and an E.G. Whitlam Research Fellow at the Whitlam Institute (within Western Sydney University), Sydney. She has taught and worked in the Asia-Pacific region over the last 34 years and conducted projects for the United Nations, World Tourism Organization and UNESCO. These projects include a number in China (Yunnan, Guangdong and Guizhou), India, Mongolia, Myanmar, Hong Kong and Macau. She has an interdisciplinary perspective on cultural heritage management, marketing and sustainable tourism development. She has been an international member of ICOMOS since 1988 and an expert member of the ICOMOS Cultural Tourism Committee since 1999. Her latest books are Cultural Tourism (2015) co-authored with Bob McKercher and The Arts and Events (2014) with Lee Jolliffe. Richard A. Engelhardt was educated in the historical and social sciences at Yale and Harvard Universities. In 1981, he joined the United Nations and from this platform spearheaded heritage conservation efforts throughout Asia. In 1991, while serving as head of the UNESCO Field Office in Cambodia, he initiated the International Safeguarding Campaign for Angkor, in recognition of which King Norodom Sihanouk knighted him Commandeur de l’Ordre Royal du Cambodge. From 1994 to 2008, he was UNESCO Regional Advisor for Culture in Asia and the Pacific, and from 2008 to

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2010, UNESCO Senior Advisor for Culture. Currently, he is UNESCO Chair Professor of the Conservation of Historic Towns and Urban Centres and serves as senior advisor to Think City, Malaysia. Susan Fayad manages the roll out of UNESCO’s new approach to urban conservation and city development – The Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) – at the City of Ballarat, Australia, as part of an international pilot programme. She helped build the HUL approach into Ballarat’s longterm growth strategy, centralizing heritage and culture in the city’s sustainable development. Susan is an active member of the global HUL programme, contributing both internationally and locally in Australia. She has lectured on HUL and co-authored The HUL Guidebook: A Practical Guide for Managing Heritage in Dynamic and Constantly Changing Environments with WHITRAP in China. Farhana Ferdous is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at the Howard University, USA. Her design, teaching and research career spans in the continents of Asia, Australia, and North America. She received a PhD in Environmental Design Study from the University of Sydney, Australia, and taught at the University of Kansas, USA. Her teaching and scholarship focus on evidence-based environmental design for the elderly, community health-wellbeing, and urban design through interactive and action-based approaches. She has authored several book chapters, edited volumes and peer-reviewed publications. Her research has been supported by the Toyota Foundation Grant, Academy of Architecture for Health Foundation, American Association of University Women, Grantmakers in Aging, and Endeavour Postgraduate Awards. Nisha A. Fernando is a Professor of Interior Architecture at University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, where she has taught since 2001. She received a PhD degree in Architecture (Environment-Behaviour Studies) at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA. Her current research interests include cultural aspects and multi-sensory dimensions of built environments, universal design, community-centred design research methodology and design pedagogy, on which she has several publications and presentations at national and international conferences. She is an active member of several academic and professional organizations. Zhe Geng is a graduate of Anhui Agricultural University in China, majoring in landscape architecture, including a thesis on the ‘Application of Post-modernism in Chinese Landscape Architecture’. At Deakin University in Australia, she successfully undertook doctoral studies examining ‘The Performance and Success of the Conservation and Management of Historic Districts in China: Perceptions of Conservation and Management Outcomes and Practice’ with an emphasis upon Beijing’s Guozijian and Yandaixiejie Districts, Xidi and Hongcun in southern Anhui Province, and the canal town of Zhouzhuang in Jiangsu Province. She is now an Executive Assistant at Long Island Homes in Melbourne, Australia. Shamsul Hossain, the first curatorial and founding academic staff of the Chittagong University Museum, did his MA and PhD from University of Chittagong, Bangladesh. He has started his research career as fellow of a project sponsored by Ministry of Education of then Pakistan in the Department of History of Chittagong University. He has attended a course on Managing Conservation in Museums held in York and London, sponsored by the British Council. He wrote books on history of Chittagong named Eternal Chittagong and others. He is an ardent organizer of movement for architectural conservation. Documentary filmmaking is his passion, and he has worked with production houses from Italy and Singapore. Mohammadsaeid Izadi has worked in the field of urban revitalization of historic cities for more than a decade. He served as deputy minister of urban regeneration between 2013 and 2017, and as the deputy minister of architecture and urban planning between 2017 and 2019 at the Ministry of Roads and Urban Development of Iran. He is currently the director of Eyvan Company active in the study, xv

Contributors

planning, design and management in architecture and urban design projects. He also teaches in the areas of urban regeneration and conservation, with a focus on quality of life, public space improvement, and the adaptive reuse of historic buildings. He holds a master’s degree in architecture from the Tehran University and a PhD from the Newcastle University, UK. Maharina Jafrin is a PhD student in School of Architecture and Build Environment of Deakin University, Australia. Her research interest is on ‘Developing an open space standard in a densely populated city: A case study of Chittagong city’. She worked as an architect in Chittagong Development Authority for 10 years and was engaged with planning, urban design, landscape and architecture projects. She designed a number of parks, playground, and residential, commercial and community buildings. She completed her Bachelor of Architecture from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology and Master of Urban Design from University of Western Australia. Rohit Jigyasu is a conservation architect and risk management professional from India, currently at ICCROM as the Programme Officer at its regional centre in Sharjah. Since 2010, Rohit has been the UNESCO Chair holder professor at the Institute for Disaster Mitigation of Urban Cultural Heritage at Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, Japan. He was the elected President of ICOMOS-India from 2014 to 2018, and has been president of ICOMOS International Scientific Committee on Risk Preparedness (ICORP) since 2010. He has been the Elected Member of the Executive Committee of ICOMOS since 2011 and is currently serving as its Vice President for the period 2017–2020. Before joining ICCROM, he has worked with several national and international organizations on consultancy, research and training on disaster risk management of cultural heritage. David Jones is Foundation Professor of Planning and Landscape Architecture at Deakin University. A former Honorary Secretary of Australia ICOMOS, he serves on ICOMOS’s Cultural Landscape Heritage and 20th Century Heritage International Scientific Committees, on both PIA’s and AILA’s National Education Committees, and has co-authored contributions to The Oxford Companion to Australian Gardens (2002), Designed Landscapes in South Australia (1997), Gardens in South Australia 1840–1940 (1998), Adelaide Park Lands & Squares Cultural Heritage Landscape Assessment (2007), Creating Healthy Places (2017), Indigenous Knowledge in the Built Environment (2018), and the Routledge Handbook to Landscape and Food (2018). Neil Khor is a social historian; founding director of the George Town Grants Programme for urban regeneration; and now Special Advisor to the Executive Director, UN-Habitat. He was Programme Director of Think City, a subsidiary of Khazanah Nasional, the investment holding arm of the Malaysian Government, and led a multi-disciplinary team to deliver historic downtown regeneration projects in Kuala Lumpur and Johor Bahru. He was also the Secretary of the George Town Conservation and Development Corporation, a tripartite organization between the Penang State Government, Think City and the Aga Khan Trust for Culture. He is Associated Scholar at the Centre for South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge, from where he received a doctorate, and Vice President of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. Sung-Kyun Kim is a Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Seoul National University, Korea. He received his PhD in City and Regional Planning and master’s degrees in Landscape Architecture and Arts from the University of Pennsylvania, USA. He is currently the Chair of Cultural Landscape Committee, International Federation of Landscape Architects. He was the Founding President of Asian Cultural Landscape Association and President of Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture and Korean Society of Rural Planning. His research focuses on cultural landscape and landscape design. His recent publication includes Winding River Village: Poetics of a Korean Landscape (ACLA Press, 2016).

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Vaisali Krishna Kumar is a doctoral candidate in architecture at the University of Kansas, USA, specializing in the twentieth-century heritage of India. Her research on modern heritage focuses on formulating a framework that would include criteria for identification and assessment of heritage sites and their authenticity, future strategies for research and awareness building, and review mechanism for the existing conservation policies in India. She completed her Bachelor of Architecture from the National Institute of Technology, Calicut, India, and Master’s in Architecture (Architectural Conservation) from the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi, India. Sarvesh Kumar is an Assistant Professor in Geography at D.D.U. Gorakhpur University, Gorakhpur, India. He specializes in the study of cultural landscapes and heritagescapes of holy cities in India, and has widely published and presented papers on these subjects at several international seminars. Being a member of ICOMOS, ACLA and other institutions he is involved in heritage conservation programmes. Junheng Lai is a graduate student of landscape architecture at the Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, China. Her research focuses on the Historic Urban Landscape approach, with a specific reference to natural heritage protection in urban areas. Julie Williams Lawless received a Master of City and Regional Planning from Clemson University and a PhD in Architecture from the University of Kansas, USA. Her research focuses on the use of value systems at the intersection of users and the built environment. Drawing on a career in historic preservation, her research looks at value-based planning and design in sustainable, well-being, and heritage environments. She has published work in the Journal of Heritage Management, Journal of the International Society of Vernacular Settlements, and the Journal of Space and Communication. She currently consults and teaches at the University of Kansas. William Logan is Professor Emeritus at Deakin University and fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia. He was formerly UNESCO Chair of Heritage and Urbanism, member of the Victorian Heritage Council and President of Australia ICOMOS. He co-edits the Routledge ‘Key Issues in Cultural Heritage’ book series and co-edited Wiley-Blackwell’s Companion to Heritage Studies (2015). Anila Naeem is a Professor and Chairperson at the Department of Architecture and Planning, N.E.D. University of Engineering and Technology, Karachi, Pakistan. Her research focus includes the development of a method for assessing historic built traditions, taking historic towns (in Sindh) and historic districts (Karachi) as case studies. Dr Naeem has served in various executive and technical committees, including ICOMOS Pakistan and Heritage Advisory Committee (Sindh, Pakistan). Her recent publications include a book titled Urban Traditions and Historic Environments in Sindh: A Fading Legacy of Shikarpoor, Historic City published by Amsterdam University Press (April 2017). Mandy Nicholson is a Wurundjeri woman; an artist, linguist and dancer; a PhD student at Deakin University researching ‘On-Country Off-Country’ relationships of the Gunditjmara peoples; and a Director of Tharangalk Art, residing on Wurundjeri Country. Jyoti Pandey Sharma is a Professor in Architecture at Deenbandhu Chhotu Ram University of Science and Technology, Murthal (Haryana), India. She received a doctorate from De Montfort University, Leicester, UK. She engages with built heritage and cultural landscape issues of the Indian Subcontinent’s legacy of Islamic and Colonial urbanism and has published widely. She has been a Summer Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library & Collections, Harvard University, USA in the Garden and Landscape Studies programme and a University Grants Commission Associate at Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, India.

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Nihal Perera is Professor of Urban Planning at Ball State University, USA. The two-time Fulbright Scholar (China and Myanmar) was also Senior Research Fellow at the National University of Singapore and Melting Pot Fellow at KMITL, Thailand. The founder and director of CapAsia, a well-acclaimed immersive-semester in Asia, Perera has received three Fulbright-Hays awards and a Graham Foundation award. His research on social space focuses on spaces that ordinary people produce for daily activities and cultural practices, so, indigenizing, feminizing, and familiarizing cities. A primary contributor to the field of postcolonial urban studies, his books include Decolonizing Ceylon, Transforming Asian Cities, and People’s Spaces. Amanda Rajapakse is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Architecture, University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. She obtained an MSc (Architecture) degree from the University of Moratuwa and the MA (Architecture) degree from the National University of Singapore. Her research interests are on sustainable heritage conservation and management. She is currently pursuing doctoral studies in the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. Pravin S. Rana is an Assistant Professor in Tourism Management at Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India, and has published and presented papers on the issues of cultural tourism and pilgrimages. His published work includes Tourism Geography (2006) and Pilgrimage Tourism (2014). Mahbub Rashid is a Professor in the School of Architecture and Design at the University of Kanas. He uses innovative spatial and social network, fractal, and statistical analysis along with more traditional research methods and methodologies to study the effects of built form and space on human behaviour, psychology, society and culture in office, healthcare, and urban environments. His book The Geometry of Urban Layouts, published by Springer Science (2016), compares more than one hundred cities around the world using rigorously defined metrics for such important urban qualities as accessibility, complexity, continuity, compactness, and granularity. Dennis Rodwell is an independent researcher and consultant architect-planner. He works internationally in the field of cultural heritage and sustainable urban development, focused on the promotion and achievement of best practice in the management of the broadly defined historic environment. Previously a principal in private architectural practice, he has also served in local government posts as architect, conservation officer, urban designer, principal planner and project manager. He writes and publishes widely on the theme of conservation and sustainability in historic cities. Further information including a bibliography of publications may be found on www.dennisrodwell.co.uk. Kapila D. Silva is an Associate Professor at the School of Architecture and Design of the University of Kansas, USA. He has taught at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA, from which he received a doctorate in architecture, and at the University of Moratuwa in Sri Lanka, from which he received professional training in architecture. He is the lead editor of Asian Heritage Management: Contexts, Concerns and Prospects (Routledge, 2013) and Cultural Landscapes of South Asia: Studies in Heritage Conservation and Management (Routledge, 2017). Rana P.B. Singh has been a Professor of Cultural Landscapes and Heritage Studies at Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India, and has published extensively on the issues of sacred landscapes, heritage and pilgrimages based on his studies in north India, and also field studies in Japan, Sweden, Italy and Korea, which include 41 books and over 300 papers. Amita Sinha was a Visiting Professor in the Department of Architecture and Regional Planning, IIT Kharagpur (2018–19) and taught in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign from 1989–2018. She is the author of Landscapes in India: Forms and Meanings (2006, reprint 2011) and has edited Landscape Perception: Readings in Environmental Psychology

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(1995), Delhi’s Natural Heritage (2009), and Cultural Landscapes of South Asia: Studies in Heritage Conservation and Management (2017). Anita Smith is a Lecturer in Archaeology at La Trobe University, Australia, a member of Australia’s World Heritage Committee delegation and an advisor to the UNESCO World Heritage programme in the Pacific Islands. Her research focus is the cultural landscapes and heritage of Pacific Island communities. Manu P. Sobti is a historian on Islamic architecture and urbanism. He is a Senior Lecturer of Architecture at the University of Queensland, Australia, and previously taught at the School of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA. He has a BDiplArch from the School of Architecture – CEPT (Ahmedabad, India), an SMarchS from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, USA), and a PhD from the College of Architecture, Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta, USA). His recent explorations have focused on the urban histories of early-medieval Islamic cities along the Silk Road and the Indian Subcontinent, with specific reference to the complex ‘borderland geographies’ created by riverine landscapes. John C. Stallmeyer is an Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, where he teaches the history of architectural theory and studio. His research interests focus on contemporary production and consumption of global urbanism and the influence of information and communications technology (ICT). He is the author of Building Bangalore (Routledge, 2010) and the co-author of Inconvenient Heritage (Left Coast Press, 2010). Ken Taylor AM is Honorary Professor, Centre for Heritage & Museum Studies, Research School of Humanities and Arts, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia; Emeritus Professor of Landscape Architecture, University of Canberra; and Visiting Professor, International Program Architectural Heritage Management & Tourism, Silpakorn University, Bangkok. He has published nationally and internationally on changing global perspectives on cultural heritage management and cultural landscapes, including latterly with reference to the Historic Urban Landscape approach. He is a regular visitor to Asia and has lectured in various countries: China (including WHITRAP, Shanghai), India, Vietnam, Indonesia, Japan in addition to Thailand. Sudarshan Raj Tiwari received his PhD from the Tribhuvan University, Nepal, after studying architecture and planning at the Universities of Delhi and Hawaii. He retired as Professor of Architecture at the Tribhuvan University, where he taught for over forty years. He has also consulted with ADB, UNDP, and World Bank on project planning and supervision in education, health and environment sectors. He has written research publications on history of Nepali architecture, urbanism and culture, including the books The Ancient Settlements of Kathmandu Valley (2001), The Brick and The Bull (2001) and Temples of the Nepal Valley (2009). Yushi Utaka is Professor at the University of Hyogo, Japan. His research interests are in Asian urbanism with a special focus on built environments and cultural diversity. He has been conducting field research in Southeast Asia for the past 30 years. He was researcher at the University Science Malaysia in Penang State in 1995–1996 and 2001–2003, and at the National University of Singapore in 2001. He has a doctorate from the Kyoto University and has taught at the Hiroshima University. He is involved in heritage management projects in the Asian region under the auspices of national and international organizations. Ona Vileikis is an architect and heritage specialist, with ample work and research experience abroad. She is currently research fellow at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London (UCL) and postdoctoral researcher at Carleton Immersive Media Studio (CIMS) at Carleton University. Ona

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holds a PhD in Engineering Science: Civil Engineering, University of Leuven, and a MA in World Heritage Studies, BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg. She has collaborated with local professionals, government officials and UNESCO in the fields of capacity building and consulting with regard to the UNESCO 1972 World Heritage Convention and the Historic Urban Landscape approach, documentation, monitoring and digital technology, risk management, heritage policies and conservation practices. Dr Vileikis has been appointed as the ICOMOS GA2020 Scientific Symposium International Co-chair and is Executive Committee Member of the ICOMOS Scientific Committee CIPA Heritage Documentation. Ona is active advisor to the Silk Roads World Heritage nomination. Kai Weise is a Nepali national of Swiss origin and received his Master’s in Architecture from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich. He works as a planner and architect in the Himalayan Region, lectures in universities in Asia and Europe, and writes regularly for publications on architecture, planning and heritage management. As a UNESCO consultant, he has facilitated the establishment of management systems for World Heritage properties of Kathmandu Valley and Lumbini, Nepal; Samarkand, Uzbekistan; Mountain Railways of India; and Bagan, Myanmar. He developed the response and rehabilitation strategy for the culture sector after the 2015 Gorkha Earthquake and the 2016 Chauk Earthquake in Myanmar. He is President of ICOMOS Nepal and Fellow of the Institute of Advance Studies, Durham University. Jeremy C. Wells is an Assistant Professor in the Historic Preservation Programme at the University of Maryland at College Park, USA, and a Fulbright scholar. His research explores how people perceive and are affected by patina and decay in the built environment; the intersection between critical heritage studies and rules, laws, and regulations; heritage behaviour, including the language everyday people use to describe old places; and the development of applied social science and participatory methodologies that can be used by heritage practitioners. Punto Wijayanto is a Lecturer at the Department of Architecture, Faculty of Civil Engineering and Planning, University of Trisakti in Jakarta, Indonesia. He is also active as a member of the Board of Directors of the Indonesian Heritage Trust (BPPI), an organization aiming at strengthening and assisting heritage conservation in Indonesia. He is also a resource person for Heritage City Programme (P3KP) organized by the Ministry of Public Works and Public Housing since 2012. Since 2017, he has been a member of Jakarta’s Heritage Committee. His interests are in the fields of heritage city management and planning.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank many colleagues who have directly or indirectly contributed to this volume on urban heritage issues in the Asia-Pacific region. David Jones at the Deakin University and Tim Winter at the University of Western Australia connected me with several scholars who contributed chapters to the volume. Many of the contributing authors reviewed each other’s chapters and offered valuable feedback. In addition, my colleagues Neel Kamal Chapagain at the Ahmedabad University in India, Dilshan Remaz Ossen at the Kingdom University in Bahrain, and Farhan Karim, Marie Alice L’Heureux, Dale Nimz, and Amy Van de Riet at the University of Kansas also participated in reviewing chapters and providing insightful feedback. They all receive my sincere appreciation. I am most grateful to Professor Francesco Bandarin for his kind gesture in writing a foreword to the volume. Thanks are due to Grace Harrison, Sophie Robinson, Aoife McGrath, and Emily Collyer at Routledge for their great advice, support, and patience during the preparation of this volume. I appreciate the critical feedback received on the book proposal from four anonymous reviewers. I also extend my gratitude to Dylan Robert Baile, an architecture student at the University of Kansas, for meticulously preparing several illustrations and to Nyla Nicole Chaudhry, a language studies student at the University of Kansas, for her invaluable research assistance. Nyla’s assistance was facilitated by the Emerging Scholars initiative of the Center for Undergraduate Research at the university. The School of Architecture and Design at the University of Kansas supported the work with a Book Production Grant. I also thank Professor Marie Alice L’Heureux for her feedback on my introductory essay of the volume. Finally, I am thankful to all the contributing authors without whom the idea of this book would never have materialized. I hope that we will have opportunities to collaborate on other exciting and thoughtful projects in future.

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FOREWORD

The adoption of the UNESCO Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL Recommendation) in 2011 was a seminal moment. Eight years on, theoretical research, policy developments and practical experiences have been carried out in all regions of the world, shaping a new approach to urban conservation and opening up innovative perspectives for the interpretation and protection of urban heritage. This book is a major contribution to this collective effort. It fills a lacuna in the literature on the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) in particular and in urban conservation in general, by presenting diverse examples of situations, issues, challenges and directions for future research and policy innovation. Indeed, if any area of the world may benefit from a new approach to urban conservation, that is the Asia-Pacific region, with its incredibly rich and diverse urban heritage, and at the same time undergoing a fast and tumultuous demographic and economic development transformation, unparalleled in the world. Furthermore, its 37 chapters in six parts raise a series of key questions that will enrich the debate on urban conservation re-sparked by the adoption of the UN-Habitat III New Urban Agenda in 2016. Urban conservation policies are today, in all regions of the world, at a turning point. The adoption of the HUL Recommendation was the result of a long reflection on the existing ‘models’ as applied to urban heritage based on criteria for their conservation. In spite of the adoption by UNESCO of the 1976 Nairobi Recommendation and by ICOMOS of the 1987 Washington Charter, the gap existing between the system of international urban conservation principles and the realities observed on the ground – especially in the emerging regions of the world – was widening at an alarming speed. This was not simply due to the fact that since the adoption of the 1972 World Heritage Convention a number of new concepts, principles, categories and conservation guidelines had been introduced in the world of heritage conservation. It was because a greater awareness has emerged on the nature of urban heritage, on the relevance of the intangible component of urban life, as well as on the importance of integrating the natural environment in the heritage conservation policies. Undoubtedly, the Asia-Pacific region is an ideal laboratory for the development and implementation of this new approach. To begin with, the cultural relationship between Asian societies and the urban environment is radically different from the one encountered in Europe, the Americas, or the Arab world. The meaning of the urban space is often linked in Asia to stronger symbolic and geomantic relationships between the built and the natural environment. The great variety of situations and models of urban development in the Asian context is a great stimulus for the reflection xxii

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on some of the critical challenges that urban heritage is encountering today – and not only in Asia. This book offers a vast territory of experiences to frame this reflection and the future outlook. The chapters reflect the efforts dedicated to the identification of different ‘heritage types’ one encounters in the region, the understanding of the morphologies, of the relationship with the natural environment, and of the role played by local customary systems in the management of the historical environment. A dimension explored in depth in this book is the way the historical urban environment is perceived and valued by the local society. Here, more clearly than in the western contexts, the importance of the intangible dimension of urban heritage appears in a variety of forms: from the visual relationships (with human and natural elements) in the perception of the city to the sensorial aspects and to the role of urban rituals and sacred areas in the organization of the urban space. These ‘intangible’ dimensions require a special attention and adequate tools, like cultural mapping and a closer interaction with the local community: it is an innovative field of urban heritage study spearheaded by the HUL Recommendation, precisely to address the great diversity of urban experiences one finds in the different regions of the world. Another important dimension discussed in the book is the relationship of the indigenous societies with the urban environment. This aspect is paramount in many post-colonial societies, especially since many local societies have been able to assert or are in the process of asserting their rights, by developing their own post-colonial culture. Here the challenges are of great complexity: how to manage the relationship between colonial heritage and indigenous heritage; how to identify and value indigenous heritage; and how to deal with heritage of nomadic societies. All these issues require new tools of analysis and the development of a new approach, in line with the principles expressed in the HUL Recommendation. Finally, the book looks in depth at the key mechanisms of urban heritage conservation needed in the Asia-Pacific context, at their scopes and limits: from planning tools to inventory systems and from physical and cultural mapping processes to the complex link between conservation and development in rapidly moving societies. Here, the book offers many examples of the impacts linked to the increasing role of tourism, gentrification processes and displacements of the local population along with alterations to the physical environment for being more attractive for the real estate markets. The results of these analyses are indeed not reassuring: the development pressures, coupled with weak central and local policies and the lack of management tools constitute in many countries a real threat to the conservation of urban heritage. However, as many authors noticed, over and above the architectural preservation, a new awareness of the importance of urban heritage conservation is gradually emerging, even in contexts where urban development has in recent years obliterated the traces of the past. Reinforcing the urban conservation policies at the central and local level is indeed a primary goal of UNESCO’s HUL Recommendation and of the urban heritage policies developed in recent years. In 2016, on the occasion of the UN-Habitat III Conference held in Quito, Ecuador, UNESCO presented a thorough policy framework, resulting from a long global reflection and investigation on the state of urban heritage conservation in all regions of the world. This framework, summarized in the report Culture: Urban Future (UNESCO 2016), presents the first global analysis on the origin, nature and situation of urban heritage. The results of this analysis led to the development of a set of policies focused on the role of culture and heritage in sustainable urban development. These policies, articulated in three main areas of concern – People, Places and Policies – constitute an overall operational platform for the Member States and for the local communities. The HUL Recommendation anticipated many of the ideas, principles and policies proposed by UNESCO for the New Urban

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Agenda, now becoming part of a broader framework that embraces heritage as a vital component of the urban sustainable development processes. The contributions provided in this book will enrich the technical and policy debate on urban heritage conservation in the years to come by making available to the professionals and policy makers a vast field of experience and critical analysis. This will certainly benefit the current policy discussions in the Asia-Pacific context and beyond. Francesco Bandarin Director, UNESCO World Heritage Centre (2000–2010) Assistant Director-General of UNESCO for Culture (2010–2018)

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INTRODUCTION Reimagining the conservation of Historic Urban Landscapes in the Asia-Pacific Kapila D. Silva

Introduction Historic urban environments are being threatened by the myriad forces of global and ecological change, although these vital social, cultural, and economic assets can contribute to the regeneration and liveability of inhabited historic cities worldwide. The primary challenge in the protection and the use of this vital asset is in maintaining the crucial balance between the needs for curating urban heritage and the concerns for enhancing contemporary socio-economic life in cities. The authors of The Routledge Handbook on Historic Urban Landscapes in the Asia-Pacific (henceforth shortened to the Handbook) are scholars in the regional context and shed light on this balancing act of urban heritage management, focusing specifically on the AsiaPacific regions where these challenges are immanent, daunting, and in need of effective solutions. They take a critical look at the concept of Historic Urban Landscape (HUL), the approach that UNESCO promotes to achieve holistic management of urban heritage, through the lens of issues, prospects, and experiences of urban regeneration in this geo-cultural context. This work further discusses the difficult task that heritage managers encounter in conceptualizing, mapping, curating, and sustaining the plurality, poetics, and politics of urban heritage of the regions in question. The connective thesis that weaves the chapters in this volume together reinforces for readers that the management of urban heritage considers cities as dynamic entities, palimpsests of historical memories, collages of social diversity, territories of contested identities, and sites for sustainable liveability. The chapter authors argue for recognizing the totality of the ecocultural urban fabric, embracing change, building social cohesion, and initiating strategic socio-economic progress in the conservation of HULs. The geographical scope of this volume encompasses Central Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, East Asia, Australia, and the Pacific Islands. This expansive coverage of the Asia-Pacific region does not mean to say that the nations and the communities across the region widely share historical, cultural, socio-political and ecological affinities and that they are exceptional in some way and different than other regions of the world, and so their urban heritages and heritage management methods are similarly distinctive. Certain societies in the region, however, do share a degree of historical and social affinities, and, in some cases, heritage laws and management systems as well as concerns related to urban heritage with their neighbouring countries and communities. The selection of the contexts of Asia and the Pacific (in a hyphenated or combined manner) as the subject of this volume merely brings a focused scholarly attention to the urban heritage management issues in the region and does not make essentializing claims to an exclusive Asia-Pacific identity in urban heritage. The term Asia-Pacific is a convenient way to delineate the geographical scope of the volume and follows the generic and widely used clustering of countries for various purposes, including for the World Heritage nomination by UNESCO. Nevertheless, with long histories and rich cultural traditions,

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along with rapid urbanization and economic development, the societies and historic cities in the AsiaPacific provide a unique setting to explore the issues and ways of managing urban heritage to learn lessons on effective solutions that could be, in some form, globally useful and applicable as well.

The Historic Urban Landscape approach In 2011, UNESCO adopted the Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape, as a promising holistic approach to the conservation of historic urban areas worldwide (UNESCO 2011). The Recommendation was based on the global experiences of managing urban heritage sites and the emerging understanding of the complexity of issues and limitations of the conservation paradigm in the second half of the twentieth century. The impact of urbanization, globalization, environmental change and new development projects on the historic urban cores in Vienna, Cologne, St Petersburg, Kathmandu Valley, Melaka, George Town, and elsewhere brought the need to broaden heritage conservation thinking and practices to forefront (Bandarin and van Oers 2012; Turner 2013). The HUL approach was initially developed as the Vienna Memorandum to lay out a set of principles on integrating contemporary architecture within historic urban environments (UNESCO 2005) and was based on the principles of the Integrated Territorial and Urban Conservation programme, developed by ICCROM in the 1990s (Turner 2013) and of a long evolutionary process of modern planning and conservation guidelines (Bandarin 2019; Jokilehto 2015). The Recommendation is linked to and supported by the UNESCO World Heritage Convention and a host of other UN documents, ICOMOS charters, UNESCO recommendations, and EU documents (Bandarin 2019; UNESCO 2011; van Oers 2007). The HUL Recommendation defines a Historic Urban Landscape ‘as the result of a historic layering of cultural and natural values and attributes, extending beyond the notion of “historic centre” or “ensemble” to include the broader urban context and its geographical setting’ (UNESCO 2011: 2). The wider context includes all the attributes of the natural setting and of the built environment, land use patterns, visual–spatial relationships, social and cultural practices and values, economic processes, and intangible heritage. This expansive definition is aimed at engendering ‘a comprehensive and integrated approach for the identification, assessment, conservation and management of HULs within an overall sustainable development framework’ (ibid.: 2). The HUL approach accepts socio-physical change as an inherent part of urban settings and aims to provide the tools to integrate heritage conservation with socio-economic development in a balanced and sustainable manner. The Recommendation expects countries to adopt the appropriate legislative institutional framework and measures to apply the norms and principles outlined in the Recommendation within their own territories. Because of the swift growth in the social, economic, and physical realms of historic cities, there is the need for improved planning and conservation policies and practices that are potent in addressing dynamic urban change and future uncertainties. The policy improvements also call for ways to bring urban conservation into general policy planning, the establishment of public–private partnerships, and participatory approaches to urban management. To facilitate an effective application of the HUL approach, the Recommendation proposes to develop a range of tools under the rubric of civic engagement, knowledge and planning, regulatory purposes, and financial support. Civic engagement tools envisage involving a diverse cross-section of stakeholders to empower them to define key heritage values and socio-economic goals in their urban areas and to develop and agree upon visions and actions to safeguard heritage and promote sustainable development. The knowledge and planning tools support the safeguarding of authenticity and the integrity of urban heritage, and therefore include instruments and methods for the comprehensive documentation of all dimensions of urban heritage, heritage values, monitoring and management mechanisms, and techniques for assessing the social and environmental impact of development activities on heritage. Tools for legislative and regulatory measures aim to guide the conservation and management of urban heritage along with integrated plans for socioeconomic progress. These tools are expected to reflect local conditions and adapt and reinforce

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Introduction

traditional and customary systems for heritage management. The financial tools are needed for capacity building and economic development and to foster both public-private partnerships and private investment in heritage conservation. The Recommendation highlights the significance of building capacities in all stakeholders, research on the complexity of urban settlements, the use of innovative technologies to document and communicate this urban complexity, and international cooperation in the application of the HUL approach (O’Donnell 2015; UNESCO 2011). To implement the HUL approach, a set of six critical steps has been proposed (UNESCO 2013, 2016). These steps are: (1) undertaking comprehensive surveys and mapping the city’s natural, cultural, and human resources; (2) reaching consensus with the use of participatory planning and stakeholder consultations to determine conservation goals and actions; (3) assessing vulnerability of urban heritage to the impact of socio-economic stresses and climate change; (4) devising an integrated urban planning and conservation strategy to integrate heritage values and their risks within a wider framework; (5) prioritizing actions for conservation and development; and (6) establishing appropriate partnerships, local management frameworks, and mechanisms for the coordination of various activities between different agencies. The HUL approach is so far the ‘most complex and encompassing of all heritage concepts’ (ReyPérez and González-Martínez 2018: 112). However, the concept of HUL is not a new category of heritage, nor does it intend to replace existing conservation doctrines and principles (Turner 2013). It is rather a method to provide a supportive framework for the integrative management of different types of heritage. Its ‘use of the word “landscape” as the operative noun’ (Taylor 2016: 478) indicates that the concept of heritage has been understood as a dynamic entity, both physically and socially, concerned with human experiences occurring in a larger ecological context. Borrowing from the cultural landscape paradigm, the HUL model looks for a coordinated method of managing natural/cultural and tangible/intangible forms of heritage in urban settings while acknowledging the interdependent and interconnected nature of these heritage dimensions (Taylor 2016). The HUL Recommendation moves conservation thinking from an object-centric focus to a context-centric platform, from a static and preserved monument to a living city, and it recognizes socio-physical change as inevitable and integrative and interdisciplinary approaches to urban planning and heritage conservation as desirable. The HUL approach, therefore, reflects a shift of orthodox thinking in heritage conservation from its ‘aesthetic bias’ based on an ‘antiquarian approach’ to an ‘ecological bias’ based on a sustainable approach, in which objects, places, people, and processes are in an evolving symbiotic interrelationship (Smith 2015a: 183–185; Taylor 2016). Turner (2013: 78) reminds us that ‘this integrative attitude is surely the spirit of the Recommendation’. More importantly, as a tool for managing urban change, the HUL approach recognizes the cultural diversity of different contexts and, as such, it ‘is intended to support new practices and updated tools, rather than provide definitive answers, … in fact [it is] a new type of instrument, flexible and evolving’ (Bandarin and van Oers 2012: 191). The success of the HUL approach relies on the resolve and capacity of the countries to accept and implement the Recommendation with necessary policy revisions, tool development, resource allocation, coordination, and public participation ensured. This probably has been the most prevalent challenge in the implementation of the HUL approach. Rey-Pérez and González-Martínez (2018) mention that the Recommendation is generally unknown, which prevents the development of shared knowledge on the best practices of urban conservation across countries. This situation is true in the context of most countries in the Asia-Pacific region. Even if the HUL approach is known, the lack of political will as well as the necessary processes and resources to develop and apply the approach are certainly reasons for disinterest in the Recommendation. In some historic urban areas, an effective use of the HUL approach may even be too late to make any beneficial change to the damage caused to the urban heritage due to urban renewal and misguided conservation practices. The places where arcane policymaking processes are the norm will require more time to make their urban conservation and planning polices align with the Recommendation.

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Associated with these issues is the challenge of integrating planning and conservation polices, local practices, and governing agencies together. The governance structures in most Asian and Pacific countries designate urban planning, heritage protection, tourism, economic development, forestry, and other subjects as foci pertinent to an integrated management of urban heritage to various national and local authorities, which mostly operate independently of each other mandated either by constitutional parameters or normative governance culture. This deficiency in inter-agency coordination is a critical condition that prevents reaching an integrative effort for heritage-development outcome – one of the key principles of the HUL approach. Related to this is the absence of interdisciplinary cooperation at the professional level in the heritage field, urban planning, and related domains (Rodwell 2018). Another challenge is stakeholder participation in the decision-making process of planning and conservation. Most countries in the Asia-Pacific operate within centralized, top-down governmental systems without much opportunity for meaningful public participation. These systems certainly do not have effective civic engagement tools in hand nor the experience to entice useful community involvement. In most situations, public-private partnerships in heritage conservation are non-existent. The realization of the need for greater civic engagement in local governance and transition into a decentralized system are, however, gradually emerging in the region. In this context, a complete exploration of the HUL approach widely across the Asia-Pacific will take a longer time. The viability of the HUL approach can only be attained when there is a greater participation of all stakeholders in the policymaking. Perhaps, the HUL approach itself could be the catalyst for transforming policymaking practices in the region. Rey-Pérez and González-Martínez (2018: 111) identify several other trials in the application of the Recommendation, which are also common to the context of the Asia-Pacific. They caution that stakeholder participation in the definition of heritage authenticity could have a negative impact on the authenticity of urban heritage, if such determination is based on a shared vision that could change over time. The integration of historic urban areas to its wider geographical context could also pose difficulty in the delimitation of protective heritage areas, halting regional administration and development. Managing the vast quantities of data gained from the comprehensive mapping of the city’s natural, cultural and human resources requires complex technology, tools, and expertise that are certainly not readily available in most cases. Investment in such data management systems also demands the allocation of limited capital that has other priorities. In addition, reviewing literature on the HUL approach, Ginzarly, Houbart, and Teller (2018) find that the academic discourse on the approach is heavily focused on heritage values, but an operationalization of a values-based approach within the framework of the HUL concept is still missing and is not fully contextualized to local discourses and urban heritage governance. They conclude that the transition of the HUL approach from international guidelines to local contexts remains a challenge. As the Handbook reflects on the status of urban conservation in the Asia-Pacific, it is painfully clear that the HUL approach has not yet taken root in the region eight years after its adoption. As mentioned in the HUL Guidebook (UNESCO 2016), several sites are in some ways implementing aspects of the Recommendation. In Reshaping urban conservation, Pereira Roders and Bandarin (2019) reflect on the progress of the HUL approach in action. Across twenty-eight case studies, with seven from the Asia-Pacific region, they find that, while there is an interest to implement the HUL Recommendation worldwide, a significant gap exists between the HUL goals and the actions taken so far. In reviewing a large number of historic cities worldwide with forty-two of them from the Asia-Pacific region, Pereira Roders (2019) finds that most of those that explore the HUL approach carry out only a few activities related to the six critical steps outlined in the HUL Recommendation or develop some tools, mostly for civic engagement and knowledge and planning. Most cases undertake comprehensive surveys of heritage resources and integrate heritage values and vulnerabilities into a wider planning and development framework. The assessment of the impact of socio-economic processes and climate change on urban heritage and the formation of appropriate partnerships and local management frameworks are the least applied steps. Some at least refer to the HUL Recommendation, even if they are not actively working on it.

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Introduction

This global context of the varied interests in the HUL Recommendation is similarly apparent in the case studies presented in the Handbook. Some have barely heard of the HUL approach, and some have just begun to consider its application in their historic urban areas. Caballero and Pereira Roders (2014) characterize this situation as a validation of the assumption that the HUL approach is not a new tool but an evolution of knowledge in heritage management. The chapters in this volume, therefore, are not about a comprehensive review of the application of the HUL approach per se. They are rather about the current condition of urban conservation in the Asia-Pacific region, observed through the broader lens provided by the HUL Recommendation, to explore the issues and prospects of urban heritage management and for which how the HUL approach could be of influential guidance. This volume, therefore, certainly is a significant contribution to the body of research needed to assess the use of the approach in the Asia-Pacific context.

The discursive themes of this volume The content of the Handbook is organized under six broad discursive themes as they are centrally pertinent to the management of HULs in the Asia-Pacific region. Part I of the volume, ‘Conceptualizing Historic Urban Landscapes’, focuses on the need for a broader conceptual and theoretical framework for understanding multiple dimensions of urban heritage in the Asia-Pacific region. Chapters in Part II, ‘Mapping tangible urban heritage’, discuss some experiences of documenting and studying the tangible attributes of urban heritage in the Asia-Pacific context. Part III, ‘Safeguarding intangible urban heritage’, is dedicated to a discussion of how some forms of intangible heritage define and enliven HULs in Asia and ways to safeguard them. Part IV, ‘Fostering Sustainable Urban Heritage’, explores the issues of urban-heritage sustainability through several lenses – management systems, regulatory intent and practices, sustainable urbanism, disaster resiliency, and alternative paradigms for development. Part V reflects ways of ‘Localizing heritage stewardship’. The final part, ‘Assessing urban heritage policies’, reflects critically on existing policies and practices of urban heritage management in several Asia-Pacific countries to provide an understanding of the complexity of urban conservation in the region. These discursive themes recur in all chapters in some form, highlighting their ubiquity to all heritage sites. Urban heritage management relies on addressing them all in a responsive manner.

Part I: Conceptualizing Historic Urban Landscapes The complex histories and current dynamics of historic cities in the Asia-Pacific region require a rethinking of existing paradigms and innovative new frameworks to comprehend the nature, concerns, and prospects of their urban heritage. UNESCO’s Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape attempts to reshape the way we practiced urban conservation, while broadening the way we conceptualize historic environments from a monument-centric view of urban heritage to cities as evertransforming ecosystems of natural, cultural, social, and economic entities and processes. Urban heritage consists of multiple layers of histories with diverse interpretations, ownership claims, and dispossessions and sanitization of certain histories. Beneath the dominant narratives of its history, undoubtedly exist untold, subversive, and ignored stories to tell and conserve. Furthermore, the safeguarding of heritage of historic cities is no longer envisioned in isolation from the pressing needs for their socio-economic development. The subject of heritage is thus inherently a complex endeavour, requiring expansive vantage points (Bharney and Sandmeier 2019). The chapters in Part I remind us of the need for a broader conceptual and theoretical framework for understanding multiple dimensions of urban heritage in the Asia-Pacific which could lead to developing effective approaches for its management. The HUL Recommendation defines a historic urban area as the result of the historic layering of cultural and natural values and attributes (UNESCO 2011). In Chapter 1, ‘Cities: palimpsests of cultural memory and their management’, William Logan focuses on the historical layers of cities, arguing that a fundamental

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principle of urban heritage management should respect the multiple layers of cultural memory embodied in historic cities. The chapter asserts that, except for very few examples, today’s cities grew over time and so they are palimpsests – manuscripts through which earlier texts keep resurfacing. This layering of cultural memories gives cities their richness and unique character. The chapter points out that, however, heritage conservation in some cities attempts to return the historic centres to some supposedly untroubled time in the past, to represent either a deliberate distortion of history or a mythical past based on ideological and/or commercial intents. Using six case studies drawn from the contrasting contexts of Vietnam and Australia, Logan shows how cycles of creation, demolition, modification and/or replacement constitute the cultural layering processes through which today’s urban palimpsests have been created. Grounded on the layered cultural memories of the case studies, he draws out several key issues pertinent for urban conservation: What should happen to old structures if their original purpose is no longer valid? Should they be removed disregarding their historic interest or value? Do heritage control mechanisms limit the opportunity to create a new layer of memory of the present? To what extent must traditional places and practices be sacrificed to achieve ‘progress’? And, who should make decisions about these issues? Logan cautions us that an inclusive decision-making process specific to the given locale and cultural context is imperative to navigate these difficult issues in safeguarding the layered memories of urban heritage. As previously mentioned, the theories around the notion of cultural landscape broadened the thinking on historic cities and their conservation, shifting the overtly object-centric focus towards realizing urban heritage as a collective of complex and dynamic natural and cultural processes to ensure its future sustainability. In Chapter 2, ‘The ideology of the urban cultural landscape construct’, Ken Taylor projects the concept of cultural landscapes into the realm of historic urban areas in the context of the Historic Urban Landscape paradigm. Taylor provides a broad conceptualization of HULs that act as a tool to address the management of their change through the theoretical lenses of culture and landscape. The chapter first takes a historical overview of how, during the late 1980s and the early 1990s, academic and professional interest in heritage studies started to embrace the construct of cultural landscape. The realization of ‘landscape’ as a document of social history, the significance of the intangibility of heritage, and the importance of cultural diversity and values helped to adapt the culturallandscape paradigm for heritage conservation and eventually for the HUL approach, further facilitated by international heritage-related charters and documents. The chapter then reflects on how these realizations are relevant to the thinking and practice of urban heritage management in three Asian cases of differing urban scales – Hongkou District in Shanghai, China, Vigan in the Philippines, and Bang Luang in Thailand. The case studies pose several questions relevant to historic urban areas worldwide. Considering that change is inevitable, what are acceptable levels of change in historic cities? Could the notions of authenticity and values of heritage evolve over time? Is all gentrification unacceptable? And, how can or should local vitality and resilience be enhanced in historic districts? Taylor recommends some steps to help balance heritage conservation with desired development that include: encouraging a comprehensive cultural mapping process to guide heritage planning; facilitating collaboration between local government and community to initiate participatory planning; and ensuring that the economic development does not overwhelm community core values, ways of life and main occupations. An expansive reading of historic cities in the Asia-Pacific, especially through the lens of the landscape concept, requires seeing the connections between the natural and the cultural and the vernacular ways various cultures adapted the landscape to create urban settlements. In Chapter 3, ‘Conserving Asia’s vernacular water urbanisms’, Vinayak Bharne draws attention to the importance of understanding the urban form and culture through the irrigational infrastructure established to sustain life in historic cities and of the need for conserving such hydrological heritage. He notes that numerous pre-industrial and indigenous landscapes are gaining attention today as didactic models for contemporary design. Many such places, particularly in less-developed societies, are fragile natural ecologies, facing an uncertain future due to unpredictable political forces and ambiguous management. This renewed focus on vernacular places

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displays an increasing ethical imperative of environmental protection. Bharne argues that conservation priorities should be on the ecological dimensions of a place and accompanying socio-cultural aspects rather than on a monument or artefact. His chapter, therefore, examines the challenges underlying the conservation of vernacular urbanisms in the Asia-Pacific region, and overviews interrelated elements that form part of this larger discourse. The chapter focuses on three ‘water urbanisms’: (1) the Hiti water system of Nepal; (2) the Banaue Rice Terraces in the Philippines; and (3) the Polders of Bangladesh. The presence and formal characteristics of these examples arise from the need to collect, harvest or distribute water, and has imbibed in each of them distinct intertwined social and economic dimensions. His choice of these three examples is deliberate on several grounds: They are from different nations in the AsiaPacific region and from different ecological conditions. This helps offer insights into the overlaps and differences between their historic trajectories as well as their current administrative and governance structures – aspects that are crucial to any discussion on the future of these places. The complex cultural geographies in the Asia-Pacific necessitate new historiographical frameworks to unpack their multi-layered memories and socio-political factors to formulate more informed approaches for their heritage conservation. In Chapter 4, Manu Sobti interrogates the continuing suitability of past frameworks, definitions and management plans that pervade the approaches applied to the Central Asian region. His chapter, ‘Re-imagining Eurasia: past Flatland stories of urban and landscape heritage’, notes that Central Asia or Eurasia is a unique cultural terrain, with multiple layers of embedded histories and recurring contradictions between the past, present and foreseeable future. As a place where multiple cultural contacts occurred, it remains among the last surviving, truly vast and relatively undisturbed cultural geographies with its inter-connected populations that have continued to live in what may be best defined as ‘multiple times’. Similarly, Eurasia’s shifting geo-politics, arbitrary borders and borderlands, and concomitant cultural developments remain incompletely reconciled, even in the modern era. His chapter critically re-visits Eurasia’s significance in UNESCO’s broad gamut of ‘cultural landscape categories’ to examine arguments towards enlarging these largely ‘formal’ approaches with the multiple Stans, to include ‘space-time’ historical moments emerging from genuine regional and/or nation-state narratives as cultural patrimonies preserved for posterity. With its specific insights on Eurasia’s historic and ongoing assimilation of nomadic, quasi-nomadic and sedentary populations, the chapter offers revisions on how the terms ‘urban’ and ‘landscape’ would need substantial rewriting to critically include the layers of intangible and mobile histories that were at the core of this cultural landscape. Within this purview of modified historiography, Sobti examines the roles the historic artefacts, linkages and choreographies may play within these new historical narratives and for whom these new histories would be written. The practice of heritage conservation has been an expert-driven approach in which everyday people who were not conventionally trained in some aspect of history, aesthetics, or technology play no significant role. This expert-centric paradigm and the heritage-related conventions collectively form hegemonic thinking in heritage conservation that for the most part disregarded the plurality in the idea of heritage, what Laurajane Smith calls ‘Authorised Heritage Discourse’ (Smith 2006). Emerging critical studies in heritage now call for rethinking the role of the expert and the non-expert in heritage management, particularly for the Asia-Pacific context (Silva 2017). In Chapter 5 of this volume, ‘Human aspects of historic urban environments’, Jeremy Wells argues for developing people-centred approaches to urban heritage conservation, acknowledging that the primary beneficiaries of the recognition, treatment, and protection of older places are the very ordinary people who live and work in those places, in some cases, have for generations. The chapter recommends that recognizing everyday people as ‘civil experts’ – in the context of historic places – is an essential step in understanding the human aspects of historic urban environments. Differentiating between ‘historic’ and ‘not historic’ from an ordinary perspective compared to conventionally trained experts is essential. To acknowledge everyday people as civil experts is to respect their knowledge and to treat them as equals to conventional experts. To place this issue in context, Wells briefly outlines the central features of orthodox thinking

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in heritage management to argue that this thinking is a matter of professional culture rather than a matter of scientific objectivity in heritage conservation. Wells then discusses heritage from the perspective of civil experts, followed by specific case studies illustrating human-centred conservation research and practice in the Asia-Pacific region. The chapter argues for the importance of situational knowledge in local contexts, bringing the views of conventional experts and civil experts together to establish a better understanding for and conservation of heritage places. Developing a broader understanding of urban heritage in its plurality of cultural memories, readings, and associated values unmistakably requires a critical reflection on the validity of the conceptual frameworks adopted to study the history of places and peoples. Nihal Perera, in Chapter 6, looks at heritage conservation in the Asia-Pacific from a vantage point of postcolonial studies, and questions how Asian societies connect the past and the present together when Asian histories are still stuck in colonial frameworks compared to when Asian cities are grounds for multiple interpretations and claims to history. His chapter, ‘Historic landscapes in rapidly transforming Asian cities: contestations, commodification, and learning from grounded observations’, cautions us that Asia’s take on history, conservation, and the way historic landscapes are incorporated into present-day urban environments is somewhat unsettling. He critiques most Asian societies for following a development model borrowed from the West in their search for modernization and economic prosperity that undervalues their own cultures, histories, landscapes, and potential futures. The outcome of this process has been the erasure of much local heritage, social complexity, and richness in the portrayal of present-day cultures in favour of a global modernity. Perera delves into how history, tradition, and heritage are understood, adapted, and employed within organic and planned urban transformations in Asia and their impact on the sustenance of those cities’ urban heritage. Questioning the hegemonic heritage discourses and their Eurocentric roots, and building on pertinent literature and fieldwork, the chapter advocates for facilitating locally friendly ways of incorporating history and historic landscapes into the present. To remedy the problematic framework of Asian history, Perera recommends making basic and grounded observations in Asian locales (beyond larger categories of ‘traditional’ and ‘Modern’); theorizing rather than applying theories (as that would change the ground); and approaching the question at hand from the ground (rather than from outside) (Perera and Tang 2013).

Part II: Mapping tangible urban heritage The protection of urban heritage begins with the identification of what counts as heritage and why it is significant for local, national, and global communities. Heritage is defined through its geographical extent and concentration, historical periods, and corresponding layers of the environmental, physical and intangible attributes, urban form, architectural characteristics, specific monuments, as well as its associated values, meanings and perceptions. Analysis of the preservation of historic properties and their possible adaptations is also a part of such studies. The field of heritage conservation has been adept at mapping and inventorying these heritage attributes, especially the material attributes of heritage. The ‘collective mapping of cultural space, its hierarchies, symbolic language and associations’ have been identified as ‘first principles’ that are a pre-requisite for appropriate and successful conservation in the Asia-Pacific region (Engelhardt 2007: 3). Developing tools for documenting and mapping cultural and natural characteristics is also highlighted in the HUL Recommendation (Bandarin and van Oers 2012; Hosagrahar 2015; UNESCO 2011). The chapters in this part of the volume discuss the experience of mapping the tangible attributes of urban heritage in the Asia-Pacific context. The preparation of a detailed inventory of heritage properties is key to their heritage designation, the formation of regulatory and conservation mechanisms, and to set directions for activities such as heritage impact assessments and new development approvals. Incomplete heritage inventories cause severe problems in urban heritage management, leading to the exclusion of heritage properties from conservation

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consideration, faulty regulatory frameworks, and misguided destruction or development of assets. However, even with a well-crafted heritage inventory, similar outcomes could occur without other support mechanisms within the administrative system of historic cities. In the first chapter of Part II, ‘Evolution and repercussions of heritage designation process in Sindh, Pakistan: lessons from Karachi and Shikarpur’ (Chapter 8), Anila Naeem identifies the gaps that have led to ineffective implementation of the Sindh Cultural Heritage Preservation Act 1994 – the key statute for heritage protection within the province of Sindh, Pakistan. The law provided a legal base for heritage protection with over four thousand enlisted properties in Karachi, Shikarpur, and various other cities. An underlying objective of these heritage enlistments was to enact a cooperative arrangement between the government and property owners, facilitating the scientific management and appropriate conservation of designated heritage properties. Despite a well-developed heritage inventory (Naeem 2011, 2017), the outcomes did not achieve desirable results. Analysing the cases of Karachi and Shikarpur, Naeem identifies the recurring issues in most listed heritage properties including improper usage and space utilization, problems of ownership and occupancy, deficient maintenance and repair, delisting and demolitions, and plot subdivisions. Concerns at the macro urban level include the lack of infrastructure and services, inadequate street-space management, defacement of street-profiles/façades, and imbalanced activity patterns. Naeem lays out some directions for the mitigation of these issues including providing fiscal incentives and technical support to property owners, facilitating heritage advocacy and awareness building, and sponsoring heritage-centred public events to instil interest within the community for heritage protection. In addition to heritage properties, the overall urban form of historic cities evokes a distinctive sense of place that is part of the tangible attribute of urban heritage. Analysing multiple dimensions of the urban form should, therefore, be a part of the mapping exercises of tangible urban heritage. Contemporary theories in urban design suggest that an urban form could be studied in terms of morphological, perceptual, social, visual, functional, temporal, and symbolic dimensions (Carmona et al. 2003; Rapoport 1990; Silva 2011, 2015). There also are many methods and tools available for such studies. In Chapter 8, ‘Urban morphology and Historic Urban Landscape management: The case of Kolkata, India’, Mahbub Rashid demonstrates the use of two such tools of urban form analysis – town plan analysis and space syntax. His chapter briefly describes the concepts, methods and measures of these two tools and apply some of these ideas to the historic core of Kolkata in West Bengal, India, illustrating the usefulness of these approaches for the understanding and management of HULs. The chapter uses town-plan analysis to trace the historical development of the city form showing its origin, growth, and how its various components are assembled to create a historically significant morphology. Rashid then employs space syntax to examine the changes in the structures of street networks of the city over time and the effects of these structural changes on the distribution of land use and landmarks in the city. He concludes that urban morphological studies can be a useful way to explore the processes of formation and transformation of historic cities and to formulate appropriate strategies for their management. As the chapter illustrates, multiple methods of analysis should be conducted together to build a comprehensive understanding of the form and character of historic urban areas. An emerging discourse in heritage studies argues for shifting the focus of heritage conservation from the historic object to the way people experience, understand, and value heritage (Silva 2019; Wells and Stiefel 2019). To form such people-centred approaches to heritage conservation, studying how people experience and establish emotional connections with historic environments is essential. Many research methods and tools are available to map the perceptual, experiential, and affective dimensions of historic environments gleaned from people’s perspectives (Low 2002; Silva 2011, 2015; Wells and Stiefel 2019). Steven Cooke and Kristal Buckley introduce one such method – visual research methodology (VRM) – in their chapter titled ‘New methodologies for exploring sense of place in the Historic Urban Landscape’ (Chapter 9). The chapter highlights the importance of adopting technically oriented mechanisms to local heritage conservation to study the affective encounter between people and place.

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Visual research methodologies are useful in this connection as they link the visual and the sensory to examine more nuanced attachments to place. VRM approaches elicit the ways people perceive places through walking interviews, participatory mapping processes, and documenting place experiences with visual media. The chapter provides a critical analysis of a VRM project, part of the implementation of the HUL in the City of Ballarat, Australia. Several residents of Ballarat participated in the research project, walking around the city wearing audio-video recording eyewear and commenting on what they love about the city, the things they imagine for the city, and want to retain in the city. The chapter analyses the participants’ narratives to improve Ballarat’s heritage conservation approach. It reflects on the pros and cons of this ‘narrative methodology’ as a tool of engaging communities in heritage conservation. Cooke and Buckley display how the strategic planning of urban heritage management could be guided by an understanding of the subjective, emotional, and ephemeral values people associate with historic places. The disparate information on cultural and natural heritage resources amassed through different methods and mechanisms could only be effective if the data are stored, sorted out, and linked together in a user-friendly manner that facilitate their cross-referential analysis for the decision-making in heritage planning. This is immensely feasible due to current available innovative smart technologies. Ona Vileikis narrates the development of such a system for managing data for heritage conservation in Central Asia in ‘Creating information management systems for cultural World Heritage: experiences from Central Asia’ (Chapter 10). The chapter calls attention to the need, methods, and use of comprehensive Information Management Systems (IMS) for the documentation, nomination, and management of World Heritage properties towards a successful implementation of the HUL. Vileikis describes strategies for the development of IMS in cultural heritage illustrated with two case studies along the Central Asian Silk Roads. The first is the design and development of the Silk Roads Cultural Heritage Resource Information System (CHRIS) supporting the serial transnational World Heritage nominations in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, and the second is the development of a Geographic Information System (GIS) for mapping three World Heritage cities in Uzbekistan – Bukhara, Samarkand, and Itchan Kala. Vileikis cites the process, benefits, and challenges in the creation and usage of these IMS and emphasizes that strong capacity building and the involvement of stakeholders in data mapping and the development of systems are as important as the systems themselves. In the mapping of tangible urban heritage, historic cities could be analysed based on their distinctive spatial types to garner a better understanding of their historical growth and layers and the ways those spatial typologies define their urban form and the sense of place, which are worth conserving. Chapter 11, ‘Conservation of historic open space urban landscapes of Chittagong, Bangladesh’ by Maharina Jafrin and Shamsul Hossain, provides such a case in which the historic city of Chittagong in Bangladesh is conceptualized as a ‘city of open spaces’. The city’s rapid urbanization and economic growth present challenges to the preservation of its historic open spaces. The authors recount how the city’s open spaces were developed in its journey from a small port settlement to a contemporary urban setting and, therefore, the significance of their preservation for the management of its urban heritage. This discussion revolves around the creation and development of these space types from the seventh to the twenty-first century through three major periods – pre-medieval, medieval and colonial – and in relation to the city’s geographic, cultural, economic and political influences and their historical transformations. The chapter defines an open space as a parcel of land that is publicly accessible, provides for passive and/or active recreational opportunities, and that helps to enhance the beauty and environmental quality of Chittagong. It identifies ten types of heritage open spaces in the city. Within these spaces are historical buildings, public spaces, and natural settings with hard and soft landscape features. Jafrin and Hossain point out that this analysis of the urban form of the city in such landscape types helps to overcome the limitations of monument-centric and bifurcated (nature/culture; tangible/intangible) approaches to conservation of

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urban heritage and develops an approach that is place-specific and highlights Chittagong’s landscape setting and historical development. The conventional approaches to urban conservation have for the most part ignored the role that natural landscapes play in and around the historic cities in evoking of a sense of place and reinforcing heritage values and the cultural significance of historic urban environments. Heritage-conservation framework based on the concepts of cultural landscape and HUL have begun to recognize the values of natural heritage in the urban cultural heritage (Smith 2015a; Taylor 2016). Bringing natural and cultural dimensions of heritage together in heritage management frameworks where necessary should be explored and has been acknowledged by such global organizations as the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) (Caballero 2016). The final chapter in this part, ‘The role of natural landscapes in historic Chinese cities’ (Chapter 12) by Junheng Lai, explores the ways in which the natural landscape defines and impacts urban heritage in three historic Chinese cities of varying scales – Wuhan, Langzhong, and Zhao’an. Lai includes both the remaining parts of the original landscape that existed before human activities transformed it and the natural parts of the cultural or human-made landscape as the natural landscape. She analyses the natural landscape in terms of its ecological, spatial, and symbolic character, and explores the ecological, aesthetic, economic, and scientific values of nature in the historical urban context. Lai introduces several foci for natural landscape protection including restoration of ecosystems and biodiversity; conservation of remaining original ecological setting of cities; protection of viewsheds; sustainable use of ecological resources; maintenance and upgrade of natural features, waterscapes, and greenery within historic city centres; enhancement of traditional cultural values and practices associated with nature in urban contexts; establishment of policy and institutional infrastructure; and periodic monitoring – since nature is a dynamic and fragile entity. Lai concludes that diversity in nature contributes to urban heritage that likewise requires diverse and place-specific approaches to its conservation.

Part III: Safeguarding intangible urban heritage Conventional approaches to urban conservation have been mostly focused on the protection of historic urban form and building fabric. The role that intangible aspects of cultural heritage play in the creation, use, and perception of historic urban settings, and the ways such intangible heritage could be safeguarded have not been given adequate attention in urban conservation. Historic cities in the AsiaPacific realm are profuse with a multitude of intangible cultural expressions that give meaning and vitality to those places and are yet to be properly appreciated and included in conservation practice (Silva 2013; Taylor 2013). These intangible heritage attributes are closely intertwined with the material dimensions of natural and cultural heritage. Therefore, the application of typical categorizations of heritage – such as nature/culture, tangible/intangible, or movable/immovable – in the context of historic Asian-Pacific cities in a conformist mode do not really help promote the holistic sense of their urban heritage (Chapagain 2017; Silva 2013). Intangible cultural expressions, practices, and knowledges are so integral to the definition of the value and identity of the place and its community that their safeguard is fundamental to the success of any conservation and development activity in the historic urban area (Bandarin and van Oers 2015). This segment of the Handbook is dedicated to a discussion of how some forms of intangible heritage define and enliven HULs in Asia and ways to safeguard them. The intangible cultural heritage is typically defined as ‘practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills – as well as instruments, objects, artefacts and cultural spaces associated therewith – that communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals recognize as part of their cultural heritage’ and is manifested, among others, in the domains of ‘oral traditions and expressions, including language; performing arts; social practices, rituals and festive events; knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe; [and] traditional craftsmanship’ (UNESCO 2003: 2). The term ‘intangible’ may not be the definitive moniker to encapsulate all these domains of cultural expressions (Kurin 2004; Silva

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2010); similarly, this definition does not necessarily capture every possible aspect of intangible cultural heritage. In many situations, most of them appear in tandem; some are more expressive and palpable than others; some are latent, and one needs an in-depth cultural understanding to decipher them; most could be quite ordinary in character, but may play a decisive role in the sense of a historic place or in its heritage values; many are dynamic and temporal, making their continuance problematic; and other cultural expressions may exist that are not included in the above-mentioned operationalization. The six chapters in Part 3 address characteristics of intangible heritage in historic cities and emphasize the need to safeguard intangible heritage in a context-specific way. Multisensory cues are an integral part of the urban experience in the cities of the Asia-Pacific that contribute immensely to the definition of their space, character, and meaning. Smells, sounds, kinaesthetics, and other non-visual sensory modalities are results of local natural processes and human activities, and therefore, are intangible expressions of a place, culture, and time. Nisha Fernando draws attention to these non-visual sensory dimensions in ‘The sensory heritage of Asian cities’ (Chapter 13). She argues that the pervasive monument-centric approach to heritage conservation impedes the appreciation of multifaceted sensory environments in historic Asian cities. Using examples from Sri Lankan cities, Fernando illustrates the significance of sensoryscapes – especially non-visual sensory experiences – in discerning the spatial order, cultural identity, and meaning of urban landscapes. She also emphasizes the role of urban sensoryscapes in heritage – which she calls ‘sensory heritage’ – to create a more holistic approach to heritage management. The author points out that sensory perception is not purely biological, but mediated by culture, and as such, sensory experiences are ascribed with culturally constructed meanings and values. Therefore, in any given cultural context, sensory qualities are associated with specific settings, activities, occasions, and times. Sensory qualities created by specific activities could transform the meaning and purpose of a place immediately, for example from being an ordinary place to a sacred setting. Not only the presence of sensory information, but also their absence is an attribute of a historic place. The temporality of sensory qualities and their constant shifts are intrinsic characteristics of sensory experiences that complicate their study, mapping, or protection as an aspect of urban heritage. Their safeguarding begins with the comprehensive mapping of a city’s sensoryscape along with its value and nexus with urban heritage to fostering cultural activities and the spaces that generate them. Ordinary human activities and associated spatial settings are a part of any culture and place that typically do not receive much consideration in urban conservation since they are neither iconic nor impressive. Vernacular urban settings and cultural practices, however, can be defining traits of a sense of place in historic urban areas as much as notable monuments and festive acts. In the second chapter in this part, Amita Sinha takes on this issue of conserving ordinary urban landscapes. Her chapter, ‘Ghats on the Ganga in Varanasi, India: the making of a vernacular urban landscape and its conservation’ (Chapter 14), explores how natural, built, and intangible dimensions of heritage are brought together through organic, historic, and ongoing processes in the making of an iconic urban cultural landscape in Varanasi in India. At Varanasi, ghats (steps and landings) stretch for miles along the River Ganga. They represent how the land-water interface at the urban settlements on the Ganga’s banks is fashioned out of the need to access the rising and falling water levels in the monsoon and dry seasons. This urban setting is an amalgam of both the monumental and the ordinary, both historic and contemporary, and both material and intangible. It is also a dynamic and evolving landscape structured by natural and cultural events and crafted by traditional practices. For an effective way to conserve this urban setting, the chapter proposes to improve the legibility of the spatial and temporal structure of public life on the ghats and to augment the vernacular processes of place-making in the public realm of this urban environment. The spatial and symbolic order of an urban landscape could be determined or supplemented by diurnal and seasonal festive events. This is true for many historic cities in the Asia-Pacific region. In most cases, these are religious festivals transforming urban settings into ritual landscapes, and, therefore,

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are integral to the cultural significance and urban life of the place, requiring their continuity in the management of living urban heritage of those cities. In the third chapter in this part, Sudarshan Raj Tiwari examines how periodic religious festivals shape the urban landscape of the Kathmandu Valley World Heritage Site in Nepal. Titled ‘Safeguarding ritual landscape of living urban heritages: the case of Navadurga Masked Dance festival of Bhaktapur, Nepal’, Chapter 15 traces the path of this dance festival that spreads over the town of Bhaktapur to relive a ritually mediated historic landscape. It takes an ethnographic and interpretive research approach to document the form and structure of the ritual landscape to examine deteriorating threats and change and to identify prospects and problems in its safeguarding. The association between the ritual and the urban landscape is analysed in terms of five attributes: (1) place/stage – the squares with people, ancestors and deities; (2) streets – pathways linking associated places, stages and power spots, transition spots of symbolic dance of respect; (3) tangible markers, memory marks, stones or temples associated with the passage of the festival; (4) story, rituals, key events, and happenings in memory – the socio-religious content and practice of festival; and (5) the associated players or dramatis personae – individuals, families, clans and caste groups. This framework could be employed in understanding the function, structure, and meaning of living urban heritage and its relationship to the larger urban cultural landscape as well as in facilitating its sustenance. Chapter 16, ‘Intangible dimensions of urban heritage: learning from holy cities of India’ by Rana P.B. Singh, Pravin S. Rana and Sarvesh Kumar, similarly discusses how festive events and pilgrimage circuits transform urban spaces into ritual landscapes and why that symbiosis between the place and the ritual is an indispensable consideration in urban conservation. The chapter specifically focuses on two historic holy cities in India – Varanasi and Ayodhya – and on the religious festivals of Ramalilas, Kumbha Mela, and pilgrimage circuits and associated rituals. Emphasizing the importance of redefining heritage through a local cultural lens, the chapter examines the concept of heritage in the Indian context, which is referred to as dharohara, and defines the Indian concept of intangible heritage in terms of ten broad categories as they relate to historic holy cities. The chapter then reflects on the validity of intangible cultural heritage as a resource for sustainable development of historic cities. The Indian government has introduced two ‘heritage-development’ programmes to promote heritage sites and centres of pilgrimage-tourism by making them green, liveable, and befitting for continued cultural traditions. The chapter envisages that such heritage-inclusive development would serve as a catalyst for the fulfilment of the global and national strategies of sustainable development of HULs as vibrant and liveable centres that promote global harmony, spiritual awakening, and peace. In addition to religious festivals and pilgrimage circuits, other activities of societies such as trade, defence, nomadic migration and so on have carved out routes and trails across urban and rural landscapes that have shaped the form and function of their environments for ages. These cultural routes are now recognized as a significant part of national or cross-national terrestrial and aquatic cultural landscape heritage (ICOMOS 2008). Chapter 17, ‘Cultural routes in China: the urban heritage trails of Chóngqing’ by Junli Chen and David Jones, reviews the concept of cultural routes as an urban heritage type internationally and in China, considers this heritage type in regard to heritage instruments and policies of ICOMOS and China ICOMOS, and then reflects upon the exemplar of the old mountain-trails in the historic city of Chongqing, China. The chapter notes that cultural routes in China have been little investigated and are little understood in terms of research and conservation, an observation that is widely applicable to the larger Asia-Pacific context. In Chongqing, the mountain-trails represent an ingenious mechanism of cultural adaptation in a difficult ecological terrain in the formation of an urban settlement. The trails are intimately associated with the feng shui tradition that gave symbolic guidance for this adaptation of the natural landscape for human use. As such, the trails blur the boundaries between the natural and the cultural, tangible and the intangible, and the historic and the continuing. The chapter thus reminds heritage managers in the Asia-Pacific to be cognisant of

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cultural routes as vital elements of their urban heritage settings that may also have the potential for revival of heritage-led sustainable development. In the final chapter in this part, Julie Williams Lawless writes about ‘Finding human well-being in Historic Urban Landscapes’ (Chapter 18), examining the potential of HULs to enhance their residents’ physical, social, and psychological wellness. She draws attention to multiple studies involving community assessment of heritage environments in which people attribute their sense of well-being, at least partially, to being in a historic setting with continuing cultural traditions. She argues that ‘wellness’ should be considered a heritage value, even though it is not in the usual category of heritage values widely discussed in heritage studies and projects. Historic environments contain ‘wellness value’ that cannot be directly observable and its effect takes time to realize. Human wellness associated with heritage settings could be considered an intangible aspect of the environment. It is an aspect that is not necessarily historic, but is present nonetheless, and contributes to the sense of well-being that people experience. That experience is ascribed to the presence of history in the place by its resident community, and that is what matters in considering wellness as an intangible dimension as well as a value of heritage places. The chapter introduces a tool – ‘Heritage Map’ – to map, evaluate and enhance the wellness value of HULs. The use of the tool is illustrated with three scenarios of urban heritage in lilong areas in Shanghai, the town of Dujiangyan in China, and in Melaka, Malaysia.

Part IV: Fostering sustainable urban heritage In an increasingly globalized world, historic cities in the Asia-Pacific region are no longer isolated places, and so are subjected to both local and global occurrences. Their survival in a context of dynamic socio-political and environmental realities relies upon a multitude of carefully considered heritage management policies and practices. In addition to preserving physical attributes of historic environments and supporting cultural traditions, there is growing pressure on heritage sites to adapt to transforming lifestyles of their residents and to generate economic benefits. Heritage-focused economic development, however, has its own ills, such as commodification of heritage, gentrification of historic places, and urban migration. Balancing the pressures for socio-economic development with the needs of heritage conservation is a constant struggle. Furthermore, vulnerability of historic cities to natural disasters has also amplified in the face of global climate change (Bigio 2015; UNISDR 2012). There is a growing demand to rethink urban planning and management to reduce the dependency of fossil fuels, use renewable energy sources, stimulate cooler urban microclimate, and integrate emerging technologies (Beatley 2016; Zetter and Watson 2006). Sustainable management of urban heritage today, therefore, requires transcending the limits of orthodox practices and developing alternative and innovative thinking to address these complex issues. The chapters in this part of the volume discuss these issues of urban heritage sustainability through several lenses – management systems, regulatory intents and practices, sustainable urbanism, disaster resiliency, and alternative paradigms for development. The future sustainability of any urban heritage inexorably depends on the formulation and implementation of an effective management strategy that integrates heritage conservation with socio-economic development while mitigating foreseeable potential risks to heritage-development policies in a historic city. Such integrated management systems (IMS) should be nimble enough to deal with unexpected scenarios that negatively impact urban heritage. Periodic review of the IMS of heritage sites is critical for making management strategies relevant in a dynamic social and temporal context. To receive World Heritage status, historic properties are now obliged to have clearly articulated management systems (UNESCO 2017). The IMS should include the guiding vision and principles for heritage management, institutional and legal provisions, actions to take for heritage conservation, and ways to bring together such heritage-related sectors as tourism, risk management, regional planning, community development, and so on. In the first chapter in this part, ‘Integrated management systems of the urban World Heritage

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properties of Kathmandu and Samarkand’ (Chapter 19), Kai Weise provides an overview of the management challenges facing the historic Asian cities inscribed on the World Heritage List, and the need for them to develop integrated management systems. The information in this chapter is based on the outcome of the UNESCO’s Second Cycle of Periodic Reporting of World Heritage in Asia and the Pacific that was carried out between 2010 and 2012. Weise mentions that the vast amount of information collected has unfortunately only been partially used to determine priorities in planning related to heritage protection, with insufficient research done on the real implications. In this chapter, comparisons are made on factors affecting urban World Heritage properties of Bukhara, Galle, Kathmandu, Lijiang, Luang Prabang, Macao, Melaka, and Samarkand, along with their protection and management. Issues of heritage management that are common to these historic cities include: the need for broader collaboration among relevant heritage-related sectors; lack of community involvement in managing complex urban sites; overlooked intangible urban heritage; ignored wider landscapes of urban heritage sites; impact of infrastructure and various forms of new development; and effects of tourism. An unmistakable part of any integrated management system of an urban heritage site is the regulations that control and keep development in line with the historic characteristics of the heritage site. While such prescriptions for development are necessary to mitigate risks to cultural heritage, they could also trigger, deliberately or not, over-heritagization of historic environments and the commodification of heritage by inventing history and traditions, expunging ‘unwanted’ heritage, and sanitizing a historic place for tourist consumption, economic gain and/or political intent (see AlSayyad 2001). These practices threaten the authenticity of heritage and the continuity of local communities and lead to unsustainable futures for HULs. In the second chapter, ‘Erasure and appearance: a critical view on urban heritage management practices in China, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam’ (Chapter 20), John Stallmeyer and Lynne Dearborn explore the concept of ‘erasure’ that permeates contemporary debates in urban heritage management. They argue that the erasures accompanying much of heritage-development link to commensurate appearances in a reciprocal process with conscious and unconscious components. They adopt the theoretical scaffold of the erasure–appearance dyad (EAD) to examine the operative processes, practices, and policies that describe, prescribe, and proscribe heritage management in the historic cities of Luang Prabang, Hoi An, Zhouzhuang and Chiang Mai. These cases illustrate the explicit and implicit dimensions of descriptions, prescriptions, and proscriptions as important components of the EAD. The chapter concludes by proposing that greater awareness of the EAD might inform the formation of multiple urban heritage narratives and how those multiple interpretations can enrich the experience of heritage for residents and visitors. A truly sustainable approach to development that meets the three pillars of sustainability – environmental, economic and social – is now a global concern that reflects a shift in collective societal paradigms and scientific understanding. Cultural sustainability has been recognized as the fourth pillar of sustainability, and heritage conservation is linked to sustainable development (Bandarin 2015; Hawkes 2001). Logan and Larsen (2018) have identified that, in heritage studies, there are four possible ways that connect the concept of sustainability to heritage: heritage vs. sustainable development as incompatible entities, sustaining heritage for the future, sustainable development for heritage, and heritage for sustainable development. Focusing on the latter two approaches, Farhana Ferdous, Julie Williams Lawless, and Kapila D. Silva investigate in their chapter ‘Sustainable urbanism and Historic Urban Landscape conservation’ (Chapter 21) the applicability of sustainable principles developed in the fields of urban design and planning to historic urban areas in their conservation and development. They point out that historic cities evolved or designed to be sustainable, and, therefore, contemporary inquiry into sustainable urban planning has much to learn from historic cities. At the same time, historic urban settlements could benefit from the emerging thoughts on how to make human habitats sustainable, especially in their adaptation to modern ethos and life in their quest for relevance and survival in a dynamic global context. The authors identify three specific dimensions of sustainable urbanism – sustainable transportation and connectivity,

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sustainable and resilient communities, and energy-efficient and greener environments – to discuss in detail how these dimensions could be applied to historic urban cores to make them more sustainable. The chapter advocates for the use of new frameworks on sustainable urbanism to recognize, revive, and strengthen the sustainable dimensions embodied in historic cities and to integrate novel ideas of sustainability in an appropriate manner that enhances and preserves their urban heritage. One such sustainable urban attribute that already exists in many historic cities is the old street network that evolved and/or was designed for pedestrian movement and that, in most cases, adequately interconnects the city’s neighbourhoods. Transforming the extant street networks to accommodate modern motorized transportation that make a historic city relevant for the present while maintaining its historic character is necessary for balanced integration of urban development and conservation. In Chapter 22, ‘Regeneration of a Historic Urban Landscape with pedestrian-oriented streetscape design: the case of Deoksugung-gil Street in Seoul, South Korea’, Sung-Kyun Kim presents the urban conservation project of Deoksugung-gil Streetscape, which applied the concept of a pedestrian-centred or a shared-street – integration of vehicular traffic with pedestrianized street – as part of the regeneration of Seoul’s HUL. The chapter lays out a range of design strategies that could effectively integrate vehicles into pedestrian areas and make streets accessible, navigable, cleaner, safer, greener, and conducive to social life. The chapter advocates for the regeneration of the traditional role of streets as the primary socio-cultural space of the community life. While it is necessary to accommodate automobile use, solve traffic problems, and make roads safer, it is also necessary to make use of the advantages of the traditional functions of streets for more vigorous communities, rather than converting all roads into spaces of the automobile. Extending the life of and liveability within historic cities is also to make them safer and resilient to a myriad of natural and manufactured risks. In the fifth chapter in this part, Rohit Jigyasu signals that historic urban areas in the Asia-Pacific region are becoming increasingly vulnerable to natural as well as human-induced hazards. His chapter, ‘Towards safer and resilient historic urban environments’ (Chapter 23) reminds us of the importance of having a comprehensive legal framework to evaluate and protect historic urban areas that are vulnerable to impending disasters as well as to damage during emergency and post disaster recovery phases. The underlying reasons for the increasing disaster vulnerability of historic cities in the Asia-Pacific region include: population growth; urbanization and poverty; the impact of economic development; loss of traditional knowledge, capacity and management systems; planned as well as unplanned urban sprawl; failing infrastructure; and effects of climate change. In the context of these challenges, the chapter lays out possible ways to improve the resilience of historic cities through several mitigation and adaptation measures to be executed with the help of monitoring indicators and performance guidelines. The chapter concludes by advocating for an integrated framework and an agenda for action for urban disaster risk reduction that consider multiple hazards, vulnerabilities and potential negative impacts on people, housing, infrastructure, livelihoods and heritage for building a safer and resilient historic urban environment. Population growth and urban migration place enormous pressure on the limited physical, social, and economic infrastructure in historic urban areas in the Asia-Pacific region, which threatens the long-term sustainability of urban heritage and the liveability of those areas. Without adequate resources and effective management mechanisms, urban migration to historic areas increases the socio-economic vulnerabilities of both the migrant and host communities, in addition to overcrowding, increased pollution, shortage of daily necessities, and lack of livelihood. In the final chapter in this part, ‘Rural development: a strategy for urban heritage management in the Asia-Pacific region’ (Chapter 24), Dennis Rodwell questions, in the context of inescapable and unsustainable incessant urbanization, whether an intense focus on rural development could lead to the longevity of historic urban areas. Taking its prompt from the case of India, he argues that information-communication technology and the prospects it affords for universal education and digital marketing could be combined with innovations in localized renewable energies in such fields as permaculture, to increase opportunities for more

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Introduction

distributed forms of development, expand people’s life-style choices, and reinforce the global to local environmental agenda. He further argues that a territorially balanced approach, prioritizing the multiple advantages and opportunities of rural transition, including regionally diffused urban settlements compared to concentrations in mega cities, has the potential to ease the pressures of migration and development that threaten surviving urban heritage across the Asia-Pacific region, and should be positioned as a central platform for the management of HULs. In order for this to happen, Rodwell also contends that a re-positioning of the orthodoxy in urban heritage conservation is needed.

Part V: Localizing heritage stewardship Success in urban heritage management depends largely on the active participation and interest of multiple stakeholders of the locality in conservation activities. Their awareness of the value and relevance of urban heritage kindles their support for its long-term protection. Sparking this interest comes when they take ownership of heritage by participating in the process of conservation. Even though the need, importance and encouragement of community engagement in heritage management have been widely recognized in the discipline for some time, it is questionable to what extent it happens in urban conservation in the AsiaPacific context. Mired in orthodox, authorized, and expert-driven management of heritage, most places still follow top-down approaches to urban planning and conservation, facilitated by political cultures and bureaucratic systems rooted in centralized power structures. This governmentality, in most cases, has led to just paying lip-service to community participation or conducting initial public consultation without real involvement of people in the follow-up activities. Lack of methods, tools, and resources – material, personnel, and expertise – for effective stakeholder engagement does aggravate the issue. Fruitful participation of multiple stakeholders with diverse interests in heritage management inevitably requires effective conflict resolution, negotiation, and consensus building (Myers, Smith, and Ostergen 2016). In most instances in the region, these have posed serious challenges due to lack of relevant social and institutional infrastructure and political will and the presence of entrenched societal divisions that prevent bringing people together. This part of the volume explores ways to localize heritage stewardship. The chapters discuss lessons learned from engaging as well as not engaging local communities in heritage management. The first two chapters of Part Vdescribe two instances where carefully organized involvement of local communities have delivered desirable outcomes in urban conservation. In Chapter 25, ‘Communityfocused urban regeneration: preserving and activating the HUL in Malaysian cities’, Richard Engelhardt and Neil Khor present public-realm improvement programmes in three Malaysian cities where community participation in the design, upgrading, and activation of the HUL was undertaken by Think City Malaysia, a wholly owned subsidiary of Khazanah Nasional that is dedicated to community-focused urban regeneration. Based on an innovative platform, this work brings local government, community stakeholders, and technical experts together to ensure a wider public-sector appreciation for urban heritage and for participating in planning, interpreting, and activating these local heritage assets. The projects, located in the George Town UNESCO World Heritage Site, include the development of a Special Area Plan based upon the city’s universal and local heritage values. By involving communities, these projects have given tangible expression to the HUL Recommendation, adapted to meet the needs of the Malaysian context. The success of these projects highlights the importance of having organized entities that are dedicated to community-focused approaches in urban restoration. Most local authorities are underresourced and overwhelmed to undertake such sustained efforts; private organizations with vision and resources are, therefore, crucial to lead community-centered urban heritage management. In ‘Community involvement in heritage conservation: the case of Kotagede, Indonesia’ (Chapter 26), Punto Wijayanto illustrates how public-private partnerships were established to work with local population to restore historic urban settlements in and around Yogyakarta, Indonesia, in the wake of an earthquake. Wijayanto reflects on how a national-level recognition of the essentiality of stakeholder

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participation in heritage management eventually enabled this post-disaster rehabilitation project. In 2003, the Network of Indonesia Heritage Organisations (Jaringan Kota Pusaka Indonesia) published the Indonesia Charter for Heritage Conservation. The charter recognizes the fact that local practices are as important as the authenticity of the urban fabric and form of built heritage, and therefore, the involvement of local communities in heritage conservation is encouraged. In 2006, the community of heritage professionals and enthusiasts in Indonesia introduced the notion of ‘heritage city’ (kota pusaka) management, where government and community could work together for the conservation of urban heritage. This idea was developed during the post-disaster rehabilitation project in Kotagede in Yogyakarta. During the post-earthquake reconstruction process, the engagement of the community in Kotagede was actively sought out to provide a basis for the rehabilitation programme, to prepare people for future earthquakes, and to offer guidelines for continuous use in recovery. He describes how an understanding of the local community’s association with their heritage became crucial in the conservation, development and recovery of this settlement, and the value of community participation in heritage conservation in the Indonesian context. In this case, heritage charters provided the framework and impetus for community-led conservation. They were the means to first establish consensus among the community of heritage professionals in the country on how to approach heritage management in their national/local context, and then to engender a certain level of readiness in terms of willingness, knowledge, and resources to undertake the task of working with local communities. The Chapter 27, ‘Transient heritage values, conflicting aspirations, and endangered urban heritage in the historic Galle Fort, Sri Lanka’ by Amanda Rajapakse and Kapila D. Silva, offers an example of how the absence of community participation results in unsustainable futures for urban heritage. The chapter explores the nature and consequences of ongoing heritage discourse within the historic Galle Fort in Sri Lanka. It focuses on the transient nature of heritage values and the need for increased localization of heritage stewardship to establish a shared vision to safeguard its urban heritage. Local Sri Lankans gradually transformed this mid-sixteenth century colonial garrison town into a closely knit community living in quaint houses. The combination of multiple global and local stakeholders vying to benefit from the Fort’s heritage assets, amid efforts to mitigate the rampant heritage commodification and gentrification, have produced contradictory discourses on the fate of this urban heritage. The chapter lays out how the residents fathom their life within this place and how their heritage values have evolved drastically over time. The dynamics at play in Galle Fort in fact urge us to rethink the accepted norms of heritage theories and practices. In addition to the extant dissonance between the way the Fort’s heritage values are defined in official documents and held by the local community, the latter’s perspectives on those values also evolve. This phenomenon questions the validity of values-based approaches to urban conservation, particularly of the wisdom of holding on to heritage values defined a long time ago while the place and its community have changed so much over time. While the Fort gained its World Heritage status in 1988, an integrated management plan was not developed until 2015. Absence of this mechanism to guide the Fort’s heritage conservation and development, let alone getting the residents involved in planning its future, has led to the current predicament in the Fort today. This highlights the importance of having a ‘living’ management system in place from the very inception of the heritage designation of a place. More notably, what aggravates the situation at Galle Fort is the lack of a shared vision for the place among its stakeholders that can guide its integrated conservation-development strategies. It reminds us that the primary goal for stakeholder participation is to develop a widely accepted singular vision for the future of a heritage city. Yushi Utaka, in ‘Conserving the historic Port Town of Tomo, Seto Inland Sea, Japan: repositioning urban heritage in the “shrinking society”’ (Chapter 28), highlights how a lack of proper public consultation and uncoordinated community engagement in heritage conservation and development could lead to unsatisfactory outcomes and diminished public support. Utaka narrates the story of the historic town of Tomo in the Seto Inland Sea in western Japan. In Tomo, a bridge construction and port

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Introduction

development had been proposed for mitigating traffic congestion and improving the functions of the port. After years of contestation between state authorities, pro-development agencies, conservationists, and the local community, the construction proposal was eventually withdrawn, and a part of Tomo is included as a national preservation district. The withdrawal of development proposals has provoked conservation of Tomo’s urban heritage, yet with a not-so-clear view of its future. He traces the sequence and agency of the development controversy in Tomo. Implicit in the narration is the importance of establishing trust among all involved parties – the authorities and the residents, outside heritage enthusiasts and residents, and different groups of residents – for consensus building and conflict resolution in engaging the community in heritage planning. The chapter also informs us that under the shrinking social nature in Japan due to ageing, depopulation and recession, urban heritage conservation is gaining preference over conventional development in historic towns. This is likely to be an impending scenario in many of the Asia-Pacific societies. In ‘Understanding community-based heritage values: the case of the Tamil Brahmin settlement in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India’ (Chapter 29), Vaisali Krishna Kumar probes the nature of heritage values residents and those outside the community associate with the historic settlement of Tamil Brahmins that is associated with the Padmanabhaswamy Temple in Thiruvananthapuram in the southern state of Kerala in India. Krishna Kumar points out that heritage laws and practices in India are rooted in the nineteenth century western paradigm which follows a monument-centric, top-down, and expert-driven approach. They are, therefore, largely devoid of the perspective of ordinary people. The local community represents key stakeholders of a heritage environment and can be a driving force in conserving the living urban heritage. However, communities protect only what is valuable to them; therefore, it is critical to understand and assess the values that a community ascribes to its heritage. The chapter explores how community-based heritage values could be understood and be assessed effectively to form a collective understanding that could then feed into heritage policies and practices. The residents in the Brahmin settlement identify the sense of community, the sense of sacrality, the liveability of the place, the historicity of the settlement as core heritage values. They also characterize the shifts in the appreciation of the temple, bureaucratic incompetency, lifestyle changes, tourism, and the ageing of the population as threats to the sustenance of the community and their heritage. Residents’ perception of heritage values and risks indicate that the policies for conservation and planning should collectively focus on fostering heritage values and mitigating the risks. This could be a way to integrate heritage values, civic engagement, heritage conservation, and urban planning together. The chapter also reminds us of the need to develop useful tools to elicit people’s perception of heritage and to gain their active participation in urban conservation, a need that HUL Recommendation has acknowledged (Bandarin and van Oers 2012, 2015). Most recent literature has outlined some effective methods for this end (see Myers, Smith, and Ostergen 2016; Smith 2015b; Wells and Stiefel 2019). The final chapter in Part V calls attention to ‘invisible heritages’ that are marginalized and unrecognized by the prevalent hegemonic heritage policies, practices and interpretations, especially of the Indigenous communities of the colonized countries. In their chapter ‘Wurundjeri-al Narrm-u (Wurundjeri’s Melbourne)’ (Chapter 30), Mandy Nicholson and David Jones discuss, from a Wurundjeri viewpoint, the changes in the definition and Aboriginal connection to Country through time, with a focus on the urban heritage and landscape of Narrm, the area of metropolitan Melbourne. Throughout the chapter, reference to Narrm and Melbourne is done as two separate entities in time and context. Australia as an Aboriginal landscape is defined and how language, land, water, Country and multiple voices work together to define Wurundjeri people. The chapter considers comparative differences between the conventional definition of landscape and a Wurundjeri perspective of Country and points out how these different views work both separately and together. Nicholson and Jones present the Wurundjeri history and how their culture and language survived after nearly being erased after the European invasion. The chapter focuses on two cases – Birrarung Marr and the Barak

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Building in Narrm – to reflect upon Wurundjeri Country and its urban heritage management, reverently positioning Wurundjeri people in urban planning and urban heritage management processes and outcomes, much of which has disregarded Wurundjeri views for too long. The heritages of the colonizer and the colonized could co-exist as long as both are equally recognized and properly interpreted without sanitizing the histories of the colonial project.

Part VI: Assessing urban heritage policies The chapters in Part VI reflect critically on the existing policies and practices of urban-heritage management in several Asia-Pacific countries to provide an understanding of the complexity of urban conservation in the region. A well-crafted policy framework, guided by a clear vision of the future of the historic city, equipped with a set of effective regulatory, fiscal, structural and action instruments to address a host of urban issues, and embodied with the capacity and agility to adapt and evolve for unknown circumstances, is imperative for the successful management of HULs. In many cases in the region, the arcane policies of heritage protection are still in operation, have not transformed at all or are slow to change to address rapidly shifting social, political, economic and environmental realities. A continuing issue in most cases is the fragmented and uncoordinated policies, institutional infrastructure, and activities with regard to heritage, tourism, and development planning, without seeing them all being interconnected through a holistic perspective. Fiscal shortages are a perennial problem in the region as well, leading to designating heritage protection at the bottom of the to-do lists for national and local governments (van Oers and Taylor 2015). Heritage conservation cannot be successful without addressing other urban social ills such as poverty, overcrowding, and crumbling infrastructure. The centralized, top-down governmentality in many countries is also slow to embrace more involvement of multiple stakeholders in a beneficial manner in heritage conservation and development planning. For some, the absence of political will, motivation and leadership, as well as the necessary expertise to undertake desired steps in developing effective policy framework is a question. In the meantime, some countries are now forced to grapple with the impending consequences of environmental change. No policy framework is perfect that solves all issues and lasts long. Having and implementing one, with periodic revisions and commitment to continually improve it, is a better strategy. Considering the issues historic cities in the Asia-Pacific encounter, a policy framework for integrated urban conservation and development that develops incrementally and specific to national/local context and legacies, while learning from similar situations, is more workable for the countries in the region. The ideas embedded in the Historic Urban Landscape approach are helpful in this matter, but they have been slow to take root in the Asia-Pacific, as the chapters in this section demonstrate. The first chapter in this part examines the urban conservation practices in the City of Ballarat, the first municipal government and the only Australian city to join the pilot phase for the implementation of the HUL Recommendation in 2013. In their chapter, ‘The Historic Urban Landscape approach in the Australian context: evolving heritage practice and city management frameworks’ (Chapter 31), Susan Fayad and Kristal Buckley reflect on how the HUL approach has benefited the city in developing community-centred strategies to manage its urban heritage amid rapid change. They then extend the experiences of the HUL approach in the City of Ballarat to other different urban contexts in Australia that include the cities of Broken Hill (a rapidly growing regional city), Canberra (a twentieth century designed capital), and Melbourne (a nineteenth century state capital). The chapter recognizes the HUL approach as more than a programme, as a framework that is applicable to large and complex urban areas for which the values-based approach of the Australia ICOMOS Burra Charter may not be adequate to respond to emerging pressures impacting urban heritage. The authors contend that the unstructured character of the HUL approach makes it nimble in its application to different contexts and, with the rising interest in it in Australia, we will eventually see how Australian heritage practices would change

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Introduction

when more cities start to explore the HUL approach. A lesson that Ballarat offers to the Asia-Pacific region is that implementing a more concentrated pilot programme of the HUL approach and targeting a single historic city is perhaps more beneficial, rather than attempting to apply it to all historic cities in a nation, to gradually develop and refine country-specific objectives, policies, practices, and tools to implement and monitor the HUL approach when many countries of the region have limited resources for heritage management. The paradigm that underpins urban heritage conservation policies and practices in most of the AsiaPacific is still centred on the historic monuments and ensembles, largely disregarding the wider landscape settings of historic urban areas. In addition, while the different heritage categories in terms of natural/cultural and tangible/intangible as well as the notion of cultural landscape are now widely recognized, their interdependencies are disregarded in heritage practices. In Chapter 32, Jyoti Pandey Sharma critiques this monument-centric approach still prevalent in the Asia-Pacific region, focusing on the Indian context. Her chapter, ‘The monument and the city: examining India’s legacy of monument-centric conservation in the context of the Historic Urban Landscape approach’, points out that the monument-centric conservation approach is a part of India’s colonial legacy. Adopting the Throsbyian ‘Cultural Ecosystem’ construct, she argues that, with a large body of tangible, intangible, living and non-living heritage, there is more to the Indian historic city than the monument. The HUL Recommendation thus is more applicable in this Indian cultural ecosystem, as the Recommendation extends the notion of heritage beyond the monument to encompass the larger landscape posing new conservation and management challenges to heritage managers given the dynamic nature of the urban environment. Within the HUL framework, the chapter returns to the Indian historic city to explore how the past and the future are reconciled so that heritage can play a meaningful role in the dynamic realities of the present. The chapter briefly studies a range of historic cities in India, including Ahmedabad, Amritsar, and Delhi, to discuss the evolving scenario of heritage discourse in the country, albeit slow, from an object-centric focus. The chapter cautions us that, due to being only recommendatory in nature, the HUL approach has a limited impact as it is not binding on any party. Absence of a statutory mechanism to enforce the Recommendation, the pressure of development could have a damaging impact particularly on unprotected heritage buildings and places. The rapid economic development, urbanization, and urban renewal in China have placed tremendous pressure on the urban heritage of historic Chinese cities. As the country is similarly moving fast to form the ways to balance heritage protection in a context of swift socio-economic development, its characteristic top-down approach to heritage management supplemented by an abundance of resources and coupled with a prominent national pride in its past make China a unique paradigm in urban heritage management worth studying. In Chapter 33, ‘Historic urban landscapes of China: issues of conservation and management’, Zhe Geng and David Jones review the contemporary HUL context in China, providing a discussion of the development of urban heritage conservation thinking with a critique of current conservation praxis and governance. The authors examine eight variables of urban heritage management in China: registration of historic districts; levels of governments and related departments; policy aims of conservation; specific conservation regulations; public involvement; research on historic districts; the review system; and tourism development. They also identify that the latter seven factors appear to be having a key influence upon the successful conservation and management of China’s HULs. Geng and Jones report that, in many cases, a top-down policy formation and implementation supported by a bottom-up reporting system have jointly attained robust conservation outcomes. The chapter also highlights the urban heritage challenges that confront China: the lack of a national-level legislation and registration system for historic districts, the lack of a review system to monitor and evaluate urban conservation outcomes, and the limited public participation and nongovernment organizations in the practice of conservation. While the country has ample financial resources, local governments need capital investment to improve living conditions and infrastructure of their historic urban districts. These challenges indicate the need to form a broader urban conservation

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approach for China that integrates heritage conservation with socio-economic development within the existing heritage governance structure. The mostly top-down and inflexible systems of heritage governance that have been in operation for years in many Asian countries have begun to transform, albeit slowly, as a response to their distinctive and emerging socio-political milieu. Iran in West Asia is a case in point, with a change of its heritage policies after the 1979 Revolution and beyond. Rana Amirtahmasebi and Mohammadsaeid Izadi, in Chapter 34 ‘Conserving historic urban cores in Iran: an overview’, examine the management of historic urban cores in the country, including the evolution of institutional settings and legislative framework. The chapter outlines the different approaches to urban heritage management that existed over time and analyses the relationship between different agencies involved in heritage management on central and local levels. The chapter aims to understand the efficiency of the interrelationships among these agencies and councils. The country’s strong centralized and top-down public-sector approach has started to change only in the last decade to include broader participation. Many challenges in urban conservation persists, however, which include the prevalent centralized heritage governance, lack of community participation, unclear land and building ownership patterns, high poverty rate among the residents, low construction quality of buildings, and informal urban expansion in historic areas. The chapter notes that the current legal framework for managing historic urban cores, enacted in 2014, is designed to address these challenges with its clear vision of people-centred socio-economic development in historic areas. These points are elaborated in the chapter in relation to the case of the World Heritage site of the historic city of Yazd. Amid a host of issues in socio-economic development, many island nations in the Asia-Pacific struggle with the uncertainties and consequences related to global climate change, particularly of intensified natural disasters, sea-level rise and ecosystem collapse that will lead to loss of land, livelihood, food, infrastructure, economy, and, of course, their cultural and natural heritage. While this imminent threat seemingly has no satisfactory recourse, most of these nations have undergone serious environmental threats in the course of their histories and have developed ingenious traditional ways of managing their environments and heritage, which could be relied upon and combined with emerging strategies to mitigate the impending problems. The next two chapters investigate these concerns in the island nations of the Asia-Pacific region. In ‘“Land is a very limited definition of place”: Navigating urban heritage conservation in the Pacific Island nations’ (Chapter 35), Anita Smith probes urban heritage management in the Pacific Island Nations to point out that the policies developed in the Historic Port Town of Levuka, Fiji, might provide a model of heritage management across the Pacific. The chapter identifies that the concept of ‘place’ – both landscape and seascape – is fundamental to the cultural identity for Pacific Island communities. While most Pacific Island peoples continue to live in small communities and villages, there is an increase in the migration to urban areas, where planning processes are either limited or the priority is given to providing the essential services rather than conserving the urban heritage. The Town of Levuka is an exception, in which the sustainable management of its heritage values relies on a long process of community consultation, mapping of the town’s multiple and layered heritage values, and the integration of Fijian customary concepts of place, land and decision-making with local and national law. The chapter contends that the outcome is a management plan and system that is uniquely Pacific but aligns closely to the aims of UNESCO Historic Urban Landscape initiative. The second chapter on the island nations concentrates on several Asian cases. Zaheer Allam and David Jones, in ‘Historic Urban Landscapes in the Indian Ocean waters: challenges of urban heritage custodianship for the Comoros, Maldives, Mauritius, Mayotte, Réunion, and Seychelles’ (Chapter 36), dive into the concerns of urban heritage management in four independent nations and two French external Departments in the Indian Ocean, which are parts of the Small Island Developing States (SIDS) now recognized by UNESCO. These six communities host substantial and swiftly expanding urban centres rich in multi-

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Introduction

cultural issues, various colonial and post-independence legacies, culturally diverse governance structures, and natural values-influenced geo-heritage themes. The chapter calls attention to immediate and major issues of climate change, urbanization, tourism, infrastructural deterioration and retrofitting, and ill-funded internal governance policies that are challenging their respective urban heritage. The authors survey this physical, economic and governance landscape, including existing cultural heritage recognitions, conservation and management dilemmas, and challenges confronting the urban landscapes of each nation and Department. While these islands share the same economic, ecological, and social problems, their varied histories and cultural values have resulted in varied thoughts on heritage conservation and a lack of coordination for a consistent approach among them. The shortage of urban conservation provisions in their respective statutory-based planning schemes and the lack of any incentivization mechanism to encourage private or public urban heritage activities compound the issues of heritage management, interpretation, and heritage-led economic development. Additionally, these islands have no significant representation in the international heritage community or vice versa. A collective effort among local-global and public-private partnerships is imperative to help these communities to confront their challenges in urban heritage identification, assessment, conservation, and management. Tourism follows heritage. It is the most prevalent heritage-led development strategy which brings both positive and negative outcomes to urban heritage management, depending on the way tourism is conducted and integrated into heritage management. The final chapter in this volume examines how tourism influences the implementation of urban heritage policy in two postcolonial cities in Asia. Hilary du Cros, in ‘A tale of two cities: how tourism development is treated in Yangon and Macau’s urban heritage planning’ (Chapter 37), contrasts the recently developed Yangon Heritage Strategy in Myanmar with urban heritage conservation planning initiatives in Macau, a Special Administrative Region of China. The author notes that much of the cultural heritage management practice in these two places has developed along different lines, strongly influenced by local socio-political and economic considerations. The Yangon Heritage Strategy is the very first attempt to develop an integrative policy and practice framework to heritage conservation and urban development in Myanmar, with objectives on improving social cohesion, urban infrastructure, and liveability in the city. The political climate in Myanmar has long stagnated tourism, making it harder to argue for heritage conservation as a catalyst for socio-economic development. In Macau, a strategy is being prepared to integrate the recent 2013 heritage legislation and the most recent tourism development planning initiatives into an overarching urban planning framework. Macau has experienced a significant boom in its tourism and gaming industry, and much of the funding for heritage conservation comes directly from the tax on gaming. The two case studies present differing examples of how to integrate tourism and heritage into urban planning. Neither is formally using the HUL approach; Yangon’s approach is clearly closer to HUL, and Macau’s approach is markedly more fragmented than what is envisaged in the HUL approach. Du Cros reminds us that economic interests associated with tourism and national politics can hold the best plans hostage or drag things in a whole different direction. Successful integrated heritage management and economic development is more difficult when planning is fragmented and subject to frequent policy changes at the national level.

The future of Historic Urban Landscapes in the Asia-Pacific As the Asia-Pacific countries march swiftly towards greater socio-economic progress, the risks to their urban heritage increase as well. Without a compelling framework to guide policies and practices that could effectively integrate and balance urban conservation and urban development, the future sustainability of the HULs in the region remains uncertain. The HUL Recommendation provides such a framework. However, the promise of the Recommendation depends on its acceptance and application, which falls upon national governments and related institutions. As previously mentioned, the primacy of the political will and

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leadership is critical in making this decision and then in developing the necessary steps and tools that suit local conditions for the implementation of the HUL approach. It could be a slow and painful process as it requires change in governmental attitudes, structures, and practices. Heritage conservation cannot be a successful enterprise without attention given to the question of agency and the discourse of power. The chapters in the volume clearly call attention to the necessity of a paradigm shift in the way we conceptualize historic cities in the region. They assert that we look at cities as dynamic entities, palimpsests of historical memories, collages of social diversity, territories of contested identities, and sites for sustainable liveability – aspects of the expansive perspective that the HUL concept promotes. Within this boarder view, the idea of heritage should be understood not merely as the past, but as the viability of the present and future and the continued relevance of that past. This also requires a critical review of the way we understand history and replacing the arcane and imported frameworks with grounded observations to see the context-specific future potential of heritage. Such alternative discourses of heritage are emerging in the Asian context (Aygen and Logan 2016). To ensure the desired continuity of urban heritage in the Asia-Pacific, the chapters argue for recognizing the totality of the natural-cultural urban fabric, embracing change, building social cohesion through civic engagement, and initiating strategic policies and actions for socio-economic progress. These steps then require the kind of instruments the HUL approach recommends devising, testing, modifying, and deploying to ensure the future of urban heritage. A number of other factors that are critical to the success of urban heritage conservation in the region also recur in the chapters. The success is assured when there is a clear vision about what the heritage city should be in the future, in terms of its heritage protection, urban development, and the degree and nature of its agreeable change. This vision should be collectively developed, understood, and agreed upon by multiple stakeholders in the city through an inclusive decision-making process. The implementation of this shared vision probably will have to be incremental, allowing the optimal use of limited resources, the time to make structural changes to the systems of governance, the opportunity to monitor, assess, and modify the policies and actions, and the prospect to learn and develop the country and/or city-specific methodology for integrated urban conservation. The sustainability of urban heritage also depends on the development of the much-desired interdisciplinary expertise, public awareness, and capacity of stakeholders for active and informed engagement of the urban conservation and planning. Developing knowledge through research and practice and sharing experiences on urban heritage management across the region and the world are also critical to the success (van Oers 2015). Achieving all these to a greater degree is possible, and many signs in the HULs of the Asia-Pacific region point to the transformative potential of the HUL Recommendation to make inroads into the slow but regular shaping of their future.

References AlSayyad, N. (ed.) (2001) Consuming tradition, manufacturing heritage: Global norms and urban forms in the age of tourism, London: Routledge. Aygen, Z. and Logan, W. (2016) ‘Heritage in the “Asian Century”: Responding to geopolitical change’, in W. Logan, M. N. Craith, and K. Ullrich (eds) A companion to heritage studies, Sussex, UK: Wiley Blackwell, 410–425. Bandarin, F. (2015) ‘Sustainability in the world heritage convention: The making of a policy framework’, in M-T. Albert (ed.) Perceptions of sustainability in heritage studies, Berlin: De Gruyter, 35–46. ———. (2019) ‘Reshaping urban conservation’, in A. Pereira Roders and F. Bandarin (eds) Reshaping urban conservation: The Historic Urban Landscape Approach in action, Series on Creativity, heritage and the city 2, Singapore: Springer, 3–20. Bandarin, F. and van Oers, R. (2012) The Historic Urban Landscape: Managing heritage in an urban century, Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. ———. (2015) Reconnecting the city: The Historic Urban Landscape Approach and the future of urban heritage, Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. Beatley, T. (2016) Handbook of biophilic city planning and design, Washington, DC: Island Press. Bharney, V. and Sandmeier, T. (eds) (2019) Routledge companion to global heritage conservation, London: Routledge.

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Introduction Bigio, A. G. (2015) ‘Historic cities and climate change’, in F. Bandarin and R. van Oers (eds) Reconnecting the city: The Historic Urban Landscape Approach and the future of urban heritage, Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 113–128. Caballero, G. (2016) ‘The role of natural resources in the Historic Urban Landscape Approach’, Journal of Cultural Heritage Management and Sustainable Development, 6(1), 2–13. Caballero, G. and Pereira Roders, A. (2014) ‘Understanding trends on urban heritage research in Asia’, A paper presented at the 12éme Conference Internationale d’Histoire Urbaine: Villes d’Europe, Villes du Monde, Lisbon, Portugal, 3-6 September 2014. Carmona, M., Heath, T., Oc, T., and Tiesdell, S. (2003) Public places – Urban spaces: The dimensions of urban design, Oxford, UK: The Architectural Press. Chapagain, N-K. (2017) ‘Blurring boundaries and moving beyond the tangible/intangible and the natural/cultural classifications of heritage: Cases from Nepal’, in K. D. Silva and A. Sinha (eds) Cultural landscapes of South Asia: Studies in heritage conservation and management, London: Routledge, 24–38. Engelhardt, R. A. (2007) Asia conserved: Lessons learned from UNESCO Asia-Pacific heritage awards for cultural heritage conservation (2000 – 2004), Bangkok: UNESCO Bangkok. Ginzarly, M., Houbart, C., and Teller, J. (2018) ‘The Historic Urban Landscape Approach to urban management: A systematic review’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 1–21. [Online]. DOI: 10:1080/13527258.2018.1552615. Hawkes, J. (2001) The fourth pillar of sustainability: Culture’s essential role in public planning, Melbourne: The Common Ground Publishing and Cultural Development Network Victoria. Hosagrahar, J. (2015) ‘Knowledge and planning tools’, in F. Bandarin and R. van Oers (eds) Reconnecting the city: The Historic Urban Landscape Approach and the future of urban heritage, Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 249–268. ICOMOS. (2008) ICOMOS Charter on cultural routes, Paris: ICOMOS. Available at: www.icomos.org/images/ DOCUMENTS/Charters/culturalroutes_e.pdf (accessed 1 September 2018). Jokilehto, J. (2015) ‘Evolution of the normative framework’, in F. Bandarin and R. van Oers (eds) Reconnecting the city: The Historic Urban Landscape Approach and the future of urban heritage, Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 205–219. Kurin, R. (2004) ‘Safeguarding intangible cultural heritage in the 2003 UNESCO convention: A critical appraisal’, Museum International, 56(1–2), 66–77. Logan, W. and Larsen, P. B. (eds) (2018) World heritage and sustainable development: New directions in world heritage management, London: Routledge. Low, S. M. (2002) ‘Anthropological-ethnographical methods for assessment of cultural values in heritage conservation’, in M. de la Torre (ed.) Assessing the values of cultural heritage, Los Angeles, CA: The Getty Conservation Institute31–49. Myers, D., Smith, S. N., and Ostergen, G. (2016) Consensus building, negotiation, and conflict resolution for heritage place management, Los Angeles, CA: The Getty Conservation Institute. Naeem, A. (2011) ‘Inventory of historic places: A systematic method for their identification, evaluation and determining significance (Part I: Core data and inventory form, and Part II: Case studies)’, Journal of Research in Architecture and Planning, 10(1), 1–34. ———. (2017) Urban traditions and historic environments in Sindh: A fading legacy of Shikarpoor, historic city, Netherlands: Amsterdam University Press. O’Donnell, P. (2015) ‘Historic Urban Landscape: A new UNESCO tool for a sustainable future’, in K. Taylor, A. St Clair, and N. J. Mitchell (eds) Conserving cultural landscapes: Challenges and new directions, London: Routledge, 163–181. Pereira Roders, A. (2019) ‘The Historic Urban Landscape Approach in action: Eight years later’, in A. Pereira Roders and F. Bandarin (eds) Reshaping urban conservation: The Historic Urban Landscape Approach in action, Series on Creativity, heritage and the city 2, Singapore: Springer, 21–54. Pereira Roders, A. and Bandarin, F. (eds) (2019) Reshaping urban conservation: The Historic Urban Landscape Approach in action, Series on Creativity, heritage and the city 2, Singapore: Springer. Perera, N. and Tang, W. S. (2013) Transforming Asian cities: Intellectual impasse, Asianizing space, and emerging translocalities, New York: Routledge. Rapoport, A. (1990) The meaning of the built environment: A nonverbal communication approach, 2nd edition, Tucson, AZ: The University of Arizona Press. Rey-Pérez, J. and González-Martínez, P. (2018) ‘Lights and shadows over the recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape: ‘Managing change’ in Ballarat and Cuenca through a radical approach focused on values and authenticity’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 24(1), 101–116. Rodwell, D. (2018) ‘The Historic Urban Landscape and the geography of heritage’, The Historic Environment: Policy & Practice, 9(3–4), 180–206. Silva, K. D. (2010) ‘Tangible and intangible heritages: The crisis of official definitions’, Journal of Housing & Building Research Centre, Special Issue: Revitalizing Historic Buildings, 6(3), 12–18. ———. (2011) ‘Mapping meaning in the city image: A case study of Kandy, Sri Lanka’, Journal of Architectural and Planning Research, 28(3), 229–251.

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Kapila D. Silva ———. (2013) ‘Epilogue: Prospects for Asian heritage management’, in K. D. Silva and N-K. Chapagain (eds) Asian heritage management: Contexts, concerns and prospects, London: Routledge, 345–355. ———. (2015) ‘The spirit of place of Bhaktapur, Nepal’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 21(8), 820–841. ———. (2017) ‘Epilogue: Prospects for manging South Asian cultural landscapes’, in K. D. Silva and A. Sinha (eds) Cultural landscapes of South Asia: Studies in heritage conservation and management, London: Routledge, 258–268. ———. (2019) ‘Towards an integrative and empathetic heritage conservation: The case of Kandy, Sri Lanka’, in V. Bharne and T. Sandmeier (eds) Routledge companion on global heritage conservation, London: Routledge, 87–108. Smith, J. (2015a) ‘Applying a cultural landscape approach to the urban context’, in K. Taylor, A. St Clair, and N. J. Mitchell (eds) Conserving cultural landscapes: Challenges and new directions, London: Routledge, 182–197. ———. (2015b) ‘Civic engagement tools for urban conservation’, in F. Bandarin and R. van Oers (eds) Reconnecting the city: The Historic Urban Landscape Approach and the future of urban heritage, Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 221–239. Smith, L. (2006) The uses of heritage, London: Routledge. Taylor, K. (2013) ‘The challenges of cultural landscape construct and associated intangible values in an Asian context’, in K. D. Silva and N-K. Chapagain (eds) Asian heritage management: Contexts, concerns and prospects, London: Routledge, 189–211. ———. (2016) ‘The Historic Urban Landscape paradigm and cities as cultural landscapes: Challenging orthodoxy in urban conservation’, Landscape Research, 41(4), 471–480. Turner, M. (2013) ‘UNESCO Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape’, in M-T. Albert, E. Bernecker, and B. Rudolff (eds) Understanding heritage, Berlin: De Gruyter, 77–87. UNESCO. (2003) Convention for the safeguarding of the intangible cultural heritage, Paris: UNESCO. ———. (2005) Vienna memorandum on world heritage and contemporary architecture – Managing the Historic Urban Landscape, Paris: UNESCO. ——— (2011) Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape, Paris: UNESCO World Heritage Centre. Available at: https://whc.unesco.org/uploads/activities/documents/activity-638-98.pdf (accessed 1 June 2018). ———. (2013) New life for historic cities. The Historic Urban Landscape Approach explained, Paris: UNESCO World Heritage Centre. ———. (2016) The HUL guidebook: Managing heritage in dynamic and constantly changing urban environments – A practical guide to UNESCO’s recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape, Paris: UNESCO World Heritage Centre. ———. (2017) Operational guidelines for the implementation of the world heritage convention, Paris: UNESCO. UNISDR (United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction) (2012) How to make cities more resilient: A handbook for local government leaders – A contribution to the global campaign 2010–2015 making cities resilient – My city is getting ready! Geneva: UNISDR. Available at: www.unisdr.org/files/26462_handbookfinalonlineversion.pdf (accessed 30 April 2019). Van Oers, R. (2007) ‘Towards new international guidelines for the conservation of Historic Urban Landscapes (HUL)’, City & Time, 3(3), 43–51. ———. (2015) ‘The way forward: An agenda for reconnecting the city’, in F. Bandarin and R. van Oers (eds) Reconnecting the city: The Historic Urban Landscape Approach and the future of urban heritage, Chichester, UK: WileyBlackwell, 317–332. Van Oers, R. and Taylor, K. (2015) ‘Asian theoretical and best-practice framework for the Historic Urban Landscape: Heritage for the future’, in K. Taylor, A. St Clair, and N. J. Mitchell (eds) Conserving cultural landscapes: Challenges and new directions, London: Routledge, 198–215. Wells, J. C. and Stiefel, B. L. (eds) (2019) Human-centered built environment heritage preservation: Theory and evidence-based practice, London: Routledge. Zetter, R. and Watson, G. B. (eds) (2006) Designing sustainable cities in the developing world, Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing.

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PART I

Conceptualizing Historic Urban Landscapes

1 CITIES Palimpsests of cultural memory and their management William Logan

Introduction Penelope Lively’s novel City of the Mind (1992) opens with her protagonist driving through London on his daily trek from home to work. He sees the building mix of columns, pediments and porticos, and stucco, concrete and brick walls. When he gets out of the car, he hears the city’s people speaking in tongues and eating a diversity of cuisines—pizza, kebab, tandoori. The city is exciting, a dazzle of sensual stimuli, apparently chaotic. How to understand the complexity of the city? Of course, architectural fashions and immigration patterns lie beneath much of the mix. But much of his city is in his head—memories of what he has been told in the past about the city as well as personal memories attached to parts of the city in which he has lived, worked and played. ‘And thus, driving through the city, he is both here and now, there and then. He carries yesterday with him, but pushes forward into today, and tomorrow, skipping as he will from one to another’ (p. 2). The city is a memory bank, a ‘jigsaw of time and reference’ (p. 4), ‘a chronicle, in brick and stone, in silent eloquence, for those who have eyes and ears’ (p. 3). A townscape is a physical manifestation of the cultural, economic and political environment in which it developed. Few cities were created in a single time period and cultural layering is the normal condition. There are rare exceptions, of course, such as Noto, Italy, an old city destroyed in 1693 by an earthquake and rebuilt in Sicilian baroque. Some newly planned towns in the Asia-Pacific region also defy the normal rule, like Canberra in the early twentieth-century and Petaling Jaya built in the 1950s alongside older Kuala Lumpur. Colonial summer resorts on hilltops at Murree, Pakistan and Sapa, Vietnam, and settlements in newly conquered areas, like Israel’s Ariel and Ma’ale Adumim in the Occupied West Bank, also fit the single period of creation category, as do new suburban districts of old cities such as Tsukuba Science City built from the 1960s on the outskirts of Tokyo. Most of these places, however, now have more modern structures alongside the original so that, although created as a unity in a particular period, they have since started to undergo the cultural layering process. Examples are Bandung and Dalat, once planned to be the new capitals of the Dutch East Indies and French Indochina respectively, where the early twentieth-century Art Deco architecture is now surrounded by more modern structures. In the majority of cities where growth has been more organic, the layering has a longer history and is more complex and intricate, with recent buildings erected within the historic cities cheek-by-jowl with traditional indigenous and imported colonial structures. If we were talking about an archaeological site,

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a deep trench could be excavated that would allow the layers to be observed. In the case of the city, this can sometimes occur when a new building is being constructed and where local legislation requires an archaeological dig to be undertaken before foundations are laid. Usually, however, we observe only the top layer, although very often buildings from earlier layers still survive at the city surface. Because of this, cities have been likened to mediaeval palimpsests—parchments that have been cleaned and re-used but in which some of the earlier writing is still seen. Writing surfaces were relatively scarce at that time and they had to be re-used. Despite washing or scraping the parchments and vellums, the cleaning process was incomplete and traces of the earlier text kept coming to the surface. So, too, old cities had to be constantly re-used and historic structures continue to appear among the new. Cities then combine different elements from different times and cultures, juxtaposed to create today’s urban landscape. Using case studies drawn from contrasting cultures in the Asia-Pacific region, this chapter shows how cycles of creation, demolition, modification and/or replacement make up the cultural layering processes through which today’s urban palimpsests have been created. Many theoretical and practical questions arise. Are the cultural layering and the palimpsest character of cities important, other than to historians and heritage specialists? Are city residents and visitors really as aware as Penelope Lively’s protagonist of the old among the new, or has the mix simply been normalized as their commonplace living environment? The palimpsest nature of layered cities is recognized by city administrations world-wide but their urban planning and heritage conservation responses vary considerably from lowpriority concern to the protection of only the most significant individual buildings (a ‘gems approach’) and to the more inclusive protection of precincts and the full range of historic buildings within them (a ‘landscape approach’). To understand the diversity of planning responses, it is necessary to explore the politics of heritage that underlies the attribution of significance to some places but not to others. Relevant here is the state’s use of heritage for nation-building and other ideological purposes and as the basis of lucrative tourism industries. Six case studies are drawn from the two countries I know best—Vietnam and Australia. Vietnam in mainland Southeast Asia is a socialist country that has survived two wars of independence to become one of the world’s most rapidly developing countries. It is keen to improve standards of living but has an acute awareness of and pride in its cultural traditions. Australia is a developed, capitalist country with a predominantly Europe-derived way of life superimposed on an indigenous culture and increasingly modified in recent years by immigrants from Asia and the Middle East. From the case studies, the chapter draws out and explores a number of key issues. These include considering what happens or what should happen to old structures if the uses for which they were constructed no longer exist. Should they be demolished despite their historic interest or aesthetic value? Do heritage controls impose an unreasonable burden on property owners and limit the opportunity for new generations to create their own, new heritage? Who makes, or should make, decisions about what to keep and what to let pass into history?

Development of the urban palimpsest concept While the use of the urban palimpsest notion has flourished in the last 20 years in the social sciences, particularly in the United States, it is not entirely new. Ivan Mitin (2010) points out that a number of geographers were propounding very similar concepts in the early to mid-nineteenth century, such as Carl Sauer on cultural landscapes and Derwent Whittlesey on ‘sequent occupance’. Mitin notes, too, that the first geographer to refer specifically to a cultural landscape as a palimpsest was Donald Meinig (1979: 6). Meinig also extended the notion from the physical to the psychological, exploring the way in which human interpretations and representations create the cultural landscape—or rather the ‘multivocal cultural landscape’ since it is ‘read’ by different individuals and groups in different ways. Richard Schein (1997: 660) found in his American suburban research that people viewed landscape essentially

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as ‘reflective and symbolic of individual activity and cultural ideals.’ This emphasis on the palimpsest as ‘an endless number of coexisting semiological systems’ can make the concept too passive, Mitin (2010) argues, since during the process of constant re-interpretation new senses of a place emerge and new layers of the palimpsest are formed, all of which serves to highlight the dynamic nature of cities in which the palimpsest is never fixed for long. Marshall et al. (2017) push the intangible aspect of city life further, pointing out that use of the term ‘palimpsest’ as a metaphor for describing the city includes both ‘the physical urban form as well as memories and experiences of everyday urban life’ (p. 1163). It is this focus on memory that characterizes the work of cultural critic, Andreas Huyssen, who has perhaps been the writer most responsible for popularizing the ‘trope of the palimpsest’ (2003: 7). His book, Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory, analyses the relationship between traumatic events, history, forgetting, selective memory, memorialization and the generation of works of art. He focuses on three cities—Berlin, Buenos Aires and New York—showing how their palimpsests have unfolded over time. In some ways this is not particularly new: historians and historical geographers have long been writing about the cultural layering and cultural memory in individual cities without using the term. Alan Balfour, for instance, studied the political history of Berlin through a detailed analysis of Potsdamer Platz and Leipzig Platz and their ‘layers of living residue’, pointing particularly to the way the ‘ideals, myths and fictions of a culture [were] seen through the reflections of architecture, architects, and artists’ (1990: 11). Although focused on the city’s phenomenal twentieth-century growth, historian Howard Spodek (2011) nevertheless reveals much about the cultural layers of Ahmedabad, India. My own ‘biography’ of Hanoi, Vietnam (Logan 2000) shows how that city’s cultural layering is the basis of its special character.

Case studies: city palimpsests and their management Hanoi, Vietnam Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, has a culturally layered history stretching back more than a millennium and is now a major metropolis of around 8 million people. The value of the palimpsest notion to cities— to understanding their historical evolution and their current day heritage significance—quickly became clear to me when I first went there on a UNESCO mission in January 1990. On the basis of a confusion of Vietnam War media images in my head, I had expected to find a city heavily destroyed by American bombs. I found instead a city almost unscathed by that war, although badly damaged in the earlier struggle against the French in the 1940s. It was a quiet city, bicycles everywhere and barely a motor vehicle in sight, quite unlike the Hanoi of today with its surfeit of visual and aural stimuli. This was just as well because there was enough visual confusion, I initially thought, in the mix of building types and architectural styles. As mentioned in my Hanoi book (Logan 2000: 7–8), one of my first appointments was at the Australian embassy in Ly Thuong Kiet Street in what is commonly referred to as the ‘French Quarter’. This is an area laid out by the French colonial authorities in the late nineteenth century with broad tree-lined boulevards and stuccoed villas and administrative buildings in a French provincial style. The embassy itself was of this style, a handsome building that still serves as the ambassador’s residence today (Figure 1.1a). But within a short block or two of the embassy were other significant buildings of totally different form and style such as the important and colourful Buddhist Quan Su Pagoda (Figure 1.1b) and the modernist Soviet-Vietnamese Friendship Cultural Palace (Figure 1.1c). It was only by recognizing that these disparate buildings were survivors of distinct cultural layers created at different stages in Hanoi’s history that sense could be made of the cultural landscape. What I was seeing was not just a jumble of built forms and styles but a palimpsest reflecting the past with an underlying logic based

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Figure 1.1 Hanoi’s ‘French Quarter’, early 1990s: (a) Australian embassy; (b) Quan Su Pagoda; (c) Soviet-Vietnamese Friendship Cultural Palace. Source: William Logan

on a layering process in which foreign powers imposed their own cultural values over those of the indigenous Vietnamese. Much of this influence was directly applied; that is, the foreign powers controlling Hanoi politically wanted to demonstrate their command by ordering the construction of buildings in their own architectural styles. But much was indirect, where Vietnam’s rulers sought to emulate the foreign powers to which they owed allegiance or where foreign belief systems, such as Daoism, Confucianism, Buddhism or Roman Catholicism, had been absorbed into Vietnamese life. Thus, the Thang Long-Hanoi Citadel emulated Chinese citadels, while temples and pagodas reflected their Chinese counterparts and churches were built with pointed spires in Neo-Gothic style. Under the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, which controlled northern Vietnam after 1955, and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, that has run the reunified country since 1975, Hanoi acquired another, socialist layer. Today’s palimpsest includes many urban design and architectural elements that were either fraternal gifts from other socialist countries or were the result of Vietnamese planners, architects and engineers having been educated in those countries. These socialist constructions include the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum and Museum designed by the USSR, the Thang Loi Hotel built by Cuba, and the Hai Ba Trung and Kim Lien housing estates (for further discussion see Logan 2000: Chapter 6; Schwenkel 2014). Hanoi’s palimpsest is changing dramatically and a new layer of medium-rise commercial buildings and high-rise apartments threatens to obliterate earlier layers. Urban planning is still locked into the master plan approach inherited from the French and reinforced by the Soviets. The latest master plan was approved in 2011 and district level planning was in place by the end of 2015 (Vietnamnet 2017). This

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kind of planning is too inflexible to cope well with the city’s booming population and urban growth. While there is an increasing community consultation element, this is usually after plans are drafted, and there is no attempt to engage the public in preliminary determination of its vision for the city and its component parts. Houses can be built without official approval, providing they meet minimum construction standards (Guardian 2014). Bringing the planning system under control has been difficult and even a prime ministerial order to reduce population density in the central city by capping new development projects and limiting building height is apparently being ignored (Vietnamnet 2017). High land values provide a strong incentive to demolish low-rise structures, including the colonial villas, and to rebuild. Officially the Hanoi People’s Committee has declared that colonial buildings should be demolished only if they are uninhabitable. According to the report on Hanoi in The Guardian’s 2014 city series, however, most are built on foundations of bamboo rammed into the swampy ground and, as with the wooden pile foundations of Venice’s palaces, survival of the foundations depends on their remaining submerged under water so that the microorganisms causing decay cannot live. In Hanoi’s case, the bamboo foundations are often disturbed by excavation work for new construction on surrounding sites, and the historic buildings supported by bamboo foundations therefore face an uncertain future even without taking into account the economic advantage of alternative site development.

Thang Long-Hanoi Citadel, Vietnam In some cities, efforts are being made to return the historic centre or parts of it to some halcyon, often mythologized period in the past. Sometimes governments distort history in this way for ideological or nation-building reasons. More often, it is to make places more attractive to tourists, apparently based on the view that visitors are unable to cope with cultural complexity, which of course may be true at the many sites lacking adequate interpretation for visitors. In central Hanoi, both ideological and tourism reasons seem to be at work, with an emphasis being placed on the period of King Ly Thai To, whose reign from 1009 to 1028 is seen as the beginning of independent Vietnam (Logan 2014). Statues of the king have appeared around Hoan Kiem Lake (Logan 2009: 92), while the multi-layered Thang Long-Hanoi Citadel is being reinterpreted and remodelled to emphasize the Ly and subsequent Le and Mac dynasties to 1592 (Dan Tri International (DTI) 2013b). The increasing focus on these early layers, however, runs against the Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) for which the citadel was inscribed on the World Heritage list in 2010. The OUV was seen to lie in three features: the citadel’s longevity, its continuity as a seat of power, and the presence of a layered record of vestiges, including the colonial and the revolutionary. If the inscription is to be maintained, it is critically important that these elements are respected and form the basis of site management. In 2002, spectacular seventh-century archaeological remains were discovered at 18 Hoang Dieu Street adjacent to the central citadel area (Figure 1.2a) and, at the time of the citadel’s World Heritage inscription, an agreement was made with the World Heritage Committee and the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) to undertake further excavations. These have had the effect of shifting the balance between the underground remains and the surface palimpsest, giving more importance to the former. Since the underground vestiges belong to early Vietnamese dynasties whereas the surface features are more recent and connected with the French colonial period, this means that there is also a shift in the importance of the various cultural layers. Some of the French and also some more recent Vietnamese military buildings have already been demolished since the inscription and, according to the local media, planners drafting a citadel master plan have proposed demolishing most of the remaining French buildings. In July 2013, for instance, it was reported in Dan Tri International that a detailed plan had been submitted to the government to ‘restore and preserve the Thang Long Imperial Citadel relic site’, apparently following a request from the Prime Minister to turn the site into a ‘cultural and historical park’ (DTI 2013a) that would preserve the archaeological remains and establish an architectural harmony with

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Figure 1.2 Thang-Long-Hanoi Citadel. (a) Inscribed World Heritage site and its buffer zone, 2004. (b) Dragon House, 2013. (c). Large space for festivals in front of Doan Mon, 2010. Sources: (a) Thang Long-Hanoi Conservation Centre; (b, c) William Logan

the adjacent Ba Dinh Political Centre (DTI 2013b). It was reported that the planners had been requested to ensure the restored citadel ‘looks as much as possible as it looked originally’ and that the colonial structures would be demolished (DTI 2013a). Returning to a mythologized period in the ancient past is always a dangerous path to follow, particularly in the absence of accurate documentation of what existed at that time, and can lead to the creation of a theme park. The Thang Long-Hanoi Heritage Conservation Centre has been aware of the dangers, however, and its archaeological excavations have been building up the necessary bank of building construction data. The citadel’s master plan, approved by the Hanoi People’s Committee in April 2016, included demolition of the ‘Dragon House’ (Figure 1.2b) that the French had built as their artillery headquarters in the late 1880s, and reconstruction of the Kinh Thien Palace, which is said to have support both within the higher echelons of the Vietnamese government and among leading scholars (Pham Thi Thanh Huong, pers. comm. 25 June 2018). The plan sets two phases for the rebuilding: until 2020, work will focus on archaeological excavation and research, and then, after 2020 but only when research finds are sufficient, the palace will be reconstructed. The Conservation Centre has advised that all of the significant colonial buildings will be protected under the master plan with the exception of the Dragon House and the Building of War Operations (Pham Thi Thang Huong pers. comm. 13 July 2018). The latter will be relocated in order to reinstate the spiritual axis destroyed by the French that runs north–south through the centre of the site. The large space between the Cot Co (Flag Tower) and the Doan Mon (South Gate) will also be protected and used for the purpose of hosting official state and city events (Figure 1.2c). In May 2018, the Hanoi People’s Committee approved a set of regulations (albeit interim at this stage) on the organization of such events at the citadel, including festivals and other intangible heritage practices. Mounting these events not only enriches the tourism experience at the citadel but is in line with the view that cultural heritage in Asian cities is shaped by philosophies and religious systems that emphasize the intangible rather than the tangible (Howe and Logan 2002: 248). In many cities in Asia, there is an abundance of myths and legends associated with fortresses, temples, pagodas, streets, lakes and other

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urban features. Without taking these traditional expressions, seasonal festivals and religious rites into account, even the best-preserved temple will be merely an empty shell and of little significance to local people. Whereas the term palimpsest is usually used in relation to tangible or physical heritage, it can and should encompass intangible heritage, which is living, continuing through intergenerational transmission and being constantly modified over time.

Vinh, Vietnam Whereas each layer in Hanoi is the legacy of direct or indirect political and cultural domination by a foreign power, in Vinh, a city of half a million people in central Vietnam, the layering is confined to a single political regime, that of independent socialist Vietnam. In her doctoral study of Vinh, architect Kelly Shannon (2004: 240–8) describes the settlement’s earlier life as the southernmost outpost of the Vietnamese kingdom until the fifteenth century and French colonial city in the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries. Almost all of this has gone, destroyed in Vietnam’s two wars of liberation, first against the French and then against the United States and its allies. Shannon (2004: 252) notes that the citadel had been ‘reduced to a mere mark on the landscape (although still drawn prominently on plans)’. The citadel gates (Figure 1.3a), dating from 1831, survived and were restored by the city authorities in 2004, but essentially the city centre had to be rebuilt twice. The notion of palimpsest is used more explicitly by anthropologist, Christina Schwenkel (2014), in her excavation of the layers of urban infrastructure built in Vinh after each war. The khoi phuc (rehabilitation) period from 1954 to 1963 saw a strong national effort to create a new, ‘socialist city’. In the xay dung lai (reconstruction) period from 1974 to 1980, a more extensive and systematic replanning and rebuilding of Vinh occurred, with a seven-year aid commitment from East Germany. Schwenkel (2014) sees this as an ‘unprecedented moment of internationalization’, even if limited to within the Soviet bloc, which resulted in the urban palimpsest that exists in Vinh today being one of ‘socialist architecture and infrastructure built upon the material ruins of past urbanisms’ (Figure 1.3b, 1.3c). It reinforces the point, too, that Soviet planning was one of the major globalizing tendencies of the last half-century (Logan 2000: 186).

Hoi An, Vietnam Yet other historic cities world-wide are being remodelled not due to hostilities but to boost their attractiveness to tourists and to strengthen national and local revenue from the tourism industry. Macau, for instance, has seen massive changes since Portuguese colonial control ended in 1999. Extensive land reclamation has provided space for casinos catering to mainland Chinese and engulfing the World Heritage-listed historic centre. The capital of the last Vietnamese royal dynasty, Hue, is recreating the centre of its citadel, with Japanese assistance. In Bangkok, the Rattanakosin Master Plan is designed to beautify the royal Rattanakosin district at the expense of local communities, such as the residents of Pom Mahakan, and their heritage. Making use of heritage assets to create jobs, bolster the local economy and improve the local community’s standard of living is a sensible urban management goal, but cultural heritage and cultural memories can easily be overwhelmed by tourism. A new set of philosophical and practical questions arise, therefore, in relation to historic cities experiencing such tourism pressures. How is the palimpsest being reshaped and for whose benefit? How effective can heritage management be under such circumstances? To what extent must traditional ways be sacrificed in order to achieve ‘progress’? Are there limits to acceptable change? The ‘Ancient Town of Hoi An’ in central Vietnam has boomed as a tourist destination since it was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1999. The town’s tourism promotion strategies have been highly successful, capitalizing on the World Heritage brand. From around 150,000 in 1999 when the

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Figure 1.3 Vinh, 2010: (a) citadel gate; (b) socialist parade ground overseen by statue of Ho Chi Minh; (c) Vinh Market. Source: William Logan

Cities as palimpsets of cultural memory

Hoi An’s inscription occurred, tourist arrivals grew to 3.2 million by 2017, of which 55 per cent were international and 45 per cent stayed overnight (Bushell et al. 2018: 5). Compare this with the town’s resident population of approximately 150,000. Tourism generates 67 per cent of Hoi An’s GDP (ibid) and revenue from the sale of entry tickets into the World Heritage core area amounted in 2016 to USD 7.8 million (Duong et al. 2018: 245). But the reason for inscription was that its palimpsest was a well preserved example of a traditional Asian international trading port that combined buildings and a street plan reflecting indigenous and foreign influences, including Japanese, Chinese, Indian and European, dating from the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries. However, the explosion in visitor numbers—a 42 per cent jump between 2015 and 2017 alone—is imposing enormous pressure on the fragile site and raising concern about the site’s sustainability. In their recent study, Robyn Bushell, Pham Huong and Tran Thi Thanh Thuy et al. observed that many visitors found the crowds at peak times to be unappealing and wondered whether complaints on Trip Adviser and other social media platforms would impact negatively on visitor numbers (Bushell et al. 2018: 14). The wear and tear on the physical fabric of key buildings, such as the ‘Japanese Bridge’ (Figure 1.4a) and several traditional houses that are open to the public, is also of concern. While a report from a joint UNESCO-International Labour Organization (ILO)-Quang Nam Province project in 2014–16 to develop sustainable tourism in Hoi An argued that tourism has the potential to be a driving force for inclusive socio-economic development and enterprise and job creation, especially for women and young people, Bushell et al. have found that the economic benefits have been enjoyed most by those living in the core area and by the many absentee property owners (ibid.: 3, 5). Pham (2016: 288) sees the concentration of the conservation and tourism development programs on the core area leading to a ‘rupture in the relationship between heritage and the broader urban community outside the core area.’ In recent years Hoi An’s urban planners and heritage managers have sought to address the pressure of numbers by developing new tourism precincts and new entertainments that will spread tourist numbers beyond the core area. Two different approaches can be seen. The more sensitive approach has been the community-based development of Triem Tay, a village 15 minutes’ walk across the bridge from the core, as part of the UNESCO-ILO-Quang Nam Province project (see Bushell et al. 2018) (Figure 1.4b). Here the local residents have been fully engaged in establishing homestay facilities, food services and handicraft shops to make the village a satellite of Hoi An, diffusing the tourists and encouraging them to stay longer in the area. According to Duong et al. (2018: 247), official policies and regulations have promoted active participation by the private sector, making it the main driver of development. Much larger and less sensitive has been the creation of the new tourist precinct of shops and houses built in quasi-traditional style along the Thu Bon River opposite the core (Figure 1.4c). A similar approach has been taken in China’s Lijiang where the responsible authorities have encouraged the construction of replica traditional houses around that city’s World Heritage core (Logan 2012: 120–22). Visitors to both Hoi An and Lijiang are hard pressed to know what is genuinely old and what is a replica—and perhaps many do not much care since the primary aim of their visit is simply to have a good time. A theme park does this just as well as, if not better than a carefully conserved historic town. Assuming, however, that Hoi An wants to be more than a theme park, tourism needs to be managed carefully so that it does not undermine the very heritage assets on which it has been based. Unfortunately, arguing for tourism to be cut back is flying in the face of a shift in the balance between heritage conservation and new development that has been observed globally over the last few years. This shift is seen, for example, in the UN’s 2016 Quito Declaration on Sustainable Cities and Human Settlements for All (Habitat III), where cultural heritage is included because it can be used to leverage the achievement of social, economic and political goals (UNGA 2015). It is also seen in the June 2017 updating of the Hoi An Declaration on the Conservation of Historic Districts in Asia to become the Hoi An Declaration on Urban Heritage Conservation and Development in Asia (UNESCO

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Figure 1.4 Hoi An, 2017: (a) Japanese Bridge; (b) Triem Tay; (c) tourist precinct across Thu Bon River. Source: William Logan

Cities as palimpsets of cultural memory

2017). Dwindling public budgets for heritage put pressure on heritage values and raise wider sustainability concerns in historic cities everywhere.

Westgarthtown, Melbourne, Australia The first Australian case study could not be more unlike Hoi An with respect to its physical size, the number and motivation of visitors and the way it is managed. Westgarthtown started life as a small dairy farming settlement established by immigrants who arrived from Germany just before the Victorian gold rushes beginning in 1851 that led to a boom in population and economic development. Sixteen settlers purchased allotments in 1850, each landholding providing a creek frontage to ensure the availability of water for most part of the year. Ten acres (about four hectares) were reserved for a church, school and stores. Of the five surviving farmhouses, three are privately owned and one is owned by the Victorian State Government. The fifth, Ziebell’s bluestone (basalt) farmhouse, has been owned since 1993 by the municipal government, the City of Whittlesea, which has meticulously restored the property and opens it at regular intervals to visitors interested in colonial social history, architecture and gardens (Figure 1.5a). The bluestone church, which was erected in 1856, is the oldest operating Lutheran church in Australia, although services are now only monthly and the congregation is aged (Figure 1.5b). The Lutheran Cemetery dating from 1850 remains (Figure 1.5c), as does the street and allotment pattern, but the school and stores have long gone. Today Westgarthtown is engulfed in the sprawling suburbs of northern Melbourne. It continues to form part of Melbourne’s multicultural residential mix. The settlers were Germans from Mecklenburg and Wends, a Slavic group (also known as Sorbs) from Brandenburg and Saxony south of Berlin. They were among the estimated five million people who left Germany for mostly economic reasons in the mid-nineteenth century, 95 per cent of whom went to North America. The settlers in this case study had been encouraged to migrate to Victoria by the prominent Melbourne merchant William Westgarth who travelled through Germany in the late 1840s promoting Melbourne’s potential as migration destination. The Germans and Wends worked together cooperatively as a community and generally prospered, one family establishing a milk supply company that is today one of the largest in Australia. Their origins in Germany might have been problematic in the twentieth century given the antiGerman agitation that broke out during the world wars. Westgarthtown’s settlers were, however, well supported by the municipal authorities during World War I, unlike those in some other parts of Australia (Fischer 2015). Several young Westgarthtown men volunteered for service in the colonial forces during that war and one was killed on the Western Front in 1917. It is claimed by Robert Wuchatsch, a descendant of one of the Wendish families, that Westgarthtown’s residents had become ‘almost indistinguishable from their neighbours of British descent, apart from their names. Their lives, needs and aspirations had merged …’ (Wuchatsch 2004: 12). Today Westgarthtown stands as a testimony to the fundamental contribution made by ethnic minority groups to the development of Melbourne’s society and its townscape. It also shows how political, social and economic processes, if sensitively handled, can enable the peaceful and productive integration of ethnic minorities into national life.

St Kilda Hill, Melbourne, Australia The second Australian case study—a section of the Melbourne southern suburb of St Kilda—also owes much of its early development to the 1850s gold rushes. Its palimpsest reflects successive cycles of economic boom and bust as well as the succession of generations of inhabitants having different cultural values based on class and ethnicity. It also illustrates the adoption of innovative government strategies for protecting the palimpsest, particularly the use of a heritage overlay planning mechanism.

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William Logan

Figure 1.5 Westgarthtown, 2018: (a) Ziebell’s farmhouse; (b) Lutheran church; (c) Lutheran cemetery. Source: William Logan

The urban development of St Kilda started in 1842 on the coast of Port Philip Bay seven kilometres south of Melbourne, which itself was still a new settlement, having been founded in 1835. With Melbourne’s metropolitan growth—its current population is almost five million—St Kilda has become an inner suburb with around 22,000 residents. Official settlement at St Kilda made no allowance for the pre-existing indigenous Boonwarrung people of the Kulin nation who were forced to move to surrounding areas. Having no buildings that might have survived in today’s St Kilda palimpsest, the indigenous cultural layer is represented by a single corroboree tree standing near the original, pre-reclamation seashore. During the mid-nineteenth century, parts of St Kilda attracted wealthy landowners who erected palatial mansions surrounded by extensive gardens and farmlands. Mansion building came to an end with a severe recession in 1893, although they were already becoming too large as family sizes decreased and too expensive to maintain and heat. In addition, inner city living was becoming unfashionable compared with living in the more spacious and allegedly healthier ‘garden suburbs’ that had been opened up by the development of Melbourne’s railway network. Some parts of St Kilda had always housed lower income residents and after the village was connected by train to Melbourne in 1857 its beaches became a favourite leisure location for the city’s workers. In the twentieth century, St Kilda’s social tone plummeted substantially, with many mansions turned into boarding houses and two principal thoroughfares—Fitzroy and Grey Streets—becoming locales for prostitution and drug trafficking. Some early apartment construction occurred in the 1930s

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following the Great Depression. After a lull in development during World War II, St Kilda, like most of Melbourne’s inner suburbs, underwent a period of massive change in the 1950s and 1960s that saw the destruction of many of the remaining mansions and their replacement by cream-brick apartments and cement-panel social housing towers. The ethnic composition of the population also changed, the Anglo-Celtic dominance of the nineteenth century being moderated by Greek immigrants in the 1960s and, in the last 20 years, Russians. There had always been a significant Jewish component and several synagogues were built, two of which—St Kilda Hebrew Community (erected 1871, rebuilt 1927) and Temple Beth Israel (built 1937)—remain part of the palimpsest although much of the Jewish population has shifted eastwards to neighbouring suburbs in recent decades. In terms of social status St Kilda remains very mixed, with considerable gentrification alongside low income renters. One of the most desirable parts of St Kilda in the nineteenth century was the area known as St Kilda Hill. Its first European owner ran a cattle and pig farm and prospered sufficiently to build for his family the Hill’s first large mansion, Charnwood House, in 1853 (Browne 2015). Not long afterwards the property was sold and subdivided and, by 1869, all lots had been sold to business and professional men who wanted a semi-rural life close to the sea. In addition to their mansions, terraced and freestanding houses were also built speculatively in the 1870s and 1880s for rental to middle-class families (Figure 1.6a), while narrow ‘worker’s cottages’ were constructed for servants, labourers and others, mostly on the side streets (Figure 1.6b). Gradually, however, many of the mansions were demolished and their land subdivided. One of these was Cintra, a large manor house built around 1855 in farmland at the eastern end of the Hill. The owner went bankrupt in the 1893 recession, the property was sold, and the mansion was demolished and replaced by the Cintra Avenue housing subdivision in 1905–7 (Figure 1.6c). The new houses in Federation style have now existed more than twice as long as the original mansion and are regarded as significant heritage (David Helms Heritage Planning 2018: 67). Charnwood House survived longer, being demolished as late as 1961 when it was replaced by an apartment block and a school attached to one of the synagogues. Only a few Canary Island palms have survived from the mansion’s garden. Other mansions remain part of today’s urban palimpsest, however, their fate having been determined by their owners’ ability to find new uses for them. Some were converted into apartments and others into private school buildings (Figure 1.7a and 1.7b). Yet others remain but are hidden from sight behind 1950s apartments (Figure 1.7c). Under Australia’s founding constitution of 1901, urban planning and heritage conservation are matters controlled by the states and territories. So, when a concern for urban heritage emerged in the 1970s as Melbourne’s inner suburbs began to gentrify, it was the state government of Victoria that passed the Historic Building Act 1974, Australia’s first piece of heritage place legislation (Logan 2007: 208). This law was replaced by the Heritage Act 1995 and subsequently the Heritage Act 2017. Implementation of the legislation occurs at the state level for places assessed by the Victorian Heritage Council to be of significance to the whole state and at the local government level for places assessed to be of local significance. A ‘gems’ approach is used by the Heritage Council and about 15 St Kilda buildings have been registered. In the St Kilda Hill precinct these include the Marlton, Rondebosch and Toldara mansions (Figure 1.7a, 1.7b and 1.7c) as well as the 1862 working class house in Octavia Street (Figure 1.6b), several interwar Arts and Crafts-inspired apartment blocks, a Jazz Moderne cinema from 1936, and a block reflecting the post-World War II austerity period when building materials were extremely limited. Places of local significance in St Kilda come under the control of the City of Port Phillip. With the passing of the Planning and Environment Act 1987, Victorian local governments became responsible for issuing planning permits for buildings and works, such as new developments or additions to existing buildings. In the 1990s, a set of Victorian Planning Provisions introduced the notion of overlays for features that cut across the usual land use zoning. Heritage significance is one of these since heritage value may apply to places having all kinds of land use. Like most Victorian local governments, Port Phillip has undertaken studies of the historic

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Figure 1.6 St Kilda Hill, 2018: (a) Crimea Street professional family houses, 1870s–80s; (b) Octavia Street working class house, 1862; (c) Cintra Avenue houses, 1905. Source: William Logan

Figure 1.7 St Kilda Hill, 2018; adaptive re-use. (a) Marlton, built mid-1850s, now kindergarten wing of a co-ed private school. (b) Rondebosch, built 1868 by merchant Israel Bloomington, part of private school since the 1990s. (c) Toldara, built 1868–9 for jeweller and merchant David Rosenthal. Source: William Logan

William Logan

resources within its area and incorporated the findings into its heritage overlay. The St Kilda Hill area was included in a ‘Heritage Overlay 6 East St Kilda Precinct’ study in 1998 and reviewed in 2018 (David Helms Heritage Planning 2018). Heritage overlays take an inclusive rather than ‘gems approach’ and most of St Kilda Hill is covered. There is popular support in Melbourne for the overlay approach, which protects the public aspects of private properties while allowing modern additions behind and modernization within them (Logan 2007: 209). Even so, the overlay approach is not particularly participatory, mainly inviting the community to comment on the heritage consultant’s recommendations after they have been submitted to council. In the case of the 1998 and 2018 overlay proposals for St Kilda Hill, there was no attempt to identify community identity. Moreover, council does not always have the final say: while council policy is not to allow demolition of significant listed buildings unless they are structurally unsound, owners may ask the Victoria Civil and Administrative Appeals Tribunal to override the council’s injunction.

Urban palimpsests and the Historic Urban Landscape approach Communities often struggle to safeguard the tangible expressions of their identity and heritage in the face of top-down decisions to invest in new construction in the historic centres of major cities. The global shift in the balance between conservation and development, noted in relation to Hoi An, increases the difficulties heritage advocates face. Against this, however, some hope lies in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (UNGA 2015) and UNESCO’s 2015 Policy for the Integration of a Sustainable Development Perspective into the Processes of the World Heritage Convention (UNESCO 2015), both of which insist on the rights of local communities to be involved meaningfully in decision making about their living environment. Equally aspirational, the Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape, which was adopted by UNESCO’s General Conference in November 2011, also emphasizes the meaningful engagement of local communities in decision making about their city environments (UNESCO 2011). To support such engagement, the Recommendation calls for the development of community or civic engagement tools that will ‘involve a diverse cross-section of stakeholders and empower them to identify key values in their urban areas, develop visions that reflect their diversity, set goals, and agree on actions to safeguard their heritage and promote sustainable development’ (UNESCO 2011: para 24a). Although UNESCO’s 2011 Recommendation does not use the term ‘palimpsest’, the notion is nevertheless embedded in the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) concept. As explained by the concept’s chief advocates, Francesco Bandarin and Ron van Oers (2012: 63), a historic urban area is not just ‘a “sum” of monuments and urban fabric’ but a ‘comprehensive system, marked by historical, geomorphologic and social relationships with its setting and environment, and characterized by a complex layering of meanings and expressions’. They point out that viewing the city as comprising a set of layers, including the contemporary, allows heritage policies to be developed that recognize the continuum of changes that have created today’s cities and allow planning procedures that encompass the kinds of negotiations and ‘trade-offs between conservation and development that face communities and decision makers’ (p. 69). The key is that the ‘usefulness [of the HUL concept] resides in the notion that it incorporates a capacity for change’ (van Oers 2010: 14). HULs will therefore include modern buildings and infrastructure alongside the old as well as considerable adaptive re-use. This does not, however, remove the necessity for impact assessment of proposed planning and development policies and proposals; indeed the HUL approach insists upon it (Bandarin and van Oers 2012: 166–7).

Conclusion Kapila Silva (2013: 34) points out that each historic city should be considered at the detailed level as a specific case with detailed issues unique to it. This is of course true; the case studies show that contextual considerations always apply to the conservation of all monuments and sites and are especially critical

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in the protection of broader cultural landscapes and HULs. The case studies nevertheless also demonstrate a number of general points. In particular, they show both the wide geographical applicability of the palimpsest concept to understanding culturally layered cities as well as the concept’s practical usefulness as a basis for urban planning and heritage conservation policy. They reflect the difficulties commonly experienced by city administrations in dealing with the layered character of the townscapes in their care. In the case of Hanoi there was in the 1990s some resistance to seeing the French colonial architecture as heritage worth keeping and there is still little enthusiasm for protecting socialist-era buildings other than major landmarks. The city’s astonishing growth means that its administration is barely able to enforce planning and heritage regulations. The Thang Long-Hanoi Citadel faces the dilemma of meeting nationalistic reinterpretation ambitions and saving all of the cultural layers that contribute to its OUV as recognized in its World Heritage inscription. Hoi An meanwhile is seeking to balance the protection of its World Heritage values and the expansion of its tourism, but with fears the balance has tipped too far towards the latter and that it is acquiring too many theme park traits. St Kilda, in Melbourne, leaves much to the free market to sort out but uses a heritage overlay mechanism within the municipal planning system as a way of protecting heritage elements that satisfies the needs and ambitions of the various stakeholders. The municipal authorities work alongside private property owners to conserve the heritage of its ethnic minorities in Westgarthtown. National, provincial and local governance arrangements and policy frameworks are often the key to understanding the balance achieved between heritage protection and urban development that actually occurs on the ground. The existence of a many large mansions in St Kilda Hill has been highlighted. This is not because this elite form of building has per se any more heritage significance than any other form, but simply that the mansions demonstrate very clearly the importance of adaptive re-use as a major factor in determining the survival of buildings from past cultural layers in today’s palimpsest. Indeed, all forms of building are of emotional and economic value to their owners and occupiers—and their descendants in the case of Westgarthtown—and in that sense reflect the semiological diversity that some social scientists stress when using the palimpsest concept. Historic buildings also tell us something about the social, economic and political history of the area and contribute to the local community’s cultural identity. It follows that urban planning and heritage policies should be inclusive and take into account all types, forms and ages of heritage—buildings, trees and gardens; intangible as well as tangible; and what remains from all cultural layers. Planning and heritage policies in Asia and Australia have tended to be formulated top-down by bureaucratic and professional decision-makers (Logan 2009; Taylor 2012). To formulate effective and fair policy, however, all stakeholders and especially the local community whose living environment is most directly affected should be involved in decision-making about the processes of heritage identification, assessment, management and monitoring. This is not to deny the often reified use of the concept of community by planners that is criticized in the heritage literature by Emma Waterton and Laurajane Smith (2010) and others. There is always a need to check who claims to be representing the community, how such persons were selected, and to whom and how they are accountable. Nevertheless, resort to the community is probably the best we can come up with if we are seeking democratic input into decision-making processes. People need to be meaningfully engaged in the decisions about their own living environment. Community involvement must be the starting point, as emphasized in the HUL approach, not the end point. A problem may lie in the various stakeholders being unaware of the heritage significance of the vestiges of earlier cultural layers. This is where governments have an educative role to play as a preliminary to consultation and decision-making. The case studies show, however, that there is always a mix of motives behind the extent to which residents, local businesses and tourists are prepared to accept palimpsest change—and this is also true for city governments that have the task of balancing a range of priorities. Moreover, places change; they age, become obsolescent and wear out. Owners,

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no matter whether state or private, cannot afford to maintain empty buildings. There are a finite number of old buildings that can be kept operating as historic house museums or private schools. Aesthetic and historic value may not alone be sufficient justification for continuing conservation. When the use disappears for an old structure the key to its survival lies in finding new uses for them. When the original use remains but requires more technology than the old structure can provide, a solution should be sought initially in internal refurbishment but, if this is insufficient, demolition may be inevitable. Planning and heritage processes should not seek to freeze cities. New generations must be able to put their own mark on the city and create their own heritage, as was seen in St Kilda Hill’s Cintra Avenue (Figure 1.6c). There are, however, some limits of acceptable change. New replacement and infill buildings must be designed sensitively, with respect for the palimpsest and the views of the immediate neighbours and the broader community. If the palimpsest produced by cultural layering stores the memories of a city’s inhabitants and is a key element of the city’s identity and heritage, a fundamental principle of urban management should be to respect what remains of the layers. Managing HULs is, however, about management of change and developing policies and practices that aim to achieve a balance between sensitive development and sensible conservation. City management must value and protect the layers of cultural memories to support the concept of an egalitarian city in which cultures co-exist peacefully and productively, but it must also allow new uses and meanings to emerge. In this way that the city can be a living landscape, holding on to cultural memories but responding to the changing needs and aspirations of all its occupants.

References Balfour, A. (1990) Berlin: The Politics of Order, 1737–1989, New York: Rizzoli. Bandarin, F. and van Oers, R. (2012) The Historic Urban Landscape: Managing Heritage in an Urban Century, Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. Browne, T. (2015) ‘History of St Kilda Hill’. Online. Available at: https://jaagstkilda.com/victories/history-of-stkilda-hill/ (accessed 27 July 2018). Bushell, R., Pham, H. and Tran, T. T. T. (2018) ‘World heritage, tourism and benefit sharing by local communities’, Proceedings, International Conference on World Heritage and Sustainable Development in Contemporary Context, Ha Long, Quang Ninh, Viet Nam, 9-11/07/2018, Hanoi: UNESCO Hanoi Office. Dan Tri International (DTI). (2013a) ‘Hanoi mulling over restoration of thang long imperial citadel’, Dtinews. Online. Available at: http://dtinews.vn/en/news/019004/30268/hanoi-mulling-over-restoration-of-thang-longimperial-citadel-.html (accessed 8 March 2018). Dan Tri International (DTI). (2013b) ‘Imperial citadel to become historical park’, Dtinews. Online. Available at: http://dtinews.vn/en/news/019/44775/thang-long-imperial-citadel-to-become-cultural-and-historical-park. html (accessed 8 March 2018). David Helms Heritage Planning. (2018) ‘Port Philip heritage overlay 6 St Kilda East Precinct review – Final report (prepared for City of Port Phillip)’. Online. Available at: www.portphillip.vic.gov.au/__0Review%20of% 20HO6%20Report.pdf (accessed 28 July 2018). Duong, B. H., Tran, T. T. T., Pham, T. T. H. and Nguyen, C. V. (2018) ‘World heritage and sustainable development in Viet Nam’, in P. B. Larsen and W. Logan (eds), World Heritage and Sustainable Development: New Directions in World Heritage Management, London: Routledge; 240–56. Fischer, G. (2015) ‘German experience in Australia during WW1 damaged the road to multiculturalism’, The Conversation, 22 April. Online. Available at: http://theconversation.com/german-experience-in-australia-during-ww1damaged-road-to-multiculturalism-38594 (accessed 19 October 2018). Guardian. (2014) ‘Hanoi: Is it possible to grow a city without slums?’ 11 August. Online. Available at: www.theguardian. com/cities/2014/aug/11/hanoi-slums-vietnam-urban-planning-construction (accessed 19 July 2018). Howe, R. and Logan, W. (2002) ‘Conclusion—Protecting Asia’s urban heritage: The way forward’, in W. Logan (ed.), The Disappearing ‘Asian’ City: Protecting Asia’s Urban Heritage in a Globalizing World, Oxford: Oxford University Press; 245–56. Huyssen, A. (2003) Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Lively, P. (1992) City of the Mind, London: Penguin.

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Cities as palimpsets of cultural memory Logan, W. S. (2000) Hanoi: Biography of a City, Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press; republished (2010) in Vietnamese as Hanoi: Tieu Su Mot Do Thi, Hanoi: Hanoi Publishing House. Logan, W. S. (2007) ‘Reshaping the “sunburned country”: Heritage and cultural politics in contemporary Australia’, in R. Jones and B. J. Shaw (eds), Loving a Sunburned Country? Geographies of Australian Heritages, Aldershot, UK: Ashgate; 207–23. Logan, W. S. (2009) ‘Hanoi, Vietnam: Representing power in and of the nation’, City, 13(1): 87–94. Logan, W. S. (2012) ‘States, governance and the politics of culture: World heritage places in Asia’, in P. Daly and T. Winter (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Heritage in Asia, London: Routledge; 113–28. Logan, W. S. (2014) ‘Making the most of heritage in Hanoi, Vietnam’, Historic Environment, 26(3): 62–72. Marshall, D., Staeheli, L. A., Smaira, D. and Kastrissianakis, K. (2017) ‘Narrating palimpsestic spaces’, Environment and Planning A, 49(5): 1163–80. Meinig, D. (1979) ‘Introduction’, in D. Meinig (ed.), The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes, Oxford: Oxford University Press; 1–7. Mitin, I. (2010) ‘Palimpsest’, in B. Warf (ed.), SAGE Encyclopedia of Geography, Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE; Online. Available at: www.hse.ru/mirror/pubs/lib/data/access/ram/ticket/56/1529818734829af157ca4dd6db429640 b14e2797b8/MitinSAGE.pdf(accessed 23 June 2018). Pham, T. T. H. (2016) ‘Living heritage, community participation and sustainability: Redefining development strategies in the Hoi An Ancient Town world heritage property, Vietnam’, in S. Labadi and W. Logan (eds), Urban Heritage, Development and Sustainability: International Frameworks, National and Local Governance, London: Routledge; 274–90. Schein, R. (1997) ‘The place of landscape: A conceptual framework for interpreting an American scene’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 87(4): 660–80. Schwenkel, C. (2014) ‘Socialist palimpsests in urban Vietnam’, ABE Journal, 6. Online. Available at: https://journals. openedition.org/abe/909 (accessed 20 June 2018). Shannon, K. (2004) Rhetorics and realities. Addressing landscape urbanism. Three cities in Vietnam, unpublished PhD thesis, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. Silva, K. D. (2013) ‘The city imageability: A framework for defining urban heritage dimensions’, in K. D. Silva and N. K. Chapagain (eds), Asian Heritage Management: Contexts, Concerns, and Prospects, London: Routledge; 325–344. Spodek, H. (2011) Ahmedabad: Shock City of Twentieth Century India, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Taylor, K. (2012) ‘Heritage challenges in Asian urban cultural landscape settings’, in P. Daly and T. Winter (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Heritage in Asia, London: Routledge; 266–79. UNESCO. (2011) ‘Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape’. Online. Available at: https://whc.unesco. org/uploads/activities/documents/activity-638-98.pdf (accessed 6 August 2018). UNESCO. (2015) ‘Policy for the integration of a sustainable development perspective into the processes of the world heritage convention’. Online. Available at: http://whc.unesco.org/en/sustainabledevelopment/ (accessed 28 June 2018). UNESCO. (2017) ‘The Hoi an declaration on urban heritage conservation and development in Asia 2017’. Online. Available at: www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/FIELD/Hanoi/Hoi_An_Declaration_2017_01. pdf (accessed 20 July 2018). United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). (2015) ‘Transforming our world: The 2030 agenda for sustainable development’. Document A/RES/70/1. Online. Available at: www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/ RES/70/1&Lang=E (accessed 28 June 2018). van Oers, R. (2010) ‘Managing cities and the Historic Urban Landscape initiative: An introduction’, in R. van Oers and S. Haraguchi (eds), Managing Historic Cities, (World Heritage Papers No. 27), Paris: UNESCO; 7–17. `Vietnamnet. (2017) ‘Gridlock and disorder in Hanoi’s urban planning’, 21 January. Online. Available at: http:// english.vietnamnet.vn/fms/society/171681/gridlock-and-disorder-in-hanoi-s-urban-planning.html (accessed 17 July 2018). Waterton, E. and Smith, L. (2010) ‘The recognition and misrecognition of community heritage’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 16(1–2): 4–15. Wuchatsch, R. (2004) Westgarthtown – A History & Guide, Whittlesea: Friends of Westgarthtown.

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2 THE IDEOLOGY OF THE URBAN CULTURAL LANDSCAPE CONSTRUCT Ken Taylor

Introduction The platform for this chapter is an inquiry into how the cultural landscape concept has influenced thinking and practice on the notion of historic urban areas in the context of the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) paradigm, addressing how this happened and why. To do this I take a historical overview of how, during the latter half of the 1980s and early 1990s, academic and professional interest in heritage studies came to embrace the cultural landscape concept. Landscape, it was increasingly realized, was a document of social history reflecting the interaction between people, events, places and time waiting to be read as a way of seeing and interpreting the who and why of what was seen. Forty years ago, Meinig (1979: 3) expressed this in the sense that ‘Landscape is defined by our vision and interpreted by our minds’. The chapter also refers to international heritage related charters and documents. In the context of concerns related to the management of HULs, the chapter reflects how these have relevance to urban heritage and how thinking and practice have been instrumental in the inception and development of the HUL paradigm. My reference to the late 1980s is not to imply that the cultural landscape idea was new. German cultural geographers such as Otto Schlüter (1872–1959) and anthropologists/geographers such as Franz Boas, in the late nineteenth century, had promoted the notion of Kulturlandschaft.1 Schlüter ‘came to champion the view that the essential object of geographical inquiry was landscape morphology as a cultural product’ and he ‘emerged as a major exponent of the significance of the cultural landscape (Kulturlandschaft)’, counterbalancing a prevalent international geographical focus on the natural landscape (Naturlandschaft) (Livingstone 1992: 264). Charles Darwin may have rocked the theological boat with his theories on evolution and natural selection, but this did little to shake the conviction that environmental forces – nature – determined behaviour of people and was the primary agent in how people shaped the landscape. Such views were attractive to the increasingly vocal discipline of geography which craved to be accepted into the scholarly world as a science in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Hence, the scientifically deterministic view of environment firmly established itself in the geographical mindset. The emergent German human geography tradition challenged this, thereby laying the foundations for how we have come to understand the cultural landscape concept. Boas, in particular, stressed the associated importance of understanding human behaviours, beliefs, and symbols in shaping the cultural landscape (Taylor 2012). His teachings and ideas in social

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anthropology and geography remain central to present-day interest in the cultural landscape idea where landscape is a clue to culture. Cultural landscape as an idea then became the focus of the 1920s Berkeley School of Geography headed by Carl Sauer. Notably, however, the school of thought under Sauer kept narrowly within the bounds of scientific method and he concentrated on material aspects of cultural diversity in the landscape, in what Robertson and Richards (2003: 2) regard as ‘unnecessarily deterministic’. In contrast, the German school emphasized the social, associative dimensions of landscape. Nevertheless, the Berkeley school did extend the scope of cultural landscape study to the urban sphere. Critical to the late 1980s/1990s movement embracing the cultural landscape concept were the 1960s and 1970s scholarly writings of cultural geographers, like David Lowenthal, Peirce Lewis, Donald Meinig, J.B. Jackson with his inimitable essays on the everyday American scene, Dennis Cosgrove in Britain, or Dennis Jeans in Australia. They continued the late nineteenth-century German tradition of kulturlandschaft with landscape morphology seen as a cultural outcome. Their writings and perceptive comments still have relevance today. For example, Jackson (1951: 5) expressed his interest in the landscape with the pithy comment that ‘A rich and beautiful book is always open before us. We have but to learn how to read it.’ Similarly, David Lowenthal (1975: 12) avowed that ‘It is the landscape as a whole – that largely manmade tapestry, in which all other artefacts are embedded … which gives them their sense of place.’ Here was a shift from concentration wholly on physical aspects2 – the what, where and when – to address the immaterial associative aspects of landscape (i.e. the who and why of landscape making). Coincidental, but not accidental, was the parallel and increasing understanding of the significance of the intangibility of heritage. There emerged, in effect, a manifesto for a move to a refreshed way of thinking and acting where heritage and landscape began philosophically to sit ‘comfortably together’ (Harvey 2015: 911; see below for continued discussion). In this regard, Veldpaus et al. (2013) reflect that, as thinking on the heritage process changed, ‘cultural heritage management moved towards a more inclusive approach [to] include notions such as the intangible, setting and context, and urban and sustainable development [and] social and economic functions of (historic) cities. This approach is known as a landscape-based approach.’ Furthermore, this approach can be seen to have informed the promulgation in 1992 of the three categories of cultural landscapes for World Heritage purpose.3

The human side of landscape and heritagization process Over the last thirty-five years or so there has emerged the idea of historic cultural landscapes being worthy of heritage conservation action. It is a movement that embraces an extraordinary array of landscapes from everyday landscapes – vernacular landscapes reflecting the human side of landscape − to the international level of World Heritage landscapes. It must be acknowledged that even at the level of the World Heritage List many listed landscapes are everyday landscapes representative of ways of living as, for example, in the Philippines Cordilleran Rice Terraces inscribed in the World Heritage List in 1995. In the same year, David Jacques in a paper ‘The Rise of Cultural Landscapes’ envisaged the emergence of the topic of cultural landscapes as potentially one ‘of great interest to the conservation community’ particularly with ‘the concept of value that cultural landscapes brought with them’ (Jacques 1995: 91). In prophetic mode, Gerald Patten (1991: 1) introducing an edition of CRM (Cultural Resource Management) for the National Park Service of the USA referred to ‘Cultural Landscapes: The Intent and Tenor of the Times’. He pointed to ‘the growing urgency of recognizing and protecting our legacy of cultural landscapes for their historical value and for their contribution to society today.’ In the sense of ‘tenor’ as a movement or activity, the cultural landscape concept – with its inseparable meanings and values as a complex phenomenon involving

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tangible and intangible identities − has become one of the philosophical foundational elements for the way we think and act in the heritage management process. Here it is relevant to pose the question: is the word ‘cultural’ linked to landscape redundant? It is a teasing dilemma and possibly a distraction in the face of the fact that the term ‘cultural landscape’ is now an essential part of the international heritage lexicon and not easily be discarded. But ‘we may wonder if there are really any landscapes that are not cultural’ (Greffe 2010: 1), and why use ‘culture’ if discourse on ‘landscape’ is inextricably linked to aspects of culture, nature, diversity and human identity, leading to the idea that all landscape is culturally defined? Is ‘cultural landscape’ therefore a tautology? In an Asian context, and with particular reference to China, the Chinese scholar and landscape architect Han (2006, 2012) suggested that it was. She argued, for example, that in China the term had been problematic. She posits that people are part of the landscape experience and that landscape in the context of nature has its specific meanings which, she argues, contrast with Western notions, including inter alia that it is humanistic rather than religious; it is aesthetic rather than scientific; travelling in nature aims to be enjoyable instead of solitude oriented; artistic rebuilt of nature is more beautiful than the original. Are not all perceptions of landscape culturally based and determined including the notion of wilderness? In this regard Wylie’s (2007: 10) comment is thought-provoking: … the traditional distinction made between ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ as two wholly separate realms of existence in many ways merely rephrases the error of dividing landscape up into two fields, objective facts and layers of subjective meaning. In view of the fact that the idea of cultural landscapes being worthy of heritage conservation action has emerged, it is germane to broach the topic of links between (cultural) landscape studies and heritage studies. That such links exist is quite clear and we may, therefore, ask where and how does the concept of cultural landscapes slot into thinking on changing perspectives in heritage (see Taylor 2017 for an extended discussion)? Harvey (2015: 911) in this regard observes that: The recent histories of heritage and landscape studies appear to be closely linked, with their epistemological, ideological and methodological twists and turns progressing amid a common broad intellectual and interdisciplinary space … Heritage and landscape are two concepts that appear to have sat comfortably together within academic, policy and popular imaginations for some time. A distinctive aspect of heritage discourse since the early 2000s has been the increasing alignment of heritage with notions of memory and identity, articulating around the notion of culture as ‘ways of life’ and involving conjoined issues of practice, policy and politics (Isar et al. 2011: 2). In this connection, notions of memory, identity and ways of life dovetail seamlessly with cultural landscape theory where the tangible and intangible merge to inform meaning and community values of places (landscapes). At this point we may legitimately pose the question: what is heritage and indeed is there such a thing as heritage? All too often heritage has been seen as a physical entity that can be photographed, measured and recorded devoid of community cultural connections: Julian Smith (2015) refers to these as the antiquarian/commemorative/aesthetic biases in heritage conservation. This takes us to the proposition that ‘[t]here is, really, no such thing as heritage’ (Smith 2006: 11). What is meant here is that heritage is not a thing but ‘a multilayered performance … that embodies acts of remembrance and commemoration while … constructing a sense of place, belonging and understanding in the present’ (Smith 2006: 3). In this connection, we may see that while heritage as process passes on established values and meanings, and it creates new meanings and values. Hence, heritage is dynamic so that ‘what constitutes heritage is not fixed … it evolves with society and reflects its changing values over time. It is therefore incumbent upon contemporary societies to redefine the role, meaning and purpose of

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heritage’ (Bandarin and van Oers 2012: 178). To this I would add that the cultural landscape concept also acknowledges that change is an inevitable factor. Landscape is not static, it reflects changing human ideologies over time (Biger 1992) in culturally diverse communities. Dynamic landscape change complements the stance that heritage is not a fixed immutable thing residing solely in famous architectural and archaeological monuments and sites. Uzzell (2009: 326–327) encapsulates this with the observation that: The meaning of heritage will vary over time and for different groups of people. It serves social, cultural and political functions. But the heritage during this process does not remain static and unchanged … We use the heritage in the creation of our own individual, group and national identities. Broadening critical scholarly discourse on heritage and what it means has seen, therefore, what is essentially a rethink of the process of ‘heritagization’ grounded in an understanding of the link between culture and heritage. ‘The process of “heritagization” − insofar as it is a cultural phenomenon – takes place in the same dynamic and dialectic environment which is the base of the construction of culture itself’ (Fontal and Gómez-Redondo 2016: 66). In the late 1990s/early 2000s critical rethinking on the concept of heritage as cultural process (Harvey 2001; Howard 2003) emerged as opposed to thinking primarily of heritage as a product focusing on physical objects and sites. At the same time – and not unconnected – there arose burgeoning interest in intangible cultural heritage. Concurrently, and building on 1960s/1970s cultural geography studies, came ‘views that rework[ed] landscape not as cultural product but as cultural process’ (Robertson and Richards 2003: 6). These parallel trajectories can be seen to have persuasively introduced notions of diverse cultural values underpinning landscape and heritage studies. Covering far more than simply buildings, structures and sites, such processes embrace concepts of living history and living heritage to encompass the full spectrum of people’s sense of place, traditional knowledge and its transmission, cultural production including equity and access, creativity and innovation, and the safeguarding of natural resources and cultural traditions that provide the foundations of local livelihoods. It is a concept that fits neatly with the cultural landscape concept. We may also appreciate how the concepts of landscape, memory and identity (Taylor 2008) became inextricably linked to, and influenced notions of heritage and its intangible connections with, human values. The shift that has occurred in thinking on living history/living heritage is part of the re-orientation of the conventional cultural heritage management approach, from solely caring for the physical fabric of heritage structures towards recognizing the significance of intangible cultural heritage and associated values of living communities and the needs and wishes of living communities who are the custodians of this heritage. Putting them centre-stage, the thinking goes, ensures a more engaged, better informed and locally rooted conservation management process, which is more culturally sustainable. Poulios (2014: 28, 2015) expresses this in his three key principles that determine a ‘living heritage approach’: 1. recognizing local communities as the true long-term custodians of their heritage sites; 2. empowering communities in the conservation and management process, and benefiting from their traditional knowledge, management systems and maintenance practices; and 3. linking conservation to the sustainable development of communities, by developing a process to manage change and by making heritage relevant to the needs of the contemporary communities. To return to the question posed above (on links between landscape and heritage studies), we may see that inextricably linked to a cultural concept of landscape is the understanding that one of our deepest needs is for a sense of identity and belonging. In this connection, my point is that there is a common denominator in this: human attachment to landscape and how we find identity in landscape and place

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and that such a phenomenon is cross cultural. Cultural landscape study also underpins the notion that landscapes reflecting everyday ways of life, the ideologies that compel people to create places, and the sequence or rhythm of life over time tell the story of people, events and places through time, offering a sense of continuity: a sense of the stream of time. They also offer the context for broader concepts and understandings of cultural heritage than monuments and sites. If, as the preceding discussion suggests, there is an immutable link between cultural landscapes and modern thinking on cultural heritage, it is useful at this stage to look at a definition of cultural landscape. Here, I refer to a paper by Peter Fowler titled ‘Cultural landscape: dreadful phrase, great concept’ in which Fowler (2001) includes a number of definitions. The definition I quote below, and why it is quoted, is because it is succinct. Like Fowler, I find it theoretically and professionally workable: the last sentence expresses the very essence of what we mean by ‘cultural landscapes’ with ‘a brevity beguiling its profundity’ (Fowler 2001: 67): Cultural landscapes reflect the interactions between people and their natural environment over space and time. Nature, in this context, is the counterpart to human society; both are dynamic forces, shaping the landscapes … A cultural landscape is a complex phenomenon with a tangible and intangible identity. The intangible component arises from ideas and interactions which have an impact on the perceptions and shaping of a landscape, such as sacred beliefs closely linked to the landscape and the way it has been perceived over time. Cultural landscapes mirror the cultures which created them. (Plachter and Rössler 1995: 15; my emphasis)

Cultural landscapes and urbanization The cultural landscape concept underscores an awareness that heritage places are not isolated islands and that there is interdependence between people, their social structures, ecosystems and landscape conservation. Additionally, increasing attention is now being focused on urban cultural landscapes, including under the HUL paradigm. This is an approach to historic urban conservation which sees towns and cities as consisting of layers through time, as in the cultural landscape concept. It marks a shift away from the preoccupation with the historic city as a visual object with a focus on famous buildings or groups of buildings divorced from their cultural setting to an interest in the historic environment as a space for ritual and human experience. Given that a major rationale behind this chapter is interrogating changes that have occurred and continue in the broadening understanding of the cultural heritage process, it is appropriate to consider cultural heritage conservation theory and practice through the lens of the march globally into urbanization. In this regard, the question posed in the following commentary is apposite: Current urbanization policies often ignore the importance of cultural heritage preservation and promotion and the great potential of creativity in addressing social, environmental and economic urbanization challenges. How does culture weigh in addressing urbanization challenges today?4 Today, for the first time in human history, more than half of the world’s population lives in cities. According to UN-Habitat, within two decades, five billion people will live in cities, a majority of them in the Global South. Coincidentally, within the field of cultural heritage conservation, increasing international interest and attention over the past two decades has been focused on urban areas. This is timely, because pressure for economic development and the prioritizing of engagement with the global economy have accompanied rapid urbanization. In many societies, and not least in Asia, pressures for economic development have privileged modernization efforts leading to the loss of traditional

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communities. Accompanying this has been a concentration in the field of urban conservation, focusing on famous buildings and monuments rather than seeing cities as communities of people with values and belief systems that are reflected in the city’s overall setting: its cultural landscape. As a result, an alternative way of seeing cities – the HUL paradigm – has evolved and it is the discourse around this paradigm that I address in the following part of the chapter.

Historic Urban Landscape The concept of the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) is a major initiative by UNESCO in the field of conservation of urban areas associated with change that is taking place in the world’s cities. It was first set out at a UNESCO conference in Vienna in May 2005,5 and advocated in the Vienna Memorandum on World Heritage and Contemporary Architecture – Managing the Historic Urban Landscape. It followed concerns by the World Heritage Committee about impacts of modern developments on historic urban areas and compatibility with the protection of their heritage values. This was particularly so with its proposition of the HUL notion as a tool to reinterpret the values of urban heritage, and its indication of the need to identify new approaches and new tools for urban conservation. The Vienna Memorandum was pivotal to the Declaration on the Conservation of Historic Urban Landscapes by the General Assembly of UNESCO in October 2005.6 Van Oers (2010: 8) noted that: The Vienna Memorandum is not a Charter, nor was it intended as a finalized document that could guide urban development and conservation for decades to come – it represented a consensus product, established with the involvement of various professional entities, to serve as a catalyst for opening up the debate … It is a transitional document which hints at a vision of human ecology and signals a change towards sustainable development and a broader concept of urban space suggested as ‘landscape’ – not so much the designed and evolved landscapes that are familiar to most conservation specialists, but rather associative landscapes or ‘landscapes of the imagination’. In this context, its thinking and intention, therefore, paved the way for reviewing debate on new approaches to urban conservation. The establishment in the Vienna Memorandum of the HUL idea was, in effect, a high-water mark for the heritage conservation field. It marked the start of a shift away from the preoccupation with the historic city as a visual object to an interest in the historic environment as a space for ritual and human experience. Van Oers summarizes this shift towards the HUL paradigm in the following definition (Van Oers 2010: 14):7 Historic Urban Landscape is a mindset, an understanding of the city, or parts of the city, as an outcome of natural, cultural and socio-economic processes that construct it spatially, temporally, and experientially. It is as much about buildings and spaces, as about rituals and values that people bring into the city. This concept encompasses layers of symbolic significance, intangible heritage, perception of values, and interconnections between the composite elements of the historic urban landscape, as well as local knowledge including building practices and management of natural resources. Its usefulness resides in the notion that it incorporates a capacity for change. The culmination of thinking on new international approaches to urban conservation came in 2011 with the UNESCO Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape (UNESCO 2011). This instrument recognized the layers of significances and values in historic cities deposited over time by different communities under different contexts. It is an idea that is succinctly summarized by the comment in UNESCO publication New life for historic cities (UNESCO 2013: 5):

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Urban heritage is of vital importance for our cities – now and in the future. Tangible and intangible urban heritage are sources of social cohesion, factors of diversity and drivers of creativity, innovation and urban regeneration. The idea of layering, therefore, strikes a chord with, and relates closely to, the cultural landscape concept. The Recommendation recognizes the challenges of contemporary urbanization, as well as the importance of cities as engines of growth and centres of innovation and creativity that provide opportunities for employment and education. The Recommendation identified urban heritage, including its tangible and intangible components in their natural context, as a key resource in enhancing the liveability of urban areas and fostering economic development as well as social cohesion. As a tool the Recommendation on HUL is not, and was never intended to be, a separate heritage category. Rather, it is an approach to management of change in urban settings where considerations of heritage and culture are integral to the planning process where it ‘is envisaged as a tool to integrate policies and practices of conservation of the built environment’ building on a century-long tradition of practice (Bandarin and van Oers 2012: xvi).

The landscape link The recognition in HUL of the ‘layering of significance’ (Bandarin and van Oers 2012: 68) and values in historic cities dovetails with the cultural landscape concept of layers through time replete with social meanings. Cities may, therefore, be categorized as a type of cultural landscape (Taylor 2015). The cultural landscape paradigm can be seen to offer a trajectory of thinking relevant to the historic urban setting, not least because it connects with the notion of landscape study as a form of social history reflective of human values. The significance of the cultural landscape concept in the urban sphere is that it allows us to see and understand the approach to urban conservation concentrating on individual buildings as ‘devoid of the socio-spatial context [that] contributes to a deterioration of the urban physical fabric’ (Punekar 2006: 110). Greffe (2010: 3) reinforces this urban landscape way of thinking as contrary to seeing the city as a closed view of architectural wonders of historic cities, but rather seeing the ‘postmodern city where we are looking for feelings and emotions. The landscape then becomes an experience’. In contrast, do we really want the concept of a historic urban zone to rely substantively on the model of ‘the deliberately assembled museum town [and] vernacular museumification of existing towns and districts’, critiqued by Ashworth and Graham (2012: 591)? Here, I am reminded of World Heritage listed Old Quebec which effectively shuts down after the shops close. For me as a cultural geographer and planner, the move into landscape-linked-HUL is welcome, not least in that it builds on the pioneering work of distinguished geographers in town studies, including Donald Meinig, Wilbur Zilenski, Fred Kniffen, John B. Jackson, Peirce Lewis, Arthur E. Smailes, and Edward Relph. Central to such a paradigm shift emphasizing the need for a cultural landscape approach is the inalienable role of human values. Continuing this line of thought, Punekar (2006: 111) makes a strong case for adopting a cultural landscape approach: A cultural landscape approach enables diverse communities to be seen as part of that landscape. That is, cultural, historical, and political conditions affecting contemporary communities are part of the process of human engagement with the place. The cultural landscape approach can be a means of reuniting fragmented approaches to valuing and constructing the environments we inhabit, a means of overcoming distinctions between historic environment and new development, nature and culture, built heritage and context.

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Charters and declarations Changes in line with broadening of thinking generally on heritage conservation in the 1980s started to be seen in urban conservation. Reflective, for example, of this are the 1987 ICOMOS Charter for the Conservation of Historic Towns (Washington Charter) and the 2003 ICOMOS Hoi An Declaration on Conservation of Historic Districts of Asia. The Washington Charter notes in particular (Article 3) that ‘the participation and the involvement of the residents are essential for the success of the conservation programme’ (ICOMOS 1987: 2). Here came the first steps to acknowledging an understanding of the significance of built urban heritage as the places where people live their everyday lives, where social values and a sense of place exist. Even so as Bandarin and van Oers (2012: 49) note, the charter ‘focuses principally on the physical aspects of urban conservation’. It eschewed any reference to links between social and economic processes and economic productivity and the conservation process. The Hoi An Declaration, among its six principles and recommendations aimed at national and local authorities as well as institutions and international organizations, recognized the significant role that historic villages and city quarters in constituting a major part of the living cultural heritage of Asian countries. It also highlighted the importance of involving inhabitants in the conservation of historic districts given that inhabitants and users of historic districts should be key actors in conservation efforts. Their role should be recognized and welcomed in the planning, the implementation and the review phases of that process (ICOMOS 2003). But beyond this, it did not address change and changing social and economic values and their role in urban conservation in the context, for example, of the context of historic areas in the wider urban setting. Considerations of any links to authenticity as outlined in Nara Document on Authenticity (ICOMOS 1994) and urban place meaning related to human values were also absent (see also Martínez 2017 on role of authenticity and urban conservation). The shift to a holistic, contextual view of urban heritage to include the idea of landscape as setting for people’s lives – and within this the idea of sense of place ― is seen in the initiative of two further documents: Xi’an Declaration on the Conservation of the Setting of Heritage Structures, Sites and Areas (ICOMOS 2005) which throughout refers to the holistic concept of landscape as setting for sustainable local communities (including urban settings) and the Seoul Declaration on Heritage and Metropolis in Asia and the Pacific((ICOMOS 2007). Notably the Seoul Declaration, in relation to a wider understanding of heritage, proposes (ICOMOS 2007: 6) that: These heritage sites contribute to the life and memory of the metropolitan areas by the diversity of their uses. … Along with geographical features and the living social ecosystem, cultural heritage contributes strongly to the personality and character of the metropolis. It is a source of a truly sustainable development of the metropolitan areas in Asia and the Pacific in achieving their strategic and economic roles. While the Seoul Declaration relates specifically to an Asian context, its five major recommendations are highly relevant to consideration of sustainable urban conservation needs globally: 1. Cultural heritage should be recognized as a diverse and non-renewable asset, essential to the sustainable and human development of metropolitan areas in Asia and the Pacific. 2. Conservation of cultural heritage should be integral to the development of the city, including policies, programs and projects, from their planning to their approval, implementation and updating. 3. Conservation is composed of the ongoing identification, evaluation, protection and management of cultural heritage supported by the necessary human, scientific and financial resources. 4. Conservation of cultural heritage requires the development and implementation of adapted tools founded on recognized best practice and local conditions and traditions.

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5. Conservation in metropolitan areas requires information, involvement and cooperation among the public, private, academic, and non-government sectors as well as citizens and international organizations. Contrary to the scepticism expressed by some scholars that the international bureaucracies and agencies were immune to changes in thinking and broadening of cultural heritage theory and methods – paradigm – such a view is not supported by evidence of shifts that have occurred in the forty-five years since 1972 when the World Heritage Convention was promulgated. Broadening of the thinking and practice has seen a shift ‘to accommodate an increasingly large number of objects, places, and perhaps most importantly, practices, and the landscapes in which these occur’ (Harrison 2013: 115). Coincidental has been the broadening of concern with culture and the intangible rather than focusing primarily on things. In the shift away from a concentration on monuments and sites, heritage now embraces (Logan 2010: 38): … precincts, historic urban centres, whole towns and villages, cultural landscapes, and historic urban landscapes, associative values and intangible heritage – the talents embodied in people, such as artistic skills in dance, music and painting, or skills in language, or craft and construction skills. Indication that international bureaucracies and agencies became increasingly conscious particularly from the 1990s onwards of the imperatives to embrace a broadening of cultural heritage thinking and practice can be seen through the promulgation of a number of instruments (see table 2.1 in Taylor 2017 for review of these). Notable also was the increasing number of documents related to urban considerations and urban scale (Veldpaus et al. 2013). I draw attention below to examples of documents and instruments as indicative of change in thinking with shifts from focus on monuments and sites: • • • • • • •

•

ICOMOS (1994) The Nara Document on Authenticity. UNESCO (2002) Istanbul Declaration on World Heritage which, inter alia, refers to intangible cultural heritage as addressing cultural identity, living and recreated practices, and where safeguarding intangible heritage must involve democratic participation of actors involved in heritage. ICOMOS (2003) Convention on Intangible Cultural Heritage. ICOMOS (2005) The World Heritage List. Filling the Gaps: An Action Plan for the Future. UNESCO (2005) Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions. UNESCO World Heritage Centre (2007) World Heritage Challenges for the Millennium. World Heritage Committee Decision (Decision 31 COM 13B) at its meeting in 2007 in Christchurch to include ‘Community’ with the four Cs (Credibility, Conservation, Capacity Building and Communication) of the Budapest Declaration on World Heritage (UNESCO 2002). Also at this meeting the Committee requested that ICOMOS and IUCN submit commentary on inclusion of local people in World Heritage nominations. UNESCO (2016), The HUL Guidebook. Managing heritage in dynamic and constantly changing urban environments. A Practical guide to UNESCO’s Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape.

Case study examples Following are three case study examples demonstrating the differing urban scales for the application of HUL principles in recognized historic sections of two cities and the third being a historic urban community in a provincial town in Thailand reflective of the distinctive small-town pattern of urban livelihood and culture in Thailand.

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Hongkou District, Shanghai The Hongkou District occupies the eastern and western sides of Hongkou Creek upstream from its confluence with the Huangpu River within view of the famous Bund area of Shanghai in China. It is a fascinating mixture of groups of traditional lilong houses, shops/commercial development, and industrial areas in the form of factory buildings and smaller scale artisan-style work spaces, reflecting in its built form intense periods of development since the mid-nineteenth century. The lilong or ‘lane housing’ is particular to Shanghai. It has a variety of forms developed over time from the first lilong of the 1860s. They are mainly in the form of a series of long terraces of houses, two or three storeys, fronting narrow longitudinal lanes with cross lanes. A common characteristic within a lilong is an overwhelmingly palpable sense of community (Figure 2.1a), physically and experientially. The boundary edges are lined with lilong houses or very often commercial premises (Figure 2.1b), creating a ‘wall effect’ punctuated by stone edged gateways into the communities.

Figure 2.1 Hongkou District, Shanghai: (a) the palpable sense of community in the place, and (b) Lilong houses and shops. Source: Ken Taylor

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Conservation efforts in Hongkou have been underway for over ten years (UNESCO 2016: 26–28) with a gradual change from managing the historic environment with a focus solely on examples or groups of historic buildings to consideration of a contextual view of the whole area, including the framework for local conservation and development involving new constructions, new fabric and new spaces using the HUL paradigm as a tool. In consultation with communities, there is ongoing upgrading of lilongs: for example, Figure 2.2a shows a lane scene in Ruiqing Lilong where an additional storey has been added to the houses to create more living space. The local inhabitant is expressing his approval of such a change to a group of visitors at a December 2014 WHITRAP Training Course on HUL. One particularly interesting aspect of the Shanghai lilong is the Shikumen building style in the form of terraces of houses reminiscent of western style of architecture with some having distinctive decorative portals around doors (Figure 2.2b). In 2016, eleven lilong neighbourhoods were included in the Conservation List of Shanghai Historic Neighbourhoods. Such developments are supported also by upgrading of facilities, such as kitchens and bathrooms in historic buildings. Some run-down, poorly maintained lilong sections have been slated for demolition. Currently demolition is held-up due to ownership concerns and some owners who, no longer living there but rent out the houses, are reluctant to sell. Heritage attention in Hongkou is also directed at its industrial and commercial past. The Peninsula Bay project is a case in point: it is a complex of five buildings. Building 3 (Figure 2.3a), known originally as the Harbin Building, was built in 1929 by the American owned Huifang Sawmill Company. It was destroyed in the second Sino- Japanese War and rebuilt as a vocational and technical training centre in 1949. It is now the Peninsula Bay Fashion Culture Creative Industrial Park, housing high tech and creative enterprises. Similarly, the distinctive concrete Art-Deco style 1933 Millfun building,

Figure 2.2 Hongkou District, Shanghai: (a) A lane scene in Ruiqing Lilong, and (b) a building with the Shikumen style. Source: Ken Taylor

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Figure 2.3 Hongkou District, Shanghai: (a) the Harbin Building, and (b) Millfun building with Art-deco style. Source: Ken Taylor

which was originally the Shanghai Municipal Slaughterhouse and derelict for many years, is now a complex of restaurants and shops (Figure 2.3b). Both these examples reflect adaptive reuse of buildings and the creative city notion. Additionally, some lilong housing neighbourhoods are marketed as visitor attractions. Martínez (2017: 60), through an evaluation of heritage attributes and authenticity, thought-provokingly reviews these examples as ‘potential prevalence of “experienced based” touristic and creative city authenticity over heritage authenticity in urban conservation’. Martínez (2017: 59) further suggests that the Hongkou District government ‘is investing heavily in the transformation of its built environment, aiming to become the new economic centre of the city’. In this process, however, we can see the portent of dissonant voices and contested views apparent. The point at issue is that of heritage authenticity as ‘urban redevelopment stakeholders are applying intervention criteria that respond to “experience-based” authenticity standards of tourism and the creative city ideal, devaluating its heritage authenticity’ (Martínez 2017: 58).

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In summarizing Hongkou, I am grateful to Plácido Martínez (personal communication, 13 June 2018) for the following comments: The transformation of the area is subject to many different interests, which right now are not leading to any clear proposal for the future of the area. The only initiatives that have been taken in the last two years relate to infrastructure issues, with the widening of Hailun Road at the north of the area and the subsequent demolition of the perimeter residential units of Ruikang Lilong. In the meantime, the entrepreneurial interpretation of the history of Hongkou leads to the re-creation of the ideal image of the 1930s that is everywhere now in Shanghai. Lack of clear planning determinations is the most challenging part to understand urban transformations in Shanghai. This is not just an issue of Hongkou, but of other relevant areas undergoing change like the historic quarter of Laoximen in the Old City. No plans, no possibility to clearly identify stakeholders … until construction works start, and then who knows what the outcome will be?

Vigan, Philippines One of the dangers inherent in urban heritage is a historic city brand image with replicable heritage items, bric-a-brac, and standard ‘off the peg’ heritage. It is, according to Ashworth and Graham (2012: 595), reflective of the hallmark of some European cities typified as ‘catalogue heritage’. Within this overall classification are separate categories or possibilities to market heritage distinctiveness. Ashworth and Graham refer to these as ‘popular optional “add-ons” … “tourist-historic waterfront”, medieval old town, “ethnic” district, festival calendar, sanitized “red light”, and gentrified “urban village”; all devised to be different but ultimately becoming the same’ (Ashworth and Graham 2012: 598). The cultural landscape model would suggest that wherever possible this catalogue list approach to historic urban heritage conservation is best avoided, or at least restricted in extent and reproduction. Instead should be an approach where the socio-cultural and political context of the cultural landscape as process by which identities are formed is applied. Here, I am not arguing per se against reconstruction of some special historic places, such as the Jewish Quarter of Warsaw or Williamsburg in the USA, where, I would argue, cogent physical and spiritual reasons, whether one agrees or not, can be enunciated to support reconstruction (see also Khalaf 2018). A comparison with the World Heritage city of Vigan in north-western Philippines is instructive in light of Ashworth and Graham (2012) critique and impacts of tourism. Undoubtedly, the town’s economic well-being derives very much from tourism and conservation of the town’s remarkable collection of buildings and streetscapes. Coincidentally, there is a sense of social cohesion of different groups in the community, together known as Bigueños, and their shared attachment and palpable pride and sense of place in their city. The city was laid-out on a grid pattern spreading out from a central park ringed by administrative and religious buildings by the Spanish who arrived in 1572 (Figure 2.4a). Later, Chinese immigrants intermarrying with local Filipinos formed an affluent group who built their houses tightly strung along narrow streets in contrast to the grander scale of the Hispanic houses. Many of the city streets being closed to motorized traffic today offer an attractive sense of being able to wander at will (Figure 2.4b). The move to have Vigan listed as a World Heritage property in 1999 was the initiative of the city’s Mayor, Eva Marie S. Medina, working collaboratively with the local community. It is an exemplar of cooperation between local government and local people. Ms. Medina involved her community from the start, not least with her own infectious conviction and enthusiasm, and as she observed (UNESCO Bangkok et al. 2010: iii):

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Figure 2.4 Vigan, Philippines: (a) the Spanish Quarter, and (b) the Chinese-Filipino Quarter Source: Ken Taylor

We started to recognise our distinct advantage of being in a historic place which is unique and of special character. We began to be aware of the socio-economic potentials in heritage conservation as a tool for building up community pride and sense of responsibility, improving our standard of living, developing cultural industries and creating livelihood opportunities. With its new international recognition, Vigan became a source of pride for its residents, a must-see destination for visitors, which in turn made homeowners want to take better care of their ancestral houses and give them new uses. Through consensus building, local legislations were enacted to define the boundaries of our historic core zone, development limitations and physical interventions to preserve structural integrity and authenticity.

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A visitors’ brochure suggests that: Vigan remains to be the home of proud Bigueños who welcome everyone … Images and sounds of modernity have established their presence, however they are unable to drown the stillness and elegance of the past. Vigan has opened itself to change but has not sacrificed the bountiful wealth of its heritage. Perhaps an enduring example of this is the fact that there is a McDonald’s in the main square and near the 1641 cathedral, although limits to the height of the building were imposed and McDonald trademark arches are absent. What is apparent is that Vigan, as claimed, is ‘a Living Historic City’. The historic urban layout, grid street pattern and open spaces remain intact. The lower floor of buildings for commercial use continues with upper floors as residences, albeit with changes taking place such as interiors subdivided into smaller apartments and the use of galvanized metal roofing. What is palpable is the sense of community and social history underpinned by the participation by local people in Vigan’s management. Authenticity is powerfully supported by the intangible cultural heritage association between people and place. In this sense, Vigan celebrates plurality of its identities and traditional value and belief systems as expressed and maintained by resident communities. Undoubtedly a major outcome of World Heritage recognition of Vigan has been an influx of tourists as a must-see destination, encouraged by the city government but palpably supported by the local community because of its economic benefits. It has also encouraged locals’ sense of pride in their place and, importantly, has not been merely touristically fashionable vernacularism sold to tourists. The city effectively reflects J.B. Jackson’s (1994: 151) observation that: Most of us, I suspect, without giving much thought to the matter, would say that a sense of place, a sense of being at home in a town or city, grows as we become accustomed to it and learn to know its peculiarities. It is my belief that a sense of place is something that we ourselves create in the course of time. It is the result of habit or custom. Vigan was recognized as a model of best practices in World Heritage site management at the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the World Heritage Convention in 2012, with a certificate presented to the Mayor. It was noted that Vigan’s successful and sustainable management has been achieved with relatively limited resources, which should make it adaptable to sites in all countries. The local community is well integrated into many aspects of the sustainable conservation and management of the property; and a multi-faceted approach to the protection of the site has been developed.8

Bang Luang, Thailand Notwithstanding a preoccupation with monumental heritage, Thailand’s Tourism Authority (TAT) in 2003 launched a new international campaign – ‘Unseen Thailand’ – to focus on local areas. Its 2012 plan includes ‘Thailand Experience and Smile’ aiming to incorporate small towns as tourist destinations. An example of the latter is Bang Luang on the Chin River in the Nakorn Pathom province, about 73 km from Bangkok. The community was established in 1903 by Chinese immigrants. With a long and invaluable cultural history, Bang Luang community has many attractive places providing a glimpse back to Siam a century ago, which are imbued with tangible and intangible values. There are 68 traditional wooden shop-houses integrating Thai and Chinese styles of architecture (Figure 2.5a), local temples and a local museum, and redolent of ways of life of a traditional market community creating close association with the Chin River (Thaisurya 2016). The vernacular timber shop-houses line the main street, and the town was once a central collecting point for local goods to be shipped to Tha Tien market in Bangkok. Fascinating relicts from its history include a working metal casting forge, Chinese musical group (Figure 2.5b), Chinese school, opium hall and shops, many of which specialize in local food delicacies. Notably Bang Luang is posted as a place to visit by the Tourism Authority of Thailand in their website Amazing Thailand.9

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Figure 2.5 Bang Luang, Thailand: (a) the historic street with traditional shop-houses, and (b) the Chinese musical group. Source: Ken Taylor

In a PhD research study, Supot Thaisurya (2012) found potential for tourism development but outlines need for a tourism and heritage management plan. This does raise the question of how such small urban communities can replete with history and heritage values attract tourists and what the potential impacts are. Critical to this process is addressing what the acceptable levels of change would be in the context of historic, natural and cultural resources.

Conclusion The case of Hongkou raises the question common to historic city areas worldwide: what are accepted levels of change in questions of urban conservation bearing in mind that change is seen as inevitable in the HUL approach. Relevant also is the notion that authenticity is not static. It is a dynamic concept

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accommodating changes as community values morph over time, what Stovel (2007: 28) aptly refers to as ‘progressive authenticity’. The dilemma here is that change in the cultural landscape of cities in the HUL approach is an accepted process as is the concept of creative industries if, inter alia, they benefit local communities and enhance vitality and resilience of cities that ‘are at the core of economic, social and cultural activity.’ (Bandarin and van Oers 2012: 111). The catch-cry of gentrification in a negative sense could be levelled at some of the changes in Hongkou as with the development of creative industry foci such as Peninsula Bay and there is no doubt such change is driven by city government policy. Nevertheless, gentrification in this sense creates employment opportunities in new high tech or design-oriented fields often for younger people. They do more than merely preserve the shell of historic buildings giving new life for historic cities or districts (see also UNESCO 2013) without which the city could stagnate. In contrast to such gentrification examples are the conservation efforts in the eleven lilong housing areas where upgrading of the facilities is taking place in some of these older housing precincts. Of more concern with the lilong is that they are being marketed for visitors prompting the questions of how this will affect local communities and how can or should local vitality and resilience be enhanced in historic districts. Behind such questions is the immutable fact that cities change through time physically, culturally, and socially. Crucial here and in the context of tourism at cases such as Hongkou and Ban Luang is (a) ensuring that the business of tourism does not overwhelm community core values, ways of life and main occupations, and (b) facilitating collaboration between local government and community to initiate participatory planning, as in the case of Vigan, and to encourage a cultural mapping process which documents heritage resources, meanings and values. In this way, cultural mapping can help ‘to understand the notion of local distinctiveness [and] can be a tool to help local communities have their voice heard through their involvement in the mapping process’ (Taylor 2013). An increasingly asked question is what kind of future faces the HUL Recommendation? This is not least so given that it can stand contrary to the policies and actions of local governments ‘to foster urban regeneration through massive investments’ (Pérez and Martínez 2018, quoting Greffe 2004). Inevitably this will involve compromise between proponents of HUL, including scholars, civic groups, heritage professionals, local communities and government. There are encouraging signs this is happening as shown in the six case studies/best practice summarized in The HUL Guidebook (UNESCO 2016) and in the examples suggested in New Life for Historic Cities (UNESCO 2013). HUL offers an opportunity for a much-needed dialogue with city planners, urban designers, legal instruments and governments (national and local) on how layered cultural experiences influence perceptions of the urban landscape and why these are important in urban renewal outcomes. It is important in this dialogue that it is understood that the concept of urban cultural landscape heritage conservation and the reality of economic and political influences on city development and expansion are not mutually exclusive, acceding that change to city form will be inevitable with HUL acting as a catalyst for socio-economic development treating cities as dynamic organisms (UNESCO 2013). Pivotal in this process is managing urban change as set out in the six critical steps outlined in The HUL Guidebook (UNESCO 2016: 13): comprehensive mapping of the city’s resources, reaching stakeholder consensus on heritage values and attributes, assessing the vulnerability of these attributes, integrating heritage with city development, prioritize actions for conservation and development, and establishing appropriate partnerships for implementing these actions.

Notes 1 Schlüter is credited with introducing the term kulturlandschaft, regarded as a significant event in geographical history (James and Martin 1981: 177). 2 Known as ‘conventional’ approach to cultural heritage management. 3 Designed, evolved and associative landscapes are the three categories of cultural landscapes declared for World Heritage purposes by UNESCO in 1992. See: http://whc.unesco.org/en/culturallandscape/#1.

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Urban cultural landscape ideology 4 United Nations Conference on Trade & Development (UNCTAD) Website: ‘Culture vital for development progress, Deputy Secretary-General tells meeting’, at the Hangzhou International Congress 15 May 2013. See: http://unctad.org/en/pages/newsdetails.aspx?OriginalVersionID=501 (accessed 17 May 2013) 5 UNESCO international conference on ‘World Heritage and contemporary architecture – managing the historic urban landscape’, organized by UNESCO World Heritage Centre in cooperation with ICOMOS and the City of Vienna at the request of the World Heritage Committee, adopted at its 27th session in 2003. 6 Available at: http://whc.unesco.org/archive/2005/whc05-15ga-inf7e.pdf 7 Discussed at the Expert Planning Meeting on Historic Urban Landscapes, at UNESCO, Paris, in November 2008. 8 Led by the local mayor who enthused local people and involved them in the enterprise of recognizing Vigan’s tangible and intangible heritage. See: https://whc.unesco.org/en/news/948/. 9 See www.tourismthailand.org/Bang-Luang-market (accessed 15 July 2018).

References Ashworth, G. J. and Graham, B. (2012) ‘Heritage and the reconceptualization of the Postwar European City’, in D. Stone (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Postwar European history, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 582–599. Bandarin, F. and van Oers, R. (2012) The historic urban landscape: Managing heritage in an urban century, Chichester, UK: Wiley Blackwell. Biger, G. (1992) ‘Introduction: Ideology and landscape’, in A. R. H. Baker and G. Biger (eds) Ideology and landscape in historical perspective, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1–14. Fontal, O. and Gómez-Redondo, C. (2016) ‘Heritage education and heritagization process: SHEO methodology for educational programs’, Interchange, 47: 65–90. Fowler, P. (2001) ‘Cultural landscape: Dreadful phrase, great concept’, in R. Kelly, L. Macinnes, D. Thackray and P. Whitbourne (eds) The cultural landscape: Planning for sustainable partnerships between people and place, London: ICOMOS-UK, 64–82. Available at: http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveDS/archiveDownload?t=arch302-1/dissemination/pdf/fwp88/fwp88.pdf (accessed 17 July 2018). Greffe, X. (2004) ‘Is heritage an asset or a liability’, Journal of Cultural Heritage, 5(3): 301–309. ———. (2010) ‘Urban cultural landscapes: An economic approach’, Working Paper 1/2010, Turin: Department of Economics, University of Turin. Available at: www.researchgate.net/publication/254455944_Urban_cultural_ landscapesan_economic_approach (accessed 1 June 2018). Han, F. (2006) The Chinese view of nature: Tourism in China’s scenic and historic interest areas, unpublished doctoral dissertation, School of Design, Queensland University of Technology, Australia. ———. (2012) ‘Cultural landscape. A Chinese way of seeing nature’, in K. Taylor and J. L. Lennon (eds) Managing cultural landscapes, London: Routledge, 90–108. Harrison, R. (2013) Heritage: Critical approaches, London: Routledge. Harvey, D. (2001) ‘Heritage pasts and heritage presents: Temporality, meaning and the scope of heritage studies’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 7(4): 319–338. ———. (2015) ‘Landscape and heritage: trajectories and consequences’, Landscape Research, 40(8): 911–924. Howard, P. (2003) Heritage: Management, interpretation and identity, London: Continuum. ICOMOS. (1987) Charter for the conservation of historic towns and urban areas (Washington Charter), Paris: ICOMOS. ———. (1994) The Nara Document on authenticity, Paris: ICOMOS. ———. (2003) The Hoi an declaration on conservation of historic districts of Asia, Paris: ICOMOS. ———. (2005) Xi’an Declaration on the conservation of the setting of heritage structures, sites and areas, Paris: ICOMOS. ———. (2007) Seoul declaration on heritage and metropolis in Asia and the Pacific, Paris: ICOMOS. Isar, R. J., Viejo-Rose. D. and Anheier, H. (2011) ‘Introduction’, in H. Anheier and R. J. Isar (eds) Heritage, memory and identity, the cultures and globalization series 4, London: Sage Publications, 1–20. Jackson, J. B. (1951) Landscape, 1 (Spring 1951). ———. (1994) A sense of place, a sense of time, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Jacques, D. (1995) ‘The rise of cultural landscapes’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 1(2): 91–101. James, P. E. and Martin, G. (1981) All possible worlds: A history of geographical ideas, New York: John Wiley & Sons. Khalaf, R. (2018) ‘A proposal to apply the historic urban landscape approach to reconstruction in the world heritage context’, The Historic Environment: Policy and Research, 9(1): 39–52. Livingstone, D. (1992) The geographical tradition, Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Logan, W. (2010) ‘Development in world heritage studies in university education’, in D. Offenhöußer, W. Zimmerli, and M-T. Albert (eds) World heritage and diversity, Germany: German Commission for UNESCO, 38–45.

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Ken Taylor Lowenthal, D. (1975) ‘Introduction’, in D. Lowenthal and M. Binney (eds) Our past before us: Why do we save it? London: Temple Smith, 9–16. Martínez, P. G. (2017) ‘Urban authenticity at stake: A new framework for it definition from the perspective of heritage at the Shanghai Music Valley’, Cities, 70: 55–64. Meinig, D. W. (ed.) (1979) The interpretation of ordinary landscapes: Geographical essays, New York: Oxford University Press. Patten, G. (1991) ‘Cultural landscapes: The intent and tenor of the times’, CRM: The Journal of Heritage Stewardship, 14(6): 1–3. Pérez, R. J. and Martínez, P. G. (2018) ‘Lights and shadows over the recommendation on the historic urban landscape: “Managing change” in Ballarat and Cuenca through a radical approach focused on values and authenticity’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 24(1): 101–116. Plachter, H. and Rössler, M. (1995) ‘Cultural landscapes: Reconnecting culture and nature’, in B. von Droste, H. Plachter and M. Rössler (eds) Cultural landscapes of universal value: Components of a global strategy, Jena: Gustav Fischer Verlag, 15–19. Poulios, I. (2014) Past in the present: A living heritage approach – Meteora, Greece, London: Ubiquity Press. ———. (2015) ‘Gazing at the “Blue Ocean”, and tapping into the mental models of conservation: Reflections on the Nara+20 document’, Heritage & Society, 8(1): 158–177. Punekar, A. (2006) ‘Value-led heritage and sustainable development: The case of Bijapur, India’, in R. Zetter and G. Watson (eds) Designing sustainable cities in the developing world, Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 103–120. Robertson, I. and Richards, P.. (eds) (2003) ‘Introduction’, in Studying cultural landscapes, Arnold: London, 4–18. Smith, J. (2015) ‘Applying a cultural landscape approach to the urban context: Challenges’, in K. Taylor K. A. St ClairHarvey, and N. Mitchell (eds) Conserving cultural landscapes: Challenges and new directions, London: Routledge, 182–197. Smith, L. (2006) Uses of heritage, London: Routledge. Stovel, H. (2007) ‘Effective use of authenticity and integrity as world heritage qualifying conditions’, City & Time, 2(3): 21–36. Taylor, K. (2008) ‘Landscape and memory: Cultural landscapes, intangible values and some thoughts on Asia’, Proceedings of the16th ICOMOS General Assembly and International Symposium: Finding the spirit of place – between the tangible and the intangible, 29 Sept – 4 Oct 2008, Quebec, Canada: ICOMOS. ———. (2012) ‘Landscape and meaning: Context for a global discourse on cultural landscape values’, in K. Taylor and J. Lennon (eds) Managing cultural landscapes, London: Routledge, 21–44. ———. (2013) ‘Cultural mapping: Intangible values and engaging with communities with some reference to Asia’, The Historic Environment: Policy and Research, 4(1): 50–61. ———. (2015) ‘Cities as cultural landscapes’, in F. Bandarin and R. van Oers (eds) Reconnecting the city: The historic urban landscape approach and the future of urban heritage, Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 179–202. ———. (2017) Landscape, culture and heritage: Changing perspectives in an Asian context, Available at: http://dro.deakin. edu.au/eserv/DU:30102152/taylor-landscapeculture-2017A.pdf (accessed 1 June 2018). Thaisurya, S. (2012) The study potential of cultural landscape for cultural tourism development of Bangluang Community, Nakhon Pathom Province, Unpublished doctoral dissertation, International Program in Architectural Heritage Management and Tourism, Graduate School, Silpakorn University, Bangkok. ———. (2016) ‘The potential of cultural landscape for cultural tourism development of Bang Luang Community, Nakhon Pathom Province’, AHMT (Journal of The International Program in Architectural Heritage Management and Tourism) and NAJUA Architecture, Design and Built Environment), 31(4): 181–198. UNESCO. (2011) Recommendation on the historic urban landscape, Paris: UNESCO World Heritage Centre. Available at: https://whc.unesco.org/uploads/activities/documents/activity-638-98.pdf (accessed 1 June 2018). ———. (2013) New life for historic cities. The historic urban landscape approach explained, Paris: UNESCO World Heritage Centre. ———. (2016) The HUL Guidebook: Managing heritage in dynamic and constantly changing urban environments – A Practical guide to UNESCO’s Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape, Paris: UNESCO World Heritage Centre. UNESCO Bangkok and City Government of Vigan. (2010) World heritage city of Vigan Philippines. Heritage homeowner’s preservation manual, Bangkok: UNESCO and Vigan, City Government. Uzzell, D. (2009) ‘Where is the discipline in heritage studies? A view from environmental psychology’, in M. L. S Sørensen and J. Carman (eds) Heritage studies: Methods and approaches London: Routledge, 326–333. Van Oers, R. (2010) ‘Managing cities and the historic urban landscape initiative – An introduction’, in R. Van Oers and S. Haraguchi (eds) UNESCO world heritage papers 27 – managing historic cities, Paris: UNESCO World Heritage Centre, 7–17. Veldpaus, L., Pereira Roders, A., Colenbrander, J. (2013) ‘Urban heritage: Putting the past into the future’, The Historic Environment: Policy and Research, 4(1): 3–18. Wylie, J. (2007) Landscape, London: Routledge.

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3 CONSERVING ASIA’S VERNACULAR WATER URBANISMS Vinayak Bharne

Introduction Over recent decades, heritage conservation has undergone a radical rethinking due to new understandings of the environmental and ecological limitations of existing theory, policy, and practice. The disciplinary boundaries of heritage conservation have expanded through the influences of social, geographical and natural sciences to embrace numerous urgent concerns such as natural disasters, global warming and climate change. The act of identifying, protecting, restoring and reusing buildings, districts and built landscapes of historic and cultural significance is transforming into a far more reflective process of ecological reform with deep socio-economic consequences. The agency of heritage conservation is being re-thought, not just as an effort in cultural amelioration, but a strategic endeavour towards an environmentally sustainable future. This shift has, among other things, brought vernacular urbanisms to the forefront of the contemporary conservation discourse. Numerous pre-industrial, indigenous landscapes, many tracing back to historic times, are gaining attention as didactic precedents for, and aspects of, contemporary design. Many such fragile, ecological landscapes, particularly in less developed societies, face an uncertain future due to unpredictable political forces and ambiguous management. They not only require our urgent attention, but also far subtler conservation approaches towards their future. This renewed focus on the vernacular, is evidence of an increasing moral imperative of environmental protection that seeks to prioritize ecological dimensions and their socio-cultural accompaniments over the conservation of a single built object or artefact. This imperative seeks to identify deeper concerns as the driver for engaging with what we value as built heritage. This chapter contributes to this discussion by focusing on three vernacular ‘water urbanisms’ (De Meulder and Shannon 2008) in the Asia-Pacific region, whose formal, social, economic and cultural characteristics stem from the need to collect, harvest or distribute water: (1) the hiti water system of Nepal; (2) the Banaue Rice Terraces in the Philippines; and (3) the Polders of Bangladesh. The choice of these three examples is deliberate on a number of grounds: They are from different nations in the Asia-Pacific region, thereby offering insights into the overlaps and differences between their historic trajectories as well as their current socio-political structures – aspects crucial to any discussion on the future of these places. Additionally, the three places are from different ecological conditions, and thereby help expand the environmental aspects of this discussion in a comparative manner: The hitis are located in urban contexts; the Banaue Rice Terraces are exurban, rural places; and the Polders are elements of a coastal geography.

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In a period of hydrological uncertainty and climate change, what is the place of vernacular water urbanisms in the larger conservation discourse? Is the global water crisis a lens for excavating the deeper relationships of cultural identities with traditional urbanisms? Do such vernacular systems and landscapes offer alternative perspectives on the relationship between heritage conservation and contemporary urbanism? Do indigenous water urbanisms expand the prerogatives and goals of contemporary conservation practice?

The hiti water system of Nepal There have been times when the design of water-infrastructure has been inseparable from the cultural identity of a place. One thinks of the aqueducts and fountains of Rome, the mosaic-clad water tanks of Khiva, the acequias (water channels) of New Mexico, and the tirthas (sacred reservoirs) of Banaras. These infrastructures did not just supply water; they also created compelling urban settings whose image was indelibly linked to the social, political and cultural pride of their respective habitats. The hiti water system of Nepal is a case in point (Figures 3.1 and 3.2). Also called Dhunge Dhara, this traditional infrastructure has provided and distributed water for approximately1500 years and in this process created intimate interfaces with the culture’s social and religious dimensions. The hiti’s earliest mention dates to inscriptions found in Hadi Gaun as early as 550 CE, when it was established

Figure 3.1 Hiti at Hiranaya Varna Mahavihar, Patan. Source: Suraj Belbase/Wikimedia Commons

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Figure 3.2 Naga Hiti, Bhaktapur Durbar Square. Source: Suraj Belbase/Wikimedia Commons

by Lichhavi King Mandev I, and the oldest existing hiti is the Manga Hiti constructed in 570 CE in Patan (Manandhar 2013). Most existing hitis were established between the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries in the three major kingdoms of the time and the last recorded hiti, the Sun Dhara in Kathmandu, was constructed by Queen Lalit Tripura Sundari Devi in 1828 CE (Pradhan 1990). Over the ages, the hiti system has served as a source of water for drinking, bathing, laundry, and worship, with rulers governing the entire network and family groups bearing the responsibility for its maintenance and regulation (Molden et al. 2016). An estimated 95 per cent of hiti are today concentrated in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal’s largest metropolitan area, making it an ideal place to study the contemporary condition of these indigenous artefacts. The working principle of the hiti network is based on an interflow and base-flow process. Interflow is the lateral movement of water in the earth’s unsaturated zone that first returns to the surface or enters a stream prior to becoming groundwater. Base-flow is derived from bedrock water storage near surface valley soils with water percolating into groundwater and then flowing to a water body. Upstream ponds or aquifers are connected to a depression in the ground through pipelines and canals, and eventually made visible as channelized spouts of water along a vertical wall, accompanied by shrines, conduits, ponds, canals, reservoirs, and wells. As such, hitis have various shapes and sizes, though most spaces are square or rectangular in shape. The spouts are made of stone, and those inside royal palaces and public squares are sometimes decorated with gold. Over the ages, hitis have evolved into significant social spaces. Many of Kathmandu’s urban areas are named after hitis – Bhotahiti, Thanhiti, Maruhiti, Kohiti, etc. Historically a community organization called ‘guthi’ consisting of community members associated with the local government manages and

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sustains the activities around hitis. Today, hitis are important meeting spaces for women, who are the primary water gatherers in families. The act of water gathering at a hiti has evolved into a daily ritual; a break from housework and a place for local gossip and information gathering on social life. More importantly, hitis have come to bear deep sacred meaning. The Nepalese people follow both Hinduism and Buddhism and over time, hitis have become important religious settings for offering ‘pure’ water to the divine, making them nothing less than public shrines. Women are not allowed to use the hiti during the menstruation period. One must remove shoes before entering the hiti space, and the use of soap is strictly prohibited (Pradhan 1990). The design of the hiti’s water spouts usually contains spiritual symbols: most have sculptures of the water goddess, or makara (motifs of mythological water guardians) such as the crocodile, cow, goat, elephant, tiger and rooster, with water flowing from their mouth. Hitis have become the settings for numerous jatras (festivals) and religious ceremonies such as the Indra Jatra, Machhendra Nath Jatra, and Sithi Nakha that celebrate the water guardians and rain gods. Using water from the hitis as part of daily worship accords the same religious merit as worship at a holy Buddhist and Hindu place (Pradhan 1990). For example, during the Sithi Nakha in May, prior to the monsoon season, people gather in groups to clean and repair the hitis and their accompanying wells and ponds (Molden et al. 2016). This ritual is triggered by the belief that rain water gathered from a hiti has far greater sacred value than that from a metal pipe. According to the 2009 report by the Non-Government Organization Forum for Urban Water & Sanitation, out of the Kathmandu Valley’s 389 hitis, 45 have been demolished, 68 are permanently dry, and 43 are connected with illegal municipal water pipelines. European-inspired pipe water systems were introduced by the Rana rulers in the late 1800s, and the rising appeal of piped water between the 1950s-70s led to the vivid decline in hiti use (Joshi, 2015). During the late Rana Perio civil war from 1996 to 2006, hiti systems received minimal formal care, and increasing rapid urbanization led to their further decline (Molden et al. 2016). Additionally, rapid uncontrolled development in the Kathmandu Valley has had significant impact on these systems. The deeper foundations of high-rise buildings have resulted in the demolition of several underground water channels (Khadge and Tiwari 2014). Subterranean water has been contaminated due to the deterioration of traditional filtration systems and polluted by sewage and solid waste. Urban expansion has resulted in the paving of agricultural fields, parks, gardens, and open space increasing surface runoff. Consequently, hiti reservoirs are no longer been recharged with fresh water. An increasingly modernizing lifestyle has fragmented traditional social organization and ritual resulting in ambiguous financial support and ownership of hitis. Today, in the Kathmandu Valley alone, there 233 hiti systems still in working condition, and their upkeep and investment towards their revitalization is justified on a number of grounds. The restoration of supply canals can serve to replenish the ponds contributing to the recharge of aquifers. Additionally, stone spouts, wells and ponds, as part of the traditional water supply network, can supply irrigation water to agricultural areas, helping increase crop yields. Canals, primarily serving to irrigate land, can also serve to recharge the ponds and aquifers, especially in Nepal’s dry seasons. As the current piped water supply system cannot reliably meet water demand in Nepal, traditional water sources, such as the stone spouts and wells, can help meet the water demands of local communities, with excess water redistributed on a strategic basis. And with the traditional stone spouts understood as a sacred heritage by their users, their status as culturally significant urban artefacts further reinforces why they deserve attention. If the hiti system and its components (such as spouts and water sources) are to be preserved and restored to function as contemporary water sources, their reconstruction must be carried out with due recognition to the hydrological cycle. Hiti restoration has its challenges however. It can involve the relocation of structures and buildings near the spouts, many of which encroach on public property. The impervious surfaces of such buildings limit natural rainwater infiltration and can significantly compromise the quality and quantity of

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water in the aquifers. Since the spouts obtain water from shallow aquifers, such buildings can also affect spout supply lines. Additionally, surface pollution can lead to the contamination of spouts, and currently, most if not all of the hiti spouts are reported to be effected in some way. Nepal’s current municipal systems have been unable to provide adequate drinking water to residents due to the disrepair of piped systems coupled with limited resources, and weak management. Most of the low-income demographic has had to subsequently depend on the historic hiti system to fulfil their water needs. An estimated 4 million people in the Kathmandu Valley have lived amidst this serious water crisis, especially after the 2015 earthquake. As noted above, while operation and maintenance methods of hitis are already part of local knowledge, their revitalization also has several environmental benefits. The revitalization of the hiti system, is a necessary, large-scale project which can make a significant and reliable contribution to the availability and augmentation of the fresh drinking water supply for Nepal today.

The Banaue Rice Terraces, Philippines The Banaue Rice Terraces in the Cordillera Administrative Region of Luzon, Philippines, are speculated by anthropologist Otley Beyer to be around 2,000 years old (Figures 3.3 and 3.4). These elaborate agroecosystems were carved into the mountains by the Ifugao people largely by hand at an altitude of approximately 1,500 meters (4,900 feet) above sea level. They are composed of eight interrelating levels starting from the highest elevation: (i) inalah (public forest); (ii) muyong (privately owned forest lots); (iii)

Figure 3.3 The Ifugao Rice Terraces are carved into the mountains largely by hand at an altitude of approximately 1,500 meters (4,900 feet) above sea level. Source: Allan Jay Quesada/Wikimedia Commons

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Figure 3.4 Male farmers maintain the terraces, with specific social contracts holding them accountable for annual activities such as planting, harvesting, and repairing broken walls and channels. Source: Captaincid/Wikimedia Commons

kaingin (slash-and-burn farms); (iv)magulun (communal grasslands); (v) mabilau (cane grasslands); (vi) payo (rice terraces); (vii) boble (settlements); and (viii)wangwang (irrigation outflow in rivers.) This agrarian mega-landscape is intricately related to the Ifugao social hierarchy. Farmers owning rice paddies are considered the elite of the Ifugao society; those who do not are considered lower in social status. A property is considered a family rather than an individual asset, and the ownership of forestlands, valued for timber, is typically shared by a group of kinsmen and their families. A rice field by contrast is considered the property of the family head. When a field is abandoned, a ‘caretaker’ is given the right to till the land until the rightful owner repossesses it. Rice is regarded as a ‘prestige crop’ and homemade rice wine is used in rituals engaging with deceased ancestors (Manahan 1997). The significance of rice and the terraces to Ifugao culture and life is paramount from a socio-economic as well as cultural standpoint. Traditionally, the workings of these man-made agrarian terrains followed an elaborate communal pattern: Maintenance work and water rights were based on cooperative arrangements and commonpool resources. Male farmers maintained the terraces, with specific social contracts holding them accountable for annual activities such as planting, harvesting, and repairing broken walls and channels. Codes of conduct regulated daily practices. For example, if a farmer was unable to perform daily work in the field, he would have to provide prepared rice to feed the group who harvested that day.

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Likewise, communities that used the same down-flowing water channel shared management duties of maintenance and upkeep (Acabado and Martin 2015; Ostrom 1990). This communal structure was part of a long tradition that fostered social relations and economic vitality in the region. The Banaue Rice Terraces were designated a World Heritage Site (WHS) in 1995, bringing increased attention to the region as a tourist destination and enhancing the areas marketing potential as an export economy. The National Food Authority of the Philippines subsequently introduced commercial rice developed by the International Rice Research Institute in the region, and with the dominance of non-local rice varieties, and the commercialization of rice, Ifugao farmers have been able to profit economically by selling these new crops. The production of non-local rice varieties, however, does not involve the traditional rice-harvesting rituals, and this has resulted in decreased community kinship. Social cognition in the region has also changed due to market economy pressures. Women, who traditionally led rituals, are now ignored in the rice culture, since men lead and support the export of rice. The cultural practice of rice harvesting is dying. Over hundreds of years, Ifugao rice farmers have passed on knowledge that newer generations are gradually abandoning, as they seek more urban opportunities for economic stability. In the 1960s, the National Irrigation Administration (NIA), took control of all the irrigation systems within the nation. The agency sought to divert water into urban areas, bureaucratized water uses and dammed several water channels, including a number from the Ifugao region. It required farmers to pay the government for the maintenance of the channels and dams and continued to administer the payout process while leaving the responsibility of repairs and maintenance to locals (Acabado 2010). This has significantly affected on-ground maintenance. Dams leading to urban areas have redistributed Ifugao water away from the agricultural community without compensation to the farmers. The shift from co-operative water rights to government ownership has become a source of conflict among Ifugao farmers. It has affected the local socio-political dynamic surrounding the Ifugao agricultural system and is also shrinking the Ifugao’s agency over the terraces their ancestors created. The government has not missed the importance of the UNESCO World Heritage Site designation. But there is rising concern that government control of the area’s natural resources may result in unilateral moves such as rapidly built roads and transit infrastructure to encourage tourism. This could result in new tax policies on the crops, and also seed new development in proximate areas. Meanwhile, fields across the Ifugao region remain threatened by other factors. There is the threat of cross-contamination by Indonesian worms and snails. Natural disasters, such as typhoons and earthquakes, also endanger the rice terraces. In 2011, a typhoon caused several small landslides that buried segments of the terraces, and due to the bureaucratic nature of repairs, the terraces still remain in disrepair. Earthquakes also cause shifts in water flows, redistributing harvested water to the wrong small farm. Such threats put the terraces on the List of World Heritage in Danger in 2001. Subsequently, increasing issues and concerns were studied and addressed through efforts of the Provincial Government and related national agencies, such as the Ifugao Terraces Commission that was set up in 1994. This commission helped create, a ten-year master plan covering issues of management, conservation and socio-economic dynamics. In June 2012, the terraces, have been delisted from the roster, recognizing effective management and development efforts. Currently, the terraces are under the management of the Provincial Government of Ifugao and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts. Ongoing government efforts aimed at improving economic conditions of the community through its various programmes remain hopeful and encouraging.

The Polders of Bangladesh Bangladesh is located at the cusp of three rivers – the Ganga, the Brahmaputra, and the Meghna – and is also intersected by approximately 200 rivers and tributaries that create numerous tidal inlets, creeks, and estuaries, as extensions of these major water bodies. The nation’s coastal river delta is one of the

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largest, and youngest, in the world. Since the earliest human migrations to Bangladesh, coastal settlements have served to benefit from this dense riverine network and the fertile agricultural land surrounding them. But the area also has a long history of flooding, and frequent coastal hazards including annual cyclones and land erosion, has resulted in the rapid deterioration of the coast (Azam 2011). Polders are a protective response to this phenomenon (Figure 3.5). They were originally constructed in the early 1960s under the Coastal Embankment Project and established to protect low-lying areas from inundation and salinity intrusion. Physically, polders are enclosed by embankments or dikes creating an artificial land-water entity. Sluice gates allow water to flow into the polder to help in agricultural production while allowing it to be filtered out as needed (Rosenberg 2019). Today the Bangladesh’s polders comprise nearly 4000 miles of embankments protecting more than a million hectares of land. There are numerous examples of polder networks around the world, but Bangladesh is among the few designed for the establishment of communities. A majority of the people living within and around the polder network are agriculture producers and labourers (Alam 2016). Yet, since the beginning, the polder network has been adversely impacted due to a general lack of maintenance, funding, and government intervention. During a severe cyclone in the 1970s thousands died in areas lacking polder development, compared to those within safeguarded ones. Following that disaster, several people

Figure 3.5 Deteriorated Polders. Source: Challenge Program on Water and Food/Flickr Commons/www.flickr.com/photos/cpwf/5806805913/in/set72157626904885598

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formerly living outside polders have moved within them, and today, an estimated 8 million people occupy them. It is therefore imperative to restore the polders not just to safeguard the occupants’ lives, but also continue to build upon Bangladesh’s legacy of innovative vernacular methods dedicated to their citizens’ livelihoods. Today, an estimated 44 of the 123 polders are currently at risk of overtopping in a severe cyclone (IRIN News 2013). Restoration and conservation costs are estimated to be nearly US$900 million by 2050, with annual recurrent costs of US$18 million (IRIN News 2013). Polder related livelihoods are largely dependent on agricultural crops, mostly entailing rice production. The fertile polder land provided an increase in rice production of up to 300 percent, compared to the previous non-polder agricultural land (Islam 2006). Manoranjan Kumar Mondal, a scientist who grew up in the polders notes that polders were able to uplift the socio-economic condition of the residents, boost family income, and foster close community ties (Nair 2014). However, by the 1980s many polders suffered from internal congestion and siltation, leading to increased poverty and migration. Today, with a net cultivable area of nearly 2 million hectares, the polders offer ample opportunity for enough agriculture to increase the quality of life for all occupants. But, as highlighted by the CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food (2014) report, the polder land is extremely underutilized. Farmers have the ability to grow multiple crops, which is standard for the region, but this cannot occur without the restoration of the polder network. This is not an easy subject. Annual cyclones of increasing intensity have continuously eroded the polder network foundations. Cyclone Sidr in 2007 flooded 3.45 million households. Cyclone Mahasen in 2013 called for the evacuation of more than one million people. Additionally, sea level rise has continued to threaten polder sluice gates which allow the removal of water to avoid long-term flooding. It is estimated that by 2050, the sea level will rise by 1.24 feet (GlobalChange.gov n.d.). World Bank studies indicate that Bangladesh will be one of the most affected countries in South Asia in the upcoming decades, and sea level rise coupled with extreme weather patterns will ultimately affect food production, infrastructure, and livelihoods. Today, poor maintenance and storm damage have exceeded the limitations of these dikes, threatening some 42 million coastal residents and their communities. There is however, an ambitious project underway to restore the polders. The Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh has initiated the Coastal Embankment Improvement Project, Phase-1 (CEIP-1), with funds borrowed from the World Bank and grant monies issued by the bank under its pilot programme for climate resilience. The geotechnical work involved in this major upgradation will use soil to increase embankment height and width with locally produced concrete blocks serving as slope reinforcement. Mangrove and other salt-tolerant plant species will also help further reinforce the embankment forelands. Sluice gates will be upgraded, with some redesigned to include sliding gates to enable the sluices to let water both in and out. Polder dwellers, particularly squatters, who must be relocated during construction will be given money to assist with the move. Although a permanent relocation is desired, it will not be enforced, and people will be allowed to return to the embankments once construction is complete. An estimated 129 polders will be upgraded as a part of the project. Upon completion, existing embankments along the sea, estuaries, rivers, and their associated drainage channels will have been upgraded to offer greater protection from storm surges, and sea level rise.

Indigenous water urbanisms in prospect The three examples discussed above are, as mentioned in the beginning of this chapter, not only from varied ecological and geo-political conditions, but also from varied nature-habitat gradients: The hitis are the most urban of the three and intersect directly in complex ways with the physical urban condition of Nepalese cities. The Banaue Rice Terraces are rural places with vast natural terrains interspersed by intimate villages. The Polders in turn are parts of a coastal landscape representing a third typology of habitat that is neither as urban as the hiti, nor as rural as the rice terraces. Despite these

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obvious contrasts, the combined narrative of this study highlights the complex technical, economic and cultural challenges that underlie their restoration and conservation. Indigenous hydro-urbanisms are often fragile systems, and unless consistently maintained, do not lend themselves to easy retrofit or reuse once abandoned. It is possible to enhance active or recently dormant systems, but such efforts typically require highly specialized labour. Their low expenditure in comparison to the high maintenance charges of wells and motor pumps presents a definite advantage particularly in rural areas, making them a safer long-term water provision. But from an economic standpoint, the conservation of these systems is not an in-expensive proposition. The long-term sustenance of a restored indigenous systems also has its own social complexities. Studies of comparable indigenous hydro-infrastructure, such as the qanats of of Iran, offer valuable insights in this regard. The cost of excavating a historic qanat proves to be more than double that of a deep well with pumps. As such, qanats, if regularly dredged and repaired have proven to have an almost unlimited life span, compared to the typical twenty-year life-span of a well, thereby justifying their upkeep (Haeri 2003). But the case of the qanats also reveals that the success of such efforts is only possible thorough communal willingness and participation. For example, in the 2000 pilot qanat renovation effort in the Syrian village of Shalalah Saghirah, east of Aleppo the qanat was cleaned, with its technical impact measured by a flow meter, and sixteen young community members trained for its upkeep. But when the project team returned in summer 2002, though the qanat was providing a substantial amount of water, the community was again divided with social tensions, and the qanat’s future remained dubious (Wessels and Hoogeveen 1996). The conservation of indigenous systems especially in agrarian and rural areas must therefore be done on a case by case basis after a careful analysis of the social pulse of the place. An aspect that cannot afford be ignored is that of water contamination. With rapid and increasing urbanization in places such as Nepal, Philippines and Bangladesh, surface water with industrial pollutants lands up being absorbed into the substrata eventually impacting the aquifer. Since indigenous hydro-systems such as the hiti are aquifer-dependent, this argues for a broader multi-disciplinary approach to conservation efforts. It suggests a conscious intersection of mainstream conservation practices with the geological and hydrological sciences. It calls for the accurate mapping of the precise location and condition of the vernacular infrastructure, as well as its condition along the hydrological geography. It expands the scope of the conservation effort beyond the object and artefact into the larger geological context within with it performs. From both an environmental and social standpoint, the three examples discussed in this chapter remind us that the ‘urban water crisis’ will demand significant shifts in our perception of water, its use, and its related infrastructure; that the attitudes to obtaining, distributing and using water, the very lifeblood of any community is a thing to be celebrated not hidden; and that the mainstream expressions of urban infrastructure as utilitarian footnotes need to be transformed into visible armatures for the cultural and spiritual enrichment of people. From an environmental standpoint, two aspects transport indigenous water systems to the top of the sustainability chart: First, their long-term dependability and viability as drought-resilient systems; second, their ability to conserve the optimum amount of water from a limited source through minimal evaporation. These qualities are worthy enough to justify their strategic conservation in a time of climatic and hydrological uncertainty. The future of vernacular water urbanisms and their hydro-infrastructure remains a complex subject across the world, and certainly across the Asia-Pacific region, where policy, administration and reinforcement is more ambiguous compared to developed nations. The overarching question is therefore whether or not the future of such indigenous systems can be successfully incentivized. How can strategies and policies inspire and instigate communities and administrations to engage in maintaining indigenous systems as both practical and useful elements beyond their profound cultural value? There is no doubt that vernacular water urbanisms will die in many portions of their cities. The question is:

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will they survive in others? As indigenous artefacts on the seeming path to extinction, perhaps it is in their death that their value will eventually be realized, giving them a new life. Whatever the case, their destiny is intrinsically tied to the decisions and directions of their city’s future growth patterns, and the extent to which these places will succeed in transforming their petrified bureaucracies towards socio-cultural appropriations for a time of unparalleled environmental and economic crisis. The task at hand for these societies is to mediate the ongoing dialogues between tradition versus modernity, and unapologetically choose between the volatile whims of a mainstream urbanity, or the deeper wisdom of sustainable policies, patient capital, and long-term investment. The eventual destiny – whether as an active agent for future sustainable city-making or a long-forgotten anachronism – will emerge from this choice.

Conclusion This chapter sought among other things to examine how heritage conservation can expand its discourse through an engagement with indigenous water urbanisms. The first expansion occurs through an emphasis on ecology. Today, in the wake of climate change and global warming, ecology should be an increasingly dominant lens of inquiry in any urban design and heritage conservation effort. Issues of water scarcity, extreme storms, and flooding that underlie this discussion are emblematic of a larger scenario that also encompasses melting glaciers and the thermal expansion of the oceans. Such truisms suggest a re-framing of conservation through ecological issues tantamount with its architectural and socio-economic aspects. Additionally, an ecological lens also serves to expand a conservation effort’s perceived physical boundaries. It emphasizes the evolving relationships between buildings, open spaces, and natural features that have shaped the larger local and even regional context, far beyond a singular entity or object. The act of identifying, protecting, restoring and reusing built ‘heritage’ – be it buildings, districts, landscapes or entire towns and regions of historic or cultural significance – is increasingly recognized as a far more strategic act of urban and ecological transformation (Bharne and Sandmeier 2019). This study also reveals the multiple ways in which heritage conservation intersects with social and populist dimensions, and how they might have significant bearing on the ways we read the process and end goals of a conservation effort. The case of the hiti highlights connections of religion and ritual acknowledging the intangible aspects of a setting – people’s beliefs, cultural traits and knowledge structures – and their eventual embodiment into the physical signatures of a place. Here, the act of heritage conservation is about augmenting cultural identity by negotiating issues of tradition, authenticity, continuity, and change at multiple scales. The case of the Banaue Rice Terraces highlights the social intersections of indigene and modernity, indicating the strategic need for pragmatic rather than nostalgic approaches to fragile, aging places. It reminds us of the tensions between traditional values, versus emerging aspirations of a new generation that seeks other expressions, many of which directly contradict their historic patterns. The act of conservation in this case is one of striking a strategic equilibrium between both. The case of the Polders highlights how heritage intersects with issues of economic impoverishment and geographic uncertainty. The idea of conservation here is to achieve a pragmatic augmentation of both, while celebrating the underlying cultural patterns of the place. The combined narrative of this study reminds us that origins and deep pasts are not the only ways of understanding a place. Shifting histories can mutate into new and unforeseen guises – at once an architectural and anthropological issue. The environmental challenges facing the Bangladesh Polders today, the political challenges surrounding the future of the Banaue Rice Terraces and the hiti are reminders that heritage is not an embalmed but a dynamic, evolving idea. The conservation of heritage must therefore transcend its exclusively historic and monumental values to consider how people’s values and community aspirations can contribute to its contemporary presence.

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Such realizations are already shifting the field of heritage conservation globally, moving them from the realm of the expert-professional to the territory of the ordinary. The role of the contemporary conservationist as a professional expert is being superseded by new processes and initiatives, wherein conservation practice is now becoming the domain of ordinary citizens and activists, and numerous other actors that did not traditionally play a role on the heritage conservation stage (Manzini 2015). Like the three cases discussed in this chapter, numerous places in the Global South today not only contain some of the oldest and most fragile examples of cultural heritage but offer a heritage conservation discourse that is a counterpoint to the formal and authorized one of the West. While an elaboration on this aspect is beyond the scope of this chapter, it is nonetheless, important to emphasize that the efficacy of heritage conservation efforts will eventually emerge from the specific political and administrative realities of these places, and these differences will have a direct impact on the place of heritage within the evolving built environment. Varying trajectories of urban growth, post-colonialism, post-independence, post-industrialization, and populist dispositions will all have bearings on the variable between aspiration and implementation. The specific players that engage in acts of conservation, and the actual processes and products that bring about bigger and deeper changes will themselves be significantly different. This discussion on conserving Asia’s indigenous water urbanisms must be understood as part this larger evolving rubric.

Acknowledgements I wish to acknowledge three students from the University of Southern California School of Architecture for their assistance and contributions to this chapter: Yi Xiao (Hiti), Katrina Castaneda (Ifugao Rice Terraces), and Christopher Purcell (Polders).

References Acabado, S. B. (2010) The archaeology of the Ifugao agricultural terraces: Antiquity and social organization, PhD dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Hawaii. Acabado, S. B. and Martin, M. (2015) ‘Between pragmatism and cultural context: Continuity of wet-rice agriculture in Ifugao, Philippines’, in H. van Schaik and W. Willems (eds.) Water and heritage: Material, conceptual and spiritual connections, Leiden: Sidestone Publishers, 273–295. Alam, E. (2016) Adaptation actions, migration and disaster vulnerability of Bangladeshi coastal communities, Washington, DC: Middle East Institute. Azam, M. (2011) Factors driving environmentally induced migration in the coastal regions of Bangladesh: An exploratory study, Master’s Thesis, Albert-Ludwigs-Universitat Freiburg, Germany. Bharne V. and Sandmeier T. (eds) (2019) ‘Introduction’, in Routledge companion to global heritage conservation, London: Routledge, 1–11. CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food. (2014) Messages from the Ganges Basin development challenge: Unlocking the production potential of the polders of the coastal zone of Bangladesh through water management investment and reform, Dhaka: CGIAR. De Meulder, B. and Shannon, K. (2008) Water urbanisms, Amsterdam: Uitgeverij SUN and authors. GlobalChange.gov. (n.d.) ‘Projected sea level rise and flooding by 2050’, GlobalChange.gov: US Global Change Research Program. [online]. Available at: www.globalchange.gov/browse/multimedia/projected-sea-level-riseand-flooding-2050 (accessed 19 May 2019). Haeri, M. R. (2003, 12–13 November) ‘Kariz (Qanat); An eternal friendly system for harvesting groundwater’, A paper presented at ‘In Adaptation Workshop’, New Delhi, India. Available at: http://unfccc.int/files/meetings/ workshops/other_meetings/application/pdf/121103_iran.pdf (accessed 10 December 2010). IRIN News. (2013) ‘Bangladesh Polders under threat’. [online]. Available at: www.irinnews.org/feature/2013/06/ 27/bangladesh-polders-under-threat (accessed 16 May 2019). Islam, R. (2006) ‘Pre- and post-tsunami coastal planning and land-use policies and issues in Bangladesh’, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 55–70. [online]. Available at: www.fao.org/forestry/13138098e3e2e57aa60088543a509788445c8d.pdf (accessed 19 May 2019).

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4 RE-IMAGINING EURASIA Past Flatland stories of urban and landscape heritage Manu P. Sobti

Introduction In November 1972, the General Conference of UNESCO adopted the Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. In underlining perceived threats to cultural heritage and natural heritage ‘not only by the traditional causes of decay, but also by changing social and economic conditions’ (UNESCO 1972: 1), this consensus overtly recognized a significant, internationally recognized legislative instrument that would protect cultural and natural heritage of outstanding universal value, and against a myriad of agents. Yet, in realistic terms, it was only two decades later, in 1992, that this Convention was formulated as the first international legal instrument that effectively protected ‘cultural landscapes’ undergoing irreversible change. Or at least, this was the explicit assumption that the legal constraints created by this Convention would impart stringent parameters for the state and its stakeholders to uphold, propagate and therefore create capacity on preservation best practices within respective nationalistic boundaries. While these actions were undeniably milestone protections for cultural and natural heritage, yet they offered little to account for the subterfuge that a less identified (and relatively unforeseen) agency could systematically impart to the authenticity of heritage. An agency, that especially operated via its role as an instigator of nationalistic master narratives, and often so at the cost of genuine, overarching heritage stories. Often overlooked, this ‘agency’ remains none other than the political mechanism of the state itself, whose misdirected actions against living heritage have served to undermine cultural roots, via an array of short-sighted policies and their machinations. In some instances, the state and its logistical enterprise have also spawned corrupt middlemen practices and heavy-handed interventions. Of course, even the attitudes of the state do not operate within a vacuum but remain shaped by short and long-term histories of place and culture, which are themselves problematic at best. In summary, within the several nation-states of the Global South (and occasionally even within the Developed World), the purported ‘protectors’ of the ‘legal instruments’ and upholders of preservation best practices – the state – appears to have been systematically complicit in the demise of heritage appreciation and the irretrievable generational loss of cultural landscapes in this process. Curiously, the State Party’s actions appear to have received little public notice, even though the UNESCO officiating reports frequently detail out multiple overt and indirect references on the involvement of the state in matters of heritage. A case in point is the UNESCO World Heritage Committee Decisions Report 42M, which clearly points to serious concerns on the deterioration and destruction of the ‘Historic Centre of Shakhrisyabz

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(Uzbekistan – C885)’ yet decides to retain Shakhrisyabz on the List of World Heritage in Danger (UNESCO 2001). In fact, UNESCO appears to have been concerned about the heritage value of these monuments since 2016 (if not earlier) – yet, little can be done in terms of policing the states (Figure 4.1). It is within this broad framework of systemic state malfeasance, that this chapter accesses the questionable successes and tragic failures of heritage conservation and management process within the unwieldy region known as the Central Asian Stans or Eurasia. Comprising the nations of Uzbekistan,

Figure 4.1 View of Shakhrisyabz, Uzbekistan showing the giant statue of Timur in the middle of a Soviet-era formally designed park with Aq Saray Palace ruins (top); View of old town of Shakhrisyabz from the top of Aq Saray ruins, showing still-intact mahalla with scattered monumental buildings. These mahalla neighbourhoods were completely erased in 2016–17 and the formal garden boulevard extended (bottom). Source: Manu P. Sobti

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Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, Central Asia today remains well-acknowledged as a unique cultural terrain, with layers of embedded place histories and recurring contradictions between the past, present and foreseeable future. As a syncretic crucible par excellence along the legendary Silk Road and replete with unique built artefacts and landscapes, Central Asia is among the last surviving, truly vast and relatively undisturbed cultural geographies with its inter-connected populations that have continued to live in what may be best defined as ‘multiple times’. In fact, the ‘political map’ of what constitutes Central Asia today, hardly demonstrates its cultural connectedness east and west (Sobti 2019). Within the contemporary epoch, Eurasia grapples with change on an everyday basis – her relatively young nation states demonstrating vast contrasts in their development trends, socio-economic and political situations, while frequently squabbling over genuine and purported claims to terrain, resources and cultural legacies. Eurasia also continually debates her shifting geo-politics, arbitrarily drawn borders and borderlands, as concomitant cultural processes remain incompletely reconciled and thoroughly protracted even in the modern era. Within this complex dynamic of a holistic region, this chapter critically re-visits Eurasia’s significance in UNESCO’s broad gamut of ‘cultural landscape categories’ (designed and/intentional landscapes versus organically evolved landscapes versus associative cultural landscapes). It interrogates the continuing suitability of these past frameworks, definitions and management plans that have persisted in the approaches applied, specifically examining arguments towards enlarging these largely ‘formal’ (and often failed) approaches brokered by UNESCO with the multiple Stans. The chapter endorses the inclusion of ‘space-time’ historical moments emerging from genuine regional and/or nation-state narratives as cultural patrimonies preserved for posterity. Within the light of specific insights on Eurasia’s historic and ongoing assimilation of nomadic, quasi-nomadic and sedentary populations, this research also offers revisions on how the terms ‘urban’ and ‘landscape’ would need substantial rewriting to critically include the palimpsest of non-artefactual and mobile histories of the trans-regional ‘trust networks’ that were at the core of this cultural landscape. Lastly, this purview of modified historiographies also explores the possibilities on how the new and extended histories of Eurasia would be written? Additionally, what roles would bygone and extant artefacts, linkages and choreographies play within these new histories; and for whom would these new histories be written, as they self-consciously circumscribe past and present ‘cultural narratives’ that pervade the region, and Eurasia realizes her critical role as a veritable compendium and living museum for the future?

Cultural amnesia in the Stans Understanding the troubling preservation trends and practices of urban and heritage landscapes in Central Asia is underscored by the region’s contentious relationship with the events of history. While a detailed narrative on this history remains beyond the scope of this discussion, it would suffice to say that Central Asia in its heyday between the ninth and sixteenth centuries was as an exemplar synthesis of Sogdian and Islamic landscapes. As an unbroken land promontory, this ‘thick peripheral zone’ bordered yet interconnected the disparate Persianate, Slavic, Indian and Chinese world empires (Sobti 2017). Central Asia’s steppe terrain was moderated by its few, interspersed cities and extensive networks of nomadic mobilities concentrated along the river Oxus (later the Amu Darya) and its life-giving tributaries. As the nexus of nomadic and sedentary cultures, which created conurbations of multiple resident populations, the region served as a global entrepôt for the production and consumption of goods and diverse peoples. In literal terms, therefore, history was made, unmade and remade in this civilizational crucible. Cities stood atop older settlements, buildings systematically erased earlier palimpsests and cannibalized parts from antiquity, while they self-consciously regurgitated whatever remained of memory and meaning. Germinating in a socio-political apogee exacerbated by the arrival and spread of Islam starting in 675 CE, followed by the decisive Mongol invasions between 1221 and 1255 CE, and thereafter the dizzying Ilkhanid and

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Timurid artistic renaissance between 1256 and 1507 CE, Central Asia witnessed a decline starting in the early nineteenth century. While its ‘gunpowder empires’ dismembered (Hodgson 1974), the historical primacy of a contiguous, land-based empire contingent on the networks of trade, transit and nomadic sodalities were gradually eclipsed by the marked rise of relatively dependable sea routes. In effect, Central Asia’s historically shared a common culture that relied on its holistic geography, making any piece-meal heritage strategy not just untenable but entirely inadequate towards explaining the region’s history. While Central Asia’s past had always remained contentious in the hands of vying dynasties, the appreciation of this past (or whatever remained of it) got even more complicated starting in the early nineteenth century. The region now fell within the colonial spheres of influence and was subject to a series of confrontations known in the scholarship as the Great Game, fielded by the British, Russians and the French (Hopkirk 2006). By the 1870s, Central Asia’s complex historical palimpsest of urban and rural landscapes, spectacular architecture made and un-made, building ensembles protected by charitable endowments (waqf), and a robust vernacular tradition, experienced major structural modifications. The past now fell into Russian hands and was subject to the degradations of urban environments, architecture and canal networks that had crisscrossed the arable land on the Amu Darya banks, only to be bolstered by the Bolshevik preservation policies and state control of the region’s antiquities starting in 1924. In fact, it would not be an overstatement to conclude that in this trajectory of historical progression owing to both her internal vulnerabilities and external factors, Central Asia (and what would later be known as the ‘Stans’) experienced a ‘cultural amnesia’ of sorts. The grand destinies of migrating and nomadic communities that had once historically characterized the Eurasian borderland were gradually (if not deliberately) eroded! Against public sentiment and scholarly introspection, Soviet bureaucrats in Moscow (Khalid 2009) forming the Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (created from the Turkestan Krai of Imperial Russia in 1924) proceeded to demarcate the borders and infrastructure of fifteen Soviet Republics (the later Stans) where there had once been a continuous land-based empire. Based on a binding belief in the unbreakable union of these Republics (Freni 2013), this momentous step assumed that ‘eternal interdependence’ would form a natural bond between these cultural entities owing to their historical and geographic proximities. Within the Stans, where historical process had predisposed a culturally connected and predominantly nomadic population, these arbitrary border demarcations were particularly detrimental. They systematically forfeited the cultural cohesion of this uniquely nomadic realm, especially given that the constituent nations had no historical experience in the paradigm of an ethnic state let alone multiple borders within the steppe (Bartold 1925; Thomas 2018; Ubaidulloev 2015). Within this scenario, while cultural landscapes and architectural masterpieces could have hardly been expected to take sides, many exemplars were coopted towards the political gains of the state and its ideology. Heritage was ‘classified and categorized’ into distinct value systems based on its fidelity to prevalent nationalistic narratives, age, provenance and artistic prowess expressly demonstrated. Buildings with any religious affiliations, which included Bukharan cemeteries and mausoleums (constituting about a quarter of the city’s landed territory) and obviously mosques, were frequently demolished. In particular, the campaign against religion was actively pursued until around 1940 and archival records indicate that as much as 70 per cent of the residential district of Bukhara was destroyed (Schwarz 1999). Also, in the 1940s, given the abolishment of the ‘charitable endowment (waqf), 35 buildings (from among several) in Bukhara were classified as ‘material culture worthy of preservation’ – including merely four mosques and two mausoleums, although an inventory had listed 360 mosques in Bukhara in 1917. Also, a necropolis spread over 16 hectares dating back to the sixteenth century was not included in the 1940s inventory, obviously chastised owing to its close association with the Juybari Sufis. The classification process imparted to the ancient heritage its new and ‘real’ meaning (i.e. the expression of the ‘culture of the proletariat’), while it destroyed those structures considered seemingly unclassifiable. In these brazen choreographies of ideological change that spawned on the Soviet

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Union’s peripheries, while buildings were removed from the public eye and made redundant via categorization, the historical ‘past’ too was substantially removed from the mainstream of resident populations, let alone regarded as any legitimate resource for posterity. By the 1930s, following these destructions and neglect, and the unabashed repurposing of historical monuments (including several Bukharan mansions) for other functions, the region’s commercial and religious life markedly diminished. Central Asia’s urbanities fell into disrepair, and from among the hundreds of monumental built exemplars that still embellished the urban environments of historical and pre-modern Central Asian towns (and remained in a good state of presentation), only a handful were specifically designated for state conservation. These idiosyncratic choices, undoubtedly alienated population from their affective histories. Allworth describes this as an ‘imperfect system of preservation’, that ‘came into play because the Soviet regime found private foundations (waqf) incompatible with State capitalism’ (Allworth 1990). Within Uzbekistan, several of these ‘converted buildings’ also became the first so-called museums for the nations’ history, their revised building programmes and displays elaborating ‘the exploits of the revolution’ within the newly established atheistic propaganda clubs. Often, with little regard to the quality of the built fabric, the state allocated buildings to various ministries, assigning new functions to enable cultural artefacts to become ‘the property of the people’ and thereby instil a ‘loyalty to Communist ideals’. Meanwhile, buildings newly erected in commemoration of the ‘exploits of the revolution’ and representing the new Soviet ideology were regarded as having greater value in comparison to the surviving vestiges from an unreferenced past. Beyond the scale of the monumental, the re-branding of Central Asia also extended to the residential districts of cities. These environments were strategically targeted towards fostering a new system of social relations and norms corresponding to what constituted Soviet socialist ideals. Given their Marxist borrowings, the Bolshevik view of the Central Asian ‘Asiatic’ Eastern populations was one of cultural ‘backwardness’. By extension, the Russian peasant too was dirty, ignorant, passive and unconscious of time – and therefore ‘Asiatic’. On these lines, while the ‘Muslim traditionalist’ of Eurasia was the Russian peasant’s so-called Oriental counterpart, the ‘semi-nomadic agrarians’ of the steppe were the ‘undesirable’ remnants of the feudal past (Castillo 1997). Following the Bolshevik rise to power, Soviet architects had argued that their profession would purge the USSR of its historical ‘Asiatic’ tendencies. This rhetoric aligned well with Moscow’s proselytizing propaganda, and by the 1920s, the Constructivists had elaborated a theoretical basis for the transformative influence of built form. In the decades until the 1950s, within the scenario of demolished mahalla, degraded Central Asian urban environments also witnessed the elaboration of a Soviet-generated social ‘urban collectivizing’ building typology, known as the rayon (or raion). Much like the Soviet factory and workers’ club, the rayon were conceived as ‘social condensers’ – devices capable of instilling modes of conduct while meeting basic needs. Implicit in this theory was the concept of urban demolition as a technique of social reform. Therefore, if a social condenser could function as a ‘workshop for the transformation of man’, traditional environments might (as corollary) therefore ‘contaminate’ new Soviet proletarians with discredited ways of life. By the 1950s, so desperate was the need to connect to a past (and any purported past), that prevalent Soviet doctrine employed these rayon as ‘brutal interventions’ within rapidly changing urbanscapes of Central Asia. Functionalist and melancholic, save for the profusion of decorative tile works adorning their facades, the rayon blocks constituted the largest share of publicly owned (and afforded) housing within these re-developed cities. Many served as staging grounds for the arrival of displaced nomadic populations from lands afar. Beyond the bigger cities, the pervasive Soviet era microrayon and their lesser versions also dotted the rural landscapes in Central Asia, creating anomalies within the otherwise agricultural hinterland. Between the 1950s and 1970s, while the rayon ‘model’ was systematically replicated across Eurasia, it actually coexisted alongside the pre-existing mahalla. And, while comprehensive demolition and construction plans were drawn up for a number of the region’s cities (including Samarqand, Bukhara,

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Khiva and Ashgabat), few were actually subject to these disastrous interventions. Nonetheless, elaborate rayon containing multiple micro-rayon within their garden-like settings were realized on many urban sites, some in the very midst of indigenous (and thriving) mahalla neighbourhoods. A final and tragic Soviet ‘corrective’ to these efforts followed especially after the devastating Tashkent earthquake on 26 April 1966. An estimated 75 per cent of the city was destroyed, necessitating an ‘unprecedented and rapid’ Soviet rebuilding to sow the ‘seeds’ of change – the first entirely new and modern Eurasian city on a forgotten historical plan. Re-built with migrant labour gangs, new Tashkent had wide streets, green parks, large housing estates (micro-rayon) enough for each nuclear family and touted as a haven of socialism within the phoenix-like Uzbek Republic that emerged from the ruins of the past. Tashkent’s vast constructions also expanded the city limits to effectively incorporate many surrounding villages (kishlak), agricultural and pastoral lands. The ‘semi-nomadic agrarian’ of the Eurasian steppe – an ‘undesirable’ remnant of the feudal past – was finally just a memory. In fact, now these ‘mobiles’ from Eurasia’s ‘deep antiquity’ had an opportunity to finally sedentarize! Between the 1970s and 1990s, Central Asia’s legacy of urban change remained a mixed bag. While the national capitals at Tashkent, Ashgabat, Dushanbe, Bishkek and Almaty were the frequent sites of substantial state-sponsored constructions, their surviving residential districts consisting of tightly packed traditional courtyard homes within the mahalla and Soviet-era rayon introduced in the decades past remained largely undisturbed. And, somewhat ironically, in this era of relative governmental laxity (at least in contrast to the cataclysmic political and physical changes earlier), a normative status quo of sorts now prevailed between the ancient, medieval and recent pasts. There was, hence, at least the semblance of an uneasy urban reconciliation, whereby even the brutal rayon interventions (especially prominent in the state capitals and along the edges of middle-tier towns) contrived to gain some legitimate residential status within their salubrious garden settings. Meanwhile, several middle-tier towns in the five Republics also received the typical institutional core that would serve as the Soviet social incubator via a workers’ club, cinema, shopping centre and gymnasium. Last but not least, these three decades also witnessed the incorporation of ancient and medieval monuments that had undergone conservation within propaganda narratives proliferated by the state-run Intourist Agency which tightly controlled the itineraries of foreign tourists to these exotic destinations along the Silk Road. All this was to change in 1991, when in yet a final twist to the despondent tale of preservation gone awry, and seventy-four years following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics declared independence from the Moscow. The implosion of the Soviet state apparatus in the Stans provided a suitable vantage for technocratic elites no longer subordinate to Moscow, to now adapt rapidly to the new post-Cold War status quo. Empty pedestals and sites – created by dismantling the highly visible emblems of Soviet power – were replaced with real, and often semi-mythical ‘hero’ figures befitting newly formulated master narratives and nationalistic historiographies seeking eager legitimacy. As the literal re-carving of the past into the future, these identities extended upon reinterpretations of ethno-genesis through the manipulation of material objects.

On the long and short of forgotten artefacts and their ‘thick’ histories Preservation politics Within Central Asia of the early 1900s, in the state’s decided push to have local populations shoulder responsibility for the upkeep and protection of the many surviving historic properties, a series of bureaucratic committees were formed. Often based within the state and regional capitals, these Committees followed the trend that had prevailed throughout the Soviet Union – their roles were contentious and highly controversial, and their occasional actions were mired in ideological bias. Within this gamut of making and un-making, the early 1920s Turkomstaris Committee immediately focused its attention on

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desperately needed restorations to Samarqand’s Ulugh-Beg Madrasa. The Turkomstaris quickly evolved into the Five-Republic Credakomstaris, which in turn shuttled on to become the Bukhara-specific Bukhkomstaris Committee and received direct funding from Moscow (Azzout 1999). Even while the Bukhkomstaris Committee was superseded in 1930 by the Uzkomstaris Committee, its efforts remained severely hampered by reactions from the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Government. Its expected engagement with historic preservation was predictably classified as a low priority task and counter-productive to the ideological attributes desirable to the state. Predictably, by the 1940s, the Uzkomstaris Committee too was terminated and its functions transferred to the Council of the Commissioners of the People of Uzbekistan. And, in following upon the earlier trends, when some of the commissioners attempted to focus on the process of historical preservation, they too were brutally exiled and executed. The Council was dissolved in 1943 and replaced by the Historic Buildings Committee in 1957 under the Council of Ministers of Socialist Uzbekistan, and finally a Committee formed within the Ministry of Culture (Azzout 1999; Benjamin 2018). Given the above state machinations, Azzout and Benjamin contend that little genuine preservation efforts were discerned in any of the state appointed preservation committees during the transition phase that stretched between the 1920s to the early 1960s. While the choices on what constituted ‘authentic’ heritage were limited, committee actions were construed as reactionary aligning priorities towards the feudal past versus correspondence with the ideologically driven socialist future. Miraculously, what appears to have saved several historic buildings from reckless destruction was the emergence of a new ideological concept of ‘heritage status’ driven by the Uzbekistan Ministry of Culture in 1961. Within the tenets of this integrated town planning policy, entire old towns throughout the Soviet Union were suddenly deemed worthy of preservation. Starting with Bukhara, the new policy mandated that ‘ancient heritage must now be an integral part of the development of the modern idea of the town’. In effect, around 55 hectares of what had previously been the ancient core of Bukhara were designated for preservation, although in Azzout’s understanding this was still modest (given that the old town had covered 300 hectares even as recently as the nineteenth century) (Azzout 1999). Also, while no additional building constructions were permitted in the old towns; exceptional approvals were processed through a permit process which specified heights no more than two floors, thereby matching the older built fabric in formal language and plan footprint. At Bukhara and Samarqand Bukhara, this ‘new preservation mandate’ worked to conserve historic buildings in a small area, even a single street, providing tourists with the opportunity to experience these ancient urban centres without having to visit the parts of these cities where ordinary people lived. In accordance with this plan, buildings were reclassified according to three ‘participatory’ criteria – firstly, buildings suitable for external viewing; second, buildings that could retain their original function (such as baths or residences); and thirdly, buildings that could be adopted for new purposes, while still retaining their architectural facades. Restorations in Central Asian historic towns under the ‘heritage policy’ were also linked to Soviet propaganda. Efforts were stepped up during periods in which external organizations and nations took an interest in the region. As a case in point, over 1980, UNESCO’s celebration of the 1000th anniversary of the birth of Central Asian Islamic philosopher Ibn Sina (Avicenna) resulted in as many as 40 buildings and mausoleums undergoing rapid restoration in the historic core of Bukhara (Louw 2007). Khiva also witnessed a similar renaissance in 1983 while marking the 1200th anniversary of the birth of mathematician Muhammad al-Khwarazmi (Figure 4.2).

Profiles of action and inaction in the Stans This then was the cultural baggage that confronted Uzbekistan – the largest of the Central Asian Republics – when she gained her independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. While on the one side remained a contentious past made through an untidy (and cruel) assortment of history, on the other was

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Figure 4.2 Uzbek tile masons at work on two sites using a combination of older and new restoration methods. Tilework being repaired at Samarqand’s Bibi Khanum Mosque using steel reinforcement bars, as seen in foreground (top); Timurid era mosaic tilework being re-finished at Shakhrisyabz’s Aq Saray Palace ruins (bottom). Source: Manu P. Sobti

a post-Bolshevik social and political decline whereby surviving history served as collateral to future development. Arguably, even in the early years of the 1990s, the nation’s understandably challenging post-independence dilemma opened up exciting possibilities to forge a new, national identity. In Uzbekistan’s case, this was one wherein earlier Soviet-era symbols were strategically replaced through

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a thoroughly revised Uzbek national narrative. The central character in this narrative was the properly sedentarized Asiatic nomad – none other than the Tamerlane (Timur) who had founded the glorious Timurid dynasty (1370–1505 CE). Even while he was indeed the historical antithesis of the unruly Uzbek (or Shaybanid), Timur’s opportunistically appropriated cult identity nevertheless served as the pre-condition to germinate the country’s glorious civilization (Laruelle 2010). Historical inaccuracies notwithstanding, all perceptible signs of the countless other nomadic confederations that had populated medieval Eurasian space and time were driven to historic obscurity. Most notable were the Tajik – who had been the ethnic population of Central Asia since time immemorial. They were now relegated to the lesser political enclave of neighbouring Tajikistan (Finke and Sancak 2012). This decided shift was strangely reminiscent of earlier debates on the divisive role of architectural heritage within the nationalistic re-construction of self, harking back to the Bolshevik era. More importantly, the debates on the Uzbek-ness of Uzbekistan were accompanied by the restoration of heritage exemplars commensurate with the state ideologue. Also, well-formulated were state mandates on a ‘corrected and improved’ Uzbek history that conspicuously left out the Tajiks and specifically discouraged Tajik language teaching in schools across the Uzbek Republic. Within Uzbekistan, decreasing decentralization and growing nationalist sentiment in the 1960s had already made historical cities such as Samarqand and Bukhara gain special prominence. A series of concocted restorations (more appropriately ‘resurrections’) moved their status from being traditional urban centres to Soviet ideological settings that packaged Uzbek nation-building to the outside world. This was an image dramatically at odds with the so-called Soviet-era feudal history, and one in which architectural heritage of the exoticized past had been regarded as a prestigious attribute characteristic of a modern society that energetically straddled the past and present. It is this ideological image that late Soviet Uzbekistan had desperately aspired to gravitate towards. Consequently, while the propaganda and restoration of Bukhara’s monuments sharply increased between the 1960s and 80s, this process also witnessed the deteriorating quality of the restoration itself. This included the arguably undocumented, substantial (if not full) reconstructions of older monuments and ruins, characterized by the lack of fidelity to any specific dynastic genre or style, the rampant use of synthetic materials and unrecommended construction techniques towards restoring multiple monuments to pristine condition in the shortest time frame possible. Today, the conservation of monuments in Bukhara is primarily aimed at the ‘beautification’ of the city in order to show it off, rather than the restoration of exemplar buildings towards preserving them. Beyond foreign visiting tourists, these beautification projects are also intended for the Uzbeks to remind them of their rich heritage and ethnic affiliations to a loosely identified ‘Sogdian’ ancient civilization, thereby placing Uzbekistan as a nation in world history. Arguably, while all of the five Stans share affiliations to Central Asia’s Sogdian heritage, only Uzbekistan claims this special connection. Meanwhile, through these beautification projects, the state also gains cultural capital to distract its citizens from pressing socioeconomic problems. As for the populations residing in Bukhara’s historical core, restorations have come to be associated with residential and neighbourhood demolitions. The restoration of a single monument within the traditional residential fabric is usually followed by a 50-metre ‘clean-up’ perimeter demolition around a monument to yield more impressive panoramic views. Short notices of eviction, as well as empty promises of compensation for relocation, are two major consequences of historical restoration that Bukhara’s residents face today. In addition, new projects aiming to improve infrastructure of historical Bukhara, seem to be implemented strictly for the benefits of tourism (Figure 4.3). In the present context, historical monuments in many of the Central Asian Republics are therefore objectified and branded as the glorious legacies of the ‘national past’. Several are expressly conserved for the purposes of serving as backdrops for nationalistic celebrations. In the authoritarian regimes that characterize several of the Stans, official national holidays, anniversaries, and festivals

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Figure 4.3 Derelict courtyard home in Bukhara, Uzbekistan (around mid-eighteenth century). Several such homes dot the urban landscapes of Bukhara and Samarqand, but witness no restoration efforts. Many are owned by overseas residents. House courtyard showing mud-brick construction (top); view of formal entertainment space 1 (middle); view of formal entertainment space 1 (bottom). Source: Manu P. Sobti

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abound (Uzbekistan for instance has 57 ‘national days’) (Adams 2010). While several remain as carryovers from the Soviet era, others were ‘invented’ after the Stans claimed independence in 1991. In fact, the ultimate goal of such celebrations, was not to connect to the past (authentic or contrived), but to overtly reinforce the ethnically defined national traditions and collective traits, thereby creating a cultural and ethnic construct of statehood – Uzbeks-ness, Kazkh-ness or any other – that differentiated the neighbouring Republics from each other. While this process reinforces that identity is indeed carved by difference, it also substantiates the need that these Republics identify towards specifically packaging their ethnic roots for the outside world. Newly created holidays and anniversaries are also intended as rites of passage to initiate monumental restorations, setting artificial deadlines for the work to be finished. This trend in contemporary Uzbekistan has its beginning in the Soviet era, when anniversaries served as among the major incentives for any work to be done, including restorations or re- buildings. In combination, unrealistic time constraints and artificial reasons for restorations to display historical monuments glorifying Uzbekistan’s (and not Central Asia or Turkestan’s national past), render the majority of contemporary restoration to be done without adhering to authentic material choices, techniques and historical references. The restoration projects instead are projects slavishly catering to the state’s ‘reimagination’ of how monuments could have looked or should have looked. Even beyond monuments, Eurasia’s earlier mentioned ubiquitous public housing projects or microrayon have also changed meaning. Starting in 1991, most post-Soviet regimes in Eurasia privatized the majority of this housing stock by giving it to incumbent residents. In the ensuing economic crises, little new housing was officially constructed as per any strategic plan; neither did banking practices in the newly independent Eurasian nations develop mortgage-lending conventions. In Housing the New Russia, Zavisca argues that transplanting and adapting the American model of housing markets to postSoviet Russia – failed owing to cultural resistance, economic illiquidity, and the uncertain context of a ‘permanent crisis’. The privatization of the majority of the urban cvartal and micro-rayon housing stock was followed by its morphing to become ‘desirable’ real estate in the hands of its continuing residents (Zavisca 2012). Simultaneously, outwards migrations from the region’s larger cities to other parts of the Russian Federation, created a rapidly growing number of empty dwellings thereby facilitating a ‘secondary housing market’, an unprecedented development in the region’s history and most certainly beyond the purview of the Socialist system.

Contradictions of urban preservation practice How then does contemporary Central Asia negotiate these partially forgotten ‘thick histories’ of the past, and interpret its past through the current practices of architectural and urban conservation in its cities? On this front, the approach of the Stans to heritage has been piece-meal with no sustaining policy over the decades. Beyond the general structure of what constituted preservation in the Soviet era, two cases demonstrate the effect of these various policy shifts concerning architectural preservation between the 1920s to the 1980s, and its extension into present day. The first is the city of Tashkent – the present-day capital of the Republic of Uzbekistan and undeniably the nerve centre of the Stans since the 1920s. Tashkent – the abode of the Uzbek elite – was characterized by its explosive expansion and subsequent industrialization between the 1920s and 1930s. It was the site for architectural and urban experimentation, the point of first contact between the partially surviving world of the steppe, and the Socialist ideas of change. Employed as a setting for the relocation of factories from western Russia to preserve Soviet industrial capacity from the invading Nazis during the second World War, little of Tashkent’s dramatic industrialization occurred in the historic old town. Additionally, the city received the bulk of Central Asia’s incoming Russian population of war evacuees following the Great Patriotic War (1941–45). These two factors consequently boosted

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the Russian population of the region to well over a million, and by the 1950s, Russians and Ukrainians made up more than 50 per cent of the total residents of Tashkent (Allworth 1990). Even beyond these social changes, Tashkent underwent irreversible modifications following the 1966 earthquake. This cataclysmic event effectively destroyed the city and left more than 300,000 people homeless. The ‘heritage status’ that Soviet urban planners were able to apply to the historic core of the ruined city, also provided them with a momentary window to create a model Soviet city outside of the dense old town – the virtual urban antithesis of the historic core and its constituent mahalla (Raab 2014). More significantly, while these new interventions in Tashkent were collateral to preserving the past, several important Islamic buildings in Tashkent’s historic core, were also carefully restored between 1960 and 1980s. The kosh-ensemble created by the Barak Khana Madrassa, the Tilya Sheikh Mosque and the Kukeldash Madrassa remain a good example of Tashkent restorations. Restorations in Tashkent were Uzbekistan’s first experiment to create what would later be called as ‘a museum in the open’. In other words, this was a ‘choreographed, museum experience’ that displaced the viewer to heterotopic time, versus any continuity of the original atmosphere that pervaded in centuries past. Similar ‘museums’ would also be developed in Bukhara and Khiva in the decades to come. Continuing urban development between the 1970s and 80s further increased the sprawl of Tashkent, and by the time of the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, it was the fourth largest city in the USSR with a population in excess of 2 million inhabitants. Thereafter, since independence, Tashkent has undergone significant economic cultural and architectural change, with character-changing urban projects now conceived for the core of the city. Tashkent’s definition of heritage was and has always remained quite removed from historic cities such as Bukhara and Samarqand. In similar vein as Tashkent but on a different scale, the Registan Square kosh-ensemble at Samarqand also documents the trials and tribulations of urban heritage practice. Its progress document the actions of a regime that transitioned from the Soviet past towards becoming a Stan yet held on to several unresolved issues of statehood. The Registan – an urban space popular with local and foreign tourist groups – was framed by three medieval madrasas – the Ulugh Beg Madrasa (built 1417–20 CE); the Shir-Dar Madrasa (built 1619–36 CE); and the Tilla-Kari Mosque and Madrasa (built 1646–60 CE). While this ensemble remains critical towards understanding Central Asian medieval urbanity and is one of the region’s most spectacular sites, a combination of time, neglect and seismic activity had left these majestic buildings in an almost ruined condition just a few centuries after their construction. Domes and portals were damaged, the minarets dangerously inclined, and the façades in some places had lost up to 80 per cent of their ceramic tilework. To their credit, starting in 1875, Russian authorities used local craftsmen and builders to shore up some of the most dangerous sections of the madrasas. However, once under Soviet control, the government’s prohibition on religious activity meant that theological schools still operating with the Registan madrasas received no preservation attention. The Ulugh Beg Madrasa, located on the west side of the Registan, remains by far the oldest structure within this ensemble. Historians also claim that it is the only one built by the Timurids, while the other two were built by the Shaybanids. In the 1920s, the Turkomstaris Committee is reported to have sponsored substantial structural preservation on the Ulugh Beg Madrasa, essentially putting up a framework to stop the domes and arches from total collapse, while also shoring up the leaning minarets. In 1932, additional emergency repairs were done, followed by the start of major restoration work on all three madrasas within the policy shift towards heritage preservation in the 1960s, (Serageldin and Grabar 1989). Furthermore, between 1967 and 1987, more careful restoration work was carried out based on extensive studies, including archaeological excavations, probing and the assessment of foundations and facades, archival research, and epigraphic studies. To counteract the seismic damage to the ensemble caused by its shallow foundations, Soviet engineers substantially rebuilt the interior and the exterior of the buildings, ad employed salvaged brickwork, tiles and majolica gathered from mounds of rubble. This impressive restoration was completed just before the fall of the USSR in 1991. Benjamin suggests that despite the

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many changes in Soviet policy towards preservation over the decades in Central Asia, it is truly the Soviets whose restoration of the Registan, preserved it for posterity (Benjamin 2018).

Conclusion: why the past (still) matters and moving ahead Today, while Central Asia’s struggles to keep alive her urban cultural landscapes, UNESCO continues to divide and re-divide the totalities of Eurasia employing policies that primarily apply to individual buildings ‘categories’ and heritage ‘corridors’ created via state-to-state negotiation. More importantly, UNESCO’s efforts have never attempted to directly reprimand any of the state parties in the Stans towards their clearly flagrant abuse of World Heritage status and support. This has dramatically increased in the last decade as the states continually tease the checks and balances that UNESCO’s outreach can potentially perpetuate. In multiple cases, it would not take a UNESCO ‘expert committee’ to quickly discern that conservation and restoration completed at several sites fall well below prescribed standards, often creating more problems versus resolving the ones that had previously existed. Concerning the Historic Centre of Shakhrisyabz (Uzbekistan), for instance it was only in 2018 (as per UNESCO World Heritage Committee Decisions Report 42M), that ‘serious concerns’ on wilful demolitions by the state were uncovered. Yet, the systemic process of the demolitions was (already) clearly evidenced in my own trips to the region between 1995 and 2018. While the greatest damage in Shakhrisyabz was documented between 2017 and 2018, the state actions to effectively sanitize the urban fabric and its social structure of the city were clearly not being executed surreptitiously. Rather, this was a state-endorsed diktat that had unsettled the local population, who remained largely helpless to contest its rapid implementation. And perhaps, even less known to the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, by June 2018, the kitsch Disneyfication of Shakhrisyabz was tragically complete. A vast amusement park with fake gazeboes, multiple ice-cream stalls, and barren garden pathways had now replaced large tracts of the previously traditional mahalla. Somewhat ironically, I searched for the throngs of inveterate tourists who were ambitiously expected to photograph the perspectival attenuation of monuments, though none were to be discerned. Instead, in the desolate and empty streets, the local community huddled together somewhat apologetically as they made their way to the local mosque, in what were the last days of Ramadan. And, yet Shakhrisyabz continued to remain on the List of World Heritage in Danger (as per UNESCO 2001). Shakhrisyabz remains merely the tip of the iceberg and other examples of the State Party’s disregard of the ‘Management Plan for the Conservation and Rehabilitation of the Historical Centre of Samarqand’ (2007) via the changes to the Registan and street layout (in 2013) could also be cited (Paskaleva 2013). Quite clearly then, individual building conservation efforts within the urban context of the Stans has failed miserably, and especially following independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. In many cases, such as in Uzbekistan (at Bukhara, Samarqand, Khiva and Shakhrisyabz) and Turkmenistan (Merv and Kunya Urgench), over-zealous restorations and ideologically driven repairs has inflicted irreversible harm to critical exemplars from Central Asia’s past. As observed at Shakhrisyabz, these conservation projects have also become opportunities for ‘speculative investment’ versus genuine restoration. Also, problematic has been Uzbekistan’s uncritical reversal on continuing some of the better practices established in the Soviet past. Careful documentation and meticulous restoration have been replaced by rapid ‘camera-friendly’ reconstructions. And while these large-scale reconstructions certainly yield fully legible buildings that convey the superlative qualities of their legendary patrons, these clearly abuse internationally accepted conservation norms (Stubbs and Thomson 2016). Restorations in Central Asia also bring up the pertinent issue of craft survival into the future. Uzbekistan today remains a treasured repository of ‘master craftsmen guilds’, whose past generations were on the construction crews for much of the country’s recognized heritage. In the Soviet era, somewhat paradoxically, several of these craftsmen families (and their extended ateliers) were provided

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with continuing state support and sustained as per ideological agenda. Master craftsmen were encouraged to continue their cultural contributions at a reduced scale and included on cultural events overseas that show-cased the diversity of the Soviet Union. Beyond craft and its narrow definitions, local vernacular construction in adobe was discouraged. This continues to remain the case in postindependence Uzbekistan, though the outskirts of several cities (kishloq), smaller towns and villages continue to construct dwellings in traditional ways. Also, while craft guilds (often single craftsman households) still produce luxury ceramics, textiles, metalwork and leather handicrafts, they increasingly struggle for support within the ‘tourist bazaar’ that the Stans are rapidly transforming into. While there certainly remains the occasional recognition by the state, genuine craft at best remains accessible only to avid collectors and foreign dignitaries. At worst, this material heritage is completely bypassed by the momentary tourist who remains more content with inexpensive, miniature replicas of the well-known Gur-i Mir mausoleum or fake Ikat look-alike scarves – all mass-produced in China. This large-scale cultural undermining of Uzbekistan, while at superficial glance may not even seem to be directly related to the issues of urban heritage conservation, remains inherently connected to the changing ‘cultural tastes’ of the local population and their appreciation of what constituted the past. This is also evidenced in the thin local crowds at several of the unimaginably rich (yet poorly displayed) collections at Uzbekistan’s state-run and local museums. In effect, it is no surprise that few visitors even notice the inaccuracies in the reconstructions at several sites (Figure 4.4).

Figure 4.4 The Gur-I Mir Mausoleum at Samarqand, Uzbekistan was restored and substantially enlarged by razing large parts of the surrounding mahalla and its buildings. The ‘restored’ building was surrounded by a new ‘boundary wall’ decorated with tiles similar to the Mausoleum; entry and exit from the mahalla was provided at two points. Source: Manu P. Sobti

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Next door Tajikistan contrasts this Uzbek commodification of heritage. Here the paucity of state funding specifically prioritized towards conservation has, at least for now, kept several architectural exemplars from being restored. Tajikistan’s rich cultural heritage has the highest universal value, and its Inspectorate for Heritage Protection, Historical and Cultural Reserves – the State Organization for Heritage Restoration, administered under the Ministry of Culture, seem cognizant of the challenging task ahead. Yet, future restorations in Tajikistan will have to be done carefully, to specifically avoid over-restoration tendencies while keeping well-intact and relevant the largely nomadic heritage of this mountainous nation. The country also has a List of Properties of National Significance protected at the government level, and sites of universal value are already entered on a World Heritage Tentative List, with work begun on preparing the nominations (Turekulova 2005). Meanwhile, Turkmenistan presents two vastly differing stances on the continuing process of conservation. Of these, the first is admirable state support towards the creation of the ‘State Historical and Cultural Park of Ancient Merv’ (located near Mary) – a vast complex of ancient and medieval ruins spread over 350 hectares and inscribed to the World Heritage List in 1999. The contrary second, in the marked absence of support (even until quite recently) towards the spectacular cultural landscape consisting of ruins along the Amu Darya and within the desert that stretches between Mary and Türkmenabat. To its credit, Turkmenistan has collaborated with multiple overseas partners towards the careful documentation of a growing number of its heritage sites. It has also created indigenous capacity in terms of developing an entire sector of trained individuals towards heritage site care and the tourism industry. How this marked valuation of the past will continue to be encoded in social attitudes of the Turkmen people remains to be seen. This would be especially important, since the currently small population of Turkmenistan allows the conceptualization of a strategic heritage plan for the significant history of this nation (Figure 4.5). Beyond the woes of individual buildings, which show up across the Central Asian Republics – including Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan (as discussed above), and also in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, the region’s cities have also gradually crumbled over the last two decades. This is owing to the obliteration of their multiple mahalla and rayon neighbourhoods. While the mahalla always remained the provocative sites of change since the early interventions of the Soviet era, the rayon were added to the category of the ‘undesirable’ only in the recent past. In true terms, however, it is the ‘real estate’ land potential of these dense residential mahalla sectors, along with the garden sites of the rayon, that remain most attractive to the aspirations of the state. This irretrievable loss of a cultural landscape within the Central Asian city – whether historically rooted in the mahalla or monumental creation, or anchored in the rayon from the recent past – is indeed unfortunate This destruction has occurred in across the Republics, but most profoundly impacted Uzbekistan. In Tashkent, urban growth has increased exponentially and large plots of land in the city centre are now earmarked for high-value real estate developments coordinated by lucrative developers. Within Uzbekistan, the law states that you can sell the right to a plot of land, but not the land itself. On these lines, hundreds of families who once called Tashkent home are being evicted to the urban peripheries. Meanwhile, judgement had been maintained on how and why the predominantly adobe constructed, humble mahalla dwellings no longer constitute the ‘legitimate’ vernacular for this region, and remain therefore unworthy of a modern way of life. Only time will only tell where these trends will go and how the nations of Central Asia endorse the process of urban restoration within their state machineries. Returning to the ‘cultural corridors’ mentioned at the start of this section, the ‘Silk Road Routes Network of Chang’an-Tianshan Corridor’ is touted as one among UNESCO’s most successful Corridors. What does UNESCO’s recognition of a ‘cultural corridor’ imply (Williams 2014)? Achieved through cooperation on 22 sites located in China, 8 in Kazakhstan and 3 in Kyrgyzstan, would this corridor purport to facilitating the free ingress and egress of the regional populations? Or, would these corridors be expedient ways to ‘package’ the past for tourists armed with Western passports and multiple

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Figure 4.5 The grand Tomb-Mausoleum of Seljuk Sultan Sanjar at Merv, Turkmenistan in the midst of the ‘Merv Archaeological Park’. The Tomb was repaired substantially since the 1900s, but has been subject to extensive ‘reconstruction’ in the last decade. This recent reconstruction combines old and new brickwork (top); Water damage to the newly plastered inside surfaces is clearly visible (bottom). Source: Manu P. Sobti

visas. ICOMOS reports detail the assumptions employed to define these ‘corridors’, but stop short on reflecting how the very definitions of cultural landscape could be potentially re-thought for local populations along these corridors. Would ‘cultural fidelity’ trump nationalistic allegiances so easily? More importantly, conceiving these ‘corridors’ should mean subsuming not just visible ‘landscapes’ that are in substantial part figments of the historical imagination, but equally also those that are less readily visible, and therefore consist of hidden processes and intangible associated values that intrinsically shape the

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visible. In Central Asia, given its prolonged history of terrain and concomitant nomadism, it is these complex cultural landscapes that stretch across the boundary lines of multiple nations, therefore making the conception of any simplistic ‘cultural landscape corridor’ particularly challenging (and relevant to historical process). But ‘cultural landscape corridors’ such as those mentioned above also need to objectify their ‘performative roles’ in serving as the ‘vessels’ of human history, and as the terrains of ‘lost choreographies’ and nomadic mobilities that crossed these geographies in antique and medieval time. To relentlessly ‘measure’ cultural landscapes via the propensity of extant artefacts and recorded history has remained the bane of preservation practice everywhere, including across Central Asia. Within this scenario, and especially given that Central Asia presents a unique synthesis of nomadic and sedentary conditions, could composite natural landscapes of nomadic mobilities and cultural memories now have inclusion within the category of cultural landscape corridors? Cultural landscapes of scattered cities, few artefacts, and silent geographies, but replete with memories of the past times? One among these composite landscapes with palimpsests of nomadic mobilities and cultural memories is Central Asia’s watery lifeline and fracture point – the Oxus River (called the Amu Darya). The Amu Darya criss-crosses the heart of this semi-arid region, connecting Afghanistan to the Aral Sea. The geographical entity of the Amu Darya borderland was a liminality that shaped the urban geographies of many urban centres in Central Asia, and particularly following the Arab invasions (Sobti 2016). Geographically, this ‘liminality’ is a broad undulating plateau straddling the Amu Darya river and its riparian edges, while running in the north-western and south-eastern directions in a parallelogram-shaped formation. Notwithstanding its utilitarianism as a present-day international boundary condition between Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, this riparian plateau evolved as a cultural landscape with human interventions of varied socio-cultural dispensations, coexisting with the natural environment. However, within Central Asian preservation politics, the significance of the Amu Darya riparian plateau as a natural landscape with cultural layers continues to remain largely ignored. Perhaps, in the foreseeable future, the five Central Asian Stans need to (again) look at each other for deeprooted cultural similarities, versus differences. And perhaps devise a way to reveal patterns of ‘temporality’ (as opposed to history or chronology, to quote Ingold) that made their diverse peoples occupy the same geographical space – the land of the nomad (Ingold 1993). Buildings will disappear, so will the mahalla and rayon, but the ‘memory of land’ will continue.

References Adams, L. L. (2010) The spectacular state: Cultural and national identity in Uzbekistan, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Allworth, E. (1990) The Modern Uzbeks: From the fourteenth century to the present: A cultural history, Palo Alto, CA: Hoover Institution Press. Azzout, M. (1999) ‘The Soviet interpretation and preservation of the ancient heritage of Uzbekistan: The example of Bukhara’, in A. Petruccioli (ed.) Bukhara: The myth and the architecture, Cambridge, MA: Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, 161–173. Bartold, V. (1925) ‘Orta Asya’da Moğol Fütuhatina kadar Hristiyanlik’, Türkiyat Mecmusai, I(Ağustos): 47–100, (transl. by Köprülüzade Ahmed Cemal). Benjamin, C. (2018) ‘Soviet Central Asia and the preservation of history’, Humanities, 7(73): 1–8. Castillo, G. (1997) ‘Soviet orientalism: Socialist realism and built tradition’, Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review, 7(2): 33–47. Finke, P. and Sancak, M. (2012) ‘To be an Uzbek or not to be a Tajik? Ethnicity and locality in the Bukhara Oasis’, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 137(1): 47–70. Freni, S. J. (2013) ‘The Soviet nationality policy in Central Asia’, Inquiries Journal, 5(3): 1–3. Hodgson, M. (1974) The venture of Islam: Conscience and history in a world civilization, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Hopkirk, P. (2006) The great game: On secret service in High Asia, London: John Murray.

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Re-imagining Eurasia Ingold, T. (1993) ‘The temporality of the landscape’, World Archaeology, Volume on Conceptions of Time and Ancient Society, 25(2): 152–174. Khalid, A. (2009) ‘Culture and power in Colonial Turkestan’, in S. Gorshenina and S. Abashin (eds) Le Turkestan Russe Colonial: Une Colonie Comme Les Autres? Paris: IFEAC, 403–436. Laruelle, M. (2010) ‘National narrative, ethnology, and academia in Post-Soviet Uzbekistan’, Journal of Eurasian Studies, 1(2): 102–110. Louw, M. E. (2007) Everyday Islam in Post-Soviet Central Asia, London: Routledge. Paskaleva, E. (2013) ‘Samarqand refashioned’, Silk Road Foundation Newsletter, 11, 143–144. Raab, N. (2014) ‘The Tashkent Earthquake of 1966: The advantages and disadvantages of a natural tragedy’, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, 62(2): 273–294. Schwarz, F. (1999) ‘Bukhara and its hinterland: The Oasis of Bukhara in the sixteenth century in the light of the Juybari Codex’, in A. Petruccioli (ed.) Bukhara: The myth and the architecture, Cambridge, MA: Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, 79–92. Serageldin, I. and Grabar, O. (1989) ‘Report on Soviet Central Asia: In space for freedom, London: Butterworth Architecture. Available at: https://archnet.org/authorities/3928/sites/767 (accessed 17 May 2019). Sobti, M. P. (2017) ‘Peripheries of contact: Beyond geographies and historical Flatland’, Global Architectural Historical Teaching Collaborative (GAHTC) Published Lecture Modules. Available at: http://gahtc.org (accessed 18 May 2019). ——— (2019) ‘Eurasia’s historical space of palimpsest – desert, border, riparian and steppe’, in A. Pieris (ed.) Architecture on the Borderline: Boundary politics and built space, New York: Routledge, 13–35. Sobti, M. P. and Hosseini, S. (2016) ‘Persian civitas: Revised readings on networked urbanities and suburban hinterlands in Erich Schmidt’s flights over ancient cities of Iran’, in M. Gharipour (ed.) The historiography of Persian architecture, New York: Routledge, 14–40. Stubbs, J. and Thomson, R. (2016) Architectural conservation in Asia: National experiences and practice, London: Routledge. Thomas, A. (2018) Nomads and Soviet Rule: Central Asia under Lenin and Stalin, New York: Bloomsbury Academic Press. Turekulova, N. and Turekulov, T. (2005) ‘Tajikistan: A view from outside’, Heritage at Risk, 2004/2005: 239–242. Ubaidulloev, Z. (2015) ‘The Russian-Soviet legacies in reshaping the national territories in Central Asia: A catastrophic case of Tajikistan’, Journal of Eurasian Studies, 6(1): 79–87. UNESCO (1972) The Convention concerning the protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, Paris: UNESCO. ——— 2001 Samarkand – Crossroad of Cultures, Paris: UNESCO World Heritage Center. Available at: http://whc. unesco.org/en/list/603 (accessed 17 May 2019). Williams, T. (2014) The Silk Roads: An ICOMOS thematic study, Paris: ICOMOS. Zavisca, J. (2012) Housing the new Russia, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

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5 HUMAN ASPECTS OF HISTORIC URBAN ENVIRONMENTS Jeremy C. Wells

Introduction What makes an environment ‘historic’? To answer this question, one needs to ascertain to whom this question is asked. For most of the twentieth century, this question was always assumed to be asked of the architect, the art/architectural historian, and sometimes the geographer. Very few people were concerned with how places could be considered ‘historic’ to everyday people who were not conventionally trained experts in some aspect of history, design, or aesthetics. Yet, we must recognize that the primary beneficiaries of the recognition, treatment, and protection of older places are these very people—ordinary individuals who are not assumed to be experts in any aspect of place. This assumption that ordinary people are not experts is not true: everyday people are indeed experts about the environment in which they live, work, and recreate. The issue, as it has been re-contextualized for the twenty-first century, is that we have long ignored this fact and, in the process, have been far too dismissive to local knowledge. The field of community-based participatory research has a name for this kind of ‘expert’: the civil expert (Fortmann 2008). Recognizing everyday people as civil experts—in the context of historic places—is an essential step in understanding the human aspects of historic urban environments because we need to understand what is ‘historic’ and ‘not historic’ from this perspective in balance with the perspective of conventionally trained experts. Acknowledging everyday people situated in specific old places as civil experts also requires that we respect their knowledge, and, in turn, respect these people as equals, in some cases, to conventionally trained experts. In order to orient the reader, this chapter briefly introduces the essential characteristics of the orthodox management of historic urban places. Rather than treating this practice as grounded in objectively scientific principles, it is better understood as a kind of professional culture. I do this not to introduce a relativism between the cultures of conventional experts and civil experts, but rather to establish the importance of situational knowledge in certain contexts. I then discuss the heritage aspects of culture from the perspective of civil experts, followed by specific case studies illustrating human-centered conservation research and practice in the Asia and Pacific region.

The culture of orthodox conservation practice There are two fundamental characteristics that define orthodox, Western built heritage conservation practice: numinism and expert rule. In the Western world, the conservation of the historic environment

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is commonly understood to have its genesis in the mid-nineteenth century ‘scrape’ versus ‘anti-scrape’ debates of John Ruskin and Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (Pappas 1985). But what often gets missed in Ruskin’s writings is his mysticism, especially as it relates to numinism, as when he discusses how the ‘washing waves of humanity,’ left an imprint in the fabric of a building (Ruskin 1989: 186) and created a ‘golden stain of time’ (Ruskin 1989: 187) (Figure 5.1). Indeed, it is ‘numinism’ that helps to define orthodox conservation values (Muñoz Viñas 2005), as opposed to other conservation approaches, including whether to ‘scrape’ or not. Thus, the Western practice of built heritage conservation illogically assumes that the meaning of a building is in its fabric, ignoring the sociocultural and experiential dimensions of meaning (Waterton, Smith, and Campbell 2006: 349). The other characteristic of orthodox conservation practice is the way in which expert rule is enforced and meanings from the public are, as Smith (2006), describes, ‘sidelined’ through the ‘authorized heritage discourse’ (AHD). An important characteristic of the AHD, as it manifests in the built environment, is that rules, laws, and regulations require outside experts to educate the people about their own local heritage and protect this heritage from its rightful owners and inheritors (King 2009). As a result,

Figure 5.1 The way surfaces change over time on building materials (e.g., soiling, decay) form what John Ruskin (1989) refers to as the ‘golden stain of time.’ Source: Jeremy C. Wells

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the public—and increasingly academics and reflective practitioners—brand heritage professionals not as protectors of heritage, but rather as the ‘heritage police’ (Emerick 2014). It is, however, unfair to denigrate heritage professionals when the real problem lies in a heritage system in which ‘the bureaucracy of conservation is more important than the act of conservation’ (Wells 2017a: 32). The state is only capable of implementing systems for the management and regulation of heritage that are based in ‘simplification, objectification, and efficiency,’ while requiring forced ignorance of the richness and depth of cultural meaning (ibid.). In sum, rather than orthodox built heritage conservation being based on principles of scientific objectivity, it is just one of many possible cultural systems in which heritage is valued in some fashion (Waterton, Smith, and Campbell 2006). It succeeds because of its historical position and association with individuals from dominant, Western cultural groups. It should therefore not be interpreted, prima facie, as a superior system just because it is dominant. Yet, across Asia and the Pacific, many countries have uncritically adopted this orthodox approach, whose values remain largely unchanged since the late 1960s.

The culture and experiences of local communities What if many more things ‘historic’ could be defined and managed through the meanings and values of the public rather than through the meanings and values of conventional experts, and in doing so, deprecate the role of doctrine, rules, laws, and regulations? This action purposely shifts the focus on conservation from fabric to socio-cultural meanings and is the premise of a more human-centric approach to the conservation of the historic environment. In this system, heritage experts are no longer ‘police,’ but become facilitators, seeking and understanding cultural meanings and then attempting to manage places from this perspective (Wells 2015). What do we know about the relationship people have with built heritage and cultural landscapes? How do everyday people interpret, understand, and become affected by this heritage? We have some tantalizing answers from the social sciences, such as sociology, anthropology, environmental psychology, and geography, but there are still many gaps. Because of the overreliance of orthodox built heritage conservation on doctrine and because it is often associated with architecture, researching built heritage from the perspective of the social sciences is not a well-known or employed endeavor. Largely because of critical heritage studies, however, this situation appears to be changing to some extent. But literature on this subject only really begins, in earnest, in the 1990s, although there was a significant amount of research by folklorists in the 1970s that is often forgotten. This is, for all purposes and intents, a new field of research. We do know that built heritage is incredibly important to people; so important that they are willing to die to protect it from harm. One need not venture into the dusty shelves of scholarly libraries to readily see evidence for this. In the Middle East, ISIS, Al Qaeda, and the Taliban have purposely sought and destroyed cultural heritage to demoralize certain groups of people (Jeffries 2015; Lawler 2018; Marlow 2011), because control of a group’s heritage is a way to destroy cultural identities. For instance, in 2015, Khaled al-Asaad, an archaeologist in Syria, chose to die rather than give up the location of ancient artefacts to his ISIS captors (Shaheen and Black 2015). And, Father Columba Stewart and Abdel Kader Haidara led a group of people in Timbuktu, Mali, who risked their lives to save rare and unique religious manuscripts from ISIS and Al Qaeda, respectively (Dreazen 2013; Fagotto 2017). Wars have been started over who controls built heritage and, in the case of Warsaw and Mostar, the restoration of built heritage destroyed by war has become a community rallying point, creating and fostering shared cultural ties (Gunzburger 2012; Jokilehto 1999). The forced separation of people from their built heritage in the name of ‘protection’ and ‘conservation’ is well known, especially at World Heritage sites. In reality, these actions are often carried out to promote economic development and tourism with little sensitivity paid to their effect 100

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on local populations. For instance, at Ayutthaya (Thailand) and Borobudur and Prambanan (Indonesia), the management plans for these World Heritage sites sideline or simply fail to recognize the values and meanings held by the local population and instead privilege conventional art/historical values. But this practice is a missed opportunity to more fully engage the visitor. Indeed, as Black and Wall (2001: 121) observe, these ignored local values ‘have the potential to enhance the interpretation of the monuments and in fact make them more relevant to domestic and international visitors alike.’ In effect, the meanings attributed to these sites are ‘defined largely by experts who come from other places’ (p. 122) who erroneously assumed that their efforts took the local community’s needs into account, even though these experts never actually talked to members of the community (p. 131). Steinberg (1996) found similar situations where local values were either dismissed or local people were simply not consulted at all in Delhi, Bombay, Bhaktapur, Galle, Penang, Singapore, Shanghai, and Beijing. To be sure, ‘forced ignorance’ of local values in World Heritage management plans exist across the globe, such as in Mexico (Breglia 2006) and Iraq (Khoshnaw 2016). The theme here is an erroneous assumption that tourists want a kind of sanitized heritage, free from the realities of real people living in context with tangible heritage and that the local people would prefer to move anyway because they want to live in new buildings. Research, however, indicates otherwise. When provided with resources to repair and maintain their buildings, people often prefer to stay in their indigenous environment, close to the place from which their identity springs (Cossons 2016; Oakes 2012). Tourists also appear to be willing to not only accept the realities of people living in context with heritage sites, but sometimes specifically seek it out in the search for an authentic place experience (Kontogeorgopoulos 2003). Indeed, heritage tourists are often deeply unsatisfied with the staid interpretive experience at historical sites. Traditionally, the assumption made by historians and museum staff is that the goal is to create an educational experience and that people visit historic sites to learn. For most people, however, an authentic visit to a historic site is one that involves ‘performativity’ (Bagnall 2003) and, most importantly, feeling, but not necessarily learning. People do not visit museums and historic sites to learn, but rather they go to feel and experience, and these experiences are often cathartic (Smith and Campbell 2015). And what connects these visitors to the site is the nature of the emotional experience, which is catalyzed by a phenomenon I refer to as a ‘spontaneous fantasy.’ To be clear, not only tourists and visitors experience spontaneous fantasies, but residents do as well. A spontaneous fantasy is catalyzed by the appearance of decay (or, in a more positive sense, patina) in the built environment. This patina is what provides the authenticity of the physical age of a built environment to the person who experiences it. Patina can take the form of subtle changes in surface texture, discontinuity, and added complexity to stone, brick, wood, paint, or metal. But, when someone experiences this patina in the context of a historic environment, quite often, and in an unpremeditated, spontaneous way, a vignette of the past will appear in the observer’s mind’s eye. This vignette takes the form of some hypothetical event from the past and may, or may not, be related to factual events. For instance, in my work in the United States’ oldest historic district in Charleston, South Carolina, people experienced spontaneous fantasies in the form of seeing Civil War soldiers marching up steps, cotton wagons being pulled in the distance, and people disembarking from carriages. All the individuals who experienced these events found them to be highly and positively emotional and it increased the level of place attachment they had to the historic district (Wells 2017b). Spontaneous fantasies are clearly related to numinism in some way, but so little research has been done in this area that all we can do at the moment is speculate, although Siân Jones’s (2009: 138) ethnographic research observes how built heritage to most people has a ‘magical, almost numinous, aura.’ But in my work (Wells 2010) and many others (e.g., DeLyser 1999; Inglis & Holmes 2003; Trigg 2011), the frequency of people mentioning ghosts and the ‘presence’ of people from the past in certain places cannot be ignored. Nor can the constant reference to ‘magic’ and ‘charm’ in relation to 101

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ethnographic and phenomenological studies on the historic environment (Staiff 2014) be ignored, either. There is also a general trend in the increase of ‘dark tourism,’ especially ghost tours, that gives a great deal of credence to many Western people’s belief of spirits or some kind of essence from the past that is part of the fabric of the historic environment. Similarly, in the Asia-Pacific region, such as in Thailand, various forms of ancestral worship are common, including a belief that the spirits of deceased relatives inhabit physical places (Horstmann 2011). Another example is when restoring Hindu temples, the temple deity is temporarily transferred from the idol that is worshipped to a kalasha (pot) and then transferred back to the idol when the work is done; in doing so, the perceived authenticity of the temple is retained because the original deity, or embedded sprit, remains with the temple (Tom 2017). Rather than venture into the supernatural, the takeaway theme here is emotion. For most people, the historic environment is a place that is desirable for the feelings and experiences it instils and not the objective qualities it conveys. Schofield (2009: 105) summarizes this difference between the heritage expert’s experience and the layperson’s experience of built heritage by referring to the former as ‘allocentric,’ which is characterized as ‘cool,’ ‘intellectual,’ ‘detached,’ and ‘distanced’ and the latter as ‘autocentric,’ which is characterized as ‘hot,’ ‘physical,’ ‘primitive,’ and ‘expressed de novo on each occasion.’ Lastly, quality of life issues defines human-centered conservation, because the assumption is that conservation activities should improve overall human flourishing in comparison to other built environment activities. For instance, arguments about the role that built heritage plays in quality of life issues is an important topic in Hong Kong, starting with the loss of the Queens Pier in 2006 (Pomfret 2007). The government of Hong Kong does not officially recognize socio-cultural values in its built heritage policy (Ho et al. 2014), and as such, quality of life arguments have not featured in government decisions about which heritage is demolished and saved. Residents have become increasingly vocal in their desire to retain built heritage for its contribution to overall quality of life and to serve as a counter to the building of ever more high-rise buildings (Yung and Chan 2013). In addition to general case studies like this, other research addresses the specific intersection of heritage and well-being via social and individual effects. Power and Smyth (2016: 165) find that community-based participation in heritage conservation activities results in an overall increase in participants’ ‘passion, curiosity, delight, accomplishment, pride, reciprocity, and growth.’ Similar findings have been found by when people participate in community-based archaeological projects (Sayer 2015). There is also some evidence from health care settings that shows that when people are in context with heritage objects, especially when they can touch and handle them, they show lower levels of pain and improved measures of quality of life (Ander et al. 2013). In sum, human-centered conservation is defined through experiences, emotion (which is often conflated with place attachment and sense of place), and, especially, quality of life. It shifts the focus from how conservation can improve the state of building fabric to how conservation can improve human flourishing. And it does this by using social science and participatory research methods to gather evidence for how everyday people interact with, understand, and treat built heritage and cultural landscapes. Conservation is still the goal, but instead of conserving fabric, the aim is to conserve the continuity of meanings associated with a place (Zancheti and Loretto 2012).

Issues of human-centered conservation in the Asia-Pacific region Bottom-up, community-engaged practice in heritage management Since human-centered conservation requires an intimate understanding of the intersection of people and place, there needs to be an emphasis on bottom-up, community-engaged approaches to practice and management. The need for this approach is increasingly found in the literature that addresses heritage 102

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conservation in Asia and the Pacific (e.g., Halim and Ishak 2017; Shakya, Takada, Morishige, and Okubo 2015; Su and Wall 2012). For instance, in Taiwan, there are many examples of community-centered conservation projects that utilize tools for participatory democracy, such as community workshops whose primary goal is to help safeguard the ‘spirit of place’ (Davis, Huang, and Liu 2012) (Figure 5.2). More commonly, however, are critiques of practice, such as in China, where the government claims that it is engaging in heritage planning with residents, but evidence suggests that the approach is still largely topdown (Fan 2014). Similar examples of this kind of disconnect exist for Vietnam (Jones and Nhung 2016) and Indonesia (Bhaskara 2015), as well as many other countries in the Asia-Pacific region. It should be noted that the dominance of top-down approaches and expert rule are not at all unique to this region of the world; it is the dominant practice in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia (Emerick 2014; Gibson and Pendlebury 2009; Harrison 2013; King 2009; Lowenthal 1985; Pannekoek 1998; Smith 2006). Human-centered conservation also assumes that the everyday person’s perspective is holistic; ordering the environment into artificial dichotomies of natural/cultural and tangible/intangible (Chapagain 2017; Dyer 2007) is symptomatic of top-down approaches that emphasize objectivity, simplicity, and the need to reduce complex meanings into a system that can be controlled by rules, laws, and regulations (Wells 2017a). This ‘reductionist’ perspective on heritage, which includes limiting the concept to just buildings, requires government to adopt an implicit policy of willful ignorance of the public’s

Figure 5.2 Student-led, community design workshop at a former train station and industrial site in Hengshan Township, Taiwan. Source: Jeremy C. Wells

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holistic perspective, such as can be found in the government’s approach to the management of heritage in Old Hanoi, Vietnam (Sauvegrain 2001). To be sure, heritage experts, such as in India, have been promoting a self-described ‘holistic’ perspective on built heritage and cultural landscape management. While well meaning, their methods tend to advocate for limited engagement with the public and instead reify existing, top-down approaches and expert rule (e.g., Thakur 2007). On the other hand, there are numerous examples of bottom-up community engagement and management strategies that embrace holistic concepts of heritage, such as the guthi institution in Nepal (Tiwari 2015; Weise 2015). This traditional organizational structure conserves what Tiwari (2015: 196) calls the ‘lesser heritage of the weak’ that embodies ordinary people and places to balance how a World Heritage management plan ‘distances the local community from the major monuments.’ In China, Xiaomei Zhao (2015) explains how residents manage changes to their villages to conserve their perceived authenticity, both in terms of physical features and Dong cultural traditions. Similarly, Luo, Liu, and Jiang (2015: 406, 407) discuss the ‘4P strategy’ for ‘keeping heritage living in urban renewal’ that requires extensive support of the indigenous peoples in Quanzhou, China, one of the surviving points on the historic Silk Road trade route. The 4P strategy encourages people to demonstrate traditional cultural activities to ‘mobilize the enthusiasm of the residents,’ while local government agencies put in place policies in which management authority is partially entrusted in these indigenous peoples (ibid.). Far more common, however, are failed or incomplete attempts at community engagement in which the status quo of expert rule remains. A desire to focus on heritage tourism for economic development is one common reason that this situation is so prevalent. Rather than conserving heritage for the benefit of the people from which this heritage originated, the goal becomes reinterpreting others’ heritage for the consumption of a global market. This action leads to the inevitable alienation of residents from their own heritage, which becomes diluted, translated, and sanitized in the name of economic development. Because of this emphasis on heritage tourism, there are many examples in the literature of conservation management plans that only tangentially involve public participation much less engagement. Such an activity is hard to justify if it endangers plans that authorities have already approved. An example of this approach can be found in Old Town Bhubaneswar, India, where Chatterjee and Basu (2015) develop a method to objectively evaluate heritage values and translate these meanings into ways to grade aspects of the built environment. Their overall methodology, however, is largely based on expert opinions rather than direct community engagement; while a vaguely described ‘household survey’ informed the expert’s recommendations, it was clear that it did not play a significant role in the outcome. Sometimes, the hierarchical, top-down power structure of heritage management is made quite clear, as in Solo, Indonesia, where it is assumed most important stakeholders are officials at the city planning authority and architectural consultants; other stakeholders, such as residents, are secondary (Agustiananda 2015). In India, according to Pandey Sharma (2017), policy makers still operate in a ‘monument-as-object conservation principle’ which has been imported from its colonialist past, and as such, rejects community participation in decision-making processes. Intangible heritage and the conservation of ordinary urban places, therefore, is often not part of normal urban planning activities in India. Professionals who work in the conservation field have little opportunity to learn how to recognize and utilize intangible heritage in planning and policy endeavors; their formalized training instead positions these professionals as promoters of monumental heritage. But Pandey Sharma (2017) clarifies that traditional Indian culture has long included the concept of jeernodharanam (meaning ‘regeneration’), which incorporates contemporary aspects of heritage conservation, yet this tradition is largely ignored both in the training of professionals and the practice of conservation in India. This lack of training in understanding how to engage with civil experts and what to do with their meanings might explain the rather common practice of attempting to include a community perspective in conservation work, but in the end, simply ignoring information gathered through this process. 104

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A similar situation exists in Thailand and Laos where, according to Arkarapotiwong (2015: 228), in Thailand, ‘government authorities initiate most conservation activities and local communities are only allowed to participate at the implementation stage.’ Where the local community has been allowed to participate in Laos, ‘cultural traditions have been converted into tourism commodities’ (p. 244). In these countries, a monumental heritage approach is evident in the way ‘government authorities focus on authenticity and originality of heritage buildings, whilst neglecting the social dimensions as they pertain to the town’s social needs’ (p. 232). To be sure, when authorities focus on economic development through heritage tourism, local voices are either silenced or there is little attempt to listen to, and act upon, the needs and desires of residents (Imon 2015; Jongsung 2004; Radzuan 2015; Su 2015). Residents who are the natural caretakers of their own heritage are mined for their knowledge and cultural practices to feed the insatiable desire of tourists while given little to no agency of their own. This leads to the strong possibility that human-centered conservation is not particularly compatible with heritage tourism, as least when implemented merely as an economic development tool. Sometimes there is an overt attempt to engage with local communities, but the result is superficial. In conservation work in the historic villages of Hahoe and Yangdong in South Korea, local authorities stated that they wanted to hear local residents’ input, but residents felt their voices were ignored; in the end, the perception was that the decisions had already been pre-determined long before the public was consulted (Syahrul and Radzuan 2015). There is some evidence that one reason there may be reluctance to engage with and use the meanings of civil experts is because they may not support heritage conservation in general. At Angkor, local residents are viewed by policy makers as injurious to the historic site rather than a living part of it, which immediately serves as a prejudicial barrier to effective community engagement (Miura 2005); moreover, policy makers seem rather clueless about how to ‘conserve’ a living heritage site through a ‘management mechanism [that] has adequately incorporated effective traditional management practices and knowledge, and local community’ (ibid.: 15). Literature on heritage conservation in Asia includes many examples like this, where the local community is perceived as unsupportive of conservation, such as in Tansen, Nepal, where it is assumed that residents always prefer modern buildings over historic ones (Chandani 2015). In these situations, however, there is little attempt to understand tangible and intangible heritage from the perspective of civil experts so that this kind of assumption can either be affirmed or refuted. Because these kinds of assumptions are predicated on the perceived necessity of heritage tourism for economic development, in the end, it may not really matter what the public thinks because the local authorities have already made a final decision. The natural direction of this thinking is that civil experts need to learn how to understand heritage from the perspective of conventional experts rather than the inverse. This perspective is often rather subtle. For instance, while Goetz (2015) acknowledges the need to engage with communities to help conserve Kathmandu, this process should take the form of ‘cultural education’ (interpreted as cultural re-education) in which the heritage expert re-educates civil experts about the importance of the latter group’s own heritage; the unstated colonialist perspective in this assumption is that the local residents fail to understand why their own heritage is important and therefore must be reeducated by outsiders in order to have a stronger conservation/stewardship ethic (e.g., Jain and Clancy 2008; Tabassum and Tyne 2015). Such a perspective denies local stakeholders the possibility of their own agency in recognizing and acting upon their own meanings associated with their own heritage. The use of technology, such as smart phone apps, to help civil experts document their own built heritage (e.g., Routh and Shah 2015) is another example of this colonialist perspective because it forces local people to use the value systems of experts when documenting the required, objective qualities of the historic environment. Rarely do these tools incorporate an epistemological agnosticism to capture the meanings of civil experts in their own words and perspectives. Instead, local stakeholders must adopt a Western, empiricist-positivistic ontology, which is inherent to 105

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orthodox heritage conservation practice (Wells 2007) or else their meanings are, for all purposes and intents, useless to conventional experts.

Tools for studying human aspects of heritage There are, however, many useful tools in the literature for understanding cross-cultural perspectives and the meanings held by local people, if there is, indeed, a desire to do so. Two methodologies that deserve attention include Yang and Sim’s (2013) attempt to understand different cultural understandings of landscape into an integrated assessment tool, and Silva’s (2011) use of the ‘city image’ to map meaning. Yang and Sim combine Western and Chinese ideas to decipher cultural landscapes by fully considering intangible heritage values; landscape features, character, and patterns; and artistic conception. While much more holistic than conventional survey processes for landscape character, it suffers from a lack of methods based on direct engagement with people and instead relies largely on rationalistic processes and existing documentation. On the other hand, Silva’s work is based on well-established social science methods and uses interviews of residents as a primary data gathering tool. Based on a case study of Kandy, Sri Lanka (Figure 5.3) that elucidated dimensions of the sacred, historical, aesthetic, and overall well-being of people who lived in the city, Silva shows how social science methods can move beyond purely visual and spatial interpretations of place and into understanding the meanings everyday people have for these places. The application of social science-based methodologies has helped elucidate people’s emotional connections with place that forms an essential component of human-centered conservation, with much of this literature having clear roots in environmental psychology. For instance, Shamsuddin and Ujang (2008) examined how the design of traditional streets in Malaysia influenced people’s attachment to place; they found that traditional street design resulted in residents having a greater amount of emotional attachment to this place and strongly influenced group cultural identity. Helping to further elucidate how particular aspects of the Malaysian traditional street might influence place attachment,

Figure 5.3 There appears to be a similar pattern to the dimensions that define sense of place for some traditional Asian landscapes. For example, the sense of place in (a) Kandy, Sri Lanka Bhaktapur and in (b) Bhaktapur, Nepal, consists of the ‘sense of sacrality,’ the ‘sense of community,’ the ‘sense of historicity,’ the ‘sense of serenity,’ and the ‘sense of well-being.’ Source: Kapila D. Silva

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Askari, Dola, and Soltani (2014) used a visual preference survey to reveal specific building components of value to everyday people, which were: arches, pilasters, columns, and ornamental detailing repeated in a regular pattern with little or no contemporary design interventions. This result reinforces existing research on the subject which makes it clear that historical environments with few contemporary design interventions engender stronger, deeper, and more profound emotional attachments to these places (Wells 2010; Wells and Baldwin 2012). More specifically, there appears to be a similar pattern to the dimensions that define sense of place for some traditional Asian landscapes. Silva’s (2015, 2019) work has established that in the rather disparate places of Bhaktapur, Nepal and Kandy, Sri Lanka, that sense of place consists of the ‘sense of sacrality,’ the ‘sense of community,’ the ‘sense of historicity,’ the ‘sense of serenity,’ and the ‘sense of well-being’ (Figure 5.3). How, then, does one go about using social science evidence to inform and influence conservation practice? While the literature is a bit thinner in this area, there are some notable examples with relevance to Asia. Silva (2019) makes several recommendations on the management of the heritage of Kandy, Sri Lanka based on human-centered principles. Silva recommends that the dimensions of sense of place he identified in his earlier (2011) study—‘sense of sacrality,’ ‘sense of historic solemnity,’ ‘sense of scenic serenity,’ and ‘sense of wellbeing’—be included not only in the World Heritage management plan for the city, but also should be incorporated into the city’s overall development plan to inform the conservation of some of the most important features of the city, such as the central market, clock tower, and hospital (Silva 2019). Because Silva (2011) focused on intangible heritage and its relationship to sense of place, he also recommends that the management of Kandy’s sense of place should include the control of inappropriate social behavior, such as drunk people that destroy the wellbeing and sacrality associated with nearby sites (Silva 2019). Silva found similar characteristics contributing to Bhaktapur’s sense of place (2015) that could be used to enhance the city’s overall sense of place, including a focus on intangible heritage that would include the ‘active recruiting of experts on traditional belief systems’ to influence the planning and decision-making process (Silva 2017: 193). There are other relevant examples of the use of social science evidence to inform built heritage conservation. In a North American context, Jennifer Minner (2019) used human-centered principles in the development of heritage tours that incorporate an understanding of place attachment and Kimberli Fitzgerald (2019) created a local municipality’s historic preservation plan using a facilitated, community-driven process that redefined conservation away from a ‘police’ action toward a more positive, grass-roots activity. Similarly, in Brazil, Wells et al. (2020) facilitated a community-based participatory research process in which residents led an effort to conserve a heritage botanical garden by identifying problems and designing their own conservation solutions. These examples from Asia, North America, and Brazil provide evidence that far from being a theoretical or academic endeavor, the use of applied social science research methods should and can form a core element of built heritage conservation practice.

Conclusion Human-centered conservation is based on personal and group experiences, emotional meanings associated with place (e.g., place attachment and sense of place), and quality of life. It is also predicated on a desire to engage with local stakeholders, who are often residents, on their own terms using their own meanings. Implicit in this kind of practice is a need to use social science methods to understand the relationship between people and old places, a topic that I have written about extensively elsewhere (Wells 2014, 2019). While there is some evidence that these kinds of approaches are being used in Asia and the Pacific region—mostly in terms of research—practice in these regions appears to be much as it is in the rest of the world: top-down and driven by expert rule. On the other hand, there are examples, such as the guthi system in Nepal, where traditional approaches to conservation hold the 107

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promise for a more human-centered way forward. Much of this discussion needs to be continually informed by colonialism as there is a danger that outside experts, often from entirely different cultural backgrounds, are given a great amount of power and influence over the lives of local people. On the other hand, many Asian countries lack institutions that would enable the kind of participatory democracy in which a human-centered conservation practice could flourish. As with many areas of practice, it is much easier to change education than it is to change professional practice, much less entire governmental institutions. But even in higher education, there is a chronic lack of a research infrastructure in the conservation of built heritage and cultural landscapes. To be sure, institutions—across the globe—are resistant to legitimizing heritage conservation research and providing resources for research and teaching centered on social science approaches (Kaufman 2019). Such change would necessitate incorporating non-Western approaches to understanding heritage meanings, including the intersection between tangible and intangible heritage, training in community engagement and facilitation, the development of conflict resolution skills, and education in social science and participatory research methods. A sorely needed and immediate modification to conservation/preservation curricula would be to teach the Western theory of conservation less as received wisdom and more as a critical approach through Smith’s (2006) AHD. None of this is meant to discourage the likelihood of implementing a human-centered approach to the conservation of heritage in any part of the world, but such a change will likely be akin to climbing a mountain: slow, exhausting, frustrating, but eventual. Moreover, the rewards of realizing such an endeavor and emancipating heritage conservation practice is well worth the effort.

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Perez, N. Thakur and Z. Nairen (eds) Training strategies for World Heritage management, Germany: Deutsche UNESCO-Kommission e.V, 136–143. Tiwari, S.R. (2015) ‘Revisiting Kathmandu Valley World Heritage site: Community participation in heritage affairs,’ in K. Weise (ed.) Revisiting Kathmandu: Safeguarding living urban heritage, Kathmandu: UNESCO, 189–196. Tom, B. (2017) ‘Jiirnoddharana: The Hindu philosophy of conservation,’ in K.D. Silva and N-K. Chapagain (eds) Asian heritage management: Contexts, concerns, and prospects, London: Routledge, 35–48. Trigg, D. (2011) The memory of place: A phenomenology of the uncanny, Athens: Ohio University Press. Waterton, E., Smith, L. and Campbell, G. (2006) ‘The utility of discourse analysis to heritage studies: The Burra Charter and social inclusion,’ International Journal of Heritage Studies, 12(4): 339–355. Weise, K. (2015) ‘Summary and commentary,’ in K. Weise (ed.) Revisiting Kathmandu: Safeguarding living urban heritage, Kathmandu: UNESCO, 1–47. Wells, J.C. (2007) ‘The plurality of truth in culture, context, and heritage: A (mostly) post-structuralist analysis of urban conservation charters,’ City and Time, 3(2): 1–13. ———. (2010) ‘Our history is not false: Perspectives from the revitalisation culture,’ International Journal of Heritage Studies, 16(6): 464–485. ———. (2014) ‘Social science research methodologies and historic preservation: Broadening the possibilities for a preservation thesis,’ in B.L. Stiefel and J.C. Wells (eds) Preservation education: Sharing best practices and finding common ground, Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 245–263. ———. (2015) ‘In stakeholders we trust: Changing the ontological and epistemological orientation of built heritage assessment through participatory action research,’ in B. Szmygin (ed.) How to assess built heritage? Assumptions, methodologies, examples of heritage assessment systems, Florence and Lublin: Romualdo Del Bianco Foundatione and Lublin University of Technology, 249–265. ———. (2017a) ‘Are we “ensnared in the system of heritage” because we don’t want to escape?,’ Archaeologies, 13(1): 26–47. ———. (2017b) ‘How are old places different from new places? A psychological investigation of the correlation between patina, spontaneous fantasies, and place attachment,’ International Journal of Heritage Studies, 23(5): 445–469. ———. (2019) ‘Bridging the gap between built heritage conservation practice and critical heritage studies,’ in J. Wells and B. Stiefel (eds) Human-centered built environment heritage preservation: Theory and evidence-based practice, London: Routledge, 33–44. Wells, J.C. and Baldwin, E.D. (2012) ‘Historic preservation, significance, and age value: A comparative phenomenology of historic Charleston and the nearby new-urbanist community of I’On,’ Journal of Environmental Psychology, 32(4): 384–400. Wells, J.C., Silva, A.P., Araújo, L., Azevêdo, G., Barros, A., Eduarda, M., Ferreira, E., Guerra, A., Abreu e Lima, V., Moura, A. and Tenorio, G. (2020) ‘Empowering communities to identify, treat, and protect their heritage: A cultural landscape case study of the Horto d’El Rey, Olinda, Brazil,’ in K. Fouseki, T.S. Guttormsen, and G. Swensen (eds) Heritage and sustainable urban transformations: Deep cities. London Routledge, 185–207.

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6 HISTORIC LANDSCAPES IN RAPIDLY TRANSFORMING ASIAN CITIES Contestations, commodification, and learning from grounded observations Nihal Perera

Asian societies claim histories that stretch thousands of years, and that urban heritage is evident from Babylon to Xi’an. Yet Asia’s take on history, conservation, and the way historic landscapes are incorporated into present-day urban environments is somewhat unsettling. Almost all societies follow a Westernization development model in the name of modernization, increasingly following proxies from the region, such as Singapore and Shanghai, undervaluing their ‘own’ cultures, histories, landscapes, and potential futures. While much of the old is prominent in countries like Bhutan and Cambodia, many others like China have erased much of their urban environments in favour of a global-modernity. By replacing culture with ‘tradition’, the modernist abstraction of the Other that is no longer practised, the societies and experts overlook the complexity and the richness of present-day Asian cultures. The long histories of Asian people consist of diverse periods and have hardly left any people-group untouched by another. Individual histories are intertwined with others, making history and places mostly inter-historic, and the survival or posthumous recreation of any pure history impossible. Places and structures are composed of different elements from different times (and places). The long historical processes have both brought together and torn apart communities. These complexities are evident in the Babri Masjid massacre of 1992 where a ‘Hindu group’ demolished a functioning mosque in Ayodhaya, in India’s Uttar Pradesh. The object of the group was to reclaim the birthplace of the god Ram; some believe that a Ram temple is buried under the masjid. The links between today’s national and ethnic societies and Historic Urban Landscapes, especially various ruins from historic eras that were abandoned for long periods, are recent constructions. Contemporary conflicts over historic places mostly arise from competing claims made by different peoplegroups to a historic place or structure which is thought to have been created by their ancestors. The multiple representations of historic places and landscapes have enabled political groups to politicize them as conflicting and incite violence. The Ayodhya conflict, fuelled by contemporary nationalism and hatred, was motivated by historical interpretations which resulted in the death of many people. Hence, historic environments are current. The Communist Party which assumed power in China in 1949 rejected all prior modes of production and political economies. Some historians

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believe that the Communists downplayed many aspects of the Qing Dynasty to make the latter appear weak. Yet the state continues to use the Tiananmen Square in Beijing and its backdrop, the Forbidden Palace. The Square was totally renewed (and appropriated) by the party which contemplated building ten structures around it to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the revolution. However, they were unable to build all ten, so the government incorporated, renewed, and/ or adapted a few existing buildings. While historic, the Tiananmen Square we know today is a modern creation, not due to the building project, but the discourse that redefined it – what is said, taught, and believed. Also, Asia is not static; adding to their long and diverse histories, some Asian nations, especially China and India, have once again come to drive urban change, this time globally. In short, every Asian city is undergoing radical transformation. Yet, as Transforming Asian Cities (Perera and Tang 2013) demonstrates, urban scholars have very little understanding of Asian cities and how they are transforming. According to the authors (ibid.), the literature on Asian cities focuses on the high-end (central business district, neoliberalism), the low-end (slum, poverty), and the traditional (history, heritage). As they employ the developed and modern Western-city as the reference point, much of Asia’s transformation falls outside the scope and analytical capabilities of the approaches and tools the scholars use. Cultures and landscapes in Asia are complex dynamic entities that cannot be captured within imported categories and simple dualities. Besides, the radically changing spaces and landscapes demand new understandings. Environments are historically created through the reuse, repurposing, infill, and/ or redefinition of the extant environments. As evident in cities like Kathmandu, Nepal, and Ahmedabad, India (Figure 6.1), these environments comprise structures built by different social groups at different times, mainly through a slow progression of demolition, repair, reuse, and infill. They represent different belief systems, ethnic groups, conflicts, compromises, and adaptations, at times vernacular architecture representing modern values and modern structures including traditional values (Perera and Kc 2016) (Figure 6.2). The resulting assemblages of diverse built components that represent collages of social diversity and palimpsests of historical memories provide each city its identity and richness (see Logan, Chapter 1, this volume). They too represent contested identities. Perera and Tang (2013) suggest we understand them for what they are, from locally relevant perspectives, by looking at the right places/things (instead of preconceived categories), theorizing the observations (as opposed to applying theories and seeing what was preconceived), and adopting an empathetic vantage point, paying attention to local interpretations.

Figure 6.1 Diverse landscapes of Kathmandu, Nepal. Source: Nihal Perera

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Figure 6.2 Modernized vernacular and vernacularized modern. Source: Gaurab Kc

The key question is: How do societies in Asia come to terms with history, change, and heritage in producing contemporary urban landscapes? The practical issue is how to meaningfully incorporate historic environments into the present. This chapter explores this question in the urban landscapes of East, South, and Southeast Asia, referred to in this chapter as Asia. It delves into how history, tradition, and heritage is understood, adapted, and employed within organic and planned urban transformations in Asia and their impacts on the sustenance of those cities’ urban heritage. Questioning the hegemonic heritage-discourses and their Eurocentric roots, and building on pertinent literature and fieldwork, the study aims to facilitate locally friendly ways of incorporating history and historic landscapes into the present. In the chapter, I pay special attention to the intersectionality of race, class, and gender in creating the conjuncture and/or conflict.

The inheritance of the heritage: colonialism, Eurocentrism, and the reworlding of societies Any intervention into a historical landscape in Asia demands a knowledge of it. Yet, our direct observations are mediated by our own worldviews and what we see depends on what we know. Louis Althusser (1998) argues that ideas come wrapped in ideologies. As argued in Perera and Tang (2013), the knowledge on Asian cities as represented in literature is largely Western, inherited from the knowledge produced as part of European expansion and disseminated through colonialism. For example, in regard to Egypt, Edward Said (2004) [1978] highlights that Napoleon’s forces did not simply consist of military personnel, but also geologists, surveyors, etc., who could measure, count, and map. The production of a French knowledge of Egypt – without a comparable Egyptian knowledge of France – was a powerful tool of subjugation. Much of today’s history of the non-West is written from this colonial standpoint and the heritage of the colonized is understood through these colonial lenses. Building on Said (2004) [1978] and postcolonial scholars, I have highlighted four overlapping stages of colonial spatial transformation: (1) The military conquest of society and takeover of territory; (2) the establishment of an administration organized around provinces and districts and structured around the colonial capital by a transportation network; (3) the incorporation of the society into the European world-economy through the production of compatible economic units such as mines and plantations; and (4) the establishment of cultural hegemony (dominance of the colonizers way of thinking about

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the society and space, especially of the colonized) (Perera 1999). The last, achieved across the world, including in societies that were not physically colonized, is the deepest and most long lasting. Let me demonstrate the rootedness of this imprint using a deeper study of mine on Sri Lanka (Perera 1999). The cultural-intellectual subjugation involves the defamiliarization of society and space for the indigenes and the relocation or ‘reworlding’ of these within the world the imperial powers were producing. In dehistoricizing or decontextualizing the pre-colonial Lankan1 society and relocating it in the colonial world, the British administrative officers rewrote Lankan history, over and over, along with world history, from a secular and an outsider’s standpoint. The educated and patronizing upper-class British men not only approached (and translated) the great chronicle, Mahāvamsa, but colonial writers such as James Cordiner, Robert Percival, Anthony Bertolacci, and John Davy refused to accept the possibility of a Lankan historiography that was not myth, fable, or legendary tales, without an accurate record of events. The first modern compilation of Lankan Tamil history, the Yālpāna Vaipāva-Malai, was also written in 1736 at the initiative of a Dutch official administering Jaffna in the north of the country (Perera 1999). Once the British defeated the Lankans and became, in their view, the guardians of a greater civilization, the colonial regime drew its attention, beginning around the 1860s, to the mysteries and marvels of the colonized, especially the historic irrigation works and magnificent royal and religious structures. ‘The ruined [reservoirs] and canals in the so-called dry zone, some of which were [over] two thousand years old, presented a challenge to the British who, in their perception, belonged to a nation with unbound confidence in its technological abilities’ (Perera 1999: 88). They created the Archaeology Department in 1890 and Irrigation Department in 1900. Also reflecting specific cultural developments in the imperial metropole, the British established the Kandyan Arts and Crafts Association in the 1880s to protect and encourage Kandyan arts and crafts. In this way the colonials ‘restored’ the ancient artefacts, but within a European-Modern narrative. The reworlding of Lanka as Ceylon within the British Empire was brought to its peak by the establishment of the Colombo Museum in 1877: its ‘Georgian’ style symbolically framing the appropriation of one culture by the dominant other. This building, the aim of which was to ‘store’ Lankan historic culture, was the most prominent building in [the original colonial suburb] Cinnamon Gardens until the grand Municipal Council building was built in the 1920s. … [the galleries of] brass and ivory, … Ceylonese products; natural history; rocks, minerals, and gems; indigenous birds, fishes, and insects; and archaeological rooms, all displayed within this … [Georgian] building in the Cinnamon Gardens. (Perera 1999: 88) Instead of appreciating objects, their meanings and history of the subjects, the colonials opted for the opposite. William Glover (2008: xvi) exposes, in regard to Lahore, the colonial practice of assessing objects to determine the cultural orientation of their producers and/or users. Landscapes were mapped around the highly visible peaks and big human-made objects like pyramids and stupas. By (re)naming and representing within their own culture, like Mount Everest, using a British registry, the colonials appropriated these objects, landscapes, and larger territories within their frames of reference. This process assumes that the meanings of objects are within them and alienates the objects from their producers, users, and the socio-cultural processes involved in their production, distribution, use, and signification. In stripping their culture and history, the investigators objectified and re-familiarized the objects within their familiar contexts (Perera 2016). This produced a gap between the meaning of the objects and landscapes for their producers and users on the one hand and the scholars and administrators on the other. The dominance of the colonizers’ definitions among the colonized was established through colonialism.

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History created its subjects. Along with the Europeans, the indigenes learned their own history and ‘heritage’, but reconstructed through (new) monuments, museums, and text books. In regard to Cairo, Tim Mitchell (1991) demonstrates how the representations of Egypt, such as pyramids, have become the represented (i.e. Egypt itself). The impact of this colonial discourse is much stronger in Myanmar where the physical heritage has largely reduced to colonial buildings (Lwin 2013).

Postcolonial confusions: colonialism, nationalism, and complex landscapes in Asia As colonialism began to fade, the nationalists came to define the landscapes, but within the inherited – yet negotiated – worldview described above. In Sri Lanka, the (re)claims were largely of historic places such as Anuradhapura, the oldest known capital of the Sinhalese from the third century BCE which was a bunch of ruins. Yet, it was a significant place of pilgrimage well maintained by local organizations and castes. While the leaders of the nineteenth-century Buddhist revival movement laid claim to the ‘sacred area’ as their heritage, the spatial strategies they employed were largely colonial. The people who lived in the ‘sacred area’ were displaced to a new (secular) city built further away (Dissanayake and Perera forthcoming). The reclamation also produced conflicts over the definition of historic objects and environments. The leaders of the revival movement, especially Anagarika Dharmapala, did not accept British-led archaeological excavations in the late nineteenth century. For them, the ruins were living monuments of the Sinhala-Buddhist history and digging for archaeological remains would disturb their order. Dharmapala demanded the British to stop excavations immediately (ibid.). Local resistance to external impositions on their own histories is common across colonies; the natives in North America too objected to the disruption of their cemeteries and cosmology and recently to a pipeline across their territories in the Dakotas. The colonials not only continued the excavation of ancient sites, but also created local ‘experts’ who would further this discourse. These ‘experts’ were largely unable to see, understand, and/or value the order of the local environment; they never referred to the great periods of ‘enlightenment’ in Asian history (Carrithers 2007 [1983]). This is evident in India’s continued destruction of tribal areas in the northeast (including cemeteries), where some of the tribal groups fight back in the form of Maoists. Post-colonial contestations did not go very far. Most leaders continued to revere and adapt the colonially produced history to represent themselves and to construct their identities, politics and economics within it: [In Sri Lanka,] the tourist industry, promoted as a response to a worsening deficit of foreign exchange, incorporated [the historic sites] into post-colonial national space. A new ministry was also created in the 1970s for the promotion of tourism. Two major developments affecting the built environment were the growing concern for historic monuments and the numerical expansion of [tourist] hotels. Although Sri Lankan concern about religion and culture was on the rise from the 1950s through the 1970s, large scale restoration of historic landscapes has only taken place from the 1970s. (Perera 1999: 139) Connecting Lanka’s historic capitals of Anuradhapura, Polonnaruva, and Kandy, and redefining historic landscapes mainly for the consumption of Western visitors, a new organization called the Cultural Triangle was created in the late-1970s. These sites, located far away, marginalized the tourist value of Colombo, exemplifying the stereotypical (post)colonial split site of the so-called ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ city (ibid.). The use of history to produce and justify Modern identity is a contemporary act and it employs social power to justify the present and redefine history for this purpose. For Logan (Chapter 1, this

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volume), contemporary constructions are based on mythologized versions of the past, sometimes representing deliberate distortions of history. In regard to Chinese history, Duara (1995) highlights the difficulty to rescue history from the nation (i.e. from projecting the nation back in time to fix history in favour of the nation-state). A well-known instance is India and Nepal claiming that the Buddha was born in their country when neither of the contemporary nation states existed at that time. The motivation for inventing traditions and connections between contemporary and historic communities is largely ideological, commercial or both (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983). In sum, traditional is not traditional, but a Modern construction. Western Modernity is maintained via its valuable opposite: tradition. Yet tradition is unable to exist in the contemporary. The idea of ‘tradition’ may have existed, but not in the Modern form. Also, the so-called traditional places are highly varied, ranging from abandoned to still living (contemporary), as places that continue ‘historic’ practices such as the Lingraj Temple in Bhubaneswar (India) and the Swedagon Temple in Yangon (Myanmar) or commodified as in Galle Fort (Sri Lanka) and the Taj Mahal (India).

Multiple meanings and contestations With multiple meanings and histories, history and historical landscapes are contested, and some interpretations have had dire consequences. In Ayodhya, Vishva Hindu Prasad (VHP) began a campaign in 1980 to construct a temple for the god Ram; he was believed to have been born there. The campaign culminated on 6 December 1992 with the VHP organizing a rally with the support of a political party, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Participated by a large crowd of 150,000 Hindu kar sevaks (volunteers), the rally turned violent. The crowd overwhelmed security forces and tore down the sixteenth-century Babri Masjid. A subsequent inquiry into the incident found 68 people responsible, including several leaders of the BJP and VHP. The demolition spurred several months of violence between India’s Hindu and Muslim populations, causing the deaths of over 2,000 people. Retaliatory violence against Hindus occurred in Pakistan and Bangladesh as well. Like space (Kusno 2000; Perera 1999, 2016; Yeoh 1996), landscapes are also contested. After the June Fourth incident, Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, had at least two opposing representations. In addition to how the state sees it, Linda Hershkovitz (2002) argues that Tiananmen Square is remembered as the place of the June Fourth incident (i.e. the culmination of the 1989 protest in China). With the presence of the absent (protest and what it entailed), the meanings embedded within certain landscapes are greater than what is physically seen (Kusno 2010). Bangkok too has seen numerous protests; one that most Thais remember is the Assembly of Poor in 1997 which brought a large number of villagers to the city. It devolved into a battle on Rajadamnoen Avenue, the royal processional path, between Red Shirts and Yellow Shirts (Missingham 2010). In this, both power holders and protestors appropriated and re-inscribed the Avenue with their perceptions, turning it into a theatre of contests. In addition to the meanings physically inscribed on it, there are memories attached to the landscape. The fallen students of 1973 were cremated in the Royal Field and Rajadamnoen Avenue’s landscape represented them in absence (Noobanjong 2013), until the building of a memorial. Similarly, the high-end historic landscapes, whether they represent business or politics, are also diverse and leave many cues for people’s interpretation and use. This is precisely why it is important to understand peoples’ interpretations of historic landscapes. In his analysis of Rajadamnoen Avenue, Koompong Noobanjong (2013) demonstrates how the history of the monarchy, protest movements, coups against political regimes, ranging from royal-absolutist and liberal-egalitarian to militaryauthoritarian, and the massacre of Thammasat University students in 1973 are written into it. The landscape is highly political.

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The landscapes of Myanmar are not immune to contest. An unidentified lady close to former President Thein Sein has been trying hard since 1996 to list Bagan as a World Heritage Site succeeding in 2019. This was opposed by a supporter of Than Shwe, the Senior General who is believed to be the key power holder. This contestation caused the proposal to stall. This conflict was from political infighting to save business in Bagan which may be moved out if the area became exclusively historic. In Penang, Malaysia, the Historic Society opts to save Chinese shophouses, but by freezing them in particular historical periods. This is not simply reaching out to history but establishing dominance over the narrative. Despite the Historic Society’s desire to capture history, once the flow of time is arrested, it is no longer history. In other words, history cannot be captured at a given time, but it can be claimed and the idea so constructed be hegemonized. This was best articulated in the Ceylonese Buddhist leaders’ resistance against the British archaeologists treating their living monuments dead and attempting to museum-ize them. These contests demonstrate modern attempts to capture history, culturally (identity-wise), economically (for business), and/or politically (for political capital). The Ayodhya incident and the meanings of Bagan, Penang, Rajadamnoen, and Tiananmen Square are contemporary. Ayodhya occurred at the confluence of religious VHP with political BJP that provided the background for violence of that magnitude. The above stories demonstrate that landscapes are signifiers with arbitrary meanings (not inherent) attached to them. Some meanings refer to the building process with physical markings while others to memories of incidents that have left no physical marks. Even if it is physically marked, the meaning depends on their interpretations. The meanings are therefore part of the discourse, written in people’s minds. Preservation or the reuse of historic environments themselves does not bring the old society back and a landscape is not sustainable without the society, particularly the social and cultural practices that used to reproduce it. The New Urbanists who transformed planning and design in the USA valued community that existed in early twentieth century towns and neighbourhoods that were lost due to exclusive zoning, suburbanization, and urban sprawl (New Urbanism 2019). They recreated the environments, from Celebration, Florida, to West Clay, Indiana, through changing the planning approach and laws. These made significant contributions to urban development and often recreated the physical past, but hardly brought back the society the leaders intended. This further highlights the gap and the dialectic between physical environments and their meanings for real and potential users. Today, the greater tendency is for historic environments to become tools for tourism and gentrification. The environments so created have two components: the recreated history (e.g. the sacred areas in Anuradhapura and Kandy) and the ‘gateway’ town. The latter provides access to the former, acting as a transition between the contemporary and historic areas. In the contemporary society dominated by neoliberalism, the gateway tends to become up-scale, money-making, consumerist, and an entertainment zone that, at times, overshadows the historic and cultural component. This highlights the inadequacy of existing theoretical models to understand and adopt historic landscapes to today’s society. As above projects demonstrate, historical landscapes are often commodified, and history is pushed to the background. Lumbini in Nepal is a good example; here, being the place where Siddhartha Gautama (later the Buddha) was born is the least celebratory in an environment dominated by massive edifices that represent Buddhist organizations along national lines. As they were incorporated within mainstream understanding, most historic areas were ‘sanitized’, aestheticized, and brought into the market for the consumption of tourists and for their gaze. The ‘experts’ and politicians have claimed the historic status precisely to deny it, largely subjecting historic areas to sweeping neoliberal interventions, creating places for capital investment, entertainment, and consumption. The Buddha Bar adjacent to the Boudhanath Temple in Kathmandu, Nepal, is a quick reference. The Galle Fort in Sri Lanka, claimed historic, has been turned into a habitat of upper middle-class and foreigners, a real estate

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market, tourist place that also benefits some former residents (Rajapakse and Silva, Chapter 27, this volume). Contemporary historic preservationists are largely unable to see, understand, and/or value the time, space, and historic meanings of the local environment. In reclaiming a past, they restored the Galle Fort to its Dutch period in the seventeenth century. The Dutch destroyed the Portuguese fort to build theirs; this challenges the legitimacy of this World Heritage. Prior to the Portuguese, Galle was a port city run by Muslims who were expelled by the Portuguese and later, more forcefully, by the Dutch. The Dutch buildings and the environment were substantially modified by the British who occupied the fort for another 150 years. Muslims slowly returned to the fort after independence, reconnecting with its pre-colonial history; yet the World Heritage regulations delegitimized their everyday spatial practices (Perera and Habarakada 2016). The rise of market value of land forced them to move out voluntarily (ibid.; Daniel 2010). Every restoration imposes limits on its inhabitants, so did Galle, but many ordinary people also negotiated their spaces (see Perera 2016). Unlike some historic sites, people live in places like Ahmedabad and Galle, but the rhetoric of ‘living cities’ denies the living for existing residents. Instead of learning about the existing residents, project leaders, assuming no one lives in or uses that area, assume the authority to inscribe the ‘rightful’ history, per their view. Hence, the unrooted history they create is appropriated by politicians and businesses causing ‘gentrification’. This makes it difficult to balance protecting heritage, accommodating the living population, and leaving room for rapid growth in Asian cities. The challenge is to work with historic environments, especially with the inhabitants, without interrupting the historical and spatial order they maintain, treating them as being valueless, and assuming the landscapes are dead objects that the conservationist bring to life.

Understanding and intervention Intervening into Asia’s Historic Urban Landscapes, on their own terms, demands a sound understanding of them. This requires approaches that do not transform Asian environments and realities into data that fits within the categories (boxes) that feed imported analytical frameworks. Grounded interpretations – not data – are key to developing grounded knowledge. Perera and Tang (2013) identify key problem areas that cause this shortcoming: the focus, frameworks, and the vantage points employed in research. As a point of departure, they propose making basic grounded-observations (as opposed to the imposition of larger categories that draw attention to pre-determined categories over local productions and emergences); theorizing the observations than applying theories (as the latter would change the ground to fit into imposed models), and approaching from inside (empathizing with local actors, leaving room for their interpretations). The preservation of ‘historic’ built structures and environments itself is a Western idea that emanates from the nostalgia for what it lost during its modernization, caused especially by the French Revolution (museums), industrialization (vernacular architecture) and, more recently, the urban renewal in the USA (historic register). Outside of the West, it was a colonial desire to protect disappearing exotic environments belonging to great civilizations of which Western powers had become the custodians; their preservation was carried out mainly through archaeology and museums. It is in this context that the British discovered ancient sites of Anuradhapura and Sigiriya (Ceylon), Pagan (Burma), and stupas in India. Even if the history is known, it is impossible to capture the past in the present. The standard method to capture diachronic flow of time is to freeze (synchronize) a cross section or represent in homogenized periods. In Penang, the Historic Society preserved Chinese shophouses belonging to select periods. Yet these slices of history are not history, but a representation that provide a particular window into the physicality of the structures during those periods. At the same time, the shophouses

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whose change is now arrested cannot take part in history; in order to represent history, they are denied history. The question remains: How to engage and incorporate historical landscapes without interrupting change? History is organized via selected past events. Whether UNESCO or the Taliban, it is ideological and fits into a model constructed through a vision mediated through particular lenses. The determination of which history to protect, destroy, and/or let go emanates from these ideologies. This is exemplified in the unexpected blowing up of the monumental 35 m and 53 m (115 ft and 174 ft) tall Gautama Buddha statues of Bamiyan, built in 507 and 554 CE, by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. The USA bombed many structures belonging to one of the oldest civilizations, Babylonia, during the US–Iraq war. The present, especially today’s economy and ideology, does not support all historic trajectories and there is no protection for many physical remains, especially to bear their indigenous/local meanings. Temporally, James Roseneau’s (1990) idea of ‘event cascades’ might be more useful to understand uncertain temporal trajectories than predictable linear ones. Event cascades, according to him, are ‘the processes of the multi-centric world derive from interlocking tensions that gain strength and direction from each other as they spread through the global system’ (ibid.: 303). As history is neither linear, nor fully predictable, and subject to change by the subjects, and being intertwined with other histories, it is impossible to engage a historic environment. Viewing it simplistically amounts to cleansing other influences to privilege one history. This is evident in Ahmedabad which became India’s first World Heritage City in 2017. The designation restricts the activities of its longtime people – mainly Muslim vendors in the core area. These rightful residents – including non-Muslims who have joined over time – are seen as ‘overcrowding’ the place. The World Heritage designation displaced them in their own historic place. Substantively, as Ken Taylor highlights (Chapter 2, this volume), landscapes document social history, reflecting the interaction between people, events, places and time. Scholars of cultural studies have demonstrated that cultures are produced and reproduced; new cultural geographers have shown that landscapes are an integral part of this process (Kong 1997). According to James Duncan (1989, 1990) who examines the last Sinhala kingdom of Kandy in Sri Lanka, landscapes not only have meanings, but are also models that make people adopt certain values and behaviours within them. Duncan also demonstrates how careful the British were not to agitate the subjects when they added select structures such as the Governor’s residence, St Paul’s Church, and Bogambara Prison dominating the Kandyan-royal environment but not destroying it. Capturing the prominent position in a royal environment is also evident in the Japanese imperialist location of its administrative building in front of the Korean palace in Seoul, South Korea, facing the mall. Besides the landscapes of the powerful, everyday landscapes produced and used by ordinary citizens are also integral to their culture; these also reveal their components, elements, and how, when, and why these were produced at those specific times and places. Key to understanding ordinary landscapes involves the learning of their meaningfulness for contemporary everyday practices. This is a blurry area as our perceptions of landscapes are heavily rooted in west-European colonial knowledge. Today, much of the preservation activity is integral to the economy; many have created businesses, professions, expertise, and livelihoods on historic preservation. As urban planners, preservation ‘experts’ (including the UNESCO) intervene into people’s living environments which they see as historic, they determine whether it is worth preserving for others, both marginalizing the inhabitants (Perera 2016) and potentially causing more conflict.

Incorporating historic landscapes: rethinking the approach As evident in the emergence of preservation movements, how urban development professionals treat the older environments is questionable. Let’s delve into more effective attempts to incorporate historic environments into new development.

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Most preservation practitioners approach conservation from the angle of the physical environment. For example, Myanmar has an aggressive programme to conserve its heritage-buildings led by a national figure Thant Myint-U, the grandson of the first non-European UN Secretary-General, U Thant (in office 1961–71). Yet all 30 ‘heritage’ buildings in downtown documented by the Association of Myanmar Architects are colonial buildings built by the British. Its General Secretary Moe Moe Lwin acknowledges: This book contains 30 of the most stunning colonial-era buildings in downtown Yangon … They are included in the … 189 heritage buildings compiled by the Yangon City Development Corporation (YCDC) in 2001 based on their historical and architectural value. This book does not cover the many old religious buildings [Buddhist pagodas and monasteries, Hindu temples, churches, mosques, etc.] and other structures [missionary school buildings and markets] that are equally magnificent in their own right. Also excluded are some of the privately owned buildings which should be prioritized given their role in the history of Yangon and the country. (Moe Moe Lwin 2013: 153; emphasis added) The critics engage the preservation discourse from history and society. In the context of the USA, Dubrow and Graham (2009) and Hayden (1996) have asked whether we are conserving nice (magnificent) white buildings or history. Nice white buildings, they highlight, represent white men’s domination at a time when the ‘Blacks’ were slaves and women hardly had rights. Hence, glorifying the aesthetic values of white upper classes is socially unjust. They promoted the use of historic value to determine the preservation-worthiness and radically transformed the historical register in the USA. The glorification of European colonial structures abroad such as the Galle Fort is tantamount to praising a dark age for the indigenes; the adoration of colonial buildings in Yangon and the designation of Ahmedabad as a World Heritage City are not that different. Development projects aim to create a better future. Although it is possible to predict some aspects of the future, when structural conditions such as the ruling party and the economic trajectories change, such predictions fail. This is particularly a turbulent time; we can only know the present with any certainty. This is precisely why, despite bona fide thoughts of the ‘experts’, the environments in Galle, Beijing, and Penang have become tourist environments for making money, and the gateways becoming more dominant than the objects themselves. The Starbucks in the Forbidden Palace (later removed) is a great representation of this phenomena. In today’s scholarly and professional environments, projects cannot be conceived in a vacuum devoid of ethics, politics, inequalities, discrimination, neoliberalism, and justice. In incorporating historic environments into the present, it is imperative that we respect, value, and protect the layers of cultural memories, paying attention to the faded inscriptions on the ‘palimpsest’. One such possibility is highlighted in Huey-Jiun Wang’s (2013) account of creating the 406 Plaza in Taipei from a burnt Japanese-Hongwanji (Buddhist) temple that was built over by a self-built settlement. The approach of the government and business leaders to redevelop the district – and surrounding districts – was urban renewal (i.e. remove the poor from the site and use it for ‘economic growth’). The inhabitants displaced this neoliberal attempt to erase the past. During the protests against the gentrification of the site and the district, the inhabitants turned the media coverage into a platform to convey their stories, especially after the ruins of the temple (i.e. another layer of history) had re-emerged. Effectively drawing the attention to people, their life-memories, and emotionally relating themselves to the stories, the narratives the inhabitants told highlighted the human side, including how the area was the place of the (Chinese) people who worked for the colonial Japanese and how many middle-class people loved eating their favourite foods at the restaurants self-established by these poor settlers. In so doing, they displaced the focus on the economic value of land with emotions, affection, and their sense of place.

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Figure 6.3 406 Plaza, Taipei, Taiwan. Source: Nihal Perera

The city finally built a cultural plaza, highlighting the diverse histories of those who inhabited the site since its Japanese appropriation (Figure 6.3). In Kandy, The Nikken Sekkei Research Institute has opted to document and expose the stories of residential and small historic buildings (Greater Kandy Urban Plan Team 2018). The project opts to unearth and showcase the buildings just below the most dominant layer in the city known for magnificent religious and royal buildings. Although the list neither addresses ordinary people’s environments nor is comprehensive, these buildings tell stories of significant people such as entrepreneurs, businessmen, and innovators and activities such as printing and workshops. Both Taipei’s and Kandy’s projects highlight the history of somewhat ordinary people not recorded in official histories that privilege royal and religious structures almost to the exclusion of others. Michael Carrithers (1992) distinguishes between paradigmatic thinking that locates history within an abstract framework and narrative thinking that acknowledges storytelling. In these projects, story is used to acknowledge ordinary historic landscapes, overcoming their suppression under dominant history. Also, rather than approaching components of historic landscapes in piecemeal fashion, it may be more effective to work with its ecological system. A study of environmental degradation and flooding in Hue, Vietnam might shed some light on this. Susumu Kawahara and Naoki Furukawa (2009) draw our attention to the historic concept of shanshui (environmentally balanced) cities of East Asia. Each city, which has a water system based on a river flowing through it, was built according to fengshui

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(similar to shanshui) principles to balance the local environment. Instead of applying targeted scientific solutions to each place of flooding, separately, the authors suggest that the professionals understand and work with the city’s ecological system, which has been more reliable and sustainable. Kawahara and Furukawa (2009) do not suggest reverting to an authentic tradition, restoring the old overburdened water system, or propose a nostalgic return to an imagined past. Nor do they promote the sanitizing and aestheticizing of the historic city for the tourist or middle-class gaze. They propose that authorities and professionals understand the historic water system and attempt to renew the ecological system within contemporary needs and conditions. Delving into the ways ordinary people change historic institutions and reworld them may provide some insights: The pola in Sri Lanka, commonly perceived as a ‘periodic farmers’ market’, is an example. Nirmani Liyanage’s (2016) in-depth ethnography reveals how this ‘traditional’ institution transformed into a modern/contemporary institution, adapting to contemporary conditions, and not ‘gentrifying’. The pola-vendors are no longer farmers; they sell in different close-by polas on different days of the week; the produce no longer comes directly from farms, nor do all vendors sell full-time. Although it is periodic, the people’s pola (the environment) is robust, and is used for many other activities on pola non-pola days and times. Liyanage’s study of another ‘traditional’ institution, the handiya, the spatial node system in Sri Lanka, also highlights its continuity and constant modernization (Liyanage and Perera 2016). The present and future of handiyas emerge through local people’s negotiations. In a similar study, Jyoti Hosagrahar’s (2005) Hybrid Modernities focuses on the transformation of precolonial elite houses in Delhi, the havelis. The residents have modernized their havelis adapting building methods of the colonial community yet making sure that the structures serve their contemporary (hybrid) cultural needs. In engaging the environments, the agents do not change history; they adapt the surroundings along with their changing perceptions, slowly and incrementally changing the landscapes. This creates history, whether of the pola, handiya or the haveli. They ingeniously use physical environments and ideas from the past as raw material, along with others, to construct the present within extant potential and constraints. The issue is: can the professionals understand and learn from these people’s processes (cf. Perera 2016)? As Jeremy Wells (Chapter 5, this volume) highlights, the orthodox management of built urban heritage has long relied on rationalistic principles enforced through doctrines, rules, laws, and regulations developed in a White, male, Eurocentric context and largely fixed in place in Western countries from the nineteenth century. This approach has dominated urban conservation practice ever since, but with amends. Learning from people requires the unlearning of this approach as the polas, handiyas, and other places of ordinary people are created through an ingenious combination of formal/informal, local/Western as well as aspects from various histories and historical periods, producing and reproducing histories. Ball State University’s CapAsia programme, the immersive-learning semester for American students geared towards learn-by-doing collaborative projects in Asia, can provide some insights (https://capasia.wixsite.com/capasia). In 2017 and 2019, the participants engaged in the development of Sukhothai area in Thailand. A World Heritage site, Sukhothai is known as the first Thai capital (1238–1583) and is supported by the grand narratives of nationalism. Their main resource being the archaeological sites, including Si Sathchanalai and Khamphaeng Phet located outside of Sukhothai, the immediate response of the administrators for their revenue needs is promoting more tourism. CapAsia participants, who are involved in urban development, asked the following questions: How can we incorporate people’s history into this royal and nationalist history of Sukhothai? How can we incorporate people’s heritage into the project? How can we include current residents in the area (rather than making them subservient to external capital, or displacing them through gentrification as they create gateway districts)?

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The students looked more for specific strengths in the place. They found many unique ‘heritages’ of the people. The first is the story of Phra Luang that is of a legendary figure that the locals celebrate. As part of this narrative, they make unique kites and have a kite festival (Figure 6.4). In another place, the Wives’ Association produce a new fabric type, soaking cotton cloth in the mud in rice fields. Near the Si Satchanalai Historic Park, the locals produce historic Sukhothai-period china called sangkhalok. The locals take huge pride in these; they proudly claim that china did not come to Thailand from China, but they produced their own during the Sukhothai period. Working with One Tambon One Product (OTOP), a programme initiated by the former Thai queen, and faculty from King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology at Ladkrabang (KMITL), the CapAsia participants acknowledged community identities, helping them enhance the same within and in conjunction with, the larger heritage area. For the CapAsians, learning from people, through participant observation, enable the people to overcome the dominance of grand histories of the rulers represented through so-called monuments, like the Great Wall of China built by people who were almost slaves. This project integrates history with the present. Highlighting stories along with history, it acknowledges people. It is concerned about social justice, particularly the avoiding of conservation projects restricting people’s everyday living, their continued processes of making history, and the possibility of people being displaced by tourism-based businesses.

Figure 6.4 Kites of Sarajit, Sukhothai, Thailand. Source: Nihal Perera

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Conclusion This chapter concentrates on how historic landscapes are valued and incorporated into contemporary urban environments by authorities, experts, and ordinary people. Through a multi-layered critique, it asks how to approach, rethink, define, conceptualize, and incorporate Historic Urban Landscapes. It highlights a few effective interventions. In sum, no landscape belongs to the past; they are all in the present. Conservation and/or incorporation of historic environments are also contemporary practices, but involving historical landscapes; the conservationists create newer versions of the old. As they define and inscribe new on the ‘old’, and old on new, subjects enliven the landscapes that have constantly changed. Yet, Western archaeological interventions turn historic environments into dead objects and, according to Duara (1995), it is almost impossible for us to think of history without being biased towards our own identities, and concepts, especially the nation-states. This demands a deeper (and complex) knowledge of the historically produced contemporary landscapes and the stories they carry about people and histories. In practice, there is not much innovation in the way historic landscapes are incorporated into Asia’s transforming cities. This is largely caused by the use of knowledge rooted in Eurocentrism. In addition to the lack of understanding of how Asia’s cities are transforming, the incorporation of historic environments into today’s transforming cities is hardly grounded in Asia. Effective interventions into historic urban environments require grounded understandings of both historic landscapes and contemporary urban transformations that fall beyond externally imposed models that privilege white-male-centrism and Asian tyrants who subjected the workforce to slave conditions. Outside-in efforts impede ordinary (Asian) people’s living conditions, their freedom to live, and prevent them from continuing to make history as in the jetties of Penang, street vendors of Ahmedabad, and residents of Galle Fort. The application of external perspectives that do not respond to local conditions and communities enable immediate socio-economic interests of the powerful to dominate over historic values and connections. This is evident in the appropriation of most historic environments for middle-class and tourist consumption, feeding neoliberalism, and causing gentrification. Instead of conserving, historic environments are thus destroyed by ‘sanitizing’ and commodifying those using external discourses for the consumption by the upper classes and tourists. This practice has marginalized the historic and ordinary environments without a heritage designation. Preventing such destruction of historic landscapes and their effective incorporation into contemporary ones demands a grounded approach with a concern for them, on their own terms. Such an approach demands us to go beyond Western–modern thinking. It is more just and people-friendly to look beyond power-holders and into people’s heritage and how to promote the respectful maintenance of their ordinary historic environments along with high-end ones. Such practices, not supported by dominant discourses, are developed through learning-by-doing. Practitioners employ different ways to overcome such destruction. It ranges from acknowledging multiple histories as in 406 Plaza to ecological systems as in Hue. The understanding of historic landscapes and their conservation can be grounded by working with local people as the activists in Taipei, professional work by Nikken Sekkei Research Institute in Kandy, and CapAsia students in Sukhothai. Much can be learned from the conservation and renewal practices of ordinary people. Many ordinary institutions and spaces have survived a long time transforming their historic structures and environments into today’s environment and society. The pola and handiya are two of them. They can perhaps teach us how to incorporate historic environments into today’s an ongoing way, more than we can ever believe. Socially just and well-informed incorporation efforts of multi-coded historic environments into rapidly transforming and contested Asian cities are possibly globally-informed small-scale interventions that validate and enhance local-people’s heritage, traditions, and the resulting cultural transformations. This improves local people’s lives, enabling them to continue the flow of history while celebrating the heritage.

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Note 1 I use ‘Lanka’ to refer to the island of Sri Lanka and its historic population and communities in a non-political sense.

References Althusser, L. (1998) ‘Ideology and ideological state apparatuses’, in J. Rivkin and M. Ryan (eds) Literary theory: An anthology, Malden: Blackwell Publishers, 294–304. Carrithers, M. (1992) Why humans have cultures: Explaining anthropology and social diversity, Oxford: Oxford University Press. ——— (2007) [1983] Buddha: A very short introduction, Delhi: Oxford University Press. Daniel, S. (2010, August 1) ‘Listening to the silent voices within Galle Fort’, Sunday Times, [online]. Available at: www.sundaytimes.lk/100801/Plus/plus_23.html (accessed 5 April 2019). Dissanayake, P. and Perera, N. (forthcoming) ‘Nationalism, space, violence: The production of the Holy City of Anuradhapura’, in M. Walton (ed.) Interrogating Buddhism and nationalism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Duara, P. (1995) Rescuing history from the nation: Questioning narratives of modern China, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Dubrow, G. and Graham, N. (eds) (2009) Preservation of the vernacular environment, Seattle, WA: University of Washington. Duncan, J. S. (1989) ‘The power of place in Kandy: 1780–1980’, in J. A. Agnew and J. S. Duncan (eds) The power of place: Bringing together geographical and sociological imaginations, Winchester, MA: Unwin Hyman, 185–201. ——— (1990) The city as text: The politics of landscape interpretation in the Kandyan Kingdom, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Glover, W. (2008) Making Lahore modern: Constructing and imagining a colonial city, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Greater Kandy Urban Plan Team (2018) Memories of the old buildings, Kandy: Greater Kandy Urban Plan Team and JICA. Hayden, D. (1996) The power of place: Urban landscapes as public history, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Hershkovitz, L. (2002) ‘Tiananmen Square and the politics of place’, Political Geography, 12(5): 395–420. Hobsbawm, E. and Ranger, T. O. (eds) (1983) The invention of tradition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hosagrahar, J. (2005) Indigenous modernities: Negotiating architecture and urbanism, London: Routledge. Kawahara, S. and Furukawa, N. (2009) ‘Study on methods of conservation and regeneration of the historical water system in Shanshui City: Case study of old town planning in Hue, Vietnam’, A paper presented at the 10th Asian Planning Schools Association Conference, Ahmedabad, India, November 24-26. Kong, L. (1997) ‘A ‘new’ cultural geography? Debates about inventions and reinvention’, Scottish Geographical Magazine, 113(3): 177–185. Kusno, A. (2000) Behind the postcolonial: Architecture, urban space and political culture in Indonesia, New York: Routledge. ——— (2010) The appearances of memory: Mnemonic practices of architecture and urban form in Indonesia, New York: Routledge. Liyanage, N. (2016) Behind the curtains of Pola: Creating and negotiating local markets in Sri Lanka, Master’s Thesis, Ball State University, Muncie, IN. Liyanage, N. and Perera, N. (2016) ‘People’s neighborhood center: Handiya in Sri Lanka’, in N. Perera (ed.) People’s spaces: Coping, familiarizing, creating, New York: Routledge, 194–216. Lwin, M. M. (2013) ‘Afterword’, in M. M. Lwin eds. 30 heritage buildings of Yangon: Inside the city that captured time, Yangon: Association of Myanmar Architects, 152–153. Missingham, B. (2010) ‘The village of the poor confronts the state: A geography protest in the assembly of poor’, Urban Studies, 47(May): 1165–1177. Mitchell, T. (1991) Colonizing Egypt, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. New Urbanism (2019) Website of New Urbanism. [online]. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_ Urbanism (accessed 5 April 2019). Noobanjong, K. (2013) ‘Rajadamnoen avenue: Thailand’s transformative path towards modern polity’, in N. Perera and W. S. Tang (eds) Transforming Asian cities: Intellectual impasse, Asianizing space, and emerging translocalities, New York: Routledge, 33–50. Perera, N. (1999) Decolonizing Ceylon: Colonialism, nationalism, and the politics of space in Sri Lanka, New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

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Nihal Perera ——— (ed.) (2016) People’s spaces: Coping, familiarizing, creating, New York: Routledge. Perera, N. and Habarakada, S. (2016) ‘From resisting to familiarizing impositions: Living in the World Heritage site at Galle Fort’, in N. Perera (ed.) People’s spaces: Coping, familiarizing, creating, New York: Routledge, 82–101. Perera, N. and Kc, G. (2016) ‘Spaces of modernity: Daanchi between vernacular and modern’, in N. Perera (ed.) People’s spaces: Coping, familiarizing, creating, New York: Routledge, 158–174. Perera, N. and Tang, W. S. (2013) Transforming Asian cities: Intellectual impasse, Asianizing space, and emerging translocalities, New York: Routledge. Roseneau, J. N. (1990) Turbulence in world politics: A theory of change and continuity, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Said, E. W. (2004) [1978] Orientalism, New York: Vintage Books. Wang, H. J. (2013) ‘An unexpected urban renewal practice: The emergence of a multicultural historic plaza in Taipei’, in N. Perera and W. S. Tang (eds) Transforming Asian cities: Intellectual impasse, Asianizing space, and emerging translocalities, New York: Routledge, 65–77. Yeoh, B. (1996) Contesting space: Power relations and the urban built environment in colonial Singapore, Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press.

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PART II

Mapping tangible urban heritage

7 EVOLUTION AND REPERCUSSIONS OF THE HERITAGE DESIGNATION PROCESS IN SINDH, PAKISTAN Lessons from Karachi and Shikarpur Anila Naeem

Introduction The complexities of identification and recognition of heritage assets for urban centres or towns of historic importance can be undertaken through a well formulated listing criterion that helps understand values and justification for heritage protection. Combined with a well-defined sequence of surveying, mapping and inventory management it can ideally lead to an efficient heritage safeguarding programme. This, however, requires a profound support system within the administrative/management machinery of historic cities. For over two decades, the Sindh Cultural Heritage Preservation Act (SCHPA) 1994 – key legislation for heritage protection within the province of Sindh, Pakistan – provided a legal base for heritage protection; with over 1600 enlisted properties in Karachi, 1200 in Shikarpur and a few more hundreds in various other cities. An underlying objective of these heritage enlistments was to enact a cooperative arrangement between the government and property owners, facilitating the scientific management and appropriate conservation of heritage properties. Evidences, however, show that, despite a welldeveloped heritage inventory, the outcomes of the listing process did not achieve desirable results. Analysing the cases of Karachi and Shikarpur, the research presented in this chapter seeks to identify the gaps that have led to ineffective implementation of heritage law, examining the differing viewpoint of various stakeholders and challenges faced by contending parties. It further elaborates on identifying directions for problem resolution and mitigation.

Heritage designation in Sindh: the beginnings The SCHPA 1994 may be considered as a turning point in identification and recognition of culturally, historically and architecturally significant properties/sites in the province of Sindh. It led to the process of heritage enlistments beyond monument-centric notifications practiced under the Antiquities Act 1975 at a national level. The SCHPA 1994 established precedence for provincial level legislation

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formulated to protect heritage other than just landmarks or monuments. Prior to this, only the Punjab Special (Premises) Ordinance 1985 was in place giving protection to a couple of hundred landmark monuments across Punjab, including around 15 per cent representing colonial period urban development of Lahore (Naeem 2013a). In Sindh, following the enactment of SCHPA 1994, the process of extensive heritage listings started in Karachi, the first round of which happened in 1995–97 covering around six hundred properties, and has since extended through the years (2011–18) to include hundreds of more historic structures identified for official designation as protected heritage. This involved inclusion of not only landmark heritage sites within city centres belonging to municipalities, or other national or provincial institutions/departments, but also several hundreds of private properties owned by individuals or various trusts. The enlistment process in Karachi and Shikarpur has particularly been most comprehensive, based on systematic mapping and an inventory compilation process that offered immense possibilities to advance into another level of heritage management and monitoring (Naeem 2013a). However, due to lacking professional capacities and a will to prioritize heritage protection over other commercial gains, the effectiveness of existing heritage law remains insignificant. In the absence of supportive mechanisms, neither the implementation of law has been rigorous; nor is the willing acceptance for heritage designation among stakeholders gained. The dilemma of heritage remains in lacking administrative and regulatory support. Forces negating the essence of heritage protection often succeed in pushing the process back to shaky grounds, derailing any progressive advancement.1 The enlistments of the 1990s followed identification through random spot listings, creating a series of discrepancies and inconsistencies in the decision-making process. In 2006, a systematic mapping and inventory compilation methodology was developed and applied in Karachi (Naeem 2011a, 2011b) and Shikarpur (Naeem 2013b, 2017), which resulted in a comprehensive heritage mapping and database, including not just historic buildings, but also urban elements and open spaces for protected heritage designation. This involved an inductive approach having its base in historical/archival research combined with a compilation of empirical data through field surveys. The ‘criteria for listing’ included architectural, historical, environmental merits, along with locational importance and group values derived from the urban context, identifying the reasons for enlistment. Considered attributes for merit included external architectural features, plan typology, craftsmanship, construction materials/building technology, and cultural expressions or associations. Existing deficiencies of the system, particularly lacking information on historic urban environments, were compensated by additionally providing an analytical aspect so that the heritage inventories could serve as a tool for management and ease of implementation. The two important analytical outputs included ‘value-based grouping’ (allowing similar properties grouped together) and identification of ‘threat level’ on basis of correlation of data on present usage and physical condition to help prioritize financial support and urgency of conservation initiatives. The concerned department, however, had limitations of trained staff and thus failed to implement this approach in its full spirit.

Realities of the heritage designation process Response from heritage property owners A majority of heritage property owners resent the enlistment process and seem keen on opting for demolition and re-development. A primary reason is that the enlistment process ignored seeking their consent, and even after the forced enlistment no facilitation or benefits of notified status were offered. A common misconception among owners is that they cannot do any changes to their properties or sell them. Some even develop an attitude that since it is a heritage property, all responsibility for its maintenance now lies with the government. A reason for such misconceptions is the lack of initiatives for

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awareness and education on existing law and its jurisdictions, or a defined channel that provides proper guidance and facilitation to heritage owners. Those familiar with the procedural systems for undertaking desired changes suffer through mismanagement of the system by concerned departments. Prolonged delays on decisions or applications for required approvals to undertake restoration works frustrate the well-intending property owners, not to mention the financial losses they suffer due to indefinite delays, and often also due to underhand dealings on part of few officials. These shortcomings in the system leave owners, occupants, tenants and other stakeholders of heritage properties at a disadvantage and severely resenting their property’s heritage designation. Inapt administrative mechanisms leave the properties suffering due to lacking maintenance, vandalism, or defacing alterations through prevailing ad hoc approaches. Owners are unable to gain potential economic benefits, thus forcing them to opt for pursuing new construction. The small percentage of well-intending heritage owners face difficulties in acquiring appropriate technical or administrative support, thus end up rather frustrated and demoralized, completely losing faith in the system. To penetrate through this barrier of reluctance and mistrust among resident communities, a mechanism for participatory involvement needs to be developed that offers positive directions for potential gains through heritage conservation initiatives.

Deficiencies in management and monitoring process The disappointing state of apathy, befallen on historic areas in Pakistan, is to a large extent due to mismanagement and disregard of regulatory measures, as well as the un-concerned mannerism of officials and government departments that presently lack professional capacities to handle their responsibilities with technical expertise and efficiency. Consequently, to such non-committal attitudes the heritage protection initiative has unfortunately not gone beyond mere listings. There remains a onesided emphasis on control, which only imposes restrictions without offering any compensational perks to heritage property owners. Despite existing legislation and regulatory guidelines for heritage protection, ground realities reflect on rampant violations in practice. Illegal demolitions, unauthorized constructions, defacing alterations, obscuring hoardings and signage, etc. are a commonly prevailing norm. Even though the existing legislation assigns penalties for such violations, strict implementation of these is not followed, either due to administrative loopholes or due to exercise of influential connections. Identified lapses in the monitoring process include a dearth of competent professionals and technically trained support staff. Above all, the will to implement the mandate of heritage protection in an assertive manner is lacking – where overlaps in jurisdiction and powers for decision making are mutually agreed upon between various actors of the state machinery, with a commitment for support. Loopholes within an existing system allow the conniving parties to successfully work their way through and achieve their maligned objectives. Identified areas of conflict and existing ambiguities require closer co-ordination and co-operation between relevant government departments. To address these gaps, it is also important to understand the issues of heritage property owners and devise ways for their facilitation and encouragement towards heritage conservation options. Parallel to regulatory and monitoring systems, there is also a dire need for capacity building of responsible staff and officers. Presently the Culture Department of the Government of Sindh (GoS) holds the primary responsibility for implementation of heritage law. However, their staff lack technical know-how for heritage conservation. It is thus essential that a technical wing is established that provides advice and guidance to heritage owners. The department and its progressive development also get affected due to frequent transfers and rotational appointments of officers, including Secretary Culture, Section Officers, etc., due to which a continuity of work and its steady progress gets affected that slows down the process till the new appointee settles down and takes a grasp on the work.

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Issues of heritage property stakeholders The historic quarters have a range of issues pertaining not only to individual properties but also involving larger environmental and area-level complexities that require a conscious approach for resolution and understanding to establish their interconnected linkages and deal with them accordingly. The primary issues of stakeholders at the two defined levels are discussed as follows:

Individual property level At individual property level a complex mix of issues requiring attention include the authentication and validation of ownership deeds, occupancy rights, and physical upkeep. Multiple ownership due to division of inheritance also adversely affects properties through incoherent alterations on different subdivisions. Similarly, the properties occupied on a goodwill2 basis suffer from lack of maintenance, as the generated revenue is insufficient for return investments on longevity and stability of structures. On the other hand, users without complete ownership rights lack interest in spending on their regular and periodic upkeep. The common issues recurring in most listed heritage properties can be broadly classified into five categories: usage and space utilization, ownership and occupancy, maintenance and repair, delisting and demolitions, and plot subdivisions. These are discussed in detail below. i.

Usage and space utilization

Most historic areas were originally planned for mixed land use, commonly having commercial activities at ground level (generally shops at forefront and warehousing or storage on the back side) and residential apartments on upper floors. Even institutional activities were placed within, keeping convenience of users in mind. Some areas, particularly the Central Business District (CBD), had offices and other commercial usage on upper floors as well. Beyond the clearly defined commercial zones, purely residential activity prevailed at all floor levels. These original well-balanced usage patterns have drastically changed in many areas due to excessive commercialization, resulting in extensive infiltration of warehousing into upper floors. The inappropriateness of warehousing and storage is evident from commonly occurring structural failures and damages due to extensive dead loads and accidental fires or other safety hazards, particularly in case of chemical storage. The accessibility to upper floors through narrow staircases also makes these historic structures difficult to use for bulk loading/unloading activity of warehousing. The overall degeneration of historic areas in overly commercialized zones has also resulted in a declined residential usage in these pockets where a high percentage of properties have underutilized, or vacant upper storeys, left in a state of disrepair. Lack of administrative controls on land-use changes has severely disturbed the original character of historic areas. Better utilization of upper floors can be sought through exploring possibilities of reviving residential usage in historic quarters. Abandonment leading to collapse is seemingly an intentional strategy for achieving a much-desired structural collapse or inclusion in the Sindh Building Control Authority’s (SBCA) ‘Dangerous Buildings’ list,3 opening a way for possible demolition and new construction, when de-listing appeals are not approved (Figure 7.1). A recent change-maker for the growing desire to demolish and build anew is the Sindh High Density Development Board Act 2010, allowing high-rise constructions even within the historic core of the city. This has tremendously disturbed the original Floor Area Ratios (FAR) of historic areas where originally commercial plots remained within 1:4.5 up to 1:6, and commercialresidential properties were allowed only up to 1:4. Prior to the passing of this Act, the quantum of unutilized floor area remained not too high from what was already availed, hence the possibility to convince heritage property owners to explore options of additions and extensions retaining the old structures still prevailed. Now, the only way to achieve such extensively increased FARs is through

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Figure 7.1 Ather Manson. (a) Ather Mansion remained abandoned for many years during which the owner made various attempts for its delisting. (b) In January 2019, the final demolition of Ather Mansion was undertaken in broad daylight, even though the NOC (‘no objection certificate’) from authorities was never taken. Sources: (a) HC-DAPNED; (b) Anila Naeem

demolitions, and new constructions designed on optimum utilization going up to sixty storeys and even beyond. The Transferable Development Rights (TDR) existed in SBCAs Building and Town Planning Regulations 2002 have also been deleted from its later revisions, leaving no possibility of a convincing bargain with heritage property owners. A salient feature of historic properties was their ‘open courtyards’ that provide a respite from the chaos and trauma of the street, playing an important role in the spatial quality of these areas. These courtyards traditionally allowed room for activities to take place without disturbing the traffic and circulation flow on the street. Particularly in commercial areas, they provide an opportunity for taking

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the loading and unloading activity of wholesale market goods and warehouses inside their own premises and providing sufficient parking for residents. This functional aspect of the courtyards is not very consciously managed. At present, many of these courtyards are not utilized to their optimum potential. Excessive encroachment of these open spaces with building extensions or ad-hoc structures has disturbed the equilibrium of original spaces’ usage. A few remaining open courtyards (in few cases of substantially good proportions) still hold immense potential for developing into multilevel and multifunction open spaces and green lungs of the historic city centre. ii.

Ownership and occupancy

The complexities of property ownership and occupancy rights are quite complicated, ranging from private single or multiple owners to various trust-managed properties. The occupancy terms are predominantly on a goodwill basis (pugree system); i.e. based on ‘word of honour’ which does not hold any legal standing in Pakistan, however, prevailing as the most common system of occupancy for a majority of historic properties. Occupants indicate satisfaction with this system as it allows them to retain residence or business in the heart of city centre at a negligible price. The property owner, after having gained a one-time benefit of receiving the handsome amount of goodwill money, does not gain enough monthly returns, thus in the long run loses interest in its regular maintenance. The occupancy rights based on the pugree system adversely affect the property because practically neither the owner nor the occupant or tenant exercises complete authority on the property. However, the tenant enjoys a greater freedom of control, particularly for change of possession, which can be done at the discretion of the tenant. On the other hand, if the property owner changes through inheritance, etc. the new owner is under obligation to accept the property along with its existing pugree tenants. Many listed heritage properties have disputed status of tenancy, awaiting settlement of their long pending cases from the court.4 The ills of the system have an obvious negative impact on the physical state of heritage buildings, leading to the present dilapidated state of affairs. The owners, not generating enough revenue and economic benefits in line with current market rates, are unable to spend on the regular upkeep of their property. The occupants, on the other hand, do not want to invest much in the maintenance and repairs as they do not have the legal ownership or tenancy rights. Only a few cases, where with mutual consent the switching over to standard owner-tenant agreement is successfully achieved, better maintained property conditions can be witnessed. The apparent difference in upkeep of these few properly rented properties, and the properties lived in by their owners themselves, as compared to those given out on pugree system, provide sufficient evidence for this being a primary root cause of the decaying historic fabric. Efforts should be made to either eradicate or officially abolish this system, enforcing a change-over to standard rental agreements or making legislative reforms that protect the interest of both parties and have a positive impact on the properties. For those willing to switch over, facilitation for a quicker settlement in obtaining ‘fair rent’ or ownership transfer should be offered by the concerned government departments. Those not willing to let go of the system, must through the law be forced to do so. The prevailing system needs to be closely studied to identify the existing sub-categories in pugree system transactions, and for each category a convenient procedure of change over should to be developed, which does justice to the interest of both parties. iii. Maintenance and repairs The present state of conservation for listed heritage properties indicates a lack of regular maintenance. Repairs are undertaken only when urgent and unavoidable, hence usually carried out in an ad-hoc manner without seeking a NOC (‘no objection certificate’) from concerned authorities. Repairs

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undertaken often result in defacing or damaging the original character of listed properties. These have also resulted in incidents of partial collapse (Figure 7.2) due to extensively increased dead loads5 as well as careless removal of structural walls. Common alterations broadly fall into three categories: •

haphazard additions or removals: includes addition of extra floor/s or room/s above or adjacent to existing structure; additional new blocks on open spaces of the lot; demolition of some portions of the original structure; addition of toilets or other service spaces, etc.

Figure 7.2 Calcutta Building; (a) Calcutta Building included in SBCA list of Dangerous Buildings as seen in 2011; (b) In March 2018, a portion of Calcutta Building collapsed displacing several families. By August 2019, the building was demolished and replaced with a new six-storey structure. Source: HC-DAPNED

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• •

change of original materials: includes replacement of terracotta roof tiles with metal sheets; replacement of original flooring with new materials; cladding of external or internal walls; replacement of wooden door/window shutters with aluminium frames and large glazing, etc. change in original internal layout: includes subdivision of internal spaces; removal of original walls; addition of partition walls; closing of door and window openings; covering of courtyard with roof slab; addition of new staircases, etc.

In properties having multiple ownerships or occupants, the maintenance and repairs are also not consistent for overall building, reflecting on the lack of regulatory control by authorities. Strict measures for control of these are required, with proper guidelines or principles to ensure that the initiatives of individuals remain in coherence with the overall urban environment. Institutional support and technical guidance to heritage property owners should be made available to ensure that damaging and inappropriate alterations are not undertaken. iv. Delisting and demolitions A common reaction of property owners towards heritage notification is to attempt for their delisting, as the heritage law gives provision for an appeal against the notification within a limited time. Most appeals are either turned down by the Heritage Advisory Committee after review; or, more recently, compromise decisions are taken binding the owner to maintain the outer shell and allowing new construction at the back keeping only the protected road-facing façade/s intact in their original condition and incorporated in the new design. This latter decision is usually taken where the inner fabric of property is already in a high state of dilapidation – either partially or completely gutted from inside, with only the façades remaining intact. In many cases, the high degree of deterioration is steered through intentional negligence and purposeful vandalism on part of the owner, stretching over a prolonged period to make way for inclusion of property in SBCA’s Dangerous Buildings List. This opens another channel for acquiring demolition permits, as the committee that declares dangerous buildings acts independently. Thus, even if the de-listing appeal is rejected by the Heritage Advisory Committee, the threat of possible demolition prevails through this channel. Seeking demolition is a popularly sought-after line of action by heritage property owners. The usual approach adopted is to first apply for de-listing and in the meanwhile get the property notified as ‘dangerous’ by SBCA. Cases have been noted where de-listing appeals were clearly rejected, yet inclusion in the Dangerous Buildings List led to demolition and eventually new construction. A study of 52 Dangerous Heritage Buildings6 undertaken by HC-DAPNED in 2017–18 revealed some interesting findings: around 40 per cent of the buildings in the list were categorized as being in stable or good condition, mostly requiring only major or minor repairs of damaged or dilapidated materials. Whereas, 38 per cent were identified as being not stable and susceptible to failure due to lacking maintenance or timely repairs of partial failures, and extensive alterations damaging the original structural system. Even this latter category was recommended as repairable with various structural strengthening interventions and repairs, to make them safe for habitation. From the remaining 21 per cent, around 11 per cent were already demolished and another 10 per cent were not accessible, thus could not be accessed for stability, yet seemed to be in stable condition from the outside (HC-DAPNED & Sadaf Fatima Structural Engineers 2018). Lapses in regulatory systems have led to a substantial number of listed properties having undergone partial or complete demolitions, with or without acquiring required approvals or authorized permissions. Under the shadow of weak monitoring systems, several illegal demolitions have also been attempted, out-rightly disregarding the law. Some of these went through successfully; however, those that caught the eye of the media or concerned citizen groups7 have caused the sites to be left abandoned and remaining in jeopardy for indefinite periods (Figure 7.3).

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Figure 7.3 The residence of Jufel Hurst School’s founder and Principal within the school complex was bulldozed in 2016 by the ‘builders’ mafia’; however, resistance from school alumni and neighbourhood residents succeeded getting a case filed against this act of illegal demolition. By the end of 2019, there was not much progress in this case. Source: Marvi Mazhar

v.

Plot subdivisions

Besides de-listing and/or getting the property declared as dangerous, another approach is through plot sub-division which creates the provision for retaining only a small portion of heritage property – mostly its frontage exposed to the street. Approval for new construction is obtained for the newly allotted plot number of the subdivided portions. The authority responsible for decisions on plot subdivisions is the Revenue Department’s Land Section. Since this department takes decisions independently without any consultation with the Culture Department or the building control authority, owners just obtain a ‘settlement document’ and show it to SBCA along with property papers. Based on that document, approval of NOC for new construction on subdivision plots is then issued. It is essential that decisions on plot sub-division go through a process of checks in-built within the administrative frameworks to ensure that listed heritage properties are not allowed such damaging fragmentation. Action against officials or individuals involved in such processes in the form of severe penalties is essential. Local print media should also play a role in encouraging and inviting communities or individuals to act against such violations taking place in their neighbourhoods.

Environmental level The environmental degradation of historic areas has a direct relationship with the disorganized activities taking place at the street level and the chaos created by years of ad-hoc and unregulated developments. The experience of occasional visitors to these places is often traumatic and un-pleasurable; on the

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contrary, people having regular associations express satisfying comfort, familiarity and a sense of belonging. These contrasting experiences are in response to the two levels of engagement – in the passing based on visual senses and deeper association based on more leisurely absorption or appreciation of intricacies offered by the historic environment. The callous governance has encouraged informal sector in developing a stronghold on management controls of street occupancy rights, and a dominance of clamorous race for advertisements with businesses competing for visibility result in the loss of visual and experiential pleasures that urban environments historically offered to visitors. The four primary areas identified as necessary to address for achieving any environmental level uplift of the area include infrastructure and services, street space management, street profiles and façades, and the imbalanced activity pattern. The complexity of these issues is in dealing with various organizations responsible for different services. i.

Infrastructure and services

Over densification and a lack of regular maintenance and management has led to the collapse of overall infrastructure and services within historic areas. Common complaints include: dysfunctional or insufficient water supply, clogged sewerage lines, problems in electric supply lines, telecommunication connections, and the like. Exposed electrical and phone wiring suspended across streets or dangling along building frontages that visually disfigure façades is a common occurrence. Lack of sufficient parking spaces and almost non-existent public toilet facilities are another deterring factor of environmental degradation. For status analysis and upgrade of shortcomings in existing infrastructure, the collaborative involvement of different departments/organizations is crucial. This is presently experimented through the Karachi Neighbourhood Improvement Project (KNIP)8 undertaken by the Project Implementation Unit (PIU), GoS through finances from the World Bank. Being executed in only a small segment of Karachi’s historic area, the project has a potential to serve as a replicable model based on community driven initiative or public-private partnership. ii.

Street space management

Mapping of street activities in historic areas reflects conflicts and obstructions created through an informally claimed right of way and legitimized encroachments, hampering the flow of pedestrian and vehicular traffic. The parked vehicles, trolleys, pushcarts, plus the street vendors all have gained claim to encroached space, justifying their presence on grounds of long-term associations and support through informal means. These informal activities having evolved in response to the demand and contributing to the functional needs of local community are now an integral part of the areas’ character. There remains a need to resolve the conflicts created in the official rights of way – primarily obstruction to vehicular traffic flow and pedestrian passages. Negotiations for re-organization can help minimize the existing conflict in the right of way, keeping various interests intact and incorporating them within the street management system, thus easing out stresses of all users. A possibility to explore is a better space management of side streets or underutilized back-streets, relieving the pressure from main roads. New high-rise structures add to the street chaos, through elimination of courtyard or any other form of loading and unloading area incorporated in the new scheme. Such activities spill out on to the street creating a conflict with regular traffic flow. Owners need to be made aware of the possibilities that could help them develop viable options for optimum use of courtyards and generate better revenue, and in turn facilitate in easing out the stresses on the street.

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iii. Street profiles/façades Façades are an important contributor to environmental quality as they form the most impactful visual experience holding potential for transforming the ambiance of any place. Despite existing SBCA (previously KBCA) regulations and clauses in the Sindh Cultural Heritage Preservation Act enforcing prevention of disfiguring hoardings and disproportionate signage, the building frontages, particularly at ground floor or street level, are completely obscured from vision presenting a picture of incoherence and disorderly display. In many areas, even the footpaths are blocked due to placement of advertisement billboards and display of items on sale (Figure 7.4). The façades of upper floors also suffer from lacking maintenance: broken window panes and shutters, damaged trellis and timber works, original openings sealed with unsightly block masonry or boards, decades of accumulating dirt and black crust blemishing the stone details, air conditioning units haphazardly jutting out of windows and walls, series

Figure 7.4 Out of scale hoardings and signage disfigure the building façades, whereas street vendors and shop displays encroach on footpaths. Source: Anila Naeem

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of tangled wires chaotically weaving through the delicate façade details, and the deliberate vandalism of timber carvings and balcony details. These are a common sight. An extensive anti-encroachment drive launched on the orders of the Supreme Court in November 2018 resulted in clearing up many street façades in the historic areas. However, the approach lacked sensitivity towards heritage fabric; historic façades were damaged in the process, breaking apart their architectural features and elements, while the hoardings or boards fastened to them were pulled down using heavy machinery (Figure 7.5). An appropriate approach to such a campaign for environmental uplift could have been through advocacy and convincing dialogue with stakeholders – helping them realize that an uplift of the physical environment directed towards creating visually appealing streetscape could positively impact the economy through enhanced clientele and pleasurable work surroundings. Means of ‘visual imagery’ could effectively be employed for gaining proactive community support and participation. Clauses in existing regulations with standard guidelines for signage and hoardings should be adopted and enforced for implementation. iv. Imbalanced activity pattern A common activity pattern in commercial areas involves the day-time business picking up momentum by late morning and reaching its peak through afternoon and gradually dying out towards late evening.

Figure 7.5 The anti-encroachment drive in November 2018 uncovered many interesting details of historic façades, however some building elements also got damaged due to use of heavy machinery for removal of advertisement hoardings. Source: Anila Naeem

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Even early morning hours witness a clamour of some activities, such as auction of wholesale products. As night time settles in, these areas become abandoned posing a degree of security threat for occasional passers-by and the small percentage of resident community in the vicinity. The predominant wholesaling activity and its excessive expansion over the years has been detrimental to the urban fabric and overall environmental quality, driving out other activities that balanced off pressures of commercialization. The lost balance of activities needs to be regained by widening the spectrum of commercial activities from just wholesale business to include retail shops, neighbourhood grocery stores, and few recreational outlets such as eating facilities, internet cafés or tea shops that remain open till late night. Other activities, such as the declined residential component, can also be re-injected into vacant spaces on upper floors, introducing the much-needed bachelor residences, youth hostels, or motels. Policies of land-use change must address complexities of multifaceted stakeholder groups, which may prove beneficial for regaining more balanced activity patterns.

Directions for possible mitigation and problem resolution Historic areas largely suffer from an overall environmental degeneration and declined urban fabric. To regain the charisma of such places the situation needs to be tackled at two distinct levels: environmental and individual property. Two possible means for achieving tangible progress in this regard is to first attempt street re-organization through community support, and secondly facilitate restorations through technical and financial support. It is important to understand the functional dynamics of active commercial and residential historic cores of cities, including various stakeholders and role-players such as, owners, users, administrators, decision makers and managers from formal and informal sectors. Uplift of streetscapes could include interventions for re-organizing traffic flow and pedestrian footpaths, initiating a dialogue with numerous street vendors who are the main cause of traffic disruptions but in high demand as a primary need of the area residents as well as regular commuters. For individual properties, it is necessary to prepare inventories and databases serving as a primary tool for developing management mechanisms as well, playing an important role for information dissemination and participatory community involvement. For any real change, things need to be taken beyond mere listing notifications and invest in strategies that facilitate heritage owners in gaining some benefits from the enlistment process. Grants, awards, rebates, and loans for repairs and restorations, and technical support and guidance for economically viable usages can be possible incentives to encourage willing participation from heritage property owners for heritage conservation.

Incentives for heritage property owners A major cause for the failure of conservation efforts in Karachi and other cities of Sindh is the lack of available technical support and the absence of proper incentives offered to listed heritage property owners to encourage them in taking initiatives for maintenance, management and protection of their properties, so that these could continue to contribute as an important asset of the city, portraying its historic, socio-economic and cultural developments. The constraints imposed on heritage owners or other properties in conservation areas, such as ‘denial of full development value of site’ or restricted freedom for implementation of any desired changes or alterations gives rise to financial loss or economic burdens on owners. To compensate for these apparent losses, the government, in parallel to enlistment activities, must introduce incentives and programmes that encourage private owners to willingly participate in the heritage conservation process and at the same time gain economic benefits. Diverse arrays of such financial aids, to compensate any shortfalls for owners, are offered by municipalities and local governments internationally to support sustenance of conservation activities without monetary damage to heritage property owners. Some

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proposed directions for the GoS’s Department of Culture, in collaboration with other concerned departments/organizations responsible for heritage management in Sindh, include three principle categories; subsidies (grants/aids), loans (low interest or interest free) and tax relief (VAT/property tax).

Property tax waiver/relief The only indication of tax benefit offered to heritage property owners is limited to non-commercial properties given protection under the Sindh Cultural Heritage Protection Act 1994, exempting them of ‘property taxes’ under section 4(h) of the Sindh Urban Immovable Property Tax Act 1958; a clause proposed to be added to the act through Sindh Finance Ordinance 2001. This, however, is not common knowledge and apparently not implemented. Such incentives need to be further enhanced by offering some percentage of relief to commercial properties as well, forming the larger percentage of enlisted properties. Request for incorporation of these amendments in legislation should be forwarded by the Culture Department to the Law Department. Tax waivers and subsidies related to services can also be negotiated with relevant service providers such as Water and Sewerage Board, Electric Supply Corporation, Land Revenue Department, etc.

Transfer of development rights The concept of transfer of development rights (TDR) is a compensational scheme successfully practiced in several countries. It facilitates the sale, transfer or leasing of built area lost due to the need to preserve existing heritage structures by providing owners the authority to sell their unutilized floor area of allowed ratio (FAR) to a developer in another area giving them possibility to build additional space in their development scheme, over and above what is permissible within standard regulations. The Karachi Building and Town Planning Regulations 2002, a revised version of 1979 regulations, incorporated the concept of ‘transferable development rights’ through its section 15–3.2. This clause was, however, removed through amendments in 2005 and 2008, excluding all details mentioned in its four subsections and limiting the option for utilization of unused FAR by allowing construction on available open spaces around heritage buildings within the same property limits. This whimsical change has negative implications on the original setting of historic structures and their surroundings. Concerned authorities should be made to revert to the 2002 version of Building and Town Planning Regulations, whose jurisdiction extends to the entire Sindh.

Special grants/loans For repairs, renovation and restoration of heritage properties at favourable rates of interest and period should be introduced through existing public sector financing institutions such the House Building Finance Corporation (HBFC), the National Bank of Pakistan, and other similar organizations. The conditions for such loans should be developed in consultation with the technical committee for heritage so that the repairs and renovations undertaken should be in line with accepted principles of heritage conservation. Similar programmes for grants and loans to support conservation activities should also be developed through public-private partnerships involving private sector organizations or multinationals for required financial support. These organizations in turn can be offered tax waivers on the income donated for heritage conservation activities. Governmental patronage through ‘revolving funds’ and ‘endowment funds’ should also be made available for heritage properties in disuse encouraging agencies or institutions wishing to undertake rehabilitation projects to carry out restorations and make use of these properties for economically viable purposes.

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Façade easements This is also a useful concept where part of the property (such as the façade) is taken under public ownership through an ‘easement agreement’ signed by the owner, allowing maintenance and repairs of their property’s façade through sponsorships or easement donations. This particularly works well in areas with officially recognized contiguous heritage streetscapes. The sponsorship for such easements can be achieved through public-private partnership where individuals or organizations are approached to donate for the upkeep of the historic façades. The Culture Department should develop a working module for such easement agreements, approach all heritage property owners to sign these agreements, and identify possible donors and sponsors to contribute towards maintenance of façades for which owners have signed the easement agreement.

Technical support and advice to heritage owners The most disturbing aspect of heritage monitoring at present is the inappropriate treatment of heritage property owners by government departments. There is an urgent need to ensure transparency and smooth processing of NOC applications for restoration, renovation or rehabilitation projects. The indefinite delays by Culture Department in processing of such applications are a primary cause of frustration among heritage property owners. This issue can be addressed by the concerned government departments through following corrective measures: •

• •

•

•

•

Developing an ‘online portal’ for submission of applications and any other objections or complaints regarding listed heritage, within the website of Culture Department, GoS. This should also be supported by a ‘public service counter’ where complaints of the historic property owners are received and dealt with immediately. The process of receiving the applications should be made online, so that the staff are made accountable for any delays in processing of specific files. Strong liaison between SBCA and the Culture Department should be established to facilitate the process of NOCs for proposed changes – either additions or alterations in original fabric. Establishment of field offices in all historic quarters/cities to ensure effective monitoring of heritage properties, providing heritage owners free advice and guidance on matters related to the technical aspects of management and maintenance. Community volunteers can also be engaged in this process and given basic training to deal with the primary issues at their own community level. Establishment of a ‘Heritage Conservation Cell’ supported by government funding that appoints trained professionals to conduct public forums and awareness programmes and develop workable solutions to address problems faced by heritage properties. This unit should have the capacity to provide technical guidance and advice for developing economically viable options for heritage properties. The Culture Department should maintain a pre-qualified panel of conservation consultants and legal advisors to whom property owners may be directed to seek professional assistance and advice at subsidized professional fees. These professionals should in turn be compensated for their time through an honorarium provided from government funds. Memorandum of Understanding or working contract can be signed between the appointed professionals/institutions and the Culture Department for collaborative support. A series of information leaflets and brochures can be developed and disseminated among heritage owners, including topics such as: ‘basic guidelines on procedures and processes for heritage property management and maintenance’; ‘benefits of traditional materials and historic constructions – their climatic adaptability and efficiency’; ‘role of courtyards as lungs of our choking city centres’;

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and ‘principles of conservation and restoration – a guide to safeguard Karachi’s historic buildings’. These can even be compiled as a ‘comprehensive technical manual’ or a ‘guide to appropriate interventions – do’s and don’ts’, providing basic directions for better maintenance and restoration and tips for common repairs or alterations essential for changing needs of users. These can be developed using bilingual format taking support of pictorial and graphic illustrations for easier understanding and comprehension of users.

Motivational initiatives – advocacy and awareness building Cultural properties have a ‘public and social ownership’ besides their rightful legal ownership. This forms an important aspect of the integrated conservation planning approach practiced internationally and must be encouraged through public participation inviting opinions from different segments of community. These voices should not only be heard and appreciated, but also incorporated in policy making. An important objective of public participation is to inculcate awareness and pride among stakeholders regarding the reason for heritage designation and their obligations and responsibilities to seek support from those directly affected. Initiatives towards developing such programmes for public help reinstate the significance and importance of heritage assets of cities, both at local and national level. Programmes with varying levels of professional or public interest could include seminars, conferences, workshops inviting an interdisciplinary exchange of knowledge and information sharing between researchers and the community at large, introductory presentations on history and background of the city at local schools and colleges, and open house debates inviting community participation on heritage issues including discussions on the listings and their monitoring process. Communities can also be encouraged to form active ‘heritage watch’ groups that campaign and raise petitions against illegal acts of vandalism or demolition of listed heritage properties. This is where heritage inventories can act as an instrumental tool through which information on heritage designations becomes common knowledge.

Competitive schemes and sponsored events Sponsored programmes or events such as the installation of ‘heritage plaques’ or ‘commemorative plaques’ on listed properties, organization of heritage walks and tours, street festivals at heritage locations, heritage art or photography competitions and exhibitions, heritage week celebrations, and the like organized by municipalities or the Culture Department can be effective ways for raising public awareness. Heritage competitions and awards on an annual or biennial basis can also be instrumental in encouraging owners or heritage professionals to take up self-initiated participation. These could be organized under the umbrella of professional bodies like the Institute of Architects, Pakistan (IAP) or the Pakistan Council of Architects and Town Planners (PCATP) or by the municipality or city government and awarded to best practices in conservation and heritage management giving recognition to efforts made in accordance with established standards. A working committee comprising representatives from the Culture Department, Sindh Building Control Authority, House Building Finance Corporation, Revenue Department, and Law Department should be appointed to work in collaboration with the Technical sub-committee for further developing the methods for practical applicability of the above suggestions.

Conclusion The plight of heritage conservation in developing countries can gain momentum only if conservation is appropriately rationalized in connection with economic sustenance, reaping direct benefits for associated communities. Unless the planning and development processes integrate the mandate of heritage

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preservation within their policies and strategies, it is unlikely that any positive change will ever happen. To seek transformation of Karachi back to its ‘former glory’, the GoS at the directive of the Court initiated a brainstorming session in February 2019 with professionals and planning experts where the issue of city’s heritage was discussed at length. Among many other recommendations on various aspects of urban planning, some radical recommendations were put forward for consideration. These included the proposal to establish ‘Karachi Heritage District Authority’ and demarcation of Heritage District boundaries within which the regulations would strictly remain sensitive to the cause of heritage preservation, disallowing the application of High-Density Act 2010 within its limits. Unless such drastic measures are taken to relieve the city’s historic core from pressures of commercialization and uncontrolled development leading to extensively increased high densities, it is unlikely that the cause of heritage preservation will make any successful progress. Developments on similar lines for the Walled City of Lahore have started to show positive signs of success and can bring in similar results in Karachi as well.

Notes 1 An important case that had significantly damaging effect on heritage enlistment process in Sindh is that of a Constitutional Petition (nos D-2386/2011, D-315/2012, D-3323/2012, D-3443/2013, D-1428/2015, D-5679/2016, D-1047/2017, D-1048/2017 and D-1092/2017) filed in the High Court of Sindh, Karachi, jointly by owners of Hotel Metropole and eight other highly influential property investors/individuals whose properties were included in heritage notifications. Respondents in the case included the Government of Sindh (GoS) – Heritage Advisory Committee, Sindh Building Control Authority (SBCA) and City District Government Karachi (CDGK). They drastically failed in presenting a strong and convincing defence in explaining/justifying the methodology adopted for enlistment, resulting in a sweeping judgment for revisiting the entire listing process. The judgment reflects many factual details being overlooked, perhaps due to shortcomings of relevant departments in providing sufficient evidence or reference documents in time to the honourable court, in their defence. As a result, resurveys were conducted by the Culture Department and new notifications were hastily issued in 2018. The staff undertaking this work did not have technical training for such works; thus, accurate and proper inventory documents are not maintained or available as yet for public scrutiny, lacking transparency and causing many confusions and ambiguities. While in process of re-notification, a significant number of owners took advantage of the situation proceeding with demolition of their property. 2 The ‘goodwill’ system, locally known as ‘pugree’, can be defined as an interest-free security deposit given to landlords which is refundable at the expiry of the lease term. The landlord retains ownership of the property; however, the tenant gets the right to live there for as many years as they want, giving them de-facto lifetime tenancy rights. The properties under pugree can change hands at the discretion of the tenant with the owner’s permission. When such a transaction happens, the new tenant pays off the pugree value to the old tenant and the owner gets only a small percentage (usually 10–15 per cent) to change the name of tenant on record. The monthly rent for such properties is extremely low; often amounting to only a few hundred rupees. The pugree system does not have any legal standing in Pakistan (Business Recorder 2011). The owner can proceed to evict the tenant by paying off the pugree money. 3 A list of ‘Dangerous Buildings’ is regularly published by SBCA prior to monsoon season. Over 100 heritage properties from Karachi, protected under SCHPA 1994 are presently included in the SBCA ‘List of Dangerous Buildings 2015–16’. Inclusion of any property in the list opens a way for the owners to obtain demolition permits, sometimes successfully bypassing the heritage committee, as the SBCA appointed committee for dangerous buildings works independently without any coordination with the Culture Department or its Heritage Advisory Committee. 4 According to a statement issued in 1991 by the Pakistan Law Commission, almost one-third of pending court cases are related to landlord-tenant disputes, which are settled in the light of existing rental control laws; i.e. the Sindh Rented Premises Ordinance 1979 (amended in 1980, 1984, 1986, and most recently in 2001) for the cases in Sindh. Often the cases take several years for a judgment due to the slacking judicial systems in place. During this period, the rents are deposited in the court depriving the owner even from that nominal income. 5 The partial collapse of Saifee Building in July 2016 and Calcutta Building in March 2018 brought to prominence the issues of arbitrary additions/alterations in historic structures done without any technical input or professional advice. Both cases, when investigated for reasons of collapse, pointed towards random alterations as a possible reason, where increased dead loads combined with lacking maintenance over a prolonged period eventually caused their partial collapse. For Calcutta Building several promises were made by GoS and Heritage

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Anila Naeem Foundation to help out the owners in restoration, however none of these materialized. The property was overlooked in 2018 re-notification process, as a result it was completely demolished and a ground plus six storey structure stands in its place since August 2019. 6 This study was conducted by HC-DAPNED on the request of the Culture Department to evaluate the physical condition of 52 listed heritage properties included in the list of SBCA’s ‘Dangerous Buildings’. Surveys of these properties were conducted in collaboration with structural consultants, based on visual evaluation of buildings’ existing condition. In some properties, access inside the premises was possible, whereas in others the observations remained limited to assessment from outside. 7 The case of Jufel Hurst School’s illegal demolition raised an immense hue and cry in the media through the school’s alumni, teachers and adjoining residential community. High level meetings were called, and legal action was taken against the ‘land grabbers mafia’ and builders involved. Even though decisions were passed that the reconstruction of demolished structure will be undertaken by the concerned government departments, the site remains unattended. It is also not evident if any penalties or punishment was enforced on the persons involved in the illegal demolition of this enlisted heritage property. 8 Conceptualized through a comprehensive city diagnostic study undertaken by the World Bank (World Bank Group 2018), KNIP was officially launched in 2018 for three areas of Karachi (Saddar, Korangi and Malir) to improve their liveability. One of these identified pockets is the Educational and Cultural Precinct in historic quarters of the city – starting from High Court Road at Arts Council junction and stretching up to the Pakistan Chowk. The mandate of this project includes upgrade of infrastructure, creation of pedestrian zones where cultural activities can be introduced, and provision of below-ground parking zones. The project, still in its first phase, raises many expectations for the area residents and other stakeholders. The environmental uplift anticipated through this project would have its repercussions on heritage properties in and around the project area. But having no provision within the project to address these, there is a danger that the aspect of heritage protection otherwise will be left to the mercy of emerging market forces.

References Business Recorder (2011) ‘Pagri system: Traditional rent arrangements and legal standing’, Recorder Report, [online]. December 16, 2011. Available at: https://fp.brecorder.com/2011/12/201112161262109/ (accessed 22 November 2018). HC-DAPNED and Sadaf Fatima Structural Engineers. (2018) ‘Condition assessment of heritage buildings – Karachi, declared as dangerous’, Unpublished report submitted to Department of Culture, Government of Sindh, June 2018. Naeem, A.. (2011a) ‘‘Inventory of historic places: A systematic method for their identification, evaluation and determining significance – Part I: Core data and inventory form’, NED Journal of Research in Architecture and Planning, 10(1): 1–23. ———. (2011b) ‘Inventory of historic places: A systematic method for their identification, evaluation and determining significance – Part II: Case studies’, NED Journal of Research in Architecture and Planning, 10(1): 24–34. ———. (2013a) ‘The conflict of ideologies and ambiguities in conservation policy: A legacy of shared built heritage in Pakistan’, in K. D. Silva and N-K. Chapagain (eds) Asian heritage management: Contexts, concerns and prospects, London: Routledge, 87–104. ———. (2013b) Shikarpoor: historic city, Sindh, Pakistan: Inventory and mapping of heritage properties – Vol. I & II, Karachi: Endowment Fund Trust for Preservation of the Heritage of Sindh. ———. (2017) Urban traditions and historic environments in Sindh: A fading legacy of Shikarpoor, Historic City, Amsterdam: The Amsterdam University Press. World Bank Group. (2018) Transforming Karachi into a liveable and competitive megacity: A city diagnostic and transformation strategy, Karachi: World Bank. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1596/978-1-4648-1211-8 (accessed 20 February 2019).

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8 URBAN MORPHOLOGY AND HISTORIC URBAN LANDSCAPE MANAGEMENT The case of Kolkata, India Mahbub Rashid

Introduction Urban morphology is an area of geographical study that explores patterns of urban form and structure. For several decades now, urban morphological studies have used different cartographic and geometric concepts, methods and measures to describe the significance of urban landscape in relation to physical, functional, and social processes. ‘Town plan analysis’ and ‘space syntax’ are two important approaches in urban morphological studies. The focus of the first approach is on the visible urban form. It uses different cartographic techniques to describe and understand the nature and degree of change in urban landscape viewed over long time spans, the agents involved in the process of change, and the issues related to the conservation and management of that change. In contrast, the focus of the second approach is on the invisible urban structure. It uses different topological and topometric properties of urban street networks to describe the historical, economic, sociological, psychological, and behavioural significance of urban landscape. Therefore, these two approaches could complement each other for a better understanding and management of Historic Urban Landscapes (HULs). The purpose of this chapter is twofold – to briefly describe the concepts, methods and measures of town plan analysis and space syntax; and to apply some of these concepts, methods and measures to the historic core of Kolkata in West Bengal, India, illustrating the usefulness of these approaches for the understanding and management of HULs. Using town plan analysis, the study traces the historical development of the morphology of the city showing how the city had come into existence and changed over time, and how its various components are fitted together creating a historically significant morphology. Using space syntax, the study traces changes in the structures of street networks of the city over time, and the effects of these structural changes on the distribution of land use and landmarks in the city. The study concludes that urban morphological studies can be a useful way to explore the processes of formation and change of HULs and to formulate appropriate strategies for their management.

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Town plan analysis and space syntax: two urban morphological approaches Town plan analysis The town plan analysis is a morphological approach, first developed by M. R. G. Conzen, for geographical studies involving urban landscape. In his seminal work on Alnwick, Conzen (1960) defined town plan (also ground plan or urban layout), land uses, and building fabric as the three basic elements of urban landscape and discussed their relative importance for urban morphological studies. He argued that urban morphological change is a complicated process due to differential rates at which town plan, buildings, and land use alter their character in keeping with ever-changing functional needs of society. In general, land and building use is subject to relatively rapid changes, while actual building structures are less so (though functional modifications could be frequent) and the urban layout, as defined by streets, open spaces and plots, proves usually to be the most resistant to change. Therefore, he considered the confinement of later developments within pre-existing morphological conditions, primarily defined by urban layouts, as one of the fundamental laws in urban landscape studies. Conzen introduced several morphological concepts, such as urban fringe belt, burgage cycle, morphological frame, morphological region, and morphological period. The ‘fringe belt’, in simple terms, is a zone of largely extensive land uses that is formed at the edge of an urban area during a pause in outward residential growth. With different shapes and sizes, fringe belts often follow field or rural property boundaries. They include considerably larger plots, less hard surfaces and fewer roads than normal residential developments. As a result, they are less permeable to traffic (Whitehand and Morton 2003). Fringe belts generally have many relatively open areas, often vegetated, such as parks, sports grounds, public utilities and land associated with various institutions. Also called ‘building intensity cycle’ (Conzen 1978), Conzen’s concept of ‘burgage cycle’ (a burgage being the landholding enfranchised member of a medieval borough) consists of a phase of progressive infilling of a burgage, followed by a phase of clearing of buildings, and then by a phase of urban fallow that forms the initial stage of a succeeding redevelopment cycle. In studying burgages, Conzen used metrological analysis as an essential technique to reconstruct the histories of plots. For example, by analysing the measurements of plot width of Alnwick, Conzen (1960) was able to infer the original widths of the plots and their subsequent subdivisions. Later, Slater (1981, 1990a), among others, used the technique in the English town of Ludlow to detect regularities in plot widths and patterns, and to speculate about the intentions of the medieval surveyor when the town was laid out. Conzen’s ‘morphological frame’ corresponds to antecedent plan features or topographical outlines that exercise a morphological influence on subsequent urban developments. In contrast, ‘morphological region’ is an area with a particular form that provides a sense of unity and makes it distinguishable from surrounding areas. A ‘morphological period’ is a timespan within which the morphology of a region remains relatively unchanged (Whitehand 2001). It is important to note that significant developments and refinements of Conzen’s concepts and methods have occurred over the last several decades, exploring his important concepts: fringe belts (Barke 1990; Larkham 1995; Whitehand 1975), morphological regions (Whitehand 2007), and morphological periods (Whitehand and Carr 2001). Beyond these, at least three important lines of research have stemmed directly or indirectly from Conzen’s ideas, which are concerned with (1) the nature and amounts of change in physical space viewed over long time spans, and thus generally focused on historic towns, (2) the agents involved in the process of change, and (3) the conservation and management of that change (Larkham 2006). Through the historical analysis of medieval English towns, studies of the first line of research show that these towns often have complex town plans, composed of plan units reflecting separate periods or origins of development. These studies also show similarities in form and process between towns (Slater

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1990b). Some of these studies also allow reinterpretation of problematic historical and archaeological issues (Lilley 1994). While most of these studies have been done at the scale of individual towns and quarters, a few studies have also been done comparing settlement plan types (Roberts 1987) and morphogenesis at the regional scale (Lilley 1995, 1999). Focusing on industrial-era cities, studies of the second line of research explore how and why landowners including the church and aristocratic families affect urban landscape (Lilley 1994, 2001; Slater 1978, 1987); landownership patterns affect the conversion of agricultural land to urban use (Hooper 1985); suburban developments vary in form and character over space and time (Beresford 1988; Cannadine 1982; Trowell 1985); and why and how economic, political and social history affect urban landscape (Rodger 2001; Youngson 1966). Several studies along this line of research also explore the complex decision-making processes involved in various developments (Freeman 1990; Whitehand and Whitehand 1984); and the role of specific types of agent in the development process (Larkham 1995, 1988). Studies of the third line of research explore the use, adaptation, and conservation of commercial and residential areas (Whitehand and Carr 2001). These studies note that urban landscape has increasingly become controlled by large-scale developers, and legislative, planning, and other public bodies (for example, see Bramley and Kirk 2005). They also note that development control decisions taken by planning authorities have put less emphasis on the subtle historic qualities of urban landscape and put more emphasis on building density and highways guidelines (Whitehand 1992). In summary, Conzen’s town plan analysis provides a comprehensive approach for analysing the interplay between the historical, social and functional processes and urban landscape. However, in addition to being methodologically cumbersome, Conzen’s morphological approach is unable to consider how we may perceive, use and experience urban landscape. In this regard, space syntax can help.

Space syntax Space syntax refers to a body of theory, methods, techniques and measures that can be used in the morphological analysis of urban landscape focusing on its ‘hidden’ structures of perception, use and experience. Since the 1970s, a substantial body of research has used space syntax to study urban morphology and its effects of social and historical processes (Hillier [1996] 2007; Hillier and Hanson 1984). Space syntax often uses the phrase ‘spatial configuration’ referring to how individual spatial units are related to each other and to the whole in a spatial system. Among different spatial units that space syntax uses, axial lines representing straight lines of movement and visibility and segments representing the parts of axial lines broken at the points of intersections with other lines have been used most frequently in urban morphological studies. A configuration of axial lines or segments is important because humans tend to move in straight lines and along routes with few changes in directions to minimize effort and time and to maximize movement economy. Space syntax provides rigorous techniques to represent a spatial system as configurations using axial lines and segments, which are called the ‘axial map’ and the ‘segment map’ of the system. It also provides techniques to analyse the intersecting patterns of the lines or segments using various graphtheoretic (or syntactic) measures. Additionally, space syntax allows users to colour the map based on the syntactic values of individual units. Using its methods, techniques, and measures, space syntax can be used to study how different rigorously defined elements of the spatial configurations of urban landscape are connected to each other at different scales, as well as how they are connected to social processes of long and short durations. Space syntax methods and measures have been applied to cities, districts, neighbourhoods, and even to individual buildings to characterize their underlying syntactic structures. In several historical studies on urban morphology, space syntax has been used to describe and understand the relationships between the structures and the functions of urban landscape (Peponis and Wineman 2002; Rashid 2017, 2019).

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The concept of integration is the most important centrality measure of space syntax when applied to the axial or segment map analysis. The integration value of an axial line has been defined based on the shortest routes between the line and all other lines in the network (defining ‘shortest’ in terms of the fewest changes in direction) (Hillier [1996] (2007)). Choice is another important centrality measure of space syntax. While integration is about closeness, choice is about betweenness. Unlike integration, choice gives the degree to which a line lies on simplest paths from one line to another line in the network (Turner 2007). Relevant to the analysis of HULs is the fact that space syntax methods and measures can provide experientially relevant descriptions of various intangible qualities of urban landscape that are often inaccessible to historians. Using space syntax, many have studied the evolution of street networks within broad national and international historical contexts (Medeiros, de Holanda, and Trigueiro 2003; Medieros, de Holanda, and Barros 2009; Shpuza 2009); the changes in street networks in relation to movement and land use, often with a focus on historical urban areas (Azimzadeh and Bjur 2007; Karimi 2000; Rashid and Bindajam 2015; Rashid and Shateh 2012; Read 2000); and the extent to which street networks serves to materialize and mediate socio-economic differentiation and status in different historical periods (De Holanda 2000; Vaughan, Clark, Sahbaz, and Haklay 2005; Zhu 2004). In summary, town plan analysis and space syntax focus on different morphological properties of urban landscape. While the former uses metrical properties to study the street systems, building fabric, and land use patterns of urban landscape, the latter uses topological and topometric properties of street networks to study the experiential structure of the same. Complementing each other, they have the capacity to provide a much richer description of the history of changes in urban landscape. Therefore, in the rest of this chapter, these methods and measures are used in a morphological study of the HUL of Kolkata in India, to identify issues relevant to its heritage planning and management.

A brief history of Kolkata and its built heritage The Indian City of Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal, is in the eastern part of India, adjacent to the borders of Assam, Sikkim and Bangladesh (Bunting, Kundu, and Mukherjee 2002). Kolkata has been an important centre for art, literature, architecture and cultural heritage in India for more than three centuries. It was once the capital of British India, but in 1911 it lost that status to Delhi for political and geographical reasons. Despite its lost political status, with a population of approximately 14.11 million, Kolkata remains the third most populous city in India, thirteenth most populous, and eighth largest urban agglomeration city in the world (Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner 2011). Its population density has increased from 2,039 persons per sq. km in 1971 to 3,879 persons per sq. km in 2011 (Bunting, Kundu, and Mukherjee 2002). Kolkata started as a trade settlement of the British East India Company in 1690 in and around the villages of Kalikata, Sutanuti and Govindapur on the eastern bank of the Hoogly River. By 1706, the settlement had a population of 22,000. At that time, there were two notable streets and at least eight permanent brick houses (known as Pucca houses) and 8000 temporary mud houses with a thatched roof (known as Kutcha houses). The early stage of urbanization of the city started seriously with the construction of Fort William in 1707, which was later replaced by a much larger fort located to its south with the same name. A wharf was added next to the old fort in 1710 (Ghosh 1996). To satisfy the ever-expanding needs, the Company bought another thirty-eight villages from the Zamindars (traditional land owners) in 1717. Of these, five were on the other side of the river (in Howrah), while the rest were contiguous to the three previously acquired villages. As the settlement increased in size, it became clearly divided into two parts: the ‘white’ or English areas developed based on a mercantile economy, and the ‘black’ or native areas developed based on a more traditional Indian bazaar economy. By 1756, the number of Pucca houses increased to 498 and Kutcha houses to 14,450,

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and there were no less than 27 major streets and 52 minor streets. The British dug a canal, called Maratha Ditch, in 1742 to protect Kolkata. Eleven km in circumference, it defined the boundary of Kolkata at the time (Cotton 1907; Ghosh 1996) (Figure 8.1a and b). The city experienced its first town planning development, as Lord Clive, then the Governor of Calcutta, laid the foundation of the new Fort William in the village of Gobindapur in August 1757, after the British rule in Bengal was established. The new fort, built between 1758 and 1773, was the largest British citadel in South Asia. With increased safety and security, soon Kolkata became the principal entrepôt of trade between the Gangetic Plain, Britain, and Canton. By the end of the eighteenth century, some £5,000,000 worth of exports were flowing through the port (Marshall 1985/2012). In recognition of the city’s new-found importance, Kolkata replaced Madras in 1773 as the political capital of British India. It retained this position until the transfer of government to Delhi in 1911. Throughout the nineteenth century, migrants from the rest of the subcontinent and native Bengalis settled in Kolkata for the irresistible economic promises provided by its factories, banks, brokerages,

Figure 8.1 Maps of Kolkata. (a) Plan for the intelligence of the military operations at Calcutta, when attacked and taken by Seerajah Dowlet, 1756. (b) Thomas Kitchin’s map of Calcutta, first issued in 1763. (c) A nineteenth-century map of Kolkata. (d) A twentieth century map of Kolkata and Howrah. Sources: (a) http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb40723610s (copyright information not available); (b) www.rare maps.com/gallery/detail/48750/territory-of-calcutta-mdcclvii-surveyor-general-of-india (copyright information not available); (c) F. W. Simms, H. L. Thuillier, R. Smyth, & J. & C. Walker (1857) Map of Calcutta from actual survey in the years – 1849, published by John Walker, Geographer to the East India Co.; retrieved from Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division, at www.loc.gov/item/2005634004; (d) Calcutta and Howrah Guide Map of 1957, 4th edition, published by the Surveyor General of India based on surveys executed in 1943 with the addition of a few minor corrections (copyright information is not available).

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agency businesses, and trades in such goods as grains, seeds, tobacco, perfumery, joss-sticks, cloth, jute, bullion, and silver. By the end of the eighteenth century, the population of the city had risen to 140,000. In 1837, with a population of 229,714, Kolkata was the most populous city in India. In 1850, the population of the city was 413,182. By the end of nineteenth century, the population had increased to 949,144 (Hornsby 1997). In the nineteenth century, the settlement pattern that emerged followed the lines of religion, caste, ethnicity and nationalities. In contrast to the earlier period, when Kolkata was divided into the white and native areas, the nineteenth century Kolkata saw the development of grey areas between these zones, which were occupied by ethnic groups like Parsis, various other non-Indian Asian immigrants, and mixed-blood Eurasians who occupied socio-economic status between the British rulers and the ruled Indian masses (Kosambi and Brush 1988a). Nevertheless, during this period of unprecedented population growth, Kolkata never had more than a few thousand European inhabitants. In a nineteenth century map of the city (Figure 8.1c), the English zone in the centre is shown as having spacious grace and splendour – laid out as a great capital should be, with authority. Next to the English zone, densely built native areas with irregular networks of narrow streets are shown on the north and east sides. On the western side of the city remains the Hooghly River. On the southern side, the map shows open lands, which were later developed as suburban areas. Around the whole city is Maratha Ditch, which later became Circular Road. Beyond the Ditch lay low-lying marsh lands (Figure 8.1c). By the mid-twentieth century, however, the city had grown far beyond its nineteenth century boundaries, adding mostly residential and industrial areas around its peripheries on both sides of the river (Figure 8.1d). As shown in the maps (Figure 8.2a), the central area of the English zone of the city contains a huge open space, called the Maidan, with Fort William at its south-east corner. Completed in 1780, the Maidan provided an opportunity for the city to express its newfound status in more visible forms rivalling the status of any contemporary city (Davies 1985; Roy 1970; Sen 1960). Besides its long riverside promenade, meandering pathways, gardens, and statues, the Maidan would soon include the Victoria Memorial Hall, the St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Ochterlony Monument, a race course, and a cricket field, as a comparison between the 1857 and 1957 maps of the area shows. Another set of map shows the Esplanade, which includes most of the great public colonial buildings of the city, in the northern part of its central business district (Figure 8.2b). In this area, very little change is observed from 1857 to 1957. Side by side with its many imposing public buildings, many villas were built far out in suburbs like Chowringhee, Baliganj, Rasa Pagla (Tollyganj), Garden Reach, and Chitpur by the English as well as by the rising native rich class. Some of these areas like Chowringhee were dominated by the English, while others like Chitpur were dominated by the natives. Together, they made Kolkata ‘a city of palaces’. In all these residential areas, there was a significant increase in building density from 1857 to 1957, as shown in the maps of Chowringhee (Figure 8.2c). Besides residential and monumental public buildings, a wide variety of religious structures, public and private memorials, and educational and cultural institutions were also built in Kolkata, contributing to a variety of built heritage. Colonial Kolkata, as shown in the maps (Figures 8.1 and 8.2), embodies Europeans ideas of planning, townscape and layout in its English parts, imposed on a scale that no other colonial city in South Asia had observed before. Side by side, it also embodies a mostly native built heritage created by different ethnic groups that by now formed Kolkata’s society. This native built heritage shows very little similarities to its English counterparts, except the fact that large houses in both parts often show some external affinities despite having distinctly different interiors (Losty 1990).

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Figure 8.2 1857 and 1957 maps of Kolkata areas, enlarged from Figures 8.1c and 8.1d. (a) The Maidan of Kolkata. According to these maps, significant changes were made in the upper and lower right corners of the Maidan. Even though not shown in the 1957 map, the fort remained unchanged during this period. (b) The central business district of Kolkata with the Esplanade. According to these maps, the district changed very little during this period. (c) An English suburban (Chowringhee) development. The regular street layout of the area was very different from the irregular street layout of native areas. The maps show that numerous independent structures were added in the area during the period.

Modern town planning and Kolkata’s built heritage Throughout the twentieth century, Kolkata has been losing its historic identity and gaining the character of a generic city of a developing country due to rapid urbanization and a general ignorance concerning its built heritage (Bose 2016). Deplorable hygiene resulting from tremendous urban growth and developments has also compelled the municipal and state governments to undertake many primary infrastructural improvement projects in the city. Unfortunately, as these governments undertook development projects, they did not see the built heritage of the city as an important part of its history. Therefore, it also did not see a need for developing the city according to an overall plan saving parts of its built heritage. It was only in the late 1990s that a need to preserve the city’s built heritage was recognized by policy makers. The West Bengal Government set up an ‘Expert Committee on Heritage Buildings’ (Dutta, Banerjee, and Husain 2005). The objective of this Committee was to review the lists of heritage buildings already published in different land use and development control plans of the Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA). The Committee used historical, physical, and sociocultural-economic criteria to categorize buildings; and identified 1300 buildings and sites following this categorization. So far, the state government restored only a few government-owned buildings, and a few private buildings were restored by their owners. The HUL of Kolkata along with numerous other non-listed but historically important buildings remain neglected (Bose 2016). In the early part of the twenty-first century, the urban conditions of Kolkata are made worse under the impacts of a fast-rising global economy. Large investments in real estate development associated

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with new economic opportunities have led a construction boom in Kolkata. The development of high-rise residential buildings, office buildings, commercial buildings, shopping centres, multiplexes, and many other construction projects have gradually gained momentum with little or no consideration for the built heritage of the city. As a result, Kolkata is seeing a categorical demolition and erosion of the historic and old ordinary buildings, settings and open spaces. From April 2005 to March 2010, the total number of building proposals approved for construction in the municipal corporation area alone was 17,819 with a total area of 9.46 million sq. m (Bose 2016). Uncontrolled and incompatible modifications of historic buildings and their surroundings, as well as the gradual development and encroachment of slums and squatter settlements in historic areas have also posed as great threats for Kolkata’s HUL. Therefore, there is an urgent need to save Kolkata’s HUL. In this regard, the significance of a traditional heritage planning approach that focuses on old buildings and sites cannot be undermined, but we must also acknowledge that Kolkata’s HUL represented and still represents a way of life, an experience that can only be preserved if considered as a whole in relation to history, society, culture, and place.

An analysis of the morphological evolution of Kolkata’s Historic Urban Landscape To understand Kolkata’s HUL as an urban landscape, I study the growth and evolution of its urban morphology in this section of the chapter. For my morphological study, I collected several maps of Kolkata prepared and/or published in the following years: 1742, 1753, 1756, 1784, 1832, 1838, 1842, 1849, 1852, 1854, 1858, 1893, 1901, 1911, 1914, 1924, and 1957. After a careful consideration of the contents of these maps, I divided the urban morphological history of the city in three different phases: • • •

The first morphological phase began in 1690 with the founding of the city. It ended in 1772 when Kolkata became the capital of British India. The 1742, 1753, and 1756 maps represent this morphological phase. The second morphological phase began in 1772 and ended in 1876 when the Victorian era in India was formalized by the Queen’s assumption of the title Empress of India. The 1784, 1832, 1838, 1842, 1849, 1852, 1854, and 1858 maps represent this morphological phase. The third morphological phase began in 1876 and ended in the 1950s when the city had gained some political and social stability after the British had withdrawn from Colonial India and when the post-colonial phase of the city had truly begun. The 1893, 1901, 1911, 1914, 1924, and 1957 maps of Kolkata represent this phase of the city.

Using techniques like Conzen’s, I first study how street grids, as morphological frames, helped define the form of Kolkata’s HUL over time. Following this, I study how land use patterns had changed over time to understand the evolving functional organization of the city. Then, I study how the distribution of landmarks had changed over time to understand the shifting imageability of the city. After this, using space syntax I study the evolving structure of experience of Kolkata’s HUL defined based on accessibility and visibility. Finally, I study the interrelationships among streets, land use, landmarks, accessibility and visibility within the evolving morphology of the city. My overall aim is to find ways to understand and preserve Kolkata’s built heritage through maintaining stronger whole-and-parts relationships; retaining functionality and imageability; and improving accessibility and visibility within Kolkata’s HUL.

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Street grids The three stages of the street grids of Kolkata’s HUL, established from the maps of the city identified above, are shown in Figure 8.3. The street map representing the first morphological phase shows that, after almost 80 years of its founding, Kolkata remained a small settlement with very few streets. Two of the three early villages that formed the settlement were only minimally connected with the central village of Kalikata (later Calcutta and now Kolkata). The street map representing the second morphological phase shows that the city had grown substantially along the east bank of the Hoogly River within a hundred years after the first morphological phase (Figure 8.3). The primary streets of the first phase had persisted in the second phase, but they were now extended to serve an area six to seven times larger than what it was during the first morphological phase. Secondary streets had filled in the grid defined by the primary streets of the earlier phase. As the map shows, both primary and secondary streets had extended beyond the initial boundaries of the city. During the third morphological phase, the primary street grid of the earlier phases continued to persist within Kolkata’s HUL. However, many more secondary and neighbourhood streets were added in this phase increasing the density of streets both within and beyond the HUL. One thing to note here is that changes in density did not occur uniformly everywhere in the city. The English parts of the city, as shown in Figure 8.3, changed less than the native areas of the city, which overtime became more irregular and complex. As shown in Figure 8.3, a grid defined by a set of primary streets of the early settlement had continued to serve as a morphological frame defining Kolkata’s HUL throughout its history. Therefore, this grid should be considered as an important part of Kolkata’s built heritage.

Figure 8.3 The street systems, the primary street systems (in darker lines), and the landmarks in different morphological phases of Kolkata. According to these diagrams, most landmarks were placed on or close to the primary streets of the city. Source: Mahbub Rashid

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Land use patterns The three stages of land use of Kolkata’s HUL established from the maps of the city are shown in Figure 8.4. According to the land use map representing the first morphological phase, the English areas of the city remained small. The area contained only a few buildings – the port, the old fort, the Governor’s House, a church, a warehouse, open spaces, ponds, batteries and several English houses. Outside the English areas of the city, but within a perimeter defined by Maratha Ditch and fortified walls, were lands covered with vegetation and numerous sporadic small native structures (not shown in the land use map). These native structures were connected by networks of irregular paths. Beyond the Maratha Ditch were irregular farmlands. Even at this early stage of development, the distribution of land use showed a radial pattern, where the centre was occupied by the English and their buildings surrounded by native quarters on the north and the east. On the south side of the English area, the city had an open space, which would eventually become a part of a huge open park, known as the Maidan of the city (Figure 8.4). Just like a typical fringe-belt, the Maidan included and continued to include considerably larger plots, less hard surfaces, and fewer roads than normal residential developments. These plots were used as parks, sports grounds, public utilities, and as public institutional buildings, just in the way Conzen envisioned the functions of a fringe belt (Conzen 1960). Even though the radial land use pattern continued to exist in the second morphological phase, a few differences need to be mentioned. With many more buildings, the central zone of the English area of the city now had taken the form of a more familiar central business district (CBD) that commonly characterized a European mercantile city. The CBD contained almost exclusively European types of commercial, managerial, and administrative activities (Figures 8.2 and 8.4). Located on the immediate north and west of the CBD were the English residential areas. Beyond this area were the much larger native residential areas. On the south of the CBD were the new fort and the Maidan. Also, on the south, beyond the native residential quarters, another English residential area with

Figure 8.4 The land use patterns in different morphological phases of Kolkata. Source: Mahbub Rashid

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a regular street layout and independent residences was founded. Many have argued that this isolated residential area away from the CBD was an early instance for suburban living that would become a common phenomenon in Europe and America much later (Bowden 1975; Hornsby 1997). It should be emphasized that early European suburbanization occurred in India at a time when typical modes of transportation were horses, pony-drawn carriages, ox-drawn carts, and palanquins carried by coolies (Kosambi and Brush 1988b). In the third morphological phase, the radial land use pattern of Kolkata grew by adding an industrial layer on its periphery (Figure 8.4). Therefore, in this phase the principal components of the city included the fort adjacent to the commercial waterfront, an open space around the fort, a CBD at the centre of the city, separate European and native residential sectors close to the CBD, separate European and native commercial areas, a ‘grey’ residential area for a population of mixed origin between European and native residential areas, and a peripheral manufacturing and industrial zone adjoining the native sector. In general, during this phase the growth of native quarters was remarkable. It expanded in a compact fashion either inside or outside the old limits of the city and close to the waterfront when and where possible. Separate English and native residential suburbs were formed at distances of two to five miles from the nucleus of the city. While some of the older suburbs became dense by the end of this phase (Figure 8.4), in general the new suburbs continued to be sparsely built with large houses in contrast to the very densely populated native quarters within the city core. Already at this stage of development, industrial employment produced congested rental housing and squatter settlements close to the native quarters and industrial suburbs of the city. During this third morphological phase, Howrah on the west bank of the Hoogly River also observed significant growth and land use changes with a new industrial zone next to the bank. Because Kolkata had no space for large manufacturing plants, Howrah, where the railroads from northern, central, and southern India had their terminals, was the favoured location for these plants. Manufacturing in Howrah included food processing, jute textiles, chemicals, shipbuilding, and heavy steel fabrication. Immediately next to this zone, a native residential zone also developed on this side of the river. In summary, Kolkata showed a shifting radial land use pattern with a growing CBD wrapped around by layers of different land uses that gradually decreased in rent value from the centre to the periphery of the city. This was a common phenomenon in most mercantile cities of Europe and America, but what was uncommon about Kolkata was the fact that that it had separate English and native areas with a ‘grey’ area in between; that the morphology of its English and native areas were driven by different economic systems – the former by a mercantile economy, while the latter by a traditional bazaar economy; and that the density of native quarters in this city was much higher than that of English areas. It is possible that such a disposition of land uses might have made the city unique in terms of function and experience and, therefore, should be considered carefully as a feature of Kolkata’s built heritage.

Landmarks Figures 8.3 and 8.5 show the distribution of landmarks in the city during the three morphological phases of the city. These landmarks include important administrative, commercial, institutional and religious buildings of different types. One thing to note here is that these landmarks do not include residential buildings. As ‘a city of palaces’, there were simply too many very large residential buildings to be included in these figures. According to the figures, there were at least a dozen landmarks in the city during the first morphological phase. They included, among other things, the port, the old fort, the Governor’s House, a church, a warehouse, a park, and several batteries. They were all located along the primary streets, in or near the central area of the settlement. During the second morphological phase, there were over

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Figure 8.5 Landmarks in the axial maps of different morphological phases of Kolkata. In these maps, thicker lines represent higher integration values than the thinner lines. According to these diagrams, most landmarks in the city were placed on or close to the lines with high integration values. Source: Mahbub Rashid

two dozen landmarks. Again, except a few, these landmarks were located next to each other in the central area of the settlement. Outside the central area, landmarks were located along the primary streets in areas that were not adjacent to the fort or the central area of the city. During the third phase, the number of landmarks was over one hundred. According to historic maps of this phase, though the central area had the highest concentration of these landmarks, many of them were located elsewhere within Kolkata’s HUL. By this time, a few landmarks were also located beyond Maratha Ditch, which by now was a major street of the city, and on the other side of the river. These distant landmarks indicate that the growth of the city by this time were no more dependent on the commercial and administrative functions of the CBD or on the security provided by the fort. Overall, the findings of this study indicate that the changes in the patterns of distribution of landmarks might have been related to the changes in the primary street grid of the city. As these streets gradually extended beyond the boundaries of the city of an earlier phase, so did the distribution of landmarks. Therefore, an important character of the built heritage of Kolkata’s HUL might have been the fact that the experience of Kolkata’s HUL in different phases of development might not have been dependent only on its primary street grid and land use patterns, but also on its shifting imageability defined by an increasing number of landmarks.

Accessibility and visibility For this part of the study, the axial maps of the three morphological phases of Kolkata were analysed using Space Syntax. The syntactic structures of the street network of the city in each of its three morphological phases, thickened using integration values, are shown in Figure 8.5. These maps show how

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each street of the city were connected to all the other streets of the city in terms of accessibility and visibility. In these maps, thicker lines have higher integration than thinner lines. As can be seen in the figure, during the first morphological phase the most integrated lines of the maps were in and around the central area of the settlement. During the second morphological phase, some highly integrated lines remained directly connected to the central area of the city, while other highly integrated lines were found along the old perimeter of the city where Maratha Ditch was located. The syntactic structure of the city also highlights the fact that during this phase the city was divided into two separate parts by the river. The streets of the main part of the city on the eastern bank were generally more integrated than those on the western bank of the river. Finally, during the third phase a bridge was built connecting the two parts of the city on the opposite sides of the river. The bridge changed the syntactic structure of the eastern side of the city less than the syntactic structure of the eastern part of the city. In the latter case, a syntactic centre was created by a set of highly integrated lines right next to the bridge, where there was none in the earlier phase. Therefore, this study reveals that the most integrated lines in each of the three morphological phases of the city had existed in and around the CBD of Kolkata’s HUL. As the city grew and changed, so did the shape of the syntactic structure of the city. It is possible that the syntactic structures of the city have changed once again since 1957. From a heritage planning perspective, however, it is important that we remain careful not to change the syntactic structures of the HUL in any significant ways. Such changes can affect movement and, consequently, everyday life in the HUL.

Morphological interdependencies Morphological interdependencies are long-term processes defining the effects of different morphological features on each other. Such interdependencies are important, because short-term social processes are rarely enough to explain long-term morphological changes. Our study reveals strong interdependencies among primary streets, land use patterns, landmark locations, and street integration patterns in all three morphological phases of Kolkata’s HUL. Such interdependencies are indicated by the fact that, during all three morphological phases, the primary streets of the city were among the most integrated streets, and important landmarks and commercial land uses of the city were located along these streets (Figures 8.3, 8.4, and 8.5). Additionally, as evident in the figures, the city grew along the most integrated streets. Furthermore, though not shown in the maps, most shopping streets and traditional bazaars were located on most integrated streets, and residential quarters were on less integrated streets of the city. It should, however, be noted that while the morphological elements and syntactic structures of the city changed as the city grew, their patterns of interdependencies did not change. Following Jane Jacobs (1961), one could argue that such interdependencies are important for urban vitality and liveliness. Therefore, it is necessary that we continue to preserve such interdependencies where they exist and try to re-establish them where they might have been broken due to careless urban developments.

Conclusion In historic cities of developing countries, like Kolkata, urban conservation or urban heritage planning is rarely a priority. Here, financial constraints, a lack of political will, a lack of cooperation among different stakeholders, and a preference to progress and development over preservation and conservation are among many difficult problems that need to be solved before the conservation, preservation and management of HULs could become a priority. However, the purpose of this chapter was not to explore how these prevalent problems could be solved, but to show how various techniques of urban morphological analysis could help us understand the significance of HULs in cities, such as Kolkata.

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Many have already used and/or suggested urban morphological analysis to determine strategies for the management of HULs (Jokilehto 1998, 2009; Whitehand 2007, 2012; Whitehand and Gu 2010). This study has been different from the previous studies, because it has tried to combine multiple existing morphological approaches to augment our understanding of HULs in general and of Kolkata’s HUL in particular. The Conzenian morphological approach was useful, because it allowed us to take a comprehensive look at the morphological history of HULs using well-defined morphological elements and concepts. Space syntax was useful for its flexible techniques, which were used to study the growth of the city based on the connectivity, accessibility and visibility of its street networks. They were also used to describe the whole and the parts relationships showing how the connectedness, accessibility and visibility of streets at one location could change due to changes in streets at other locations in the city (for example, the bridge connecting the two parts of the city), and why it might not be a good idea to treat individual buildings or sites independent of their morphological contexts in heritage planning and management. It is fair to say that this study has not taken the full advantage of what Conzenian and space syntax approaches have to offer in terms of urban morphological analysis. They include many more concepts, techniques and measures than what have been used here in this study. With regards to the Conzenian approach, of the three basic elements of urban morphology, my focus was more on town plan and land use and less on building fabric. Among the important Conzenian concepts, I have used the Conzen’s concepts of morphological frame and period at some length. I have used fringe belts, morphological region, and morphological units in a limited way, and have not used burgage cycle at all. Based on the previous studies, we can safely assume that these unexplored concepts would also have strong relevance to a study of HUL anywhere, anytime. With regards to space syntax, my study was limited to the study of syntactic structures defined using the axial map analysis of Kolkata in its three morphological phases. Space syntax provides many more techniques – each describing different configurations of urban morphology. Several previous studies have indicated that these other techniques are useful for describing the historical, social, and cultural processes of the city. Yet, I have not taken advantage of these techniques. While I have used integration to measure the connectedness, accessibility, and/or visibility of different axial lines of Kolkata’s HUL, I also have not used numerous other measures such as choice, control, and entropy that could have been used to get further insights on the syntactic structures of this HUL. Therefore, I ask interested readers to consult the references cited earlier in this chapter for additional information on Conzenian and space syntax approaches to urban morphological analysis. Nevertheless, using Conzenian and space syntax approaches in a limited way, this study has revealed that the growth and evolution of Kolkata’s HUL was defined and/or controlled by a grid of primary streets that evolved from a much smaller grid of the first English settlement of Kolkata when it was a trading post. It has also revealed that in the earliest phase Kolkata was clearly divided into the English and the native parts. The division became increasingly blurred with grey areas as the city continued to grow. However, a radial pattern of land use – where the centre was occupied by a CBD, the periphery by native quarters, and the in-between area by the English and the people of mixed origin – had persisted in different forms throughout the morphological history of Kolkata. The city had also included some of the earliest examples of suburban developments. Concerning landmarks, the study has revealed that these were not distributed randomly in the city. Instead, most of them were located on the primary street grid in the central area of the city. They continued to spread outward as the street grid continued to grow outward from the centre, but the centre continued to have the highest concentration of landmarks. Finally, the study has revealed that while some of the most integrated streets were always located in the central area of the city, the other more integrated streets continued to change locations as the city continued to grow. First, they stretched out from the central areas to the periphery

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of the HUL along the street that replaced Maratha Ditch. Then, they stretched out to the other side of the river along the bridge. In each phase, the locations of the most integrated lines were correlated with the direction of growth, the land use patterns, and the locations of landmarks of the city showing morphological interdependencies. Streets, land use, landmarks, and accessibility and visibility were uniquely related to the growth of Kolkata, giving its HUL a distinct character in terms of morphological history. To eliminate any historical morphological characteristics in the name of development and progress may destroy the unique qualities of this HUL, as it has been done during the last fifty to sixty years. It is vital that any management plan of the built heritage of the city consider these and other morphological characteristics of the city in developing appropriate heritage management strategies.

Acknowledgements The author wishes to thank the following students, who helped him at various stages of the research project: Lindsay Pericich, Thomas Martal, Ling-Ling Li, Nick Hansen, and Doriane Meyer.

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9 NEW METHODOLOGIES FOR EXPLORING SENSE OF PLACE IN THE HISTORIC URBAN LANDSCAPE Steven Cooke and Kristal Buckley

Introduction In international heritage practice, the approaches heralded by the UNESCO Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) (UNESCO 2011) are becoming increasingly commonplace in the discourses about urban heritage issues, sustainability, development and culture. While initially focused on finding better ways to respond to pressures affecting World Heritage cities, the HUL Recommendation and associated resources and case studies have been promulgated through UNESCO and its partners as a highly adaptable approach which is applicable to all cities and towns (Bandarin and van Oers 2012, 2014).1 While the Recommendation itself is not detailed, specific or tied to the academic literature, there is an increasingly ubiquitous use and re-interpretation of its key ideas and implications. Understanding this phenomenon is a significant area for research, but it is also important to critically analyse these uses, and the points they provide for local experimentation. Central to the HUL approach is the incorporation of community values into the management of the urban landscape. However, the relationship between community understandings and ‘expert’ notions of heritage value is a key debate in critical heritage studies (Harrison 2013). Swensen et al. (2013) argue that this is based on a perceived dichotomy between the heritage valued by local communities, defined as local and intangible, and that of heritage experts, defined as tangible. This simple duality is somewhat complicated within Australian practice by the inclusion of ‘social value’ within the Burra Charter (Australia ICOMOS 1979, 2013; Byrne et al. 2003; Waterton et al. 2006). However, the idea of heritage as a cultural practice – ‘a realm of ideas rather than a collection of things’ (Carmen 2009 in Swensen et al. 2013: 204) – has yet to be incorporated into the technically oriented heritage provisions of planning schemes and the realities of local heritage conservation practices and outcomes. The HUL is a potential mechanism through which these subjective, emotional and ephemeral dimensions of culture and heritage could be better incorporated into strategic planning, guiding decisionmaking processes that see cultural heritage as broader than current conventional approaches. Critical discussion on the inclusion of community-driven heritage concerns and attachments to local places, have produced a growing dialogue within heritage studies (Waterton and Watson 2013a). These concerns have been framed broadly around ideas about the definitions of ‘community’ in the twentieth century; in historical studies by a pursuit of a more ‘bottom-up’, grass-roots generation of

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histories (Hobsbawm 1997); and in the field of architecture and planning there has been a strong current of interest in community participation since the 1970s. These fields have framed a critique of institutional power and agency at work in the heritage industry and have issued challenges to what has been termed the ‘authorised heritage discourse’ (Smith 2006) by way of revealing mis-alignments between locals, the visiting public and expert knowledges and institutions. At the same time, the increase in interest in the affective encounter between people and place has recently come to the fore in a number of disciplines (Pink 2012, 2013; Rose 2014; Rose and ToliaKelly 2012; Tolia-Kelly 2008). These studies have explored the way that new visual research methodologies (VRM) might be useful in making links between the visual and the sensory. The authors have been working with the City of Ballarat for the past four years in order to understand the ways in which a local municipality discovers, evaluates and decides to utilize new proposals for heritage concepts and approaches such as the UNESCO Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape (Buckley et al. 2016; Fayad and Buckley, Chapter 31, this volume). This chapter provides a critical analysis of a pilot project which sought to investigate sense of place in one suburb of Ballarat, part of the implementation of the HUL in the city, and critically reflects on the applicability of visual research methods (VRM) for cultural heritage research. It shows how the subjective, emotional and ephemeral values of place can be better incorporated into strategic planning, guiding the decision-making process through the HUL, that sees cultural heritage as broader than the conventional material sites approach.

The Historic Urban Landscape and Ballarat In 2013, the regional city of Ballarat in Victoria’s Central Goldfields Region became the first municipal government to join a global pilot programme for the implementation of UNESCO’s Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL).2 Located in the ‘Country’ of the Waddawurrung and Dja Dja Wurrung Indigenous Traditional Owners, Ballarat is approximately 100 km north of Melbourne – the State’s rapidly expanding capital. Ballarat is well-known for its nineteenth century urban heritage, an impressive legacy of the rapid boom in wealth and globalization following the discovery of gold in the 1850s. Ballarat has implemented regulatory arrangements for heritage conservation for 50 years, and there are more than 10,000 heritage buildings, sites and places listed and afforded protection by the local planning scheme. The city is expected to grow rapidly in coming decades – 60 per cent by 2040 – putting the city’s urban heritage under added pressure and raising the levels of community concern about the future of the city. The HUL was seen as an attractive approach for addressing these challenges and has been central to the city’s strategies. The range and depth of the use of the HUL approach in Ballarat has been impressive and surprising. These include the development of the city’s strategy, Today, Tomorrow, Together (City of Ballarat 2015), with heritage, culture and identity at its centre (rather than a peripheral ‘addon’). The strategy was built on the outcomes of a city-wide process of community engagement called Ballarat Imagine (City of Ballarat 2013). Within the context of change, Ballarat’s citizens were asked what they love, want and wish to keep, providing decision makers with a strong political orientation that emphasized the centrality of the city’s heritage as an asset for its future. Central to Ballarat’s HUL implementation has been a flourishing of participatory processes and methods, and online engagement tools (see Fayad and Buckley in press). However, while the HUL had immediate positive outcomes in relation to the community dialogue about values and change, the city’s practitioners were also concerned to incorporate these into the regulatory schemes for local urban planning. Local area planning for the inner urban area known as ‘Ballarat East’ was therefore an important test of Ballarat’s implementation of the HUL. The ‘heritage’ character of Ballarat East contrasts with the grand nineteenth century city centre, and its streetscapes present a mixture of architectural styles, uses and historical periods (Figure 9.1).

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Figure 9.1 Ballarat East. Source: Steven Cooke and Kristal Buckley

Figure 9.2 Cultural mapping processes were used to articulate the values of Ballarat East. Source: City of Ballarat

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Because its values and attributes are diverse, subtle and experiential, the heritage of Ballarat East is considered vulnerable by its residents due to the pressures to increase population density close to the city centre. The City of Ballarat therefore considered that the cultural mapping and engagement tools inspired by the HUL were needed to chart a way forward. The local area planning process – ‘Imagine Ballarat East’ – was initiated, based on the Ballarat Imagine process that had been successfully used for the whole-of-municipality strategy (City of Ballarat 2018). The community-wide survey was accompanied by cultural mapping processes (Figure 9.2), workshops and a community-based ‘time capsule’ and provided an ideal context for experimentation using Visual Research Methods (VRM).

VRM and ‘sense of place’ There has been increased interest in recent years in the applicability of visual research methods (VRM) to social science research. VRM includes a variety of approaches which Pink defines as; … using the visual as a documenting tool to produce visual records, in interviews to elicit comments from informants, in participant observation to research ways of seeing and understanding, analysing visual and material culture and using visual media to represent the findings of such research. (Pink 2013: 320) This interest has developed new ways of investigating a long-standing theme within both cultural geography and heritage studies: encompassing sense of place (Relph 1976), and has taken the form of, inter alia, new participatory mapping approaches (Powell 2010), photo-elicitation (Stedman et al. 2004), and walking interviews (Evans and Jones 2011). Both residents and visitors can experience attachment to place. Knox and Marston (2007) however understand a distinction between the accumulation of shared experience of place for locals (‘insiders’) and a focus on the particularity of place for visitors (‘outsiders’) through landmarks, built form and practices which ‘evoke a significant common meaning for people who have no common experience of them’ (2007: 35). Such a distinction is problematic, not only through recent discussions of how places can be exclusionary (Cresswell 2015), but also through a re-evaluation of Yi Fu Tuan’s notion of surface and depth (Forsyth et al. 2013). Although ‘undifferentiated space becomes place as we get to know it better and endow it with value’ (Tuan 1977: 6), the privileging of depth over surface has a moral element: Surface almost always suggests superficiality or the adventitious, whereas core denotes centrality and depth. As scholars of a puritanical or ascetic bent, we tend to undervalue and distrust the sense, appearance and the spectacles of life, and to esteem knowledge of the underlying structure and cause. (Tuan 1989: 237) The privileging of depth over surface is evident in much writing about place attachment (Knox and Marsden 2007; see also Adams 2017) but as Forsyth et al. remind us: Surfaces and interfaces can be productive, enlivening, and enchanting spaces, where diverse materialities meet to produce physical and aesthetic mixtures, fluidities, turbulence, and movement; whether we are talking about the meeting of paint and canvas, sea water and air, rubber and tarmac, ink and paper, or concrete and soil. (Forsyth et al. 2013: 1017) As Manzo and Devine-Wright (2014) argue, tangible and intangible heritage have an important and enduring role in the accumulation of collective memories and attachment to places, and through this,

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the creation of individual, communal, local and national identities. Often this attachment is mediated through ordinary or banal places and practices that are deemed to have not met the significance thresholds to be included in heritage registers (Atkinson 2007). Such heritage resources can be used by residents to create an ‘autobiographical insideness’ whereby local history and heritage can be incorporated into personal narrative that can be used to articulate a sense of attachment to place over a relatively short period of time (Hawke 2012). Amin and Thrift (2002) explored what new metaphors might be useful to understand the urban experience: transitivity – the ‘spatial and temporal openness of the city’ (2002: 9) with the ‘intermingling and improvisation’ of everyday life (ibid.: 10); rhythms – ‘coordinates through which inhabitants and visitors frame and order the urban experience’ (ibid.: 17); and footprints – evidence of ‘the past, [and] the daily tracks of movement across, and links beyond the city’ (ibid.: 22). They argue that [t]hese tracks allow the city to be known. We negotiate the city through used tracks and construct imaginaries around them of the known city. This is one way in which a city, with all its complexity, size and change, is named. (Amin and Thrift 2002: 22) These metaphors are directly relevant to conceptualizations of the HUL (UNESCO 2011), which conceives heritage places as unbounded and permeable (Buckley et al. 2016), locally and globally constituted through the movements of people, ideas, materials and capital (Castells 2010). A focus on heritage mobilities with its focus on movement between places through ‘footprints’ (Amin and Thrift 2002) is redolent of a re-focusing from individual heritage sites to landscapes (Hayden 1995), through which sites are seen in dialogue, are mutually constitutive, and where the movement between places is part of the attachment to place. Furthermore, the affective and mobilities ‘turns’ in the humanities and social science, have foregrounded the multi-sensory engagement with heritage places and the idea that heritage can be ‘felt’ (Crang and Tolia-Kelly 2010), and which can form particular ‘landscapes of attachment’ (Kikuchi et al. 2014; see also Waterton and Watson 2013b). Such complexity calls for new approaches to understand this multi-sensory encounter. The increase in interest in the affective encounter between people and place has recently come to the fore in a number of disciplines (Pink 2013; Rose 2014; Rose and Tolia-Kelly 2012). These studies have explored the way that new Visual Research Methodologies (VRM) might be useful in making links between the visual and the sensory. In this pilot project, we sought to go beyond looking, seeing, analysing and writing text to consider the geopolitics of ‘embodied, material encounter and engagement’ (Rose and Tolia-Kelly 2012: 3). The research investigates what new methodological approaches might be appropriate to understand engagements of individual and community with place. As Adams argues, ‘[p]lace attachment research requires access to the insights of those who have lives in the place for a long time, but these potential respondents have absorbed the place so deeply that cannot easily express their insights’ (Adams 2017: 256). VRM have an advantage over other research methodologies in the way that they generate findings that might be obscured in talk-only interviews, revealing the sometimes taken-for-granted in everyday life. In addition, VRM foreground the discussion between researcher and participants (Beilin 2005; Rose 2014), being ‘inherently collaborative’ (Rose 2014: 29) with the participants becoming the expert. Such methodologies are, therefore, directly applicable to cultural heritage research and its focus on values and significance. With the advent of digital video, new opportunities have arisen to investigate movement through and in landscapes, rather than just specific locations. The ubiquity of digital video cameras, including on smart phones, has realized the ability to easily record and share both formal walking tours and urban transepts, but also the everyday – so-called ‘life logging’. The analysis of this material has the advantage of being able to investigate more nuanced encounters with space: not just the importance of specific sites, but the ‘in-between places’ (Paulos and Jenkins 2005), and

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how such sites are networked across landscapes of memory. Such devices do have a number of drawbacks however: they can be intrusive for the users who are constantly aware they are using them, and they require the use of hands. Digital video and audio recording glasses (AV glasses) have a number of advantages over digital video camera. They are hands-free and may be less visible and intrusive. Given the newness of this technology, the application of video and audio recording glasses in digital ethnographies and VRM is under explored and, therefore, this project is both significant in what it can bring to the understanding of cultural heritage values and for an understanding of VRM themselves.

The methodology These issues were explored in a pilot project located in the suburb of Ballarat East. With the support of council officials, nine participants were found through existing heritage networks in the area, and from notices placed in local newsletters.3 As a pilot project with the focus on the methodology itself, we used convenience sampling (Morse 2007) with the criteria for participation being that they lived in Ballarat East and had the time to take part in the research. A mutually suitable time and location was arranged with each participant. They were shown how the AV glasses4 worked and then asked to spend approximately one-hour walking around the local area. The route that the participants chose was at their discretion. During the walk, the participants were asked to reflect on the three Ballarat Imagine questions: ‘the things I love about Ballarat’; ‘the things I imagine for Ballarat’; and ‘the things to retain in Ballarat’. At the end of the walk, the researchers collected the glasses from the participants. The recordings were then watched by the researchers, transcribed and coded. A follow-up interview was arranged where the researchers and the participants watched the recording together. Rather than a set of existing questions, we structured the interviews according to a ‘narrative methodology’ (Schorch 2015; Schorch et al. 2015). The participants were asked to describe and explain what they were seeing and doing on their walk. The interviews were recorded and then analysed by coding. Narrative methodologies have a number of advantages and disadvantages over traditional semi-structured interview formats. Asking participants to describe what they are seeing on the recording of their walk means there is less chance of the interview questions leading the participant to provide answers that he or she thinks the researchers want to hear – so-called ‘social desirability bias’. However, the disadvantages include the variability in confidence or ability of participants to narrate their journey, an issue we return to later in the chapter.

‘Wildness’: transitivity, porosity and rhythms A key theme to emerge from the interviews was the need to retain a certain ‘wildness’ to Ballarat East. This took the form of a conception of the suburb as a hybrid space, what one participant called ‘the semi-urban’ (Participant P): neither country or city. People are actually not walking in grids, they actually walk across country. There is a certain wildness to this place. And it’s a part of what we want to hang on to. … So every house, every one of these houses in the court bowl [cul-de-sac] will be connected to the walking track. That’s urban development, connecting people up, bringing back in nature. (Participant P) And that’s something I like. And that’s different to Melbourne. You can go to a dedicated park, but, [In Ballarat East] you just go ‘round the corner and you are in the bush.

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(Participant N) So there’s almost a country feel to these backstreets which I love, and lots of different kinds of people. You can smell smoky [sic]. [Sounds of sniffing on recording] people have got their fires on, it’s so cold. And it’s almost October, but I suppose that the way it goes. Oooh! [walks/ jumps in a puddle]. Did I really want to do that? Good idea in theory, now I’ve got wet feet. (Participant C) This ‘wildness’ incorporated both aesthetic and behavioural components. The parts of Ballarat East that were unformed, without recognized markers of ownership, allowed certain rhythms of daily life (Amin and Thrift 2002). One participant commented that: But I quite like how it’s not looked after as you, well, you know, there’s that attraction about it…. Things can be too perfect, you know, I like that this is a dirt road, and gravel and not made, and yeah, so. I walk along there, and I collect kindling for my fire, you know. (Participant R) One of the nice things about this area is that [one] can just wander, and everything’s not so circumscribed all the time. (Participant C) For this participant, the walk on the wild side was an adventure (Figure 9.3): Aww. Now, there’s actually no way through here. [whispers] Perhaps if I can climb … Look at the blossom here. Definitely a sort of pride I think in people’s homes and gardens. Right we are going off road. [Checking glasses]. Yeah [Climbs over gate] We’ll climb over here. It’s a bit easier if it wasn’t wet. Maybe I’m actually on private property. Yeah, I don’t think I can go through there [laughs]. Anyway, you’ve got a little peak over there. [Whispers] Ok, let’s go back over. (Participant C)

Figure 9.3 Participant C – Climbing a fence to explore some of the ‘wild spaces’ of Ballarat East. Source: Steven Cooke and Kristal Buckley

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This encounter shows one of the advantages of VRM: a descriptive intimacy, allowing this participant to capture and share not only verbal communication, but also the joy of multi-sensory engagement with place. Not all engagement is positive, however. Highlighting the way that urban environments can be disabling for some (Imrie 2000), one participant found this ‘wildness’ problematic, commenting on the lack of footpaths, difficult when unmade roads had no footpaths. When walking with pram, one participant ended up walking on the road ‘if I have to’ (Participant N). VRM also provided an opportunity to comment on the planning processes. Often participants used the phrase ‘higgledy-piggledy’ to describe the suburb. It’s really cool that there’s such a mix of original architecture. From the Gold Rush, and you’ve got these sorts of miner’s cottages, although that’s definitely not a miner’s cottage, and then some more modern houses, like the one on the opposite side. I like the fact that Ballarat’s time line of history is on show in any one particular street. (Participant N) The mix of uses for this participant gave the suburb a distinct ‘sense of identity’ (Participant N), compared to new estates. The assortment of formal and informal spaces gave the place ‘character’ and was also reflective of the diversity of the community. For another participant, reflecting on reasoning for walking a certain route: Oh, I just wanted to show, ‘cause I think was going to be for an hour, so I wanted to show you a house up here. I like the gutters, they are a bit of a drag though. Because if you park your car not near a little ramp, It’s quite hard, it sorta goes down steeply and then up and if you are carrying things it’s a bit of a nuisance. But just back there it looked like blackberries. You see that for a bit and then see [putting on a middle-class voice] quite nice garden. And you know, I like that. (Participant R; emphasis added) This sense of place also incorporated a nostalgia for past practices and idealized communities: [DEWLP] owns it, no one manages it. It’s foreign territory. And every town needs a little bit. When your kids are growing up, all of us grew up with a vacant block somewhere, where you are able to put dirt heaps and ride your bike over bumps or lumps of wood. (Participant P) The danger of sanitizing everything, particularly in city parks where everything has a health and safety certificate. And from a legal point of view that’s important, but you also need to lock your kids out sometimes, you know, it’s sort of like ‘well – don’t climb a tree cos you might fall off’ you know. (Participant P) Rather than a strict dichotomy between the approach of planners and local residents (Swensen et al. 2013), some participants advocated a strategic approach: a need to maintain ‘wildness’ tempered by a strategic approach to dealing with council to achieve certain planning outcomes. This took the form of using existing planning instruments to argue for changes to new developments. If you don’t have ownership of place, and don’t have a sense of where it fits together, how does, who does the council talk to? The one of the corner who wants it all flattened? Or the one up at the other end who wants every tree saved? We’d like to think we’re in the middle. (Participant P)

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This was related to the ‘organic planning’ (Participant N) in Ballarat East, which residents thought had also contributed to the distinctive character. This was perceived as benefit, resulting in the distinctive character of the place, but that was now under threat from over or inappropriate development. The city is playing catch up on planning that never occurred. Pre-amalgamation it was just Rafety’s Rules, and they’re just playing catch up…. Thank you for the limbo! Because if it wasn’t limbo it wouldn’t have survived this long. No one went near it, so it just survived. But we’re at this point of time, this development pressure that we’re looking at, means that if you haven’t got anything; all of a sudden, they just ram [new development] through, and we’ve seen some shockers rammed through. (Participant P)

‘Ordinary heritage’ and attachment to place As Atkinson (2007, 2008) has argued, often the ‘heritage’ that contributes to personal and civic identity is more banal, more ‘everyday’ than that found on many formal heritage registers. Here, the term ‘banal’ is not used in a pejorative sense, but in the way that Michael Billig (1995) uses the word to understand ‘everyday nationalism’. Rather than residing only in ‘extraordinary moments’ (1995: 44) of heritage that are recognized as such via legislation, ‘banal heritage’ here is the everyday ‘flagging’ of place. Most participants articulated this importance of the everyday: I believe in the mundane as well the, you know, the really major buildings, as important to the flavour of an area, the more ‘everyday’. (Participant D) Yeah, it’s the wrought iron and them, whatever that is, I think it’s still weather board, made into this pseudo-looking brick and, just the, I don’t know, it looks like nobody’s really chosen that colour, like there’s not a very nice garden, it’s all sort of, but it’s not neglected so there’s just something about the house that’s, it’s purely the house standing there, it’s not dependent of you like the garden or you liking the pretty colours of the house or something, it’s fairly sort of boring, and yet, look, it’s just, its woodwork and everything is so intricate. (Participant R; emphasis added) Thus ‘surface’ is important. For some, this took a privileging of a typical period architecture across Australia, which would be recognized as ‘heritage’ and which is consistent with more traditional understanding of what heritage is: aesthetically pleasing period-built form. This is consistent with the image that Ballarat presents as a Victorian Gold Rush City (Buckley et al. 2016) and which was identified through the Ballarat Imagine process (City of Ballarat 2013). Such heritage architecture is of course not unique to Ballarat: It is seen to be distinctive, not perhaps opposing Ballarat East and other ‘historic’ areas, but as a process of distinction between Ballarat East and other areas of Ballarat and inappropriate ‘any place’ infill development. [Looking at a house with lacework]. I love all these little details here. This is a beautiful old place, the iron work. Little details on the fence. These are pretty special sorts of places to Ballarat, which is why the units that have no character at all, really threaten the character of the place. (Participant C) Heritage as sense of place, as surface, also came through when participants reflected on the rhythms of the daily life. A deep understanding of place was not important, but part of the background to

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everyday life. For example, a nineteenth-century bluestone house was discovered on the walk to have ‘official’ heritage status – a National Trust plaque. That bluestone building over there is quite beautiful. I don’t know what it is. I haven’t had occasion to stop there. Maybe I’ll go across now. (Participant N) Another: And this is the Greek Church at the end of my street – pretty interesting. I haven’t been in there yet. I’d like to go in one day and say hello. (Participant C) The difference between lived experience of place and distinctiveness (Knox and Marston 2007) was articulated by one, recent resident. She has lived in the area for just over a year, and during her walk, she took us past a converted petrol station (Figure 9.4). This was part of her banal, everyday heritage that allowed her to locate herself spatially and temporally: Not that I particularly love that aspect, but, yeah … no, it all adds to the social history, doesn’t it, and you know, and part of the era of growing up at a particular time. There used to be more petrol stations around when I was, you know, younger. … Well, you have to compare it, you know, with people who actually lived it, coz always living in it is more important than, you know, reading about it, isn’t it? I’m interested in it. But, you know, it’s a different perspective. (Participant D)

Figure 9.4 ‘Everyday heritage’ according to Participant D. Source: Steven Cooke and Kristal Buckley

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This was something that she didn’t mention on her walk, but the reviewing of the recording with the researchers prompted this self-reflection. Another recent resident who moved into Ballarat East less than a year previously wanted more stories to share with her kids on a walk (Participant N). The formal council interpretation was useful for tourists, but also ‘for locals, you know, walking along and thinking “my heritage is right there”. The history of the place that you live in is on display’: But that is the thing. When you become a local, you don’t do those touristy things. You tend to just live and be in the place, and all the stuff, the special stuff, that people think makes a place special is often unknown to you, because you are just here, in it, doing it. (Participant N) Later during her walk, she returned to the theme of both formal and informal heritage: So [heritage] is all around us, and that’s the thing. When you are local, it’s there, and you absorb it, and it’s part of living in this place. And maybe it’s not a conscious thing that you are overly aware of. You know, I moved here in January and people go ‘oh, have you gone to Sovereign Hill?’ And I think, no! I can hear the whistle from my house, MADE’s up the road. But do you go there? No. [Laughs]. I’ve got better things to do with my time, like living. Just general, ‘everyday’. But it’s nice that they are here, on your doorstep. It’s a sense of pride as well. (Participant N) For N, this is what Cooke and Constantinidis (2019) have termed ‘dialogic insideness’, whereby as well as reminding us of the cognitive, emotional and behavioural (Ponzetti 2003 in Smith 2017) encounters with place, it understands heritage as a ‘dialogical space’, (Hermans and Hermans-Konopka 2010: 6) for sharing of stories that articulate a sense of place attachment.

Conclusion This pilot VRM project has examined the sense of place and its relationship to the HUL approach. It has confirmed for us the usefulness of Amin and Thrift’s (2002) metaphors for understanding the urban experience and used these to frame two key aspects of place attachment that could contribute to implementing the HUL approach in Ballarat East: the need to maintain the ‘hybridity’ of the area – neither urban nor rural (a ‘wildness’), and the role of more ‘banal heritage’. VRM also captures at least in part, the multi-sensory engagement with place. It is a very intimate process, and a privilege for the researcher to join the participant, however vicariously, in being shown their place and what it means to them. The smell of wood fires, the sounds of traffic, of wind in the trees, of occasional rain pattering on the hood of a coat, provide a nuanced, evocative understanding of sense(s) of place. As one participant commented: Lovely hotted-up cars. And, the beautiful bird sounds. I love sitting in my backyard listening to all the birds, singing of Black Hill. And, the wattle has come out too. Listen to those birds lovin’ the rain. (Participant C) The walk is often an intimate conversation. For example, one participant stops briefly at a new cupcake shop that she likes and considers going in and buying a cupcake, so that we, the authors, could watch her eating a ‘delicious cupcake’: ‘But I wouldn’t do that to you [laughs]’ (Participant N). The value of the pilot to the technical planning processes being undertaken by the City of Ballarat lies primarily in augmenting and complementing the various cultural mapping and participatory methods that were implemented for Ballarat East. In other words, there is no single ‘best’ method, and

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multiple methods of participation and understanding are needed. The City’s planners have been challenged and inspired to find ways to incorporate these different sources of knowledge and value into the highly codified systems for guiding future change. Experimentation with VRM in this context has allowed some gaps in the existing approaches to be more clearly seen. These relate to the experiential and personal dimensions of heritage, place attachment, formation of boundaries and responses to change. The potential meaning in seemingly ‘empty’ spaces, the subtle components of nature in the urban spaces, and fragments that inspire curiosity and musing are not commonly valued or mentioned within local planning-oriented heritage studies. The VRM project demonstrated the need for greater attention to the experience of movement within and through study areas, and the value of routes, means of access and ‘everyday’ heritage. In many ways, Ballarat East had evaded easy characterization and heritage designation because it does not have a strongly uniform heritage ‘appearance’ or period. The VRM method suggests the potential for a much finer grain of value to be identified, further diversifying the avenues for participation. Given the limitations of small-scale, qualitative studies such as this pilot project, the value of VRM to the implementation of the HUL is not related to developing new typologies of place attachment, nor, we argue, is it able to be used as the sole basis of new planning provisions. Understanding ‘sense of place’, ‘patterns of local urban structure and subdivision’ and ‘heritage values’, are part of ‘Neighbourhood Character’ in the Victorian Planning Provisions (15.01-5S), designed to ‘recognise, support and protect neighbourhood character, cultural identity, and sense of place’ (Victorian State Government 2018). VRM allows the emotional, cognitive and behavioural aspects of sense of place to be described in fine grained detail. In its attention to the intimacies of the everyday, it has value in providing a ‘sensibility check’ to other, larger scale qualitative and quantitative planning research methods. The VRM approach is not without its drawbacks. AV Glasses move with the head, and although, as described earlier, this has advantages over static Go-Pro cameras in that the viewer follows the line of sight of the participants. The bodily movement of the participants creates often violent swaying of the image. This can mean uncomfortable viewing on the part of researchers and participants. One participant commented that he should be wearing ‘shock absorbers’ to dampen the movement! In addition, coat hoods, hair and fingers, and, on one occasion, umbrellas often get in the way, obscuring views, although partly this adds to the intimacy of the journey. More importantly, the fragility of the technology meant that on a number of occasions the audio-visual recording didn’t work, or cut out, leading to frustration on the part of researchers and participants. The methodology is intensive and time consuming and would need significant resources to replicate this study elsewhere. Not all the participants were comfortable with the process, either during the walk, or reflecting afterwards on the visibility of wearing the AV glasses. Often, participants commented on being conscious of wearing the glasses. On the recording, one participant spoke to a passer-by: ‘Hello, I’m doing research. I have to talk to myself [laughs, and then talks to us]. I’m getting strange looks!’ (Participant N; see also Cooke and Constantinidis 2019; Cooke and Frieze 2017). Some participants were self-conscious about talking over the recording while watching it with us and needed prompting. Further studies could map and analyse participants’ routes across the suburb using Google Maps or some of the GIS applications that have been used so far in the City of Ballarat’s HUL process to understand the intersections of these urban transepts and whether there are particular ‘hot spots’ of attachment. It would have also been useful to compare Ballarat East with another newer suburb, which perhaps does not have such traditional ‘heritage’ features. As Tuan argues: ‘Objects and places are centers of value. They attract or repel in finely shaded degrees. To attend to them even momentarily is to acknowledge their reality and value’ (Tuan 1977: 18). VRM provides a way of recording and sharing the micro interactions with our everyday heritage landscapes. Despite the limitations outlined in this pilot project, VRM provides an additional layer of

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information to contribute to other, more established methodologies for understanding attachment to place.

Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank the City of Ballarat, especially Susan Fayad for supporting this work. We would also like to thank the participants who gave so generously of their time, often in inclement weather, to contribute to the research. We would also like to thank Dr Paulette Wallace and Georgia Meros for research assistance on this project.

Notes 1 Key documents and academic literature about the HUL is available from a dedicated page on the website of the UNESCO World Heritage Centre: http://whc.unesco.org/en/hul/ (accessed 13 August 2018). 2 The experience of adopting and working with the HUL in Ballarat has been discussed in several published sources, including Buckley et al. (2016), Buckley and Fayad (2017), and Chapter 31, this volume. See also WHITR-AP and City of Ballarat (2016) and Pérez and Martínez (2018). 3 As this was a pilot project, primarily concerned with initial methodological process, participants were not asked specifically about their cultural identities or backgrounds. The City of Ballarat has developed extensive community consultation guidelines, including processes of direct engagement with the area’s Traditional Owners. Further details can be found at: www.ballarat.vic.gov.au/pc/cultural-diversity.aspx (accessed 12 October 2018). 4 The glasses used were Pivothead Original Series. See: www.pivothead.com/ (accessed 13 August 2018).

References Adams, P. C. (2017) ‘Epilogue: Methodologies of place attachment’, in J. S. Smith (ed.) Explorations in place attachment, London: Routledge, 254–269. Amin, A. and Thrift, N. (2002) Cities: Reimagining the urban, Cambridge: Polity. Atkinson, D. (2007) ‘Kitsch geographies and the everyday spaces of social memory’, Environment and Planning A, 39(3): 521–540. ———. (2008) ‘The heritage of mundane places’, in B. J. Graham and P. Howard (eds) The Ashgate research companion to heritage and identity, Aldershot: Ashgate, 381–396. Australia ICOMOS. (1979) The Australia ICOMOS Charter for places of cultural significance (The Burra Charter) [superseded edition], Burwood: Australia ICOMOS. Available at: https://australia.icomos.org/wp-content/uploads/ Burra-Charter_1979.pdf (accessed 20 May 2018). ———. (2013) The Australia ICOMOS Charter for places of cultural significance (The Burra Charter), Burwood: Australia ICOMOS. Available at: https://australia.icomos.org/publications/charters/ (accessed 20 May 2018). Bandarin, F. and van Oers, R. (2012) The Historic Urban Landscape: Managing heritage in an urban century, Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. ———. (2014) Reconnecting the city: The Historic Urban Landscape approach and the future of urban heritage, Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. Beilin, R. (2005) ‘Photo-elicitation and the agricultural landscape: ‘Seeing’ and ‘telling’ about farming, community and place’, Visual Studies, 20(1): 56–68. Billig, M. (1995) Banal nationalism, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Buckley, K., Cooke, S. and Fayad, S. (2016) ‘Using the Historic Urban Landscape to reimagine Ballarat: The local context’, in S. Labadi and W. Logan (eds) Urban heritage, development and sustainability: International frameworks, national and local governance, London: Routledge, 93–113. Buckley, K. and Fayad, S. (2017) ‘The HUL and the Australian Burra Charter – Some implications for local heritage practices’, Historic Environment, 29(2): 46–57. Byrne, D., Brayshaw, H. and Ireland, T. (2003) Social significance: A discussion paper, 2nd edition. Sydney: New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service. Castells, M. (2010) The rise of the network society, Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.

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Exploring sense of place in the HUL City of Ballarat. (2013) Ballarat imagine, Ballarat: City of Ballarat. Available at: www.ballarat.vic.gov.au/media/ 1333682/ballarat_imagine.pdf (accessed 12 August 2018). ———. (2015) Today, tomorrow, together: The Ballarat Strategy 2015–2040, Ballarat: City of Ballarat. ———. (2018) Imagine Ballarat East. (website). Available at: www.ballarat.vic.gov.au/pbs/city-strategy/strategicprojects-and-frameworks/current/imagine-ballarat-east.aspx (accessed 12 August 2018). Cooke, S. and Constantinidis, D. (2019) ‘Investigating “ordinary” landscapes: Using visual research methods to understand heritage digital technologies and sense of place’, in H. Lewi, W. Smith, S. Cooke and D. vom Lehn (eds) International handbook of new digital practices in galleries, libraries, archives, museums and heritage sites, London: Routledge. Cooke, S. and Frieze, D. (2017) ‘The social agency of museums in civic engagement: Investigating the impact of education programs at Holocaust museums’, A paper presented at ‘Reverberations: The Holocaust, Human Rights and the Museum’, Sydney, Australia. Crang, M. and Tolia-Kelly, D. (2010) ‘Nation, race, and affect: Senses and sensibilities at national heritage sites’, Environment and Planning A, 42(10): 2315–2331. Cresswell, T. (2015). Place: An introduction. Chichester: John Wiley and Sons. Evans, J. and Jones, P. (2011) ‘The walking interview: Methodology, mobility and place’, Applied Geography, 31(2): 849–858. Fayad, S. and Buckley, K. (in press) ‘The transformational power of the HUL approach: Lessons from Ballarat, Australia 2012–2017’, in A. P. Roders and F. Bandarin (eds) Reshaping urban conservation: The Historic Urban Landscape approach in action, Singapore: Springer. Forsyth, I., Lorimer, H., Merriman, P. and Robinson, J. (2013) ‘Guest editorial’, Environment and Planning A, 45(5): 1013–1020. Harrison, R. (2013) Heritage: Critical approaches, London: Routledge. Hawke, S. K. (2012) ‘Heritage and sense of place: Amplifying local voice and co-constructing meaning’, in I. Convery, G. Corsane and P. David (eds) Making sense of place: Multidisciplinary perspectives, Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 235–246. Hayden, D. (1995) The power of place: Urban landscapes as public history, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Hermans, H. and Hermans-Konopka, A. (2010) Dialogical self theory: Positioning and counter-positioning in a globalizing society, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Hobsbawm, E. J. (1997) On history, New York: New Press. Imrie, R. (2000) ‘Disabling environments and the geography of access policies and practices’, Disability & Society, 15(1): 5–24. Kikuchi, Y., Sasaki, Y., Yoshino, H., Okahashi, J., Yoshida, M. and Inaba, N. (2014) ‘Local visions of the landscape: Participatory photographic survey of the world heritage site, the rice terraces of the Philippine Cordilleras’, Landscape Research, 39(4): 387–401. Knox, P. L. and Marston, S. A. (2007) Places and regions in global context: Human geography, 4th Edition. Essex, UK: Pearson. Manzo, L. C and Devine-Wright, P. (2014) ‘Introduction’, in L. C. Manzo and P. Devine-Wright (eds) Place attachment: Advances in theory, methods and applications, Abingdon: Routledge, 11–22. Morse, J. M. (2007) ‘Sampling in grounded theory’, in A. Bryant and K. Charmaz (eds) The Sage handbook of grounded theory, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 229–244. Paulos, E. and Jenkins, T. (2005) ‘Urban probes: Encountering our emerging urban atmospheres’, Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Portland, Oregon, USA, 341–350. DOI: 10.1145/ 1054972.1055020. Pérez, J. R. and Martínez, P. G. (2018) ‘Lights and shadows over the Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape: ‘Managing change’ in Ballarat and Cuenca through a radical approach focused on values and authenticity’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 24(1): 1–16. Pink, S. (2012) ‘Advances in visual methodology: An introduction’, in S. Pink (ed.) Advances in visual methodology, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 3–16. ———. (2013) Doing visual ethnography, 3rd edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Powell, K. (2010) ‘Making sense of place: Mapping as a multisensory research method’, Qualitative Inquiry, 16(7): 539–555. Relph, E. (1976) Place and placelessness, London: Pion. Rose, G. (2014) ‘On the relation between “visual research methods” and contemporary visual culture’, The Sociological Review, 62(1): 24–46. Rose, G and Tolia-Kelly, D. P. (2012) ‘Visuality/materiality: Introducing a manifesto for practice’, in G. Rose, D. P. Tolia-Kelly (eds) Visuality/materiality: Images, objects and practices, Surrey: Ashgate Publishing, 1–15.

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Steven Cooke and Kristal Buckley Schorch, P. (2015) ‘Experiencing differences and negotiating prejudices at the immigration museum, Melbourne’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 21(1): 46–64. Schorch, P., Walton, J., Priest, N. and Paradies, Y. (2015) ‘Encountering the ‘other’: Interpreting student experiences of a multi-sensory museum exhibition’, Journal of Intercultural Studies, 36(2): 221–240. Smith, J. S. (2017) ‘Introduction: Putting place back into place attachment’, in J. S. Smith (ed.) Explorations in place attachment, London: Routledge, 15–32. Smith, L. (2006) The uses of heritage, London: Routledge. Stedman, R., Beckley, T., Wallace, S. and Ambard, M. (2004) ‘A picture and 1000 words: Using resident-employed photography to understand attachment to high amenity places’, Journal of Leisure Research, 36(4): 580–606. Swensen, G., Jerpåsen, G. B., Sæter, O. and Tveit, M. S. (2013) ‘Capturing the intangible and tangible aspects of heritage: Personal versus official perspectives in cultural heritage management’, Landscape Research, 38(2): 203–221. Tolia-Kelly, D. P. (2008) ‘Motion/Emotion: Picturing Translocal Landscapes in the Nurturing Ecologies Research Project’, Mobilities, 3(1): 117–140. Tuan, Y. F. (1977) Space and place: The perspective of experience, London: Edward Arnold. ———. (1989) ‘Surface phenomena and aesthetic experience’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 79(2): 233–241. UNESCO. (2011) Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape, Paris: UNESCO. Victorian State Government. (2018) Victorian planning provisions, Melbourne: State Government of Victoria. Available at: http://planningschemes.dpcd.vic.gov.au/schemes/vpps (accessed 12 August 2018). Waterton, E., Smith, L. and Campbell, G. (2006) ‘The utility of discourse analysis to heritage studies: The Burra Charter and social inclusion’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 12(4): 339–355. Waterton, E. and Watson, S. (eds) (2013a) Heritage and community engagement: Collaboration or contestation? London: Routledge. ———. (2013b) ‘Framing theory: Towards a critical imagination in heritage studies’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 19(6): 546–561. WHITRAP and City of Ballarat. (2016) The HUL guidebook: Managing heritage in dynamic and constantly changing urban environments. A practical guide to UNESCO’s recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape, Shanghai and Ballarat: World Heritage Institute of Training and Research for the Asia and the Pacific Region.

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10 CREATING INFORMATION MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS FOR CULTURAL WORLD HERITAGE Experiences from Central Asia Ona Vileikis

Introduction The UNESCO Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) requires taking into account the numerous attributes of the historic environments. It proposes six critical steps for its successful implementation. Surveys and mapping of the natural and cultural assets, as well as of human resources, are conceived as the first step in order to understand what needs to be protected or managed. To improve the efficiency of the management of cultural heritage and streamline the monitoring processes, several sources reiterate the importance of making available accurate and consistent information (ICOMOS 1964: Art. 16; Letellier 2007; UNESCO 1972a: Art. 27). However, problems start when the baseline information to be shared is not reliable or incomplete, or when there is a lack in local stakeholder expertise related to adequate information management strategies. In addition, new challenges arise in the preparation of nomination dossiers and the management of largescale or transnational World Heritage properties. For example, data made available is not always interoperable and its harmonization is necessary. In such cases it can be helpful to apply advanced yet easy-to-use information and content management systems that can handle large amounts of geospatial data (Vileikis 2018). Information Management Systems (IMS), as digital repositories, are an opportunity in cultural heritage inventories, they are changing the way stakeholders and the larger community is informed for the protection of the sites. IMS can aid in the collection, storage, analysis and dissemination of the gathered information (Longley et al. 2011). Although the HUL approach is a well-recognized instrument for managing change of cultural heritage, limited research has been undertaken in the scope of IMS to support its implementation. This chapter focuses on the need, methods, and use of comprehensive IMS for documentation, nomination, and management of World Heritage properties towards a successful implementation of the HUL. It describes strategies for the development of IMS in cultural heritage illustrated with two case studies along the Central Asian Silk Roads. The first one is the design and development of the Silk Roads Cultural Heritage Resource Information System (CHRIS) supporting the serial transnational World Heritage nominations of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, and the second one is the development of a Geographic Information System (GIS) for mapping three World Heritage cities in Uzbekistan. 181

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These ten years of experience in Central Asia (2008–2018) exemplify the benefits and challenges of such digital tools and aim to become a best practice for future initiatives with similar characteristics.

World Heritage management, the HUL and Central Asia Heritage is valued in a variety of ways being the sum of multidimensional tangible or intangible qualities that a site has at different levels of significance. These qualities mostly tend to be attributed to positive characteristics of a site (De la Torre and Mason 2002; Mason 2002). They become the core of the conservation process and lead to the management of cultural heritage (Jokilehto 1999; Mason 2006; McClelland et al. 2013). However, in today’s dynamic and continuously changing environments, the challenge is to manage such values and attributes under a holistic and interdisciplinary approach and integrate them into a broader sustainable urban management framework, as advocated by the New Urban Agenda, the Hangzhou Declaration and the UNESCO HUL Recommendation (UNESCO 2011a, 2013; United Nations 2017). The HUL approach puts forward the idea of culture as a fourth pillar of sustainable development. It aims to integrate development principles into conservation planning by considering other dimensions beyond socio-cultural values such as socio-economic values related to the local stakeholders. It intends to manage change rather than only preserve the past. It recognizes and identifies layering and interconnection of natural and cultural, tangible and intangible, international and local values, broadening the Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) and including its context and geographical setting. It also outlines the involvement of stakeholders at all levels to embrace a wider range of perspectives and interests (UNESCO 2011a). As already stressed by the Nara Document, a heritage management system should recognize and be adaptable to cultural diversity (ICOMOS 1994). Thus, there is no recipe for its development. Aside from the World Heritage Convention, there are other conventions and internationallyrecognized charters and standards for cultural heritage and conservation that aim to guide stakeholders and site managers to improve the World Heritage implementation and interpretation. New legislation or integrated approaches with other management systems, together with financial measures, might be needed to comply with the international standards given by international and local charters, guidelines and resolutions (UNESCO 1972b). Also, as a component of the management planning process, management plans serve as the means for combining the OUV with a strategic framework for the protection and management of the properties. Management systems and plans aim at a long-term planning. They serve to document the process, to identify gaps in the existing system, and are flexible enough to develop when circumstances change (Clark 2010). In the Central Asian context, the development of management systems and plans is recent, and the process has been challenging. However, experiences as innovators of the HUL are showing positive changes in the management approach. In 2007, the first Silk Roads sub-regional meetings were held in Central Asia and China as an initial step towards the development of a management heritage framework for the Silk Roads serial transnational World Heritage nomination,1 including twelve States Parties in 2010. Later in 2008, the preparation for the management plans and inventory of resources started in the World Heritage Historic Centre of Bukhara in Uzbekistan and the workflow was replicated in the three other World Heritage cities. The processes followed, to a certain extent, the seven key aspects that should be present for managing World Heritage stated by the Operational Guidelines: (1) a shared understanding of values by all stakeholders; (2) a management cycle that includes planning, implementation, monitoring, evaluation and feedback; (3) assessment of the vulnerabilities and change; (4) development of mechanisms for the involvement and coordination of the activities between partners and stakeholders; (5) allocation of resources; (6) capacitybuilding; and (7) clear description of the functionality of the system. (UNESCO 2017: Para. 111)

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These points were in agreement with the HUL as they aimed ‘to give the cultural and natural heritage a function in the life of the community and to integrate the protection of that heritage into comprehensive planning programmes’ (UNESCO 1972a: Art. 5a). The conceptual framework of ‘values-based management’ of heritage was introduced in practice throughout the World Heritage nomination and management processes in Central Asia. In addition, changes in the national legislation and the approval of degrees on cultural heritage took place such as the appointment of the UNESCO National Focal point for cultural World Heritage in Uzbekistan in 2014 and the creation of the National World Heritage Committee of the Republic of Kazakhstan in 2014.

Challenges of documenting large-scale cultural World Heritage in Central Asia Documentation is ‘the already existing stock of information. As an activity, it stands for the systematic collection and archiving of records in order to preserve them for future reference. It can be said: Today’s recording is tomorrow’s documentation’ (Letellier 2007: XV). Thus, both heritage documentation and inventories are essential tools for the management of cultural heritage. They provide the background for local, state, and national listings; and with it, legal protection to take more informed decisions and mitigate change. As recommended by the World Heritage Convention, a digital repository is valuable for the inclusion of the sites on the World Heritage List. At a national level, the heritage sites in Central Asia are documented based on the Monument Passport inventory form inherited from Soviet time. For instance, based on these forms, Kazakhstan publishes a series of books to cover the national inventory of cultural heritage of each region. However, these are not available in digital format and are limited to two books, two regions of 14 in total per year. In Uzbekistan, the hard copies of the forms are available at the documentation centre of the Board of Monuments (BoM) of the Ministry of Culture or the Inter-regional Inspections, but these passports are not accessible online nor to other stakeholders, most of the maps are still only available as hard copies and information is not regularly updated. In the other countries there are periodic checks of the sites on the Central Asian national heritage lists. However, guidelines for the conservation and maintenance, not to mention monitoring instruments, are not yet in place. Records related to World Heritage processes in Central Asia such as the nomination dossiers, providing the baseline information and stating the initial condition and management of the site at the moment of inscription were not up to date, as it was in the case of the historic cities of Uzbekistan. This documentation comprised the new nomination requirements such as a Statement of OUV (SOUV) as well as an established management and monitoring procedures for the property and maps with clearly delineated boundaries and buffer zones. During the preparation of the World Heritage serial transnational nomination dossier in Central Asia, as well as the management plans in Uzbekistan, a number of issues related to documentation of large-scale cultural World Heritage, such as historic cities and cultural landscapes, were identified. These included the following: • • • •

A large amount of baseline information was required. There was no specific system to support the elaboration of complex nomination dossiers or monitoring of the listed sites. A variety of data formats, types and languages were to be collected due to different national documentation procedures, standards in cartography, conservation strategies and policies, even within the same country. There was limited use of advance technologies and lack of technical expertise, for instance, in the use of GIS, documentation and recording techniques, and management.

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Thus, the development of systematic workflows for data collection, management and monitoring was essential to establish good baseline information, document and record large datasets. Different raw data collected needed to be shared, analysed, interpreted and disseminated in a reliable manner. The use of digital tools such as IMS was promising.

Information management systems for cultural heritage and the Silk Roads GIS and Geospatial Content Management System (GeoCMS) are two of the most versatile IMS tools to manage information. They can integrate multi-layered spatial and non-spatial data. Thus, a database containing raw data can be turned into validated information. This information ultimately serves in problem solving and multi-criteria/multi-temporal decision making in terms of planning and actual interventions. GIS are built from geographic databases stored in Database Management Systems (DBMS) (Longley et al. 2011). DBMS is a software application that allows its management by more than one user and potentially ensures integrity, longevity of large-scale information, and data uniformity. The latter is achieved through the use of (spatial) data distribution, metadata standards and protocols such as the International Committee for Documentation (CIDOC) – Conceptual Reference Model (CRM) International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 21127:2006 (ISO 2006). A GeoCMS (also GIS CMS) is an online IMS application that integrates the features of a Content Management System (CMS) with GIS Web Mapping Features. The use of GeoCMS can be mainly seen today in environmental and financial business practices. Although their use is not standardized in the common management practices, some new systems in the field of cultural heritage are successfully evolving. Table 10.1 lists a number of (geospatial) IMS in cultural heritage, from which the Arches Heritage Inventory and Management System and its implementations e.g. Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa (EAMENA), as well as the Middle Eastern Geodatabase for Antiquities (MEGA)- Jordan, Heritech and Calakmul are examples of GeoCMS.2 In addition, there are current IMS platforms related to the heritage of the Silk Roads as listed in Table 10.2.3 The latter two listed are not GeoWebsites, but their advantage is that they provide a large reliable and regularly updated database related to the Silk Roads. However, when it specifically comes to Central Asia, IMS for national inventories and systematic management and monitoring of cultural heritage are not yet consolidated or accessible (online) in a single centralized digital catalogue. GeoCMS, an advanced form of IMS, together with the advantages of GIS, offers documentation, standards with robust metadata, and visualization of information in a user-friendly way. These systems are becoming more popular in the field of cultural heritage (Cuttler et al. 2013; Myers et al. 2016; Vileikis et al. 2012). However, until today, in regards to serial transnational World Heritage nominations and heritage cities, a shared IMS supporting management and monitoring system to include the most complete baseline data is not yet available to the States Parties. The following sections illustrate the development of workflows in documentation and IMS in Central Asia.

A Geospatial Content Management System (GeoCMS) for the Silk Roads More than a decade ago, the Silk Roads was recommended as a potential theme for a serial transnational World Heritage nomination (UNESCO 2003). It initially included the five Central Asian countries – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan – as well as China. Although the countries in Central Asia have been working together since decades, there were no systematic methodologies developed for sharing documentation and information, nor for monitoring and reporting serial transnational World Heritage properties, and the group had no experience on how to set up a joint serial transnational nomination. An additional challenge appeared to be the adequate 184

Table 10.1 Examples of IMS in Cultural Heritage. Name

Objective

ARCHES heritage inventory and management system

Accessibility

Open source software system for shared public and inventories of built heritage. U.S. and supported by worldwide implementations a community discussion forum Berlin Wall Interactive GIS documenting the shared public Berlin Wall Calakmul (4D GIS) 4-D Geographical Information restricted access System for Calakmul World Heritage site in Mexico as the main cartographic data repository Endangered Archaeology Record archaeological sites and land- shared public in the Middle East and scapes that are under threat across the North Africa Middle East and North Africa. (EAMENA) Implementation from Arches Flanders Heritage Cultural Heritage Inventory with shared public Agency (Onroerend Erf- Geoportal in the Flemish Region, goed) Digital Heritage Belgium Inventory Global Heritage NetAn Early Warning and Collaborative open access and work (GHN) Solutions Platform, an initiative of the restricted commuWorld Monuments Fund nity access Heritech for the city of GeoICT for the preservation and pro- shared public Biograd na Moru motion of Croatian Cultural Heritage Middle Eastern Geodata- National information system for restricted access base for Antiquities inventory and management of (MEGA)- Jordan archaeological sites in Jordan Protected Urban Planet Exchange of information on the open access and evolution of protected urban areas restricted commuworldwide nity access (registration) Qatar National Historic Access database and ArcGIS based on restricted access Environment Record open source of cultural resource man(QNHER) agement tool for both monuments on land and the submerged cultural heritage State of Conservation Archive showing the World Heritage shared public Information System State of Conservation Reports (SOC) UNESCO WHC UNESCO Silk Road Database of themes related to cultural shared public Online Platform heritage (tangible and intangible) and a knowledge databank UNESCO World Heri- Archive showing the properties shared public tage Centre included in World Heritage List and their related activities Source: Ona Vileikis (2018).

Link http://archesproject.org

www.denkmallandschaftberliner-mauer.de www.belspo.be/belspo// Fedra/proj.asp?l=en&CO D=UN%2F4 http://eamena.arch.ox. ac.uk

https://inventaris.onroer enderfgoed.be/

http://globalheritagefund. org/images/uploads/docs/ GHNBrochure042012.pdf www.biograd-heritech.hr http://megajordan.org/

http://2011.protectedur banplanet.net/

www.qma.org.qa/arc/

http://whc.unesco.org/ en/soc/ http://en.unesco.org/silk road/unesco-silk-roadonline-platform http://whc.unesco.org

Ona Vileikis Table 10.2 Non-exhaustive list of the Silk Roads IMS for cultural heritage. Name

Objective

Accessibility

UNESCO Silk Road Online Platform

To provide a knowledge database of studies related to the Silk Roads and a number of themes related to cultural heritage (tangible and intangible) displayed on a map To give access to relevant information mainly about the World Heritage nominations and activities of China and the Central Asian sections (Corridors). It is managed by the ICOMOS International Conservation Center (IICC) in Xi’an, China. To support discovery, investigation, analysis, visualization, communication and archiving of spatial and temporal information about the Silk Roads. It is an open source web mapping system. To compile databases and research projects related to the creation of digital archives of the Silk Roads. It is an international collaboration between the field of informatics and digital humanities. To make open access information about Dunhuang tangible heritage and archaeological sites of the Eastern Silk Road. The IDP is platform, result of international collaboration.

shared public https://en.unesco.org/ silkroad/unesco-silkroad-online-platform

Silk Roads World Heritage

Silk Road WorldMap Harvard

Digital Silk Road project of the National Institute of informatics in Tokyo

International Dunhuang Project (IDP) of the British Library

Link

shared public www.silkroads.org.cn and restricted access

shared public https://worldmap. harvard.edu/maps/ SilkRoad

shared public http://dsr.nii.ac.jp/ index.html.en

shared public http://idp.bl.uk/

Source: Ona Vileikis (2018)

collaboration of a large number of stakeholders as a direct result from the size of the project. To close these gaps, the Silk Roads Cultural Heritage Resource Information System (Silk Roads CHRIS), a GeoCMS, was developed with the five Central Asian States Parties. In order to make use of the system to its full extent, workflows for documentation, as well as data standards and methods for nomination and monitoring, of serial transnational World Heritage were implemented.4 The Silk Roads CHRIS extends the features of a normal CMS to geodata with the possibilities to edit, persist and display data in a standard Internet browser. The main advantages for the Silk Roads team included: (1) adaptable to the serial transnational nomination requirements; (2) easy to use: the Silk Roads CHRIS has basic spatial analysis capabilities, the possibility to edit attributes or shapefiles using a thin client online GIS, where user only need to display the maps and information without installing any browser plug-in or applets; (3) allow exchange of information: stored data can be shared among a large number of people involved in the nomination and with different spatial locations; (4) web-based but protected: control access to data, based on user roles, easy storage and retrieval of data and improve communication between the team; and (5) able to track and validate the information during the process. The next sections present the three main stages of the development, implementation and review of the Silk Roads CHRIS.

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The roadmap The Silk Roads CHRIS development was comprised of two main stages: nomination dossier and monitoring tool. The former provided the baseline information and the latter supported the future World Heritage monitoring and reporting processes after the inscription. Once the nomination dossier was implemented as a GeoCMS and proven to be operational, the prototype of the monitoring tool was developed. Further details on the GeoCMS monitoring tool and the implemented risk management framework can be found in Vileikis (2018). Based on a User-Centered Design (UCD) approach (ISO 2010), as depicted in Figure 10.1, the overall workflow contained five phases ending with a designed solution that met the requirement of the users. The digital documentation approach was accompanied by active capacity building, an equally significant task towards human development, as advocated by UNDP (2009). Enhancing capacity aimed to transfer knowledge and expertise towards effective heritage conservation, management and monitoring as advocated by the World Heritage Committee (UNESCO 2011b). The capacity building strategy also aimed to develop the Silk Roads CHRIS using a participatory approach. It involved a series of training activities on cultural heritage documentation and recording as well as World Heritage management and monitoring. These activities were for an interdisciplinary and interinstitutional team and in the form of workshops, consensus meetings and field campaigns.

Figure 10.1 UCD process adapted from ISO (2010) for the Silk Roads CHRIS including a capacity building component (right). Data collection of base record during field campaigns in Kazakhstan (2011) (upper left) and archival research at the National Museum of Antiquities in Dushanbe, Tajikistan (2012) (bottom left). Source: Ona Vileikis

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Planning and understanding the context As shown in Figure 10.2, the levels of heritage recording and documentation (how?) based on Letellier (2007) were correlated with the levels of scale (where? who?). The identification of the levels of scale and the relation with the stakeholders, and their role in the management of the World Heritage property, was relevant to understand who was involved or responsible in the documentation process. These levels are described below. First, the levels of scale were determined by the level of management and reporting of the Corridor. Whereas in a classical implementation of the general framework three main spatial levels were identified, in the Silk Roads case study four scales were recognized as follows. These scales gave access to specific documentation in the Silk Roads CHRIS. • • • •

Silk Roads (Transnational scale): At a large scale of the network. This included the Silk Roads Corridors network and the ICOMOS Silk Roads Thematic Study, for informative purposes only. Corridors (regional scale): property inscribed on the World Heritage List because of its OUV (why). It contained access to the nomination dossier; the maps related to the Silk Roads World Heritage nomination and the monitoring tool. National: highest administrative level of the State Party. The documentation of this level was linked to the corridors or component parts. Component Parts (national and local scales): They contain the attributes and sub-attributes (what). It contained within the Corridor module the nomination dossier and monitoring tool of the Component Parts as well as the maps visualizing the nominated area and buffer zones.

Figure 10.2 Levels of heritage documentation and recording based on Letellier (2007), correlated with the levels of scale for the Silk Roads cultural serial transnational World Heritage nomination. On the right the corresponding stakeholders to each level of scale. Source: Ona Vileikis

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Second, the stakeholders were identified as a critical step for the implementation of the collaborative environment. The groups of stakeholders for the Corridors, future World Heritage properties, were primarily composed by high level national and local governmental representatives and key players in the preparation of the nomination dossier. The multidisciplinary and cross-organizational team brought, as advocated by the HUL (UNESCO 2011a), not only a more efficient use of resources especially for the acquisition of information, but at the same time the need to establish different levels of user-rights based on user-roles to be assigned in the system.

Designing and implementing the system A specific editable nomination dossier gathering all the information required by the Operational Guidelines (UNESCO 2017: Annex 5) was designed and implemented in the Silk Roads CHRIS. The States Parties were able to access online the system with a login from any location and with no particular hardware or software infrastructure. The online functionality was essential for the transnational work. Exchange of information was allowed by storing data among the States Parties and with different geographic location. To improve accuracy of data entry a common vocabulary was ensured through a glossary reflected in standardized fields with single and multiple selections, and the repository of images and bibliography with metadata. Also, texts prepared by the States Parties were inserted in the provided text boxes or selected from predefined multiple lists (see Figure 10.3).

Figure 10.3 View of an example of Silk Roads Corridor in Silk Roads CHRIS. Nomination dossier in Russian (left) and nomination map (right). Source: Ona Vileikis

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One advantage of the Silk Roads CHRIS was that it interlinked data. This allowed to have easy correlation of the objects in the database and to avoid duplication of information while entering information from different locations. Also, the proposed use of international standards for nomination and monitoring based on the World Heritage formats and metadata were implemented in the GeoCMS. The images with their metadata were displayed in the Silk Roads CHRIS. The metadata of the selected images was cross-referenced with the fields of Section 7.a of the nomination dossier. Any change made to the repository and its metadata was automatically reflected in the online nomination dossier, speeding the process of updating the information. The Silk Roads CHRIS addressed the issue of data fragmentation in digital technology, discussed by Addison (2007). A number of datasets were selected based on the reliability of the source to minimize the number of erroneous data. Notably datasets were integrated. The advantage was that the users had a visual interaction with the integrated data. With present-day technology, datasets can also be connected using Linked Data or mashups via Application Programming Interface (APIs) (Bizer et al. 2009; Tran et al. 2014). However, one main condition is that the data is published online, and this was not the case for the Silk Roads. Nevertheless, as stressed by Bizer et al. (2009) almost a decade ago and still valid, these methods also have a number of challenges to be addressed regarding licenses in terms to reuse and republish data, provenance and trustworthiness of data, and, above all this, protection of privacy. The software prototype method, as proposed by Maguire (2001), was used as a way to show the main features of the Silk Roads CHRIS and for the stakeholders to test the system and provide more complete feedback. Before the stakeholders experienced the system, they were doubtful about its use. In line with Nielsen’s (1997) results on optimization of user interfaces, this was mainly because they were not used to share information in digital format and the system of online networks was not trusted. However, after using the prototype and a series of trainings on heritage documentation, the stakeholders were confident about the capabilities of the system. The only disadvantage found at that point was that the prototype’s user interface was in English, and it would have been easier for the users to already have it in Russian or their national languages. This need of a multilingual interface has been highlighted in previous research projects with the MEGA-Jordan and the Arches systems (Myers and Dalgity 2012; Myers et al. 2012). After an agreement with the Central Asian team, the multilingual CMS was implemented in English and Russian. Other languages can be added in the future, such as Uzbek and Kazakh. However, the content provided with texts will not be automatically translated and will require additional resources. On the basis of the feedback collected, the demonstrator was replaced by a prototype. At that point, two main potential risks were observed for the development of the Silk Roads CHRIS to reach its successful deployment, namely data acquisition and the awareness of the stakeholders about the World Heritage processes. In the case of Central Asia, the national system of inventories in all countries did not have an adequate data storage, management and accessibility. Almost no information was found in digital format, or the available information was insufficient to fulfil the prerequisites for the World Heritage nomination. During 2012 and after the time of the system development, a number of capacity building activities to increase technical knowledge on data acquisition and the population of the Silk Roads CHRIS complemented with practical field campaigns took place (see Vileikis and Allayarov 2015b). In addition, these activities reinforced the capacities of the States Parties with regard to the preparation of the nomination and future monitoring in line with the World Heritage Capacity Building Strategy (UNESCO 2011b). The implementation of the system and methodologies did not aim to entirely change the current documentation methods of the States Parties, but to structurally improve the data input and systematize the nomination process towards a continuous monitoring and periodic reporting. This is in agreement with international documents that highlight the diversity of cultural heritage and respect to the local context (ICOMOS 1994, 1996; Nara +20 2015; UNESCO 1972a). The results of the field campaigns were discussed after the data was collected, opening a channel of communication among the group. 190

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Consensus meetings took place to clarify any inconsistencies related to boundaries and buffer zones. The Silk Roads CHRIS was used to visually verify the information using the maps with the original boundaries and the updated information mapped.

Populating the system The Silk Roads CHRIS helped to harmonize existing information of national inventories on sites already listed on the World Heritage List and on Component Parts on the Tentative List. An editable nomination dossier including all the information required by the Operational Guidelines was designed and implemented. It contained not only the information available on a given Corridor to be nominated on the World Heritage List, but also on its Component Parts as well as supplementary information, all linked to the GIS environment. Different kinds of data were added to the GeoCMS, from texts to photos to advanced 3D models. Additionally, by using metadata and a standardized nomination dossier for World Heritage it was possible to export data for further use. The Silk Roads CHRIS allowed for creating or modifying the delineation of the nominated area and buffer zone of each Component Part as vector data. By opening the Component Part model in edit mode, the boundaries of ten Component Parts were drawn. They were reshaped if needed with simple clicks based on the Google Maps background data. In this task, the Silk Roads CHRIS supported the States Parties by automatically adding and displaying the coordinates of the centre point of the nominated component parts. In 2012, at the time of the preparation of the nomination dossier, the resolution of scanned topographical maps and Landsat ETM imagery in some areas was better than the Digital Globe (2012) imagery provided by Google Maps. Therefore, raster data (images) was added to the Silk Roads CHRIS. This was useful to visualize the raster data faster when internet was performing slow as a lowresolution copy of the data was displayed much faster than a high-resolution dataset. Additionally, a repository was completely integrated in the system. It included a bibliography as well as documents and images associated with the heritage sites. The Silk Roads CHRIS’ large bibliography was populated by the States Parties. It allowed the users to search for an item, upload a new one or download the results list. The references selected were automatically linked by the system to section 7 of the nomination dossier at a Corridor level.

Review after implementation The Silk Roads CHRIS nomination dossier was populated with information shared by the States Parties, showing the capability of the system. Significant amount of data was added in 2012–2013 such as 323 images and 2.2 Gb of input data. The States Parties were able to work from any location, track the process and view updates of other Component Parts belonging to the common Corridor as well as to those within their national boundaries speeding the preparation of the serial transnational nomination process. Lastly, one of the main important outputs of the Silk Roads CHRIS for the State Parties was the possibility of exporting (printing) the nomination dossier as PDF. During the evaluation phase, questionnaires about the controlled user testing sessions and user satisfaction of the Silk Roads CHRIS were distributed to the stakeholders that took part in both the development of the system and the capacity building activities. A System Usability Scale (SUS) (Brooke 1996) was used to measure the usability of the system. It also included questions on capacity building and user knowledge before and after the use of the GeoCMS. Twelve anonymous questionnaires were received back. Evaluations of the Silk Roads CHRIS participants praised the usability of the system, rating it with an average of 85.5/100, based on Brooke’s SUS rating. According to the results of the questionnaires, the knowledge of all recipients increased after receiving capacity building on World Heritage and the use of 191

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the system. This positive result validated the concept of capacity development of UNDP (2009) where, after coaching local staff, knowledge and expertise is transferred to foster human development. The development of the Silk Roads CHRIS experienced both the challenge and complexity of international cooperation and coordination of the various stakeholders, as well as frequently limited local technical expertise in documentation and digitization of data, in order to populate the system. Thus, despite using an open platform and all efforts undertaken by the different stakeholders, using the system does not automatically guarantee the success of the nomination. The application of user-centred design for the development of the Silk Roads CHRIS, international agreements among the States Parties, wellestablished documentation methodologies, improved national policies, and strong capacity building are equally important than any capability of the system. The data was gathered, the system was populated and the nomination dossier of one Corridor was successfully delivered for review. It was then validated by the World Heritage Committee. The system was effectively used as a tool to support the Central Asian countries in the preparation of two nomination dossiers. By the end of 2013, the full Silk Roads CHRIS was fully operational, hosted in Central Asia and with a local administrator. The first nomination dossier, Silk Roads: The Routes Network of Chang’an-Tianshan Corridor, was jointly finalized among Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and China, and the property was listed a World Heritage in 2014. As summarized in Table 10.3, the implementation of the Silk Roads CHRIS in hand with capacity building brought a number of benefits to the field of serial transnational World Heritage in three different aspects: training, management and planning, and research and protection.

Table 10.3 Current and future benefits of the Silk Roads CHRIS. Training

Management and Planning

Accurate and proper delineation of boundaries and buffer zones

Research and Protection

Recommendations for enhancing the Increase of scientific knowledge: regulatory framework (improvement implementation of risk assessment of the national legislation) into the monitoring system, understanding of causes Standardized data collection of base- Participation of a large variety of Bibliographic and imagery repository line information of the Component stakeholders and disciplines in the accessible to the national agencies and Parts: maps, photography and preparation of the nomination dosthe public documentation sier, as well as foreseen their further participation in the monitoring Management and storage of the Cor- Management and decision-making Silk Roads CHRIS operational for ridor documentation in the Silk under a values-based approach nomination and monitoring of the Roads CHRIS Corridors, and open to new ones. One World Heritage listed Silk Roads Corridor and one submitted nomination Nomination dossier and monitoring Protocols on the use of the Silk accessible to the WHC and the advisRoads CHRIS and methodologies for data collection ory bodies for review or the process and the final documents Upgrade of technologies in the region Basic cartographic information of Corridor and Component Parts Source: Ona Vileikis (2018)

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Geographic Information Systems for the world heritage cities in Uzbekistan One example of the use of IMS in heritage management has been the seven-year initiative, from 2008 to 2015, of the development of a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for mapping and documenting the World Heritage listed cities of Bukhara, Samarkand and Itchan Kala in Uzbekistan. This initiative, of the Ministry of Culture with support from the UNESCO Office in Tashkent, collected the baseline information for the development of the Management Plans of the historic centres in Uzbekistan. The process was a first step of the HUL approach, thus, accompanied by a strong component of capacity building and stakeholder involvement (Vileikis and Allayarov 2015a). At the same time, it reinforced the existing guidelines and practices on heritage conservation by improving methodologies of data collection and heritage recording. The GIS offered the possibility of storing and managing information of larger sites and its surroundings. Figure 10.4 shows the workflow and tools used for the survey and mapping of the cities during

Figure 10.4 General workflow of data collection for the GIS database of the World Heritage cities in Uzbekistan. Source: Ona Vileikis

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each summer campaign. Four stages were identified: planning, acquisition, processing, consensus and dissemination. The same workflow for data collection and processing was used each year allowing comparison of the information (Vileikis et al. 2017). There were a number of challenges throughout the process. First, to overcome the lack of human resources in order to conduct the surveys, an interinstitutional team was established. It was composed of students, volunteers, coming from local and international universities, the national and regional heritage agencies, UNESCO staff as well as one national consultant and one international consultant. Second, to assure the reliability of the information the team members counted with a variety of backgrounds such as social studies, cultural heritage studies, history, anthropology, architecture and archaeology, and were specialized in heritage conservation and management. The large number of participants involved allowed a faster mapping of the heritage features. Previous to each campaign, the teams had a workshop to understand the context of the Uzbek traditional houses and the urban fabric of the cities as well as to agree on terminology about materials, pathologies and threats. One direct result was the production of illustrated glossaries in three languages, Uzbek, Russian and English. The teams carried out a reconnaissance mapping and survey within the historic centres. The recording process included the use of basic survey tools available at the inspection of Bukhara, the heritage agency regional branch. In addition, door-to-door surveys with the residents and property owners were conducted. The main aim of the survey was to gather social data, oral history and information about the chronology and types of interventions to the dwellings that was never collected before and could support the values, condition and threats assessments. A critical milestone of the documentation process was the continuous assessment of the information. Every day, back in the office, the information was presented by the groups and special cases were discussed within the team, such as planned interventions reported by the owners. In Bukhara, a total of 4063 dwellings were surveyed, including the traditional Bukharian houses and historic buildings, and in Itchan Kala 381 dwellings. In Samarkand, only 71 traditional houses of the Uzbek national heritage list were surveyed, the rest of the mapping is still pending (Vileikis et al. 2017). The variety of data collected allowed the creation of a geographic database composed of overlaid layers, registering monuments, historic buildings, dwellings, water channels, pools, urban fabric, buffer zone and boundaries, with GIS attributes containing the results of the base record forms and surveys. The GIS attributes were linked to a geographic area, such as the state of conservation and interventions to the historic buildings, and buildings to the cadastral data of the city. During the mapping process, the GIS allowed for more easily ‘ground-truthing’ some of the existing information provided by the regional authorities. For instance, locations of the boundaries and buffer zones that were previously traced by hand on a map were verified on site with a GPS. Later, these results were later imported in a GIS database showing more accurate results. The advantage of using GIS as a tool for data collection, visualization and management is that it allowed queries related to the changes of the historic centres and thus, supported informed decisions. The information was continuously discussed with the cultural heritage authorities, as well as with stakeholders from outside the heritage field such as the State Committee on Development of Tourism, the municipality, and the mahallas leaders (neighbourhood representatives) in round tables, consultation meetings and workshops. For the first time, in the workshops for the preparation of the management plans, the stakeholders had access to centralized, reliable and integrated data. For example, this method supported the minor review of the boundaries and buffer zones as it was the case of the Historic Centre of Bukhara and the identification of priority actions such as installation of a sewerage system within the historic centres. (see Figure 10.5). After the finalization of the database and handing them over to the Inspections, regional agencies representing the Ministry of Culture, further crucial actions are foreseen. These include capacity building such as training the staff to use GIS, to maintain the data, or to update the information in the coming years. Other recommended tasks were conducting a new cycle of field surveys and establishing a platform to share the information. 194

Figure 10.5 Example of thematic map of sewerage system extracted from the GIS database of Itchan Kala in Uzbekistan (left) and team conducting door-to-door surveys in Itchan Kala (right). Source: Ona Vileikis

Conclusion Mapping and documentation are the backbone for understanding and managing cultural heritage. The use of digital technologies, such as GIS and GeoCMS, demonstrated its added value in supporting the World Heritage processes along the Silk Roads in Central Asia. In addition, the underlying methodologies supported the large number of stakeholders in their efforts to preserve the values of their shared cultural heritage, to jointly understand and trust the information, to train professionals, and to increase scientific knowledge within the Central Asian region. The use of GIS and GeoCMS surpassed main challenges of digital information related to provenance, reliability, longevity and fragmentation. The information was joined in a common repository providing harmonization of the information. Despite the large datasets in both systems, the use of common methodologies, standards in data collection and data input, metadata, and the ability of tracking historical data supported the reliability of the information and documentation. The use of standardized terminology brought a structured manner to collect data and at the same time to accurately enter data and retrieve information from them. Quality of the data collected was improved through a number of capacity building activities to the team. However, uncertainty due to human errors, for example, mislabelling, as well as the long-term sustainability of the systems and storage, will always be of concern. The Silk Roads CHRIS, tailor-made for serial transnational World Heritage nominations was a successful example of a cultural heritage system incorporating cutting-edge data structuring and geospatial software technology. The online access and multi-lingual function was essential for transnational communication and collaboration of the variety of stakeholders. The system provided geo-referenced information and work without location restrictions. This tool is anticipated to be useful in the monitoring of and reporting on the state of conservation and management of these large-scale sites as well as for the nomination of more Silk Roads Corridors. In addition, the GIS of the historic cities in Uzbekistan spatially located the features that contain the values that make these places unique and 195

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allowed queries to identify key issues towards the development of the management plans. Both systems paved the path towards a systematic application of monitoring tools such as remote sensing to track the physical changes of the World Heritage properties. Nevertheless, the use of the system alone was not enough. The strong capacity building and the involvement of the stakeholders during the mapping processes and development of the systems proved to be as important as the systems themselves. These components generated great sense of ownership of the stakeholders to the systems. The integrated approach of IMS and capacity development confirms once more the relevance of the implementation of the HUL steps to achieve successful results towards managing change.

Notes 1 Since the 1980s, the World Heritage Committee extended the concept of single property to include a series of cultural properties in different geographical locations under one property, provided that they belong to the same historico-cultural group and typology. Serial transnational nominations include Component Parts, such as monuments, groups of monuments, or archaeological sites, located within the territory of two or more states not necessarily contiguous (UNESCO 2017: Paras. 137, 138). They are located within a State Party where the nominated area and buffer zone are defined. Even though, the Operational Guidelines propose that the property represents a single instance of OUV and requires a single main management system, each component part requires a specific management approach based on its own characteristics. 2 The Arches Heritage Inventory and Management System is a generic open source platform launched in 2013. A great advantage of this system is its functionality as open source, and no license fee is required. It follows open data standards published by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) making it compatible with desktop GIS applications (Carlisle et al. 2014). Current examples of the implementation of Arches as a platform to inventory and map its historic resources are the HistoricPlacesLA of the City of Los Angeles, the Philippine Heritage Map, the National Heritage Inventory of the Kingdom of Bhutan and the City of Lincoln, UK. Recently, Historic England is planning to use Arches for the heritage inventory of Greater London. Additional information [Online] Available at: www.archesproject.org/ (accessed 22 August 2017). 3 In 2012, the IICC Xi’an developed the Silk Roads Archive and Information Management System (AIMS) to support the nomination of the Silk Roads in China and in collaboration with the Central Asian States Parties. It was also foreseen for the further monitoring and promotion. However, the system is not anymore available online. Some of its features were migrated to the Silk Roads World Heritage platform. The Digital Silk Road project of the National Institute of informatics in Tokyo navigation using 3D digital maps was launched in 2015. However, the maps are not linked to the content of the database and they are currently not available online. 4 The ‘Silk Road Cultural Heritage Resource Information System’ was a 42 months (2010–2013) project funded by the Belgian Science Policy Office (BELSPO). It supported the five Central Asian countries: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, and in collaboration with China. It was an initiative of the UNESCO World Heritage Centre (WHC) and headed by the Raymond Lemaire International Center for Conservation (RLICC) at the University of Leuven, Belgium with the support of a Belgian consortium. The author managed the project and developed the system and supporting methodologies.

References Addison, A. (2007) ‘The vanishing virtual: Safeguarding heritage’s endangered digital record’, in Y.E. Kalay, T. Kvan and J. Affleck (eds) New Heritage: New Media and Cultural Heritage, London: Routledge, 27–39. Bizer, C., Heath, T. and Berners-Lee, T. (2009) ‘Linked data – The story so far’, Special Issue on Linked Data, International, Journal on Semantic Web and Information Systems (IJSWIS), 5(3): 1–22. Brooke, J. (1996) ‘SUS – A quick and dirty usability scale’, in P.W. Jordan, B. Thomas, B.A. Weerdmeester and A. L. McClelland (eds) Usability Evaluation in Industry, London: Taylor & Francis, 189–194. Carlisle, P.K., Avramides, I., Dalgity, A. and Myers, D. (2014) ‘The Arches Heritage Inventory and Management System: a standards-based approach to the management of cultural heritage information’, presented at the Access and Understanding – Networking in the Digital Era, Dresden, Germany. 6-11 September 2014. Clark, K. (2010) ‘Informed conservation: The place of research and documentation in preservation’, APT Bulletin, 41(4): 5–10.

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Creating IMS for cultural World Heritage Cuttler, R.T.H., Tonner, T.W.W., Al-Naimi, F.A., Dingwall, L.M. and Al-Hemaidi, N. (2013) ‘The Qatar National Historic Environment Record: A platform for the development of a fully-integrated cultural heritage management application’, ISPRS Annals of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Vol. II-5/W1, presented at the XXIV International CIPA Symposium, Copernicus GmbH, Strasbourg, 85–90. De la Torre, M. and Mason, R. (2002) ‘Introduction’, in De la Torre, M. (ed.) Assessing the Values of Cultural Heritage, Los Angeles: The Getty Conservation Institute, 3–4. Digital Globe (2012) ‘Quickbird’. [Online]. Available at: www.digitalglobe.com/about-us/content-collection#satellites& quickbird (accessed 20 January 2012). ICOMOS (1964) The Venice Charter, Paris: ICOMOS. Available at: www.icomos.org/charters/venice_e.pdf (accessed 27 October 2018). ——— (1994) Nara Document on Authenticity, Paris: ICOMOS. Available at: www.icomos.org/charters/nara-e.pdf (accessed 27 October 2018). ——— (1996) Declaration of San Antonio on Authenticity, Paris: ICOMOS. Available at: www.icomos.org/en/chartersand-texts/179-articles-en-francais/ressources/charters-and-standards/188-the-declaration-of-san-antonio (accessed 27 October 2018). ISO (International Organisation for Standardization) (2006) ISO 21127: 2006. Information and Documentation – A Reference Ontology for the Interchange of Cultural Heritage Information, ISO, Available at: www.iso.org/iso/home/ store/catalogue_ics/catalogue_detail_ics.htm?csnumber=34424 (accessed 5 February 2016). ISO (International Organisation for Standardization) (2010) ISO 9241-210:2010. Ergonomics of Human-system Interaction – Part 210: Human-Centred Design for Interactive Systems, Geneva, Switzerland: ISO, Available at: www.iso. org/standard/52075.html (accessed 2 February 2016). Jokilehto, J. (1999) History of Architectural Conservation, Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann. Letellier, R. (ed.) (2007) Recording, Documentation, and Information Management for the Conservation of Heritage Places, Los Angeles: The Getty Conservation Institute. Longley, P.A., Goodchild, M., Maguire, D.J. and Rhind, D.W. (2011) Geographic Information Systems and Science, Third edition, Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Maguire, M. (2001) ‘Methods to support human-centred design’, International Journal Human-Computer Studies, 55(4): 587–634. Mason, R. (2002) ‘Assessing values in conservation planning: Methodological issues and choices’, in M. de la Torre (ed.) Assessing the Values of Cultural Heritage, Los Angeles: The Getty Conservation Institute, 5–30. ——— (2006) ‘Theoretical and practical arguments for values-centered preservation’, Cultural Resource Management: The Journal of Heritage Stewardship, 3(2): 21–46. McClelland, A., Peel, D., Lerm Hayes, C.-M. and Montgomery, I. (2013) ‘A values-based approach to heritage planning: Raising awareness of the dark side of destruction and conservation’, Town Planning Review, 84(5): 583–603. Myers, D. and Dalgity, A. (2012) ‘The Middle Eastern Geodatabase for Antiquities (MEGA): An open source GIS-based heritage site inventory and management system’, Change over Time, 2(1): 32–57. Myers, D., Dalgity, A. and Avramides, I. (2016) ‘The Arches heritage inventory and management system: A platform for the heritage field’, Journal of Cultural Heritage Management and Sustainable Development, 6(2): 213–224. Myers, D., Dalgity, A., Avramides, I. and Wuthrich, D. (2012) ‘Arches: An open source GIS for the inventory and management of immovable cultural heritage’, Progress in Cultural Heritage Preservation: 4th International Conference, presented at the EuroMed 2012, Cyprus, 817–824. Nara +20 (2015) ‘Nara +20: On heritage practices, cultural values, and the concept of authenticity’, Heritage and Society, 8(2): 144–147. Nielsen, J. (1997) ‘The use and misuse of focus groups’, IEEE Software, 4(1): 94–95. Tran, T.N., Truong, D.K., Hoang, H.H. and Le, T.M. (2014) ‘Linked data mashups: A review on technologies, applications and challenges’, in N.T. Nguyen, B. Attachoo, B. Trawiński and K. Somboonviwat (eds) Intelligent Information and Database Systems: 6th Asian Conference, ACIIDS 2014, Bangkok, Thailand, April 7-9, 2014, Proceedings, Part II, Cham: Springer International Publishing, 253–262. UNDP (2009) Capacity Development: A UNDP Primer, New York: UNDP. UNESCO (1972a) Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, Paris: UNESCO. ——— (1972b) ‘Recommendation concerning the protection, at National Level, of the cultural and natural heritage’, presented at the Adopted by the General Conference of UNESCO at its seventeenth session, Paris: UNESCO. Available at: http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=13087&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201. html (accessed 2 September 2016).

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Ona Vileikis ——— (2003) ‘Item 6A of the Provisional Agenda: State of the World Heritage in Asia and the Pacific 2003 Synthesis Periodic Report for the Asia-Pacific Region’, presented at the 27th Session of the Committee, Paris: UNESCO. Available at: http://whc.unesco.org/archive/2003/whc03-27com-06ae.pdf (accessed 10 October 2014). ——— (2011a) Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape, Paris: UNESCO. Available at: http://whc.unesco. org/en/activities/638 (accessed 16 April 2016). ——— (2011b) World Heritage Strategy for Capacity Building. Document WHC-11/35.COM/9B, Paris: UNESCO. Available at: http://whc.unesco.org/archive/2011/whc11-35com-9Be.pdf (accessed 10 September 2013). ——— (2013) The Hangzhou Declaration. Placing Culture at the Heart of Sustainable Development Policies, Paris: UNESCO. Available at: www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CLT/images/FinalHangzhou Declaration20130517.pdf (accessed 31 August 2014). ——— (2017) Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention. Document WHC.17/01, Paris: UNESCO. Available at: http://whc.unesco.org/en/guidelines (accessed 24 July 2018). United Nations (2017) New Urban Agenda, New York: UN. Available at: http://habitat3.org/wp-content/uploads/ NUA-English.pdf (accessed 22 August 2017). Vileikis, O. (2018) Integrating Monitoring in the Nomination Process of Cultural Serial Transnational World Heritage Using Geospatial Content Management Systems: The Silk Roads Case Study, Leuven: University of Leuven. Vileikis, O. and Allayarov, S. (2015a) ‘Enhancement of the implementation of the World Heritage convention through strengthening the protection and management mechanism in the historic centre of Bukhara’, presented at the Revisiting Kathmandu, Safeguarding Living Urban Heritage, Kathmandu: UNESCO Kathmandu, 133–140. ——— (2015b) ‘Fostering World Heritage preservation in Uzbekistan’, in IUCN, ICOMOS and ICCROM (eds) ‘World Heritage Capacity Building’ and volume is ‘Newsletter 5’, 11–13. Vileikis, O., Escalante Carrillo, E., Allayarov, S. and Feyzulayev, A. (2017) ‘Documentation for preservation: Methodology and a GIS database of three World Heritage Cities in Uzbekistan’, ISPRS Annals of Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, IV-2/W2: 311–318. Vileikis, O., Serruys, E., Dumont, B., van Balen, K., Santana Quinterod, M., de Maeyer, P. and Tigny, V. (2012) ‘Information Management Systems for monitoring and documenting World Heritage – The Silk Roads CHRIS’, International Archives of Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, XXXIX-B4: 203–208. Williams, T. (2014) The Silk Roads: An ICOMOS Thematic Study, Paris: ICOMOS. Available at: http://openarchive. icomos.org/1487/ (accessed 09 October 2018).

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11 CONSERVATION OF HISTORIC OPEN SPACE URBAN LANDSCAPES OF CHITTAGONG, BANGLADESH Maharina Jafrin and Shamsul Hossain

Introduction “Landscapes are formed by natural systems and shaped by history and culture” (Brown 2007). Habib (2010) suggests that, without knowing the historical value of a place, at first glance the landscapes found within a setting may appear to be ‘left over’ spaces when in fact they may be charged with significant meaning. In Chittagong, Bangladesh, its rapid urbanization and economic growth present challenges to the preservation of the city’s historic open spaces; the challenges being similar to Habib’s (2010) description above. Currently Chittagong is facing a shortage of open space not only due to lack of forwardlooking planning and implementation, but also due to failings in the preservation of the city’s historic open spaces. In terms of urban planning, while the first Master Plan of 1961 proposed 26 different forms of open space, which also included historic places, it failed to preserve them and to implement more open space for the city. Z. Hossain (2002; quoted in Hassan 2008: 2) notes: ‘[w]e currently have an open space average of 0.066 acres per 1000 population, we have failed miserably to promote the development of parks, playfields and other amenity open spaces’ for the people of Chittagong. The focus of this chapter is to present an understanding in how the city’s open spaces were developed in Chittagong’s journey from a small port settlement to a contemporary urban setting and the significance of their preservation for the management of its urban heritage. This discussion on the evolution of open space revolves around their creation and development from the seventh century to the twenty-first century through three major periods – pre-medieval, medieval and colonial – and in relation to the city’s geography, cultural, economic and political influences, and historical transformations. Despite the city’s unsupportive stance on heritage spaces, a few traces of the city’s past are evident in Chittagong and its surroundings (CDA 2011). In a densely populated setting like this city, environmental pollution, alarming public health issues and disasters such as flood and landslide are chronic. Hence, providing open space for city residents has become a vital need. The World Health Organization (WHO) has responded to similar issues by recommending 9 square metres of open space per person (Emmanuel 2009; Singh et al. 2010; Thundiyil 2003). However, in Chittagong, when the city’s existing unique natural open space system is added with that of the city’s reserved open space network, the total open space available is only 0.18 square metres per person (0.045 acres for 1000 people), which is far less than one square metre per person. In this sense, Chittagong has only 0.21 square miles (132.72 acres) of accessible

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open spaces within 168.1 square kilometres of urban land and it serves 4.1 million residents (Hassan 2008). Therefore, understanding, preserving and increasing the city’s open spaces are extremely important to Chittagong’s future. Additionally, UNESCO (2011) recommends the preservation of historic landscapes for their important role in modern societies. The “[. . .] recommendations also identify a number of specific threats to the conservation of historic urban areas, and provide general principles, policies and guidelines to meet such challenges” (3). “Urban heritage, including its tangible and intangible components, constitutes a key resource in enhancing the liveability of urban areas, and fosters economic development and social cohesion in a changing global environment. As the future of humanity hinges on the effective planning and management of resources, conservation has become a strategy to achieve a balance between urban growth and quality of life on a sustainable basis” (2). Hence, in Chittagong, the city’s historic landscapes need to be preserved to promote their cultural and historical value, to help save the historic buildings in their midst from threat of development, and to contribute to the overall open space aggregate of Chittagong for the health and wellness of its people.

Historical background of Chittagong Chittagong is one of the oldest seaports in the world and thus possesses a rich urban heritage. Geospatially, the city is cradled by hills, the sea, rivers and lakes and was referred to as ‘the queen of the east’ (Karim 2006; Mohammad Khan 2017). Its natural features also provided a flat plane suitable for cultivation, trade and industrialization. The landscape has been described by many travellers, such as Captain Pogson (1831), a soldier with the East India Company in the mid-1800s, referring to the city as, ‘a romantic beautiful place; the houses are on separate contiguous hills, about a hundred feet above the level of the sea; the glens and valleys are beautifully crowded with Betel, Mango, and Negesar trees; the air was cold, pure and serene: sensibly different to the atmosphere of the water’ (cited in S. Hossain 2012b: xiv). Pogson’s writings of Chittagong reveal that he was as much fascinated by the physical scenery as the natural resources of the area (Mamoon 2015). Chittagong has always been an ideal spot for cultural confluence. The city’s landscape was influenced depending on who ruled, which itself revolved around the rulers’ cultural and religious background. The city was governed by several sovereign ‘foreign’ powers, eventually developing into a vibrant multicultural society. The various rulers came from diverse socio-religious backgrounds and brought with them their own traditions of building practice, spatial form and considerations for open space in the city. The major traits of rich cultural diversity of Chittagong are noticeable in its architecture, sculpture, coins and other metal products dating from the seventh century. The folk art, costumes, foods and punthi (manuscript) literature, various dialects, folklore, rituals, customs and ceremonies of Chittagong constitute and support the city’s precious intangible cultural heritage. The hills in Chittagong and its peripheries also boast an interesting prehistory. Chinese traveller Yi Jing, in the seventh century, described Harikela (the pre-medieval name of Chittagong) as the eastern limit of India. The vibrant seaport of Harikela had been a major destination in the Bay of Bengal and South Asian trade routes with Harikela being located at its apex. The port was also historically connected to a vast hinterland known for its prosperity. The economic importance of Harikela as a major port city was because of its strategic geo-political location together with its contribution to trade and commerce, the factors worked together to attract ‘Arab Geographers’ during the eighth to twelfth centuries, while they referred to the adjoining Bay of Bengal as ‘Bahr-i-Harkandh’ (Sea of Harikela). Harikela produced a very sophisticated currency system and remained a mint-town during the Sultanate (1340–1538), Arakanese (1575–1666) and Mughal rule (1666–1760) of the region. The city also continued to occupy the position of an economic and transit hub in the geographic and economic landscape of eastern India during the Colonial period (1760–1947). After 1947, the seaport 200

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was developed and expanded further to cater to the need of imports and exports business of the eastern part of the newly formed state of Pakistan. While in 1959, the state’s planning authority was first formed, and in 1961 the first master plan for the city was prepared. Chittagong as a port city along with other parts of East Pakistan became a part of independent Bangladesh in 1971. The general timeline associated with landscape developments of the city is shown in Table 11.1.

Chittagong’s historic growth centres and urban landscape Due to the city’s hilly topography, port and water-based trade, Chittagong’s urban growth was different in comparison to other parts of Bangladesh. The city’s historical background and civilizations (of the respective times) had impacts on the Chittagong’s urban and natural landscape. In terms of the city’s morphology, Chittagong is a V-shaped urban setting. The western ‘arm’ is an edge to the sea (Bay of Bengal) and the eastern ‘arm’ is an edge running parallel to the Karnaphuli River, while Chittagong’s canals work as connectors from the city to the river and the sea. In between these two arms, hills rise in the middle of the city, spread towards the north, and narrow down to the south. Therefore, geographically, Chittagong has four prominent types of natural open spaces that influenced the city’s development: the sea, the river, the hills and the adjoining flat land associated with the canals. The existing city core of Chittagong is about 15 kilometres from where the Karnaphuli River and Bay of Bengal meet (CDA 1995). The growth centres of the city were influenced by mode of trade and transportation links. Most of the growth centres were in proximity to the Chaktai Canal that is connected to the Karnaphuli River. In consequence, these growth centres are arguably the most vibrant and dense commercial areas in the present-day city. A map of Chittagong and the city’s historic buildings, given in Figure 11.1, identifies the location of the old town and growth centres. During the Harikela period (seventh century CE to 1340), the Pandit Vihara was situated on the east bank of Karnaphuli River, now known as Deang. In this period, there were a few Buddhist temples and viharas (Qanungo 1988). A vihara generally refers to a monastery as a residence for monks, a centre for religious work, meditation, and Buddhist learning. A vihara typically had a central courtyard surrounded by built features. These places have been lost due to infeasible climatic condition. Again, Portuguese used fire canon shots from the ships which damaged a large portion of Chittagong city (Ray 2017). The physical influence of monasteries on the existing landscape is difficult to trace since so much change has occurred. The Sultanate period (1340–1538) visualized growth of a new port site at Sulk-ul-Bahar (Qanungo 1988), which represent the first Arabic place names in Chittagong. Another growth centre of this period was in Postarpar (pronounced Pust Par in Persian) (Hossain 2008), near Dewan Hat, and is located on the west of Karnaphuli River. These places are now dense urban settings having evolved to their current state due to their commercial and transport activities (i.e. being located next to the river and the creek). When Sultans conquered this region, Muslim architecture and urban patterning also influenced building and landscape design. For example, the Badar-Aulyia tomb (named after the saint who came to preach Islam in Chittagong along with his eleven saints) was a combination of a tomb structure, mosque and courtyard located in Boxir Hat. Later, a settlement named Dianga was stablished by the Portuguese near the sea-coast, south of the mouth of Karnaphuli, about 20 miles south of the present Chittagong (Phayre 1883). Activities of the Portuguese intensified in the Arakanese period (Qanungo 1988). The Portuguese termed Chittagong as ‘Porto Grando’ (Ray 2017) and the area is now a settlement of port-related activity and administrative buildings. The Portuguese also had their own port establishment at Bundel, in the Patharghata area on the Karnaphuli and is now a highly dense commercial area and a religious centre in Chittagong. They built churches on the Jamal Khan Hill. The Arakanese had their ‘mud forts’ or Kotterpaar at Jahanpur, Hathazari, Kathirhat and Fateabad (Banglapedia 2014). While the Arakanese and 201

High flat land and close to river

Geometrical High flat land Religious/ Educational

Shape

Location

Function

(Source: Maharina Jafrin)

Accessibility Fully restricted

Geometrical

Yes

Boundary

Landscape Characteristics

Fully and Partially restricted

Administrative Residential Religious

Yes

Mosque Tomb

Monasteries

Establishments

Sultanate age 1340 –1538

Pre-medieval Harikela 7th c. BC to 1340

Period

Fully and Partially restricted

Administrative Residential

High flat land and close to river

Geometrical

Yes

Fort

Arakanese age 1575–1666

Table 11.1 Chronological historical periods of Chittagong and their landscape characteristics

Fully and Partially restricted

Administrative residential Commercial Religious

High flat land and close to river

Geometrical

Yes

Fort Mosque Tomb Garden Water ways Chawk/Chauk

Mughal Age 1666–1760

Free

Administrative residential Commercial Recreational

Hills

Free shape

No

Play ground Railway setup Club Judicial settlement Resident’s garden Church Racecourse

Colonial age 1760–1947

The historic landscapes of Chittagong

Figure 11.1 Historical growth centres of Chittagong. Source: Maharina Jafrin/Map from Chittagong Development Authority

Portuguese existed in the same period, they ruled in different areas (Qanungo 1988) of the city and their respective open spaces evolved differently. During the Mughal rule (1666–1760) of Chittagong, the Mughals established a fort named Ander-killah (inner fort) on the Rangmahal Hill – a vintage point providing military advantage because of the unobstructed views. The Ander-killah Shahi-Jam-e Mosque was established near the fort to express the Mughal victory over the Arakanese. As Mughal rule intensified, a range of ghats (quays) and bazaars (open market places) were established, which dots the right bank of Karnaphuli River. These open space settings are now important localities in and outside the municipality (Banglapedia 2014). During the Mughal period the city started to implement, what one might argue, its first town parks (Nilufar 2011). During the Colonial rule, the city further expanded south with the development of a railway track to establish a connection with Assam (north-west India). The Sadar Ghat (‘main quay’) was established in association with the city’s port administration building, along with officers’ bungalows, staff housing and a custom-house within the vicinity of the bank of Karnaphuli. In this period, Chittagong’s open spaces were preserved mostly because of their non-commercial function, 203

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but also because they were owned and controlled by the railway authority. Therefore, these areas predominantly remain open or unbuilt in contrast to the city’s other growth centres. An example of this shift in growth centre can be seen by the relocation of the city’s Christ Church, which was initially erected on the west of Lal Dighi in 1839. However, in the Colonial period, in 1929, the church was moved to the new extension and ‘centre’ of the colonial port city, which also accommodated the Headquarters of Assam-Bengal Railway (Hossain 2012b, Mia et al. 2015). At the end of the nineteenth century, the Headquarters was established in Chittagong and allowed for the administrative building and the railway station to remain as open space, amply surrounded by the hilly landscape (Muzzini and Aparicio 2013). The introduction of a commercial tea plantation, in this hilly landscape and during this period, instigated the development of another rail line to the north-east of Chittagong. The effect on the city of this linear corridor is that it provides an open space for Chittagong that is still a part of the urban fabric today. A result of the city’s multi-layered evolution and development was the creation of a delightful visual aesthetic in the city. In the nineteenth century, a reporter who visited the town expressed his feeling for the city as, ‘a succession of small round hills, planted with coffee, pepper, vines and bamboos and surrounded by the villas of the English residents, give to the surrounding country an interesting and romantic appearance’ (Qanungo 2010: 84). After independence of Bangladesh, an Export Processing Zone (EPZ) was established in 1983 in place of the proposed Race Course, which the city’s 1961 Master Plan had identified as a future open space. In summary, the historical growth centres have created a dense urban setting in the backdrop of vast historic open spaces. Prior to the Colonial period, urbanization of Chittagong was on the left side of the Chaktai creek and connected to Karnaphuli River. The water-based transportation formed the city in a manner that pushed the main road of the city to make a loop to bypass the dense urban setting of the old town. Most of the historical open spaces are in this area. During the Colonial period, the city expanded in the north-west and north-east directions. The Karnaphuli River, which previously ran by the side of the Fairy Hill (can be seen from the historic maps) changed its course and created a new form of landscape in between where the water-based trade and commercial activities took place. Commercial activities by waterways decreased after the establishment of railways. Thus, the historical open space in the old town started to shrink.

Historical landscape typology of Chittagong The Historic Urban Landscape of Chittagong could be analysed in terms of open space types that would reflect the historical development of the city. The heritage landscape typology of Chittagong, given below, is based on their setting characteristics, function, associated historical events, and impact on the growth of the city (including an account of the respective dominant development influences) (see Berrill, 2012; Rutherford, 2012). Ten heritage open space types are identified. They include informal (unplanned) and formal open spaces. Within these spaces, there are historical buildings, public spaces, and natural settings with hardscape and softscape features. The analysis of the urban form of the city in such landscape types helps to overcome limitations of monument-centric and bifurcated (nature/culture; tangible/intangible) approaches to conservation of urban heritage and to develop an approach that is place-specific and that highlights Chittagong’s landscape setting and historical development.

Cultural open spaces Cultural open spaces are related to significant events that contributed to the open space’s importance to the heritage of the city. For example, maidan (ground) commonly refers to a large plain, open field, 204

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a vast ground or a public square (Habib 2010). In Chittagong, there are a few maidans, but several of them, such as the Gandhi Maidan and the Municipality Maidan, have been lost to development (Qanungo 2010). The Gandhi Maidan was in the north of the city’s Rangmahal Hill, which is now the present site for Chittagong Maternity Hospital. The maidan was historically significant since Mahatma Gandhi delivered a memorable speech there as part of the Non-Co-Operative Khilafat Movement (i.e. the revolution against British colonial rule attempted in 1919–1922). The Chittagong Maternity Hospital now occupies this place. The Municipality Maidan was an open space setting extending between the foothills of the Fairy Hill and the Laldighi (a pond adjacent to this maidan). The place was bifurcated by a road (Qanungo 2010), and the segment east of the road was renamed as Laldighi Maidan. The western part of the maidan is now built on and occupied by commercial activities. This maidan has an association with Jobbarer Boli Khela, a traditional form of self-defence closely aligned with wrestling in Bangladesh. In the early part of the twentieth century, Abdul Jabbar Saodagor, a merchant of Chittagong, arranged a Boli Khela event with the desire to develop an activity preparing the city’s youth to challenge British occupation. The ‘training’ started in 1907 and still occurs to this day annually in the first month of the Bengali New Year in this location (Banglapedia 2014). There are other cultural open spaces associated with sports that were developed during the colonial period. Four noticeable play-fields that helped shape the city (Qanungo 2010) include: i) Nizamat Paltan Ground (situated in the foothills of Railway Hospital Hill); ii) a Parade Ground, which was important for inspection of troops and was significant for patriotic meetings, political and social assemblies; iii) a polo ground (which was a favourite site for Europeans to use for horse racing and polo game. This is now used as a playground and a place for hosting fairs in Chittagong; and, iv) a cricket ground (that mostly Europeans used to play cricket on) which is now encircled by a stadium. Another type of cultural open space is the ghat – a quay/landing place that runs along the city’s waterways and act as an interface between the land and water (Ahmed 2017). The oldest of these waterfronts are Sadar Ghat (the main-quay, created during the colonial period), Ghat Forhad Beg (established in the Mughal period), Fishery Ghat (year of development unknown), Patharghata (Portuguese settlement), and Firringi-Bazaar Ghat (foreign-market-quay; year of development unknown). These provide for bathing, recreation, worship, domestic activity, trading and transport, and thus are important for city residents (Ahmed 2017). The ghats are extremely busy places that are key features of the city’s urban form and public realm.

Open spaces associated with bodies of water This open space type is associated with bodies of water in the city, such as beaches, reservoirs (dighi), and canals (khal). According to Qanungo (2010), in the colonial period, seaside resorts were established near the town (Qanungo 2010), such as the seaside resorts at Minamutee and at Parkee. He recommended that, these two beaches were much-liked by the Europeans and there was riverside walkways. The shore of the river Karnaphuli from Sadar Ghat to Patenga was once noted for walking, while boat racing on the Karnaphuli was a favourite game since the Swadeshi period (from late nineteenth to twentieth century) (Qanungo 2010). Another aquatic-based open space is the Lal Dighi, which is a natural reservoir of fresh water. During the Arakanese period, it was the principal source of water used by the garrisoning army; while in the Mughal period, it retained its importance for similar purposes and in mid-nineteenth century Lal Dighi was given a beautiful shape by adding two ghats on both sides of the dighi (Qanungo 2010). The Mughals 205

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created Asker Dighi in mid-seventeenth century to ensure the water supply to the soldiers of the Mughal second commandant (Tourin 2016). The British built Foy’s Lake in 1924 to provide water to the railway workers’ residences (Banglapedia 2014). This lake and its surrounding hilly area still serve as the largest open space feature in the city. Pahartali Lake (known as Jorr Deba or a ‘pair of ponds’), was also excavated and converted to an artificial lake during the Colonial period (Qanungo 2010). Heritage canals and waterways in Chittagong are related to traditional riverine settlements concentrated with water-based trade and life along the Karnaphuli River and the Chaktai Canal. During the Arakanese, Sultan and Mughal periods, Arakan Khal and Maheshkhali Khal were prominent among those canals providing necessary water based communication network in the city promoting human settlements. The area in Khatunganj along the Canal was once Bangladesh’s largest wholesale market for essential commodities and was known as the ‘Wall Street of Bangladesh’ (Chowdhury 2011; Dastider 2016: 64). During the colonial period, there was an extensive expansion of the canal system. For example, the Mahesh Khal was excavated to facilitate water transport in the port area and the Arakan Khal was expanded from Karnaphuli to the Pahartali-Bagmaniram area of the city (Talukdar 2014). The creeks were used less and started to shrink due to encroachment (BRAC Institute of Government and Development (BIGD) 2014). Construction of retaining walls along the canals also reduced the width of creeks. Siltation causes the reduction of the depth of canals; however, they are occasionally excavated to avoid flash flooding (Ashraf and Chowdhury 2009). UNESCO’s Operational Guidelines for World Heritage Sites state that “[a] canal is a human-engineered waterway” and that “[it] may be of Outstanding Universal Value from the point of view of history or technology, either intrinsically or as an exceptional example [...]” (UNESCO 2017: 84). In this sense, the canals of Chittagong represent a unique form of cultural heritage in that they identify a monumental achievement and work to define the features of a continuing cultural landscape. These historic canals continue to contribute to the city and thus need to be preserved according to ICOMOS (1996) guidelines.

Gardens and parks These include designed and/or formal parks and gardens that are of two types- royal gardens and residential gardens. The Royal Garden at Ander-killah evolved from the development of the city’s fortified installations (Figure 11.2). There are two aspects to this type of space: an inner open space and outer open space. The inner garden relates to the open space in and around the hill of the Ander-killah (inner-fort) area in Chittagong (Hossain 2012a). The landscape inside the Ander-killah reflected a formal arrangement of gardens, including a compound of the tomb of Badr Aulyia (the saint of seamen), a mosque (named Kadam Mubarak), a formal pond (Lal Dighi) and an open field area (called ‘Lal Dighi Maidan’) that included a moat and rampart on its periphery. The fort also contained two springs inside its inner walled area (Ray 2017). Built features positioned in and around this open space were religious and administrative buildings and housing for the monarchs of this period. The open space outside of the forts was used for informal and passive public recreation and consisted of tree groves and flower gardens. These places were aptly named ‘Bagh’; which is a Persian word that translates as garden. Usually, a Bagh refers to an enclosed area with many different types of trees, shrubs, and flowering plants (Nilufar 2011). The first use of the Bagh design layout occurred during the Mughal period. There was a similar fort known as ‘the outer fort’ at the mouth of the Karnaphuli River (Ray 2017), and was lost due to the war between different rulers. The garden spaces, such as those contained in the fort, are needed to be preserved not only due to their cultural and historical value, but also due to the city’s existing shortage of open space. For example, without the open spaces abutting the Fort’s buildings (areas surrounding Ander-killah ShahiJam-e Mosque), the designed relationship between built form and function (i.e. military fortification and defence) would be lost, providing only half of the story of the city’s urban development. Residential gardens, as open spaces, accompanied the houses of the officers during the Colonial rule. People of high rank, such as European officials, merchants and agents, built their houses on the 206

The historic landscapes of Chittagong

Figure 11.2 Mughal-Arakanese battle on the Karnaphuli River in 1666 in front of Chittagong Fort. Source: Chittagong University Museum/Wikimedia Commons

top of the hills of the city (Qanungo 2010). These houses were known as bungalows. Examples for such houses include the bungalows of Captain’s Fog, M. M. Rae, Captain Compbell, Lieut. Lomas, M. Boifsongs, and Bydanaw. Paintings, maps and other documents from this period depict a calm and soothing environment of meticulously planned open spaces that complemented the built environment. These gardens form a distinctive feature of the residential landscape of the Colonial period and are, therefore, important to be preserved. Good examples of this type of open space are the gardens of the Circuit House and the DC Hill Park. The Circuit House was the residence of the high officials of the British administration. Its meticulously planned open space is now used for the New Circuit House and an amusement park (Hossain 2012b). The old Circuit House, now converted into a museum, is significant to Chittagong because it memorializes those who were tortured and killed by Pakistani troops before the country’s independence in 1971 and later it marked the assassination of a president of Bangladesh. Before the construction of the amusement park, this open space served as a vibrant public gathering space and provides a clear illustration of Chittagong’s national importance. The DC Hill Park still serves as a public space and for cultural programmes to mark the Bengali New Year. During the Colonial period, two other public parks were realized: the Hands Park (located to the north of the Muslim Institute and now occupied by a commercial building) and the Victorian Garden (in the foot hills of Fairy Hill, occupied by a fuelling station) (Qanungo 2010).

Social and community open spaces These open spaces revolve around social and community activities. In the Mughal and British periods, it was customary to have community houses surrounded by open spaces. The Nachghar (dancing hall) in the Mughal period and the Town Hall in the Colonial period had open spaces around them. These spaces have

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Figure 11.3 Chittagong Club. A clubhouse for European residents in Chittagong and circuit house. Source: Map from British Library; Images by Mohammad Faqrul Islam

been reduced in size but are still used for public gathering or ceremonies. The former tea plantation in the Pioneer Hill accommodates the bungalows and clubhouse for the European officers. In 1875, a tea planter started a club for interaction and entertainment of British officials, which was taken over by the Chittagong Club in 1878 (now Chittagong Club Limited, listed as heritage structure) to accommodate and provide facilities for an increasing number of European residents coming to the city (Figure 11.3). In the early 1890s, work began on the railway, which resulted in a large influx of Europeans. Houses sprang up on all hilltops and the general tempo of life at Chittagong increased. To overcome this ‘peace of life’ issue, a new clubhouse was erected at the present site of the Chittagong Club. Another club named Pahartali European Club, an association of Europeans travelling to the city for pleasure and co-operation, was established in the open hilly terrain of Ambagan. It was later transformed into a museum to commemorate warrior Pritilata who died while raiding the club. These buildings and the open spaces around them are currently ignored for preservation.

Open spaces associated with tea plantations This type of open space is associated with tea plantations. The first initiative for a tea plantation was taken on the bank of Karnaphuli in 1824. Later in 1840, tea plantations started in an area adjacent to the existing Chittagong Club which was named Pioneer Hill (Bangladesh Tea Board 2018). During the 1870s, the tea industry started to grow at a rapid pace and the Chittagong Hill Tracts (an extensively hilly area outside the city, known as Bandarban, Khagrachari and Rangamati) were opened for tea cultivation. Though tea plantation has shifted from the city to the Hill Tracks, the activities related

208

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to tea procurement, packaging and distribution still exist in the city. Due to its association with the history of tea plantations in Chittagong and for historic buildings such as the Chittagong Club located in it, the Pioneer Hill is an important open space to be conserved.

Transportation related open spaces A single authority managed Chittagong’s port and railway throughout the British rule. During the 1953–1958, in the period of Pakistan era (1947–1971), Chittagong Port acquired 920 acres of land through the Railway. After separation of the unified Port and Railway Authority in 1960, the Railway Authority handed over land to the Port Authority. The rail line connected to the port became unused since 2013. The Detail Area Plan (DAP) prepared by the Chittagong Development Authority proposed to conserve the unused rail land as open space (Figure 11.4). This proposal follows an ICOMOS concept that railways deemed significant for economic and social development could be considered heritage sites (Coulls 1999).

Open spaces associated with religious places These open spaces provide a setting for worship and/or homage to a religion as well as for educational pursuits. These spaces are associated with diverse religious influences – Buddhist, Hindu, Islam, and Christian faiths – that guided the rulers of Chittagong during specific periods of the city’s development. They are markers of significant historical and cultural moments of Chittagong and are, therefore, worthy of conservation. Spaces associated with the Islamic faith include mosques, tombs or shrines. A mosque is not only a place for prayer, but also a centre for educational, political and judicial activities (Al-hajaj 2014). A mosque provides court-like open space within its premise to include structures for such activities. Typically, there is also a big tank of water in mosques to avail water for ablution before prayer. Breeze flowing over this body of water also helps to sweep hot air out from the prayer hall. Mughal granted

Figure 11.4 Railway land and administrative buildings. Source: Map from Bangladesh Railway Authority; Images by Mohammad Faqrul Islam

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150 mosques, 63 Muslim shrines and 26 temples to build in Chittagong by clearing jungles (Eaton 1993). The Badr Auliya Tomb is an excellent example of this type of open space with both a tomb and a mosque within it. The Bayazid Bostami Shrine, another such example, also consists of a tomb and a mosque built in the Mughal period; it sits on the top of a hill with a large pond in front of it. The Shahi Jam-e Mosque, erected at the top of the hill at Ander-killah, is another example; its courtyard is widely used for praying during Eid festival. However, the foothill is currently occupied by a market and the new extension of the mosque blocks the view of the historical mosque. Vihara or monasteries are public open spaces associated with the development of the first Buddhist Monasteries in Chittagong. The monasteries were established throughout Bengal during the sixth to eighth centuries (Rashid 2009). Residential quarters of the Buddhist monks are termed as vihara (Qanungo 1988) and there usually is an open space – a courtyard area – that allows conference, consultation, discussion, and interchange of opinion to take place. Rajanagar Buddhist Vihara, Sudharmadhara Vihara, Salbaria Vihara, Pahartali Mahananda Vihara, Kartala Belkhain Saddarmalankara Vihara, and Pandit Vihara (in Chittagong) (Ahmed 1986) are notable examples with extensive open space (Qanungo 1988). Generally, the locations of monasteries and associated open spaces were by the banks of the River Ganga’s delta (Ahmed 2013). The planning of Buddhist monastery complexes references the vernacular architecture of Bengal, particularly the traditional courtyard house (Rashid 2009). The courtyard provided natural light and ventilation to the building complex and was suitable for the introvert nature of the monastic life. Furthermore, the centre of the courtyard was emphasized by the placement of the most sacred structure (either a temple or a statue of Buddha) of the complex (Rashid 2009). In this sense, the courtyard is a significant spatial element that is central to both monastery and ordinary house design in the region (Rashid 2009). This open courtyard space typology has been repeatedly followed in both single and grouped residential developments in Chittagong. Church complexes with associated open space were built in the apex of the hills scattered around the city or close to the river on flat lands. The Portuguese built the Church of Our Lady of the Rosary in 1601 in the Paterghatta area near the Mughal period’s Sadar Ghat. This Paterghatta area remains a place for Christians. The landscape of the church includes an open space for social interaction with a garden and graveyard around it. There also are a number of shrines for the worship of Hindu deities and missionary work along with open space to hold gatherings of devotees (Qanungo 2010). Some of these are on the tops of hills, such as the Chandranath Temple positioned on Chandranath Hill, Prabortak Shangha at Prabortak Hll and Chatteshawry Temple and Kaibalya Dham Asram on top of Kaibalyadham Hill. These places are threatened by development and need to be preserved for their unique location in the city and for the safeguard of the ratio of open space in Chittagong.

Commercial public open spaces Commercial open space is referred to as a chowk or chawk (derived from Persian word “chok” which refers to a daily market place) (Steingass 1996) and can be translated as ‘town square’ or ‘market square’. In traditional Bengali cities, chawk refers to a street intersection in the urban core (Pacione 2001). A chawk was an open market place and a public place commonly found in the heart of a traditional town. They were the traditional outdoor civic spaces and were the generator of many events and human activities (Nilufar 2011). There were officials appointed to supervise the running of the market and to regulate the prices of articles during the Mughal period (Qanungo 2010). Like many South Asian cities, Chittagong grew from a place of exchange of agricultural products, developed as a transport node, and later as an administrative centre. In Chittagong, the chawks are in proximity to the Chaktai Creek to allow transport of goods to and from these bazaars. In this bazaar-based traditional city, there are linear bazaar streets as well as wider chawks, both types are surrounded by the houses of merchants, who often live above or behind their shops and warehouses. There also are intermediate and smaller scale chawks in the mohallahs (neighbourhoods) at the nodal 210

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points of winding streets off the main Chawk Bazaar of the city. This main Chawk Bazaar is still a vibrant and busy meeting place (Figure 11.5). These chawks are important cultural and civic spaces of the city and provide a contextual illustration of the city’s urban development and the cultural thinking on urban public life in the historical times.

Administrative open spaces These open spaces are associated with administrative buildings created during the Colonial period. Prominent among them is the Assam Bengal Railway headquarters that was established in 1892, with a railway, workshop, administrative buildings, hospitals, housing for staff, a playground and a clubhouse. The open spaces were mostly in hilly areas associated with the Central Railway Building (CRB) and the Batali Hill. The predominant feature of these administrative open spaces is the lack of a boundary wall, allowing people to access these places unrestricted and enjoy the panoramic views of the city below from the hills. The existing rail station adjacent to this administrative area holds the rail line corridor through the city. This corridor is a prominent landscape in the dense fabric of the city; it hosts the cultural programme of Bengali New Year in every year. The administrative grounds of CRB and the rail corridor provide opportunities for various uses for the city’s residents, which is not possible in the adjacent dense surroundings. The Judicial Building (named Darul Adalat) was established in the mid-sixteenth century during the colonial Period, at the apex of Madrasa Hill in Chittagong, to resolve social disputes. This hill and space surrounding the building still serve as open space for the public due to its secured location. However, the building is in a derelict state and no longer in use. At the end of the nineteenth century, the Chittagong Court Building was established on the Fairy Hill near the Karnaphuli River which is

Figure 11.5 The old Chawk area, which was an open, market shown in the centre with dashed line depicting its original boundary (The existing Chwak Bazaar area is expanded from this area). Source: Maharina Jafrin/Map from Chittagong Development Authority

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in operation today. The open spaces around the building were beautifully laid out as a park and the northern valley included two large reservoirs (Hossain 2012b). The area is now slowly developed with buildings, such as an extension to the court building and offices for attorneys. These places are important for conservation due to their historical significance and for their contribution to the amount of open space in the city.

Commemorative open spaces These open spaces include the places reserved for commemorating the victims of war in Bangladesh. For example, ‘Chittagong suffered most in the Second World War and [as a result] was declared as a “nonfamily area”’ (Qanungo 2010: 103). The latter is a designation suggested by Qanungo (2010) to be a setting that is unfit for human habitation. To commemorate the soldiers who died on the Eastern Front of the Second World War, the resting place of 400 military personnel was converted to a cemetery by the army along with other cemeteries in Assam. It is located at the foot of a horseshoe shaped hill lying east and south (Hossain 2012b) in Chatteshawri and still serves as an open space for the city. To commemorate the devotees in the war for Bangladesh’s Independence (in 1971), the Chittagong Shaheed Minar was built with an open space area in front of it, which can hold a range of public gathering events every year on, for example, the Independence Day and Victory Day of Bangladesh.

Conservation and Management of the Historic Urban Landscape of Chittagong These ten types present a range of open space scenarios developed in Chittagong throughout its various stages of the history. The existence of this unique Historic Urban Landscape is hidden in today’s city. Many are in various states of disrepair and/or in need of conservation, refurbishment, and management. The 1961 Master Plan first recognized conserving heritage buildings and improving their surrounds. However, little has improved and buildings largely remain in a neglected state. The Detail Area Plan (DAP) prepared by the Chittagong Development Authority in 2015 led to the preparation of a preliminary listing of historic buildings to be preserved and conserved for historical, architectural, environmental or ecological importance. DAP has marked 54 sites as heritage sites yet failed again to include all heritage open spaces. In consequence, a number of heritage open spaces have been lost with the approval of the Authority for new development. DAP also recommends that the Chittagong City Corporation (CCC), Bangladesh Parjatan (Tourism) Corporation and other concerned government departments acquire and protect archaeological and historical resources and sites as heritage, and cites that cultural conservation is part of the planning process. For example, the Building Construction Rule 2008 made a No Objection Certificate (NOC) compulsory to build any structure within a 250-metre radius of any archaeological, historical, architectural and natural aesthetic area. Nevertheless, DAP has failed to notice that this provision has, it appears, randomly marked the land uses around heritage sites following the existing land use patterns and road networks in their respective areas. Hence, there is no cultural or heritage land use consideration in the approval of permits in the vicinity of heritage sites. The decision-making of this sort should be modified to focus on the conservation of heritage sites (Talukdar 2014). The DAP guided the development and land uses for the whole city, but the DAP has overlooked the provisions for conservation of the heritage sites in Chittagong. As a result, heritage sites are facing the challenge to survive. From a land use planning perspective, Talukdar (2014) suggested plans for immediate and long-term action for heritage conservation in Chittagong. The immediate action plan was denoted as fixating on the criteria of heritage sites, upgrading the DAP (regarding the conservation of heritage sites), collaborating between different concerned institutions and organizations, the formation of a Conservation Committee for each heritage site, and developing a conservation management plan and 212

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heritage impact assessment. The long-term action plan was denoted as a national movement, which includes the formulation of a heritage division under the national planning department, as well as indepth research, site inventories and the publication of heritage educational material. To conserve heritage open spaces, it is important first to itemise open spaces associated with the city’s historic buildings. Hence, preparing a heritage inventory and developing a historical background of heritage landscapes is a necessary step in the process. Such historical records need to be examined and supported by an experienced heritage management team made up of both scholars and practitioners. As part of this team’s examination, they may prescribe land uses that complement the respective heritage sites that can be used in the development of conservation/preservation open space guidelines. It is also recommended that in terms of evaluating permits for building construction, that a special committee needs to be established and supplied with the ‘guidelines’ so that they too can appropriately evaluate proposed development in and/or around a respective heritage site, which is a recommendation of DAP. Secondly, city officials need to restrict development near heritage buildings and their associated landscapes. Prior to this, the periphery of these open spaces needs to be demarcated and appropriate land use(s) for open space heritage sites should be declared by authorities in the city’s planning documents (e.g. DAP). Simultaneously, the open spaces need to be reclaimed where possible. Place-specific conservation strategies need to be implemented in each of the different open space types that conserve their respective architectural and historical value and peripheral landscape, along with any heritage structures within their landscape. In general, urban heritage is understood at the scale of city-level, where the conservation area comprises broad landscapes and not just individual sites (Brown 2007). Due to its ten types of heritage landscapes, considering the city of Chittagong as a macro cultural landscape with varying degrees of sites is quite effective. The use of contemporary technology for mapping the urban landscape will be useful in the case of Chittagong. Anshary (2012) recommended that application of Geographical Information System (GIS) would be a very effective tool for identification and preservation of heritage structures. For example, in the UK, since 1994, “[...] English Heritage [...] has been carrying out a programme of Historic Landscape Characterisation (HLC) throughout England in partnership with individual county councils. HLC is a GIS map-based technique designed to produce a generalized understanding of the historic and archaeological dimension of the present-day landscape” (Brown 2007: 37). HLC, as conceived in the UK, expects a multidisciplinary project team involving professionals from a wide range of disciplines that work collectively towards the mapping and realization of the vernacular characteristics and traditions of the landscape under study (Fairclough and Wigley 2006).

Conclusion The discussion of different types of open spaces that existed in Chittagong is an attempt to reflect upon defining factors of the physical condition of the city as well as the social concern of those spaces. The diverse social, economic and political forces in Chittagong’s past shaped the creation and planning of the city’s open spaces, while it is absent in todays or in future planning proposals. Among these diverse political systems, the Mughal contribution to open space landscape in Chittagong is remarkable in terms of their formal planning and design. The colonial rule by the British had a notable impact on the city’s open spaces, which led to gradual erasure of other spaces created before the colonial period. Today, most of the open spaces are lost due to lack of conservation guidelines and efforts. The heritage list prepared by the planning authority of Chittagong contains only historic landmarks and ignores the significance of the city’s Historic Urban Landscape. The contemporary preservation and conservation proposals are not adequate for effective conservation of this urban heritage. Though the conservation of this expansive urban landscape is an ambitious task to undertake, it is initially recommended revisiting 213

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the historic land use patterns associated with the city and its historic buildings, so that the future growth could be managed in a manner that appropriately conserves the city’s Historic Urban Landscapes and heritage buildings amid them.

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12 THE ROLE OF NATURAL LANDSCAPES IN HISTORIC CHINESE CITIES Junheng Lai

Introduction The UNESCO Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape defines a historic urban area as the result of a historic layering of cultural and natural values and attributes, extending beyond the notion of historic centre to include the broader urban context and its geographical setting (UNESCO 2011). The natural landscape in and around a historic urban area is an integral part of this larger context. The natural landscape includes both the remaining parts of the original landscape that existed before it is affected by human activities and the natural parts of the cultural or human-made landscape. While the role of natural landscape in urban heritage has received recognition, methods of study for its role have not been adequately developed. This chapter examines the role and value of natural landscapes in historic Chinese cities. It explores the ecological, aesthetic, economic, and scientific values of nature in the historical urban context and introduces a method for natural landscape protection. It analyses the natural landscape in terms of its ecological, spatial and symbolic landscapes. For the future of conserving historic cities, it proposes an approach for identifying, protecting and managing natural heritage in historical urban areas.

The natural landscape in urban heritage The concept of the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) was first proposed in 2005 through UNESCO’s Declaration on the Conservation of Historic Urban Landscape, providing a reference for the evaluation and protection of urban cultural heritage (UNESCO 2005). Within the Declaration, the protection of natural landscapes in urban heritage is placed within the scope of conservation of cultural landscapes and urban heritage and no extensive content for the protection of natural heritage in urban areas was proposed. In the UNESCO’s Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape, the concept of the HUL was specifically defined, in which a historic urban area is understood as the product of a historic layering of cultural and natural values and attributes, extending beyond the notion of historic parts to include its wider context and geographical setting. This broader context includes the site’s topography, geomorphology, hydrology and natural features, its built environment, infrastructures, open spaces and gardens, land use and spatial organization, perceptions and visual relationships, and other aspects of the urban fabric. It also includes the cultural practices, economic processes, and intangible heritage (UNESCO 2011: 3). The HUL concept does not refer to a specific heritage category to be protected,

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but rather present a perspective and an approach that can be applied to deal with ‘a balanced and sustainable relationship between the urban and natural environment, between the needs of present and future generations and the legacy from the past’ (UNESCO 2011: 3). By considering the interrelation of the urban form of a city, its natural features and wider environment, and its social, cultural and economic values, the HUL approach intends to develop better integrated conservation strategies for both urban heritage and natural landscapes for overall sustainable development aimed at maintaining and improving the quality of the human environment. The geographical pattern of the natural landscape forms the basis for the origin and development of historical cities and modern urban landscapes. The HUL is formed by the long-term effects, accumulations and evolutions of natural geography, biology, culture, economy and technology. Cities, as a part of the cultural landscape, are the products of the use of natural landscape by a certain cultural group: The culture is the driving force, the natural landscape is the medium, and the cultural landscape is the outcome (Sauer 1925). The natural geographical landscape is the foundation of the stability, inheritance, persistence and vitality of a historic city. Therefore, the natural landscape is an indispensable part of historic cities. The exploration and utilization of natural landscape and its values for integrated urban conservation is a key aspect of the HUL approach. The natural landscape includes both the remaining parts of the original landscape that existed before it is affected by human activities and the natural parts of the cultural or human-made landscape. This also includes the natural areas within the historic urban centre and its surrounding environment. A critical step for the implementation of the HUL approach is to undertake a comprehensive survey of a city’s natural resources such as its geomorphology, hydrology, topography, natural features, green spaces, and waterscapes (UNESCO 2016). In addition to these physical aspects, natural environments are also associated with cultural traditions, religious ceremonies, spiritual practice and ideas such as feng shui, which also should be understood in the conservation process of urban heritage. In the protection of natural landscape in historic cities, it is also important to recognize that, as Geddes (1915) pointed out, a city as an organism in the process of evolution, in which the natural and social components blend in a complex network of changes and traditions. The natural landscape has dynamic layers and constitutes an essential part of the urban development process.

A framework for the study of natural landscape in historic cities Ecological, spatial, and symbolic dimensions of natural landscape The notion of heritage has been categorized into natural and cultural, and cultural heritage into tangible and intangible heritage (Yang 2011). While such categorization may have some theoretical and practical utility, a study of nature in a historic urban area needs to blur the boundaries of these categories and form a different way to understand its role in urban places. The natural landscape in historic urban areas could be studied in terms of the ‘ecological landscape’, ‘spatial landscape’, and ‘symbolic landscape’. The ecological landscape includes the geographical features such as topography, geomorphology, hydrology, mountains, bodies of water, vegetation and other bio-organisms. The spatial landscape is the physical enclosure, viewshed, visual sightlines/axes, skyline, scenic locations, spatial sequences, and similar visual-spatial characteristics and experiences that are formed by the features of the natural landscape. The ecological landscape is about the entire natural ecosystem that provides the base for the historic urban area. The spatial landscape is about specific places created by the natural landscape. The symbolic landscape refers to various intangible cultural expressions associated with the natural landscape of the historic city that include belief systems, values and meanings, and cultural practices. These categories of ecological, spatial, and symbolic landscapes are interrelated with and

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interdependent on each other; the classification is therefore simply for the practical purpose of their study and conservation. These dimensions of natural landscape play an important role in the understanding of the formation and characteristics of the urban fabric in historic Chinese cities (Yang 2003). How some aspects of these dimensions define the form and experience of such cities are briefly explained below.

The ecological base of urban form The unique form and growth patterns of historic cities are significantly influenced by the distinctiveness of the ecological base of their natural landscape. For a majority of historic Chinese cities, the selection of the location for their urban settlements has always been a relatively flat terrain with surrounding mountains and rivers, which provided materials for sustaining life and to develop connections and communication with the world outside. Other factors such as geology, climate, and fauna and flora of the ecological base also had influence on the formation, shaping and development of urban landscapes, the socio-cultural practices of their residents, and economic systems including agriculture and other industries (Yigang 1994). Aspects of geology and vegetation critically influenced the type of construction material and technology available and in turn the character of these urban settlements (Margottini and Spizzichino 2015). Geological factors that make locations susceptible to earthquakes, landslides, and flooding also determine the patterns of the urban built fabric and settlements. The multiple aspects of the ecological base of an environment, therefore, have a greater influence of the shape, form, and traits of urban settlements, including its extent, patterns of urban blocks and street network, building stock, and the overall sense of the place (Qing 2008). Urban conservation efforts usually keep the protection of this urban structure as the central focus. As the urban form is also determined by the natural ecological base of the place, that base landscape should also be safeguarded for a proper conservation of historic urban areas.

The network of urban green spaces A network of urban green spaces is formed by the interaction of various greeneries of different types and scale within an urban environment. It plays an important role in the integration, shaping, and strengthening of urban features within a historic urban area (Yang 2011). Urban green spaces may include a specific historic tree (‘heritage trees’), streets and urban squares with trees and other vegetation, small plots of land like a home garden with trees, flowers and plants, as well as large-scale areas such as forests, grasslands, parks, nature reserves, and agricultural lands within and around an urban area. Linear, contiguous green spaces such as historic canals, cultural routes and greenways also fall within the latter category and could be defined as ‘heritage corridors’. Urban green spaces are part of the ecological landscape of the place; they contribute immensely for the definition and formation of the palpable spatial experience (thus, the spatial landscape), the generation of a pleasing micro-climate, and the evocation of a restorative sense of place in a historic urban area.

The viewshed and skyline The viewshed created by the natural landscape plays a key role in the evocation of the sense or spirit as well as the memory of the urban place. Features of the natural landscape could be the object of a view itself or significantly contribute to the formation and framing of a view. Viewshed could include panoramic views of natural landscapes (views of bodies of water, mountains, agricultural lands, and the like) or from natural features (e.g. view of the city from a top of a hill); vistas and glimpses (framed views of natural features or views framed by natural features); and urban skylines (formed by 218

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both natural and artificial features). Skylines are of particular relevance to urban conservation; while urban skylines are a composite of both natural and built elements, they are defined more by built structures than natural features. In general, a natural landscape provides the background to the skyline created by built structures and is thus quite significant for the visual experience of an urban area from afar. The juxtaposition of the urban skyline over the backdrop of the natural skyline or landscape evokes an immediate understanding of how the natural landscape shaped the origin and growth of the city and how the city shaped nature in its development. This gaze-afar-view of urban landscape is an important aspect of urban heritage to be carefully conserved and maintained through viewshed control and management (Yang 2008). When the skyline in a historic city is shaped primarily by the natural landscape with layers of natural features such as mountain peaks or tall trees in the plains, the skyline forms a more curvilinear shape. Against this backdrop stand the landmarks of the city, the visually and socially prominent monuments. These landmarks are often used as clues to determine navigation within the urban area. New constructions could have negative impact on the character and form of the historical skyline and obscure it.

The visual characteristics of natural features The visual traits of natural features certainly contribute to the sense of place of historic urban areas. The colour, shape and patterns, surface textures, and patterns of mobility (waves of water; dance of leaves of grassland in the wind) and the like are major traits that are of the urban spatial landscape formed by nature (Li 2016). Seasonal changes of these traits make visual impact on the character of historic urban cores. How these visual characteristics of the natural landscape contribute to and enhance the sense of a historic place should be attentively studied and approaches should be devised to realistically maintain such characteristics, because natural landscapes are inherently transient.

Belief systems and other intangible cultural heritage It is rare to find a cultural group who does not have reciprocal associations between the natural landscape and their cultural beliefs and practices. Nature has led to the creation of beliefs and practices; people have ascribed meanings to the natural landscape. Such beliefs and practices demonstrate how people adopted and modified the natural landscape for their purposes. A study of the role of nature in urban heritage, therefore, should investigate the interrelations between intangible cultural heritage and the natural landscape of a historic urban area. A relevant example in the Chinese context is feng shui, also known as xiang-di method. A unique cultural phenomenon, its main purpose is to establish the position, layout and orientation of dwellings, villages, towns and tombs to obtain a prosperous living environment that bring good luck for communities and future generations (Long 2005). This geomantic theory in its long-term development has accumulated rich practical experience through the process of absorbing and combining ancient science, philosophy, aesthetics, ethics, religion, and folk wisdom. The theory of feng shui has an important influence on the location of ancient Chinese cities, the layout of urban buildings, and the direction of streets. The theory advocates careful investigation of natural environment, to comply with nature, have abstemious ground to use and transform nature, create a good living environment, and achieve harmony to get along with nature. The study of feng shui theory on the spatial structure of HULs, therefore, have a significant place in urban conservation.

The natural landscape and liveability In addition to its association with tangible and intangible urban cultural heritage, the natural landscape also has a significant relationship with the liveability of the historic urban area. This nexus lies on the 219

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factors such as economy, environmental pollution, microclimate, and the resources available for life in the place. The availability of resources in the natural environment and climatic factors certainly determined, and continue to determine, the type, origin and sustenance of local economies in historic cities, starting with agriculture and then with other industries. The nature of local economies then shaped the tangible and intangible cultural expressions of place. The pollution of air, land, and water in the natural envelopment will have a significant impact on the liveability of historic areas soon, in addition to inevitable chemical damage to historic structures of value. Irreversible damage to the natural landscapes could have critical impact on the climate change locally and globally and decrease the resiliency of local communities to withstand and recover from natural disasters. The liveability of a place has a direct connection to the protection of urban heritage – a need for a local resident community to value, safeguard, utilize, and practice urban cultural heritage. Conservation of nature in historic urban areas, therefore, needs some understanding of the relationship between the nature, culture, and liveability in the place.

Biodiversity in the urban area As an aspect of the ecological landscape of an urban area, biodiversity does not usually get enough attention in a study of urban heritage or in its conservation. The relationship between biodiversity and urbanization is tenuous: urbanization always has a negative impact on the biodiversity of a place. However, certain historic urban areas may have evolved in ways that minimize the harm on biodiversity as well as in ways that benefit them from a diverse ecological system. Aspects of biodiversity may have also contributed to the identity and character of a historic city. In urban conservation, the impact an urban area, historically and currently, has on the biodiversity of its ecological landscape should be carefully studied. Such studies could explore different aspects of biodiversity, such as the diversity of species, genetics, ecosystems, and landscapes.

Heritage values of the natural landscape in historic cities The role of natural landscape in historic urban areas could also be understood in the ways it contributes to the heritage values of a historic urban area. In the case of World Heritage sites, the significance of natural heritage is assessed in the points of view of natural beauty, science and conservation (UNESCO 2017). The natural landscape could then be evaluated in terms of its own aesthetic, scientific, and ecological values as well as how it shapes those values of the tangible and intangible cultural heritage of the historic urban area (Mingfei 2010). Natural features and areas in and around urban spaces could add immensely to the scenic beauty of the place. This aesthetic value could be defined in terms of the aspects of the spatial landscape, such as greeneries, spatial enclosures, viewshed, and specific geomorphic and physiographic features of the natural landscape. The scientific and ecological values of the natural landscape are usually associated with the significant biodiversity, ecosystems, natural habitats, and ecological and biological processes in the natural landscape. The aesthetic value of natural landscapes in historic cities is readily understood in urban conservation as it is a more palpable dimension of the physical fabric and its experience. In comparison, the scientific and ecological values of natural landscape is rather intangible and thus require thoughtful study of and awareness building about them to draw public attention to the conservation of the scientific and ecological significance of the natural urban landscape. Furthermore, the value of a historic city’s natural landscape could also be interconnected with other heritage values, such as the place’s spiritual value and wellness value (Silva 2019; Souter-Brown 2015). The natural landscape could also be linked to the economic value of a historic city. The economic value could be related to direct and indirect uses of the landscape, such as recreation and tourism, 220

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sustainable harvesting of resources for food and materials, provision of fuel and energy (wood, geothermal, solar), agriculture and grazing, gene harvesting, natural disaster prevention, and climate stabilization (IUCN 1998). In addition, studies in the field of ‘place branding’ have demonstrated the important role of the natural landscape in constructing a place brand for historic cities to enhance their economic development potential (Campelo 2015; Campelo et al. 2014; Falahatkar and Aminzadeh 2018). City branding is generally understood as a whole set of actions to build a positive image of the city and to communicate it among various target groups via visuals, narratives, and events, locally and internationally to gain a competitive advantage among other cities (Kalandides et al. 2011). In these studies, a natural landscape is defined as the extensive nature that constitutes and influences the city form and the city image. For historic cities, their branding is always based on their cultural heritage; when natural landscape plays a role in the city branding, the most influential factor has been its aesthetic value. Therefore, the protection of the aesthetic value of natural landscape is vital for the economic value of a historic urban area.

Methods for studying the natural urban landscape In a study of the role of natural landscape in urban heritage, a combination of several methods could be used that may include site investigation, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), ArcGIS analysis, and the experts and public evaluation. The first step is to undertake a comprehensive survey and mapping of the city’s natural landscape resources. An evaluation of the expert and public perception on the value of these natural resources and on their contribution to the significance of urban heritage could then be conducted. Also important is an evaluation of the status quo of the fragility of natural resources. Through site investigation and the AHP method, each natural landscape element could be examined. In the AHP method, known attributes and measures of natural resources are compared with intangible attributes such as associated heritage values to derive decisions on what natural attributes and values are significant to urban heritage (Saaty 2008). When using the AHP method, it is necessary to consider the factors that affect the natural landscape and determine the weight of the indicators according to the four steps. The first step is to establish Analytic Hierarchy Process model for natural landscape consisting of three parts: the target layer, the standard layer, and the element layer (Figure 12.1).

Figure 12.1 The analytic hierarchy process model for natural landscape study. Source: Junheng Lai

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Usually, the elements of one level dominate the elements of the next level. The second step is to construct a comparison judgment matrix, using the pairwise comparison method (Saaty 2005). The third step is to determine the weight of each element relative to the upper-level element, which is obtained based on the summation method. The fourth step is to perform a consistency check through the judgment of experts and the public to determine the reliability and accuracy of the analysis. ArcGIS is a useful tool to develop layers of spatial maps depicting various attributes of natural landscape and to superimpose these layers to create a composite data base and a visual representation of the natural resources. ArcGIS maps would point out the areas where the natural landscape in a historic city needs to be protected, developed and utilized. Moreover, there could be situations in which the heights of the buildings need to be controlled to maintain the viewshed created by the natural landscape and the visual prominence of specific natural features. In scenarios where the construction height control analysis is needed, height determination could be based on the digital elevation model (DEM) analysis. DEM could be used to superimpose the surface area of viewshed at different times from a selected vantage point – for example, the viewshed at a historic time over the same viewshed at present – to decide the allowable height and locations of new constructions. DEM data could also be combined with ArcGIS to perform visual region analysis for a historic city. ArcGIS can also be used to develop the ecological sensitivity analysis map of cities. There also are methods to assess the economic values of natural urban heritage, such as opportunity cost analysis, contingent valuation, and benefit cost analysis (see IUCN 1998).

Natural landscape in historic Chinese cities: some examples Given below is a brief discussion of the natural landscape in three historic Chinese cities. They range from a developed city with a large population, a developing city with a moderate population, and a slow-developing town with a small population. They also present different scenarios of how aspects of natural landscape are integrated with their urban fabric.

Wuhan, Hubei province Wuhan is a typical Chinese example of a developed historic city with a large population. It is located in the central plains of China and at the intersection of the rivers Yangtze and Han. The Han River passes through the city forming a unique landscape pattern. The city is known as ‘the city of a hundred lakes’, such as the East Lake, Thomson Lake, and Moon Lake, of which East Lake is the largest with a significant ecological value. The city won the title ‘the Great Rivers-Great Lakes-Great Wuhan’ for its prominent natural landscape. While Wuhan also has a rich cultural heritage, its most interesting and defining features are the lakes that are scattered all over the city and that significantly influence the city’s urban spatial structure and development pattern. This waterscape undoubtedly heightens the aesthetic, ecological, and economic value of the historic city. In addition to the rivers and the lakes of the natural landscape, a key part of the city’s waterscape and its built heritage is the canal system that for centuries played an important role in transportation, trading, and the associated cultural life. Because of the existence of the rivers and the canal system, a unique culture associated with the canal docks was developed in Wuhan, with many historic buildings that stand on the banks of the canals, a unique viewshed, and cultural activities. However, with the development of land and air transportation, the docks have been gradually abandoned and the transportation function of the canal system has begun to decrease; their lack of upkeep now undesirably influences the aesthetic and ecological values of this nature-culture heritage of Wuhan. The lakes provide vital habitat for wildlife and the biodiversity of the city. The holistic protection of this HUL should thus include the city’s historic canal system, wetland systems and the surrounding hills. 222

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Figure 12.2 The urban skyline of Wuhan. Key historic structures are identified with circles, and the artificial skyline and two natural landscape skylines are marked with lines. Source: Junheng Lai

The urban skyline of Wuhan is of importance in the conservation of the city’s natural landscape. This visual feature could be divided into three layers (Figure 12.2). The first layer of the skyline consists of historical buildings, the middle layer is composed of the Yangtze River and the surrounding hills, and the third layer formed by the modern buildings built on hills of different heights. Under the protection of the city’s natural landscape, this unique feature of much aesthetic value should also be maintained. The continuous expansion of the city has gradually contracted the extent of the lakes and polluted the quality of water with serious consequences on the ecological safety and the hydrological characteristics of the natural heritage of the city. To protect the ecology of Wuhan, its landscape pattern should be studied first to identify different characteristics and then conservation areas, such as wetland reserve, mountain reserve, forest reserve, etc., should be designated along with conservation guidelines specific to each type of natural reserve. In addition, attention should be paid to maintaining the natural form of the river, including its direction and width, to sustain the ecological and landscape benefits of the river system of Wuhan.

Langzhong, Sichuan province As a developing city with a moderate population, Langzhong was constructed based on the feng shui theory in the Tang dynasty. Its natural geography perfectly presents the feng shui pattern of ‘bearing the negative Yin, embracing the Yang and fronting water with hills on the back’, which reflects the supreme perfection of the dragon, sand, water, cave and direction. Within that natural landscape, the city was created to be a good living environment in accordance with the principle of ‘tian ren he yi’, which means that human beings are an integral part of nature. Langzhong is also a hilly landscape, situated in the transition zone of the low mountainous area of northern Sichuan to the hilly region of central Sichuan. The city is located on the edge of the Jialing River. This geographical setting generates a unique city form, called ‘shan huan shui bao’ – a city surrounded by mountains and girdled by a river. The city follows this natural fabric, extending from the north 223

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of the river to the south of the mountains (Figure 12.3). The historic pattern of urban blocks, street network, and siting of buildings closely followed the natural topography. The conservation of the built fabric of the city, therefore, cannot be conducted in isolation from the protection of this unique geographical and natural setting. Although the urban development of Langzhong is blocked by the river, the integrity of its ecological landscape is sustained: the green patches and wetland patches of the city are evenly distributed and form a landscape corridor through the city. This unique natural feature is of great importance for the aesthetic and ecological values of both the natural and cultural heritages of the city. Langzhong attracts a large number of tourists due to its well-preserved historical buildings and beautiful natural landscape. This heritage-led tourism has generated a new appreciation of the city’s natural and cultural heritage. With this rapid development of tourism, the city needs new planning and transformation to protect its heritage and manage the impacts of tourism, especially in the protection of the natural landscape resources, while providing infrastructure for tourism growth.

Zhao’an, Fujian province Zhao’an town is a slow-developing town with a small population. Its population has decreased considerably due to outmigration of people looking for greater economic opportunities elsewhere. Although the demand for urban development and expansion is moderate due to this loss of population, some of the city’s urban heritage is lost as a result of inconsiderate demolition of historic buildings. However, the natural landscape of the town with its geographical pattern, moats, and

Figure 12.3 The ecological setting of Langzhong. Source: Junheng Lai

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mountains with beautiful scenery are well preserved. A significant aspect of Zhao’an’s urban natural landscape is its unique green space features that include green roofs on ancient houses, ancient ceremonial trees in front of temples, small courtyards, and green plots created on the decks of fishing boats (Figure 12.4). These spaces, particularly the old trees in the premises of temples and ancestral worshipping halls, have commemorative and emotional value for the city residents. This network of green spaces in Zhao’an provides residents and visitors places for rest and cultural spaces for many intangible heritage practices. Collectively this unique network of green spaces generates a significant ecological value to Zhao’an’s cultural landscape. Unlike the fast-growing big and historic cities that rely on tourism development, Zhao’an is less affected by external forces and endures incremental natural transformation based on factors internal to it. It retains many coastal cultures, including family culture and Mazu culture, and therefore the traditional life and activities. The life of its residents still depends on natural landscape resources. For example, people play chess under old trees, wash clothes and vegetables in the river near the ancient city wall, and during festivals conduct rituals at the foot of the mountain near the city. All these intangible heritage needs to be safeguarded. For historic towns like Zhao’an, which have rich heritage but are not valued by the government and developers, the most important issue is to improve the living condition of residents. Some historic buildings are lost to urban development; some degree of deterioration of the city’s natural setting is visible; and air pollution can be clearly felt in the city. Zhao’an needs an integrated approach to conservation of its natural and urban heritage and development of its socio-economic life.

Figure 12.4 Diverse green spaces of Zhao’an. Source: Junheng Lai

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Conservation of urban natural landscape heritage As described in the above examples of historic Chinese cities, the urban natural landscape takes different forms in each case, from large ecosystems such as mountainscapes and waterscapes to even small plots of vegetation grown on the fishing boats. This diversity of the manners in which nature contributes to urban heritage similarly requires diverse and place-specific approaches to its conservation. Nevertheless, some common guidelines for the conservation of urban natural heritage could be suggested. As mentioned earlier, a comprehensive mapping of the natural landscape is the first step, focusing on its ecological, spatial and symbolic dimensions. A part of the study should concentrate on the definition of the ecological, aesthetic, economic and scientific research values of the natural landscape and how nature contributes to the values of the cultural heritage of the place (Mingfei 2010). Assessment of these values in comparison with the conservation status of different dimensions and features of the natural landscape is helpful in developing appropriate protection strategies. The safeguard of the ecological value of the urban natural landscape perhaps deserves immediate and primary attention due to the fragility of ecosystems under the threat of rapid urbanization and climate change. Restoration of ecosystems entails actions based on the ecosystem type and its condition with the goal of re-establishing an ecosystem, as far as possible, close to its original function, structure, and composition. Conservation efforts should be directed towards stabilizing and regulating the ecological integrity, re-instating key ecological processes, protecting biodiversity, and maintaining resilience (improving an ecosystems capability to absorb and adapt to rapid environmental change). Designating protected areas and establishing connections (e.g. land corridors) between them for species migration/dispersal are important initial steps to take. Other effective mechanisms for ecological restoration include: habitat recreation; species re-introduction; invasive species removal; natural hydrology restoration; new buffer zone formation; and air, soil and water pollution control (Gross et al. 2016; Keenleyside et al. 2012). Another aspect of ecological conservation is to encourage and re-establish traditional cultural values, knowledge, practices and livelihoods that contribute to the ecological, social and cultural sustainability of the historic urban area with the participation of indigenous people, dependent communities, and local residents (Borrini-Feyerabend et al. 2004). Furthermore, the ecological landscape provided the base or setting for origin and development of a historic city and the traces of the original landscape may still be visible in many cases. Conservation of such remaining vestiges of the original ecological base should also be a part of urban heritage conservation (Qing 2008). Treatment of the ecological setting is recognized as ‘a comprehensive measure to protect a site, reveal its historical condition, and ensure its appropriate use’ (ICOMOS China 2015: 88). Efforts in this regard could involve the modification and removal of structures and visual intrusions that adversely affect the landscape, restriction of activities that may harm the site, prevention of environmental pollution, the use of indigenous vegetation, and discouraging the use of modern landscape designs (ICOMOS China 2015). An aspect of the conservation of the ecological landscape is to make use of it in a sustainable manner with the intention of mitigating negative effects of urbanization and economic development on it. The Addis Ababa Principles states that ‘[i]t is possible to use biodiversity components in a manner in which ecological processes, species and genetic variability remain above thresholds needed for longterm viability, and … ensure that use does not exceed these capacities’ (Secretariat of CBD 2004: 6). The China Principles for heritage conservation also mention that, since heritage sites are non-renewable, their appropriate use ‘must consider the characteristics of a site, its values and its capacity to withstand use’ and such use should do no ‘damage to it or the setting or diminishing its values’ (ICOMOS China 2015: 63). Ecosystems have finite resources and fragile processes that limit the goods and services they can provide. Ecosystems also change over time whether they are used or not. Not to go over the threshold limits of these constrains must be followed in developing and monitoring sustainable

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uses of natural landscapes. To optimize the socio-economic benefits, extractive uses should be conducted in a selective and ecologically friendly manner that minimizes waste and environmental impacts (Secretariat of CBD 2004). Tourism is a direct use of the economic potential of a natural landscape. Properly managed tourism could help achieve objectives of urban conservation while mitigating its negative consequences on natural heritage. Sustainable tourism and visitor management is directed at influencing visitors’ behaviour and minimizing tourism-induced change, including the control of use and access to natural heritage areas. Tourism activities and their resultant revenues can be used to support nature conservation in many ways: financing conservation activities; tourists’ volunteer participation in restoration efforts, gathering scientific data, and monitoring wildlife; building visitor awareness on conservation needs and activities; incentivizing the local community to take care of natural resources to encourage tourism revenues; and encouraging authorities to designate additional protected natural areas (Leung et al. 2018). Sustainable tourism management is based first on the definition of desirable objectives and associated indicators and standards of tourism quality for natural urban area in question, second on the monitoring of the indicators to see if standards are maintained, and then on the action taken to restore the standards of tourism quality if they are not properly maintained (Leung et al. 2018). The protection of spatial and symbolic dimensions of urban natural heritage involves the safeguard of specific natural features, greenspaces, viewshed, unique urban spaces defined primarily by natural features, and cultural beliefs and practices associated with nature in the historic city. The conservation of these is directly related to enhancing the aesthetic, socio-cultural, and historic values of the natural landscape. The safeguard of the spatial dimension of natural landscape could be taken directly under the conservation strategies for the physical fabric of urban heritage with the use of usual conservation mechanisms like zoning and control guidelines for architecture, signage, and landscape. However, the evaluation of such measures within the parameters of the protection needs and mechanism of the ecological dimension of urban natural landscape is imperative. The sustainable ways in which local communities interact with the natural urban heritage for socio-economic benefits and cultural practices as well as their beliefs associated with nature should be recognized and promoted through appropriate means with their consultation and participation (Wild and McLeod 2008). For a successful conservation of natural heritage in historic urban areas, an institutional system of support is necessary. This support system involves a management authority, a regulatory framework, a management plan, and financing. Legislative and regulatory framework and a management authority could be incorporated within the existing institutional infrastructure for urban heritage conservation. However, ecosystem conservation requires more specialized knowledge than the conventional architectural, archaeological and anthropological expertise needed for cultural heritage conservation. Therefore, the conservation team should be composed of multidisciplinary expertise appropriate for the urban and natural heritage conservation requirements exclusive to each historic city. In many Chinese cities, ecological conservation, cultural heritage management, social improvement, and economic development come under the purview of different authorities, and, therefore, proper coordination between these agencies is much desired for integrated conservation efforts of culture-nature urban heritage. Inclusion of city residents and all stakeholders in the planning and implementation of conservation activities, establishment of effective methods of communications between and among stakeholders and heritage managers, and conducting education and public awareness programmes on conservation and sustainable use of natural heritage are critical steps for achieving better outcome in urban conservation (Lee and Middleton 2003; Secretariat of CBD 2004). In terms of financing conservation plans, developing stable and sufficient long-term financing mechanisms and alternative sources of funding, in addition to usual governmental sources, are essential as nature conservation requires continuous monitoring and engagement (Emerton et al. 2006). Periodic evaluation of how well natural urban areas are being managed assures immediate action to rectify shortcomings in management systems, plans, resource allocations, 227

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processes and activities, and desired outcomes (Hockings et al. 2006). Such on-going monitoring may need the use of diverse tools to evaluate ecosystem form and function, heritage value protection, public perception, cost-benefit analysis, and the quality of use of ecosystems (Neugarten et al. 2018)

Conclusion In the conservation of Historic Urban Landscapes, the protection of both the natural areas and the cultural heritage of historic cities deserve equal consideration. However, the natural landscape in historic cities is not valued enough and properly protected. In the rapid urbanization in historic cities, their natural landscapes face constant threats in the form of habitat destruction, overexploitation, environmental pollution, loss of resiliency and genetic diversity, and loss of scenic qualities. In this chapter, a way to understand the role of the natural landscape in the heritage of historic urban areas and how to approach its conservation is discussed. The urban natural areas could be studied in terms of how their ecological, spatial, and symbolic dimensions contribute to the formation of both tangible and intangible urban cultural heritage. Their heritage values could also be defined to lay out appropriate conservation measures. While the conservation of spatial and symbolic aspects of natural areas could be achieved via typical urban conservation measures, the protection of ecological aspects of the landscape requires special considerations. In historic cities in China, the natural landscape plays a highly significant role, providing a scenic and ecological setting for the origin and growth of towns and their socio-economic and cultural development. In the adaptation of the natural landscape for human habitation, its natural features were given meaning and value through cultural belief systems. Even with the swift urbanization, industrialization, and economic development, the significant aspects of natural heritage in historic cities in China have survived to a greater degree and retain their physical extent, scenic beauty, and associated meanings. However, the impact of urban development on the ecological landscape is questionable and requires urgent and comprehensive evaluation. Similarly, while significant natural features in historic cities may have endured due to their obvious prominence, other natural features of lesser importance may not have survived, thus requiring a proper assessment of their loss and survival. There is a growing and sustained interest in the conservation of both the country’s natural and cultural heritage, and the time has arrived to extend that attention to the protection of natural heritage within historic urban areas.

References Borrini-Feyerabend, G., Kothari, A., and Oviedo, G. (2004) Indigenous and local communities and protected areas: Towards equity and enhanced conservation, Gland, Switzerland: IUCN. Campelo, A. (2015) ‘Rethinking sense of place: Sense of one and sense of many’, in M. Kavaratzis, G. Warnaby, and G. J. Ashworth (eds) Rethinking place branding, Dordrecht: Springer, 51–60. Campelo, A., Aitken, R., Thyne, M., and Gnoth, J. (2014) ‘Sense of place: The importance for destination branding’, Journal of Travel Research, 53 (2): 154–166. Emerton, L., Bishop, J., and Thomas, L. (2006) Sustainable financing of protected areas: A global review of challenges and options, Gland, Switzerland: IUCN. Falahatkar, H. and Aminzadeh, B. (2018) ‘The sense of place and its influence on place branding: A case study of Sanandaj natural landscape in Iran’, Landscape Research, [online]. DOI: 10.1080/01426397.2018.1560401. Geddes, P. (1915) Cities in evolution, London: William and Norgate. Gross, J. E., Woodley, S., Welling, L. A., and Watson, J. E. (2016) Adapting to climate change: Guidelines for protected area managers and planners, Gland, Switzerland: IUCN. Hockings, M., Stolton, S., Leverington, F., Dudley, N., and Courrau, J. (2006) Evaluating effectiveness: A framework for assessing management effectiveness of protected areas, 2nd edition, Gland, Switzerland: IUCN. ICOMOS China. (2015) Principles for the conservation of heritage sites in China, Beijing: ICOMOS China.

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Natural landscapes in historic Chinese cities IUCN Task Force on Economic Benefits of Protected Areas of the World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA). (1998) Economic values of protected areas: Guidelines for protected area managers, Gland, Switzerland: IUCN. Kalandides, A., Kavaratzis, M., and Zenker, S. (2011) ‘How to catch a city? The concept and measurement of place brands’, Journal of Place Management and Development, 4 (1): 40–52. Keenleyside, K. A., Dudley, N., Cairns, S., Hall, C. M., and Stolton, S. (2012) Ecological restoration for protected areas: Principles, guidelines and best practices, Gland, Switzerland: IUCN. Lee, T. and Middleton, J. (2003) Guidelines for management planning of protected areas, Gland, Switzerland: IUCN. Leung, Y-F., Spenceley, A., Hvenegaard, G., and Buckley, R. (eds) (2018) Tourism and visitor management in protected areas: Guidelines for sustainability, Gland, Switzerland: IUCN. Li, H. (2016) Research on control and continuity of urban landscape character from the perspective of heritage protection, Wuhan, China: Huazhong University of Science and Technology. Long, B. (2005) Feng shui and urban construction, 2nd edition, Nanchang: Jiangxi Science and Technology Press. Margottini, C. and Spizzichino, D. (2015) ‘How geology shapes human settlements’, in F. Bandarin and R. van Oers (eds) Reconnecting the city: The Historic Urban Landscape Approach and the future of urban heritage, Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 47–84. Mingfei, M. (2010) Research on legislation and practice of natural heritage protection, Wuhan, China: Wuhan University. Neugarten, R. A., Langhammer, P. F., Osipova, E., Bagstad, K. J., Bhagabati, N., Butchart, S. H. M., Dudley, N., et.al. (2018) Tools for measuring, modelling, and valuing ecosystem services: Guidance for key biodiversity areas, natural World Heritage sites, and protected areas, Gland, Switzerland: IUCN. Qing, H. (2008) ‘Research on landscape conservation of urban historical blocks’, Huazhong Architecture, 26 (6): 138–140. Saaty, T. L. (2005) ‘Making and validating complex decisions with the AHP / ANP’, Journal of Systems Sciences and Systems Engineering, 1: 1–36. ———. (2008) ‘Decision making with the analytic hierarchy process’, International Journal of Services and Sciences, 1 (1): 83–98. Sauer, C. (1925) ‘The morphology of landscape’, University of California Publications in Geography, 2 (2): 19–54. Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). (2004) Addis Ababa principles and guidelines for the sustainable use of biodiversity, Montreal: Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Silva, K. D. (2019) ‘Towards an integrative and empathetic heritage conservation: The case of Kandy, Sri Lanka’, in V. Bharne and T. Sandmeier (eds) Routledge companion on global heritage conservation, London: Routledge, 87–108. Souter-Brown, G. (2015) Landscape and urban design for health and well-being: Using healing, sensory and therapeutic gardens, London: Routledge. UNESCO. (2005) The declaration on the conservation of Historic Urban Landscapes, Paris: UNESCO. Available at: https://whc.unesco.org/document/6812 (accessed 23 March 2019). ———. (2011) Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape, Paris: UNESCO. Available at: https://whc.unesco. org/uploads/activities/documents/activity-638-98.pdf (accessed 23 March 2019). ———. (2016) The HUL guidebook: Managing heritage in dynamic and constantly changing urban environments, Paris: UNESCO. Available at: http://historicurbanlandscape.com/themes/196/userfiles/download/2016/6/7/ wirey5prpznidqx.pdf (accessed 12 June 2018). ———. (2017) Operational guidelines for the implementation of the World Heritage Convention, Paris: UNESCO. Wild, R. and McLeod, C. (eds) (2008) Sacred natural sites: Guidelines for protected area managers, Gland, Switzerland: IUCN. Yang, D. (2011) Landscape conservation planning of historic cities and towns: The case of Wugong Town, Shanxi, Xi’an, Unpublished Master’s Thesis, Northwest Agriculture and Forestry University, China. Yang, J. (2003) ‘Natural landscape protection in historic cities’, New Building, 4: 7–9. Yang, J. (2008) Conservation planning and safeguarding of Historic Urban Landscape: The revelation of Vienna Memorandum to the historic cities of China, Unpublished Master’s Thesis, Tongji University, Shanghai, China. Yigang, P. (1994) Landscape analysis of traditional villages and towns, Beijing: China Construction Industry Press.

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PART III

Safeguarding intangible urban heritage

13 THE SENSORY HERITAGE OF ASIAN CITIES Nisha A. Fernando

Introduction Heritage management of urban cultural landscapes has primarily focused on physical and tangible monuments and sites, while more recent approaches have increasingly shifted the focus towards intangible assets of heritage. A broadened spectrum of heritage is essential to better understand urban cultural landscapes as places shaped and reshaped over time within changing socio-cultural systems embedded with meanings. Heritage management practices must, therefore, deconstruct cultural landscapes to discover all possible intangible attributes to synthesize a deeper understanding and theorizing of cultural heritage.1 This chapter addresses one such significant attribute of heritage: urban sensoryscapes. Based on Eurocentric assumptions that the ideal urban form is one of clear physical order and visual coherence, most Asian cities are typically labelled as ‘cluttered’, ‘chaotic’, and ‘disorienting’. Contrary to this perception, traditional Asian cities follow organic and tacit ordering principles that are simultaneously both formal and informal. Inherent in such cities are slow-growing, unregimented spatial orders that lead to culturally specific, multi-faceted sensory environments filled with sounds, smells, textures, and movement, creating vibrant and unique urban landscapes. In this chapter, I argue that the ways in which such multisensory experiences are produced and manifested are vital to Asian cultural identities and thereby significantly contribute to the urban heritage. Using examples from Sri Lankan cities, the chapter illustrates the significance of sensoryscapes – especially non-visual sensory experiences – in discerning cultural identity and meaning of urban landscapes. It also emphasizes the role urban sensoryscapes plays in heritage and calls for creating a more holistic approach to heritage management. Furthermore, it establishes how the current dichotomy of tangible and intangible heritage components become rather blurred where sensoryscapes are concerned.

Sensory heritage of Sri Lanka Compared to modern cities designed with preconceived planning principles and regulated by rigid laws and codes, most traditional Asian cities adhere to more organic development patterns, shaped and reshaped over time within respective cultural milieus. Even when some cities may portray a welldefined physical and spatial organization with distinctive forms, morphology, spatial hierarchy and physical boundaries, spaces are created, organized and used in unique and idiosyncratic ways based on socio-cultural schemata of the respective societies and communities. As a result, when observed at 233

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small spatial scales, traditional Asian cities demonstrate distinctive spatial representations and ambiences. Sensory qualities are central to these representations and play a key role in deciphering cultural identities. To exemplify the significance of sensory, cultural identities, several case studies from Sri Lanka follow.

Sensory characteristics of everyday spaces In a study conducted in Colombo, Sri Lanka, I recorded systematic observations of the changing urban character along a 12-mile stretch of a major arterial street (Fernando 2000). Among other findings, I noted an attribute that was particularly significant in creating the perceived spatial complexity in pedestrian-level experiences: the high variety of spatial uses on both sidewalks and in adjacent buildings. Multi-storey office buildings, banks, grocery stores, clothing shops, restaurants and eateries, drug stores (pharmacies), schools, churches, temples and even a few houses exist side-by-side without any strict spatial zoning or carefully planned morphological order. In parallel to the variety of buildings and functions, sidewalks are also filled with a variety of activities. For example, in a small section of a sidewalk, one can see street vendors selling fruits, vegetables, used books and clothing items right next to shoe and umbrella repair persons and lottery-ticket sellers, while commuters waiting for buses amid others socializing, idling, and people-watching. Additionally, sidewalks are not formally organized with defined physical boundaries or visual orders; instead the spaces are organized and used spontaneously as needed. Such mix of uses – coupled with vendor kiosks, makeshift tables, stands, and various merchandise items placed on sidewalks – create an interesting mélange of activity settings. Depending on the time of day, these settings, activities, and people constantly change. While the general physical organization of the street is similar to any typical city street, these micro-level spatial settings, specific activities, and changes along with time contribute to a clearly discernible urban sense of place. Multifaceted spatial uses and activities also generate a complex array of sensory qualities that define the particular identity of the street. Because of diverse uses, sensory experiences change along the street separating the street into different segments with different perceptible characters. Sounds of traffic are prominent in busier, more modern commercialized hubs of the street. In this area, crowds of people hurry down the sidewalks while most buildings are closed off from the street, separating the interior activities from the outside (Figure 13.1). In contrast, in another area of the street, sounds of religious activities emanating from wide-open Hindu or Buddhist temples (i.e. drumming, musical instruments, chanting, etc.,) along with sounds of ethnic music played from adjacent open shops and of people talking in an ethnic language are prominently ubiquitous. Olfactory elements generated from open spice shops, sidewalk kiosks, cafes with ethnic cuisine, and shops selling flowers and incense next to the temple add yet another distinctive sensory character to the street (Figure 13.2). People leisurely linger in front the temple and shops creating a less busy, slower pace of movement patterns. These differences of auditory, olfactory and kinetic patterns divide the street into segments with distinctively different sensory experiences despite their morphological similarities. It should be noted here that multisensory experiences are also more highly pronounced in the traditional areas of the street with buildings and sidewalks widely accommodating a range of uses and people at any given time than the areas with modern buildings that are typically closed off from the street and sidewalk uses are much more rigidly controlled. Sounds and smells are also layered with a temporal dimension. Near Hindu temples, for example, the distinctive music of nadaswaram horns, thavil drums and bells denote specific prayer times, commonly during sunrise and sunset each day. Drumming and music also announce special events such

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Figure 13.1 Commercial hub along Galle Road, Colombo – with enclosed building fabric blocking out sensory characteristics. Source: Nisha A. Fernando

Figure 13.2 Hindu Temple (Sri Manika Vinayagar Kovil) along Galle Road, Bambalapitiya, Colombo. Source: Nisha A. Fernando

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as a Hindu wedding taking place inside a temple. Musical sounds, coupled with the fragrant air of fresh flowers, burning oil lamps and incense and broken coconuts (done as a ritual offering) create complex sensory qualities that represent specific sub-cultural expressions and latent spiritual meanings. These multisensory facets illustrate a key culture-specific aspect – that an ordinary street segment can simultaneously be a spiritual space as well. Such shift of meanings from mundane to spiritual as well as simultaneous existence of both is an extremely important aspect of culturespecificity of the Sri Lankan intangible heritage. Sensory elements also point to the spatial scale of urban character. While at macro-level streets appear somewhat similar, micro-level spatial analyses reveal many ‘hidden’ cultural expressions. While traditional architectural features of Hindu and Buddhist temples are obviously representative of the Sri Lankan cultural heritage, specific activities within these places – playing religious music, offering flowers and fruits, burning incense, conducting prayers and rituals, and so on – result in a myriad of intense sensory expressions and a highly complex ambiance. These specific ambiances are irrefutably emblematic of the Sri Lankan cultural identity and heritage. Where this complexity is concerned, this complexity, the mere architectural fabric becomes an incomplete, skeletal expression of culture, whereas the sensory experiences occurring at much smaller, seemingly insignificant spatial scales contribute to a much richer, deeper level of cultural expressions. Therefore I argue that the focus of heritage must be set on micro-level spatial analyses of everyday life and activities to discover the richest possible data sets of intangible cultural identity. The city of Kandy, Sri Lanka, presents another example of sensory experiences unique to the city. A UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1988, Kandy was the last capital and the stronghold of the Sri Lankan monarchy against the European colonial rule for more than 300 years. Still carrying forth many time-tested traditional spatial patterns, it is a vibrant living historic city. The city layout is based on a clear separation of the sacred from the secular, analogous to urban planning principles followed in the earlier capital cities of Sri Lanka (Duncan 1990). The Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic of the Buddha and the former royal palace complex are the most formal and prestigious buildings in the city. They are located together within the eastern half of the city and are clearly separated from the secular western half by a formal entrance gateway, an open green plaza, and a few pedestrianized streets with limited commercial use. The east-west orientation of the urban form stems from the ancient practices of BuddhistHindu spiritual symbolism where eastern direction is regarded as the most sacred. The secular city quarters of Kandy are further divided into sub-sections by a street grid system. In contrast to the formal and prominent eastern section of the city housing the sacred temple and royal complex, the western secular districts are somewhat informal and organic. They were originally organized according to various services offered to the royal court, where lay subjects of the court lived and worked in silversmithing, trading, guarding, maintaining grain storage, entertaining and so on (Seneviratna 1983). The eastern section was thus followed a formal and deliberate morphology and very specific set of activities whereas the western section was much more informal and allowed for various manifestations of lay activities. The manifold spatial use patterns in the eastern half of the city continue even today; shops selling fresh foods to clothing, jewellery, dry groceries, traditional medicine and so on are seamlessly intermixed with farmer’s markets, book shops, cafés, offices, banks, schools as well as non-Buddhist spaces (i.e. Hindu temples, Christian churches, and Islamic mosques) and some houses in between. Sidewalks are also filled with multiple uses as they are often impromptu extensions of shop interiors and are rarely distinguished as physically separated spaces. Within these mixed uses of the city lie some of the most compelling yet not fully explored intangible cultural expressions. Loose and mixed spatial uses and the miscellany of activities produce a notable sensory character in Kandy. Aromas of spices, tropical fruits and vegetables sold in open shops and of various foods from restaurants and cafes are frequently intermixed with whiffs of burning incense and oil lamps emanating from nearby temples (Figure 13.3). Sounds of street vendors calling out to passers-by intertwine with 236

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Figure 13.3 Hindu/Buddhist temple (Kataragama Devale) in the midst of a commercial street, Kandy. Source: Nisha A. Fernando

ethnic music played in adjacent shops, constant honks of vehicles, peals of church bells, and calls for prayers in mosques. These latter sounds intermittently create a sense of spirituality in the otherwise mundane commercial streets. Such temporary soundscapes turn ordinary secular spaces into spiritual spaces and then back to being secular again. The nature of everyday sensory experiences can be used to decipher the unique sub-cultural specificities of different places. Morphologically, the streets in Colombo and Kandy are generally similar and are also comparable to streets in other Sri Lankan towns. However, experientially they are quite distinctive, primarily because of the specific differences in spatial uses and user-generated activities as well as the different combinations of sensory qualities. This point can be further emphasized by analysing Nuwara Eliya, yet another city in Sri Lanka. Located in the central mountainous region and surrounded by lush green tea plantations, the city of Nuwara Eliya is largely populated by Tamils, an ethnic sub-culture. In addition to typical commercial spaces, the city has several Hindu temple and smaller roadside shrines. Many restaurants serve foods specific to the Tamil subculture. Smells of such food, coffee, tobacco and incense along with sounds of ethnic music and songs of Tamil language are ubiquitous in the streets. Such everyday life is also layered with a noticeable sense of spirituality. Hindu businesses begin the day by preparing a prayer offering to gods and goddesses and by offering fresh flowers and lighting incense and oil lamps at a small shrine altar just above the front door. Before the prayer begins, the sidewalk immediately in front of the business is swept clean and water mixed with turmeric powder is generously sprinkled around. This daily gesture signifies both physical and spiritual purification deemed important for good

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business. Streets of Nuwara Eliya are thus filled with lingering auditory and olfactory qualities that seamlessly link secular activities with spirituality. These specific activities and sensory qualities are strong attributes of the Tamil sub-culture and identity.

Sensory characteristics of religious events Formal religious events are another significant dimension of sensory heritage. The most important religious activity related to the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic in Kandy is the traditional festival of Dalada Perahera, a very elaborate and long procession to revere the significance of the Sacred Tooth Relic. Annually, the relic placed inside in a golden casket is paraded around the city as a holy blessing towards its land and people. It is also one of the oldest religious festivals in Sri Lanka with its origins dating back to the fourth century. The original form of Dalada Perahera changed during the Kandyan Kingdom in the eighteenth century when smaller processions of the four main devala (Hindu temples with strong Buddhist overlays) were added on to expand the main procession. These devala are respectively dedicated to Gods Natha, Vishnu and Kataragama (also known as Skanda and Murugran) and Goddess Pattini. Although not purely Buddhist edifices, the Natha, Vishnu and Pattini Devala are located within the scared city close to the Temple while the Kataragama Devala is located within the secular part of the city. The Dalada Perahera takes place over a two-week period in either July or August based on the lunar cycle. The entire procession begins at the Temple of the Tooth Relic after several religious offerings and rituals are conducted both at the Temple and the four devalas. Each night, the procession moves through the secular part of the city along a designated route. The long procession consists of numerous components of varying symbolic representations of religious significance. The main highlight of the procession is the Sacred Tooth Relic itself, enshrined in a golden and gem-laden casket and paraded atop a specially selected ‘auspicious’ tusked elephant. The sacred relic is brought out of the temple only during the Dalada Perahera as a special blessing to the devotees, pilgrims, the city and the region in general and therefore is considered an utmost spiritual event. The procession also includes several lay noblemen, officers and assistants representing the Temple and the four devalas as well as many more elephants decked with colourful garbs and carrying on their backs important religious items such as symbolic weapons, scared writings and caskets. Additionally, the procession comprises of many flag bearers, hundreds of drummers, horn players, dancers, singers, chanters and torch-bearers (carrying torches of burning copra, dried coconut) and assistants ensuring the procession carries on smoothly. The most unmistakable and quintessential cultural attribute of the Dalada Perahera is its unique and dramatic sensory qualities. The entire procession is an obvious visual feast. The public audience is mostly clad in white attire (the colour of Buddhist religious observances) contrasting with colourful costumes worn by the officials of the Temple and devala, drummers, singers, dancers and servicemen and the shimmering golden and silver caskets and parasols atop the elephants clad in brightly coloured clothes adorned with sparkling lights. Each deity of the four devala is associated with a specific colour (e.g. red for God Kataragama, blue for Vishnu) and all costumes and flags of their respective processions also display the same colour. Additionally, the five-coloured Buddhist flags and the colourful provincial flags with motifs of the sun, moon and symbolic animals are also ubiquitous throughout the long procession. Adding to this vivid visual imagery, non-visual sensory aspects are even more intensely present in the procession. The arrival of the procession is announced by several loud whip cracks at the front end. These repeated sounds are believed to eliminate evil spirits before the elephant carrying the Holy Tooth Relic approaches. Then follows a series of musical horns, slow-beat drumming, cymbals, and conch-shell blowing, mixed with traditional songs and chants, which form the central and leading components of the procession (Figure 13.4). Rhythmic music, chants and singing are related to Buddhist stories establishing the main religious tone of the procession. Strong fragrances of burnt copra 238

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Figure 13.4 Painting depicting dancing and music of Dalada Perahera, Kandy. Source: Nisha A. Fernando

from the torches fill the air mixing with the scents of incense and flowers carried by people in the procession. Then in the devala segments of the perahera, these sensorial qualities dramatically change. The procession representing the Kataragama Devala includes drumbeats of much faster tempos while horn music is particularly louder and more melodious. Songs are absent but are replaced with vigorous, trance-like, kavadi dancing. These dancers wear red-coloured attire and garlands (colour of God Kataragama) and often have body piercings (as sacrificial acts for the deity). They carry on their shoulder a kavadi (meaning ‘burden’) – a short wooden horizontal bar decorated with colourful and fragrant fresh flowers, bells, peacock feathers and tassels – and dance quite vigorously to the rapid drum beats. These sounds, smells and movements contrast with the slow-paced drums and music, different smells and slower dancing patterns of the rest of the procession. Together, these varieties of intense sensory qualities interspersed with the colourful elephants and costumes and the heat generated by the burning copra torches are distinctively identifiable characteristics of the Dalada Perahera. In turn, they form a cultural expression quite unique to Kandy. Aadi Vel is another religious procession dedicated to Hindu God Murugan (i.e. God Kataragama or Skanda) in many cities around the island. In Colombo, the procession begins at one Hindu temple, proceeds to a water ceremony at the nearby Indian Ocean and ends at another Hindu temple within a single day. Generally, the procession centres around an idol shrine of Lord Murugran mounted on an artificiallybuilt peacock (the symbolic vehicle of the deity). The shrine is formally placed inside a tall parasol-covered decorative chariot, either pulled by two white bulls or carried on the shoulders of several white-clad and bare-footed male devotees (Figure 13.5). Ahead of this colourful chariot walk drummers, horn players and kavadi dancers. Devotees walking along the procession loudly and repeatedly shout out the 239

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Figure 13.5 Sacred shrine in a Hindu procession in Nuwara Eliya. Source: Nisha A. Fernando

phrase ‘ara haro hara’ (a praise-offering to the deity), prompting people watching the procession on the street also to join in with the chant. Although both are formally organized religious events, the Vel procession is distinctively different from the Dalada Perahera where specific sensory qualities are concerned. In Aadi Vel, drums are played at much faster tempos and kavadi dancing is much more rigorous and dramatic than the counterparts in the Dalada procession, creating different auditory characteristics. The lack of singing and the presence of repeated chants of ‘ara haro hara’ also add to the distinguishable auditory character of Aadi Vel. The sweet fragrance of burning camphor oil, freshly broken coconuts, and fresh flowers are also different from the olfactory experiences of pungent burning copra of the Dalada Perahera. Even though the Dalada Perahera and Aadi Vel festivals are formal religious events, they take place in ordinary urban streets outside of the respective temple premises. In doing so they alter ordinary secular city streets into sacred spaces during the festivals, changing the urban character through distinctive sensory expressions. This also results in a change of perceived meanings from a low-level (ordinary, everyday character) to a highlevel (spiritual, sacred character). At the end of each festival, when streets return to the everyday ordinary uses, these meanings change back to the low-level, ordinary character. Therefore, the urban street spaces are rather loose and flexible, allowing for varying activities and multiple sensory experiences generating differing meanings. This is but one example of why both visual and non-visual sensory characteristics of a city must be understood and treated as rich intangible expressions of a cultural heritage, beyond the physical architectural fabric. In Sri Lankan cities, the religious sensory experiences are ever-present even when a religious edifice or activity is not necessarily nearby. The Temple of the Tooth Relic located outside of the secular parts of Kandy offers a good illustration. Three times a day, the Temple has a formal thevava (symbolic 240

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food-offering to the Buddha and the Sacred Tooth Relic). Each service includes a series of shabda pooja – a ‘sound-offering’ to elevate the sense of sacrality. It includes several types of drums, horns, mini-cymbals, and conch-shells and are played only when the doors to the inner chamber of the Sacred Relic open for the thevava ritual. Music played for the sound-offering ritual is essentially based on specific Buddhist stories. Accompanied by slow drum beats, they remind Buddhist devotees of the morals behind the stories, thus, adding symbolic meaning to the musical sounds.2 These sounds are meant to be heard not only by those who are engaged in the thevava within the Temple but also by the community in the entire city and are therefore transmitted through loudspeakers. Consequently, the sounds emanating from the Temple create an ambience of profound sanctity enveloping the secular spaces of the city. Similar to the spiritual-secular sensoryscapes ever present in the city, these auditory rituals of the temple are also an important facet of the intangible heritage of Kandy.

The sensory heritage: key points to consider The narratives presented above illustrate that multiple and varied sensory qualities are significant indicators of cultural specificity, identity and heritage. Sensory characteristics – specific but collectively experienced, non-physical but quite measurable – are important signifiers of subtleties between the secular and the sacred, as well as of cultural and sub-cultural identities, adding to the spectrum of intangible cultural heritage. These sensory nuances collectively create what I would like to call the ‘sensory heritage’ of a culture. Some scholars have pointed out the importance of senses as a cultural dimension (Davis and Thys-Senocak 2017; Kato 2009; Rapoport 2005). Especially referring to the meaning of sound, Kato (2009) illustrates how Ama, Japanese women divers who harvest seashells and seaweed for a living, define their everyday environments through the sound and haptic attributes of the sea. They identify these features as part of their culture and traditions. Most research, however, are concerned with individual sensory types (i.e. only auditory or only olfactory, and sometimes a single sensorial aspect) within a given environment. They either separate or overlook the presence of other sensorial expressions present in that environment. However, compared to individual qualities, the multiplicity of sensory characteristics contributes more significantly to a cultural richness and identity (Fernando 2007) and it is this multimodal sensory complexity that needs to be further examined in intangible cultural heritage studies. The following analysis elaborates on how sensory qualities may represent a culture and contribute to the sensory heritage. It also provides a rationale for broadening the scope of heritage conservation concepts to consider sensoryscapes as a significant measure of urban heritage. (a) Sensory perception is generally described as a mechanical process with the implied suggestion that people’s experience and affective responses to sounds, smells, touch and so on are somewhat similar. Recent neuroscientific and neurobiological studies present evidence to the contrary (Eberhard 2007; Pallasmaa 2012). Human perception is not purely biological; they are instead shaped and modified by personal processes such as familiarity, memory, emotions, enculturation, and so on, influenced amd modified by social and cultural backgrounds. Sensory qualities are a cultural production, thus making sensorial experiences not merely an internal, universal biological entity but rather an extended external attribute shaped by culture (Howes 2004). (b) Sensory characteristics alone do not necessarily signify a culture. Sensory components and modalities are results of physical and spatial settings, the manner with which people use spaces, types of activities present and how those activities and settings together produce certain qualities. Additionally, beyond the physicality of an environment, what spatial settings, activities and generated sensorial experiences collectively mean to the people of that culture is also very critical. While physically observable and measurable features are obviously easy to distinguish as heritage characteristics, various latent and symbolic meanings people hold about a place are not readily observable or physically measurable. Nevertheless, they are immensely critical to the place and heritage identity and need to be understood in depth. Thus, cultural heritage is a holistic phenomenon; it must include various meanings and contexts 241

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associated with sensorial heritage instead of considering only fragmented physical spaces or individual sensory features associated with a place. Some examples would clarify this point further. The urumi drum used in Hindu temples and religious processions are specific to the Tamil material culture (therefore, to their intangible heritage). The same drums are used with a different set of drumbeats in Hindu funerals and then again altogether differently at folk cultural events. The particular context of the activity, setting, purpose, symbolic meaning of the situation (i.e. sacred, afterlife or ordinary) and the respective sound qualities signify important intangible identity of the Tamil culture. Similarly, the geta bera drum used in the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic during the thevava ritual is also commonly used during lay occasions such as weddings, formal ceremonies and dance performances. While the geta bera drumming is identical across all activities with its sonic quality, tempos, pitch, length, and so on, the associated meanings are emphatically dissimilar in each specific setting (temple vs. theatre), activities (worship ritual vs. entertainment), and drummer designation (member of a traditional clan in the temple vs. any person trained in theatre). Therefore, the meanings associated with the sound, not just the sound by itself, form the cultural identity and expressions. It is the collective whole that is critical to the sensory heritage. Other scholars have also illustrated the significance of ‘holistic intangibility’ in South and South East Asian contexts (Chapagain 2017; Facchinetti 2014; Tom 2013) and I argue here that sensory heritage can only be understood within the same degree of holistic analysis. (c) Meanings associated with sensory qualities are critical. As described in the example of streets in Nuwara Eliya, a shopfront sidewalk is transformed from an ordinary space to a spiritual space by spraying turmeric-infused water. During Buddhist and Hindu processions, streets otherwise filled with the humdrum of everyday activities become spiritual spaces filled with religious overtones. Urban spaces then can be viewed as socially and culturally constructed spaces laden with meanings rather than as mere physical fabrics. They also accommodate shifting spatial meanings representing the specificity of a culture, beyond the physical, visual, and tangible characteristics of a space. Greene (2003) describes how flute and percussion playing in Gunla pilgrimage processions alters the meanings of the roads in the Kathmandu Valley. The sense of spirituality within the activity of the pilgrimage changes a road into a metaphorically laden spiritual ‘river’. Examining many roadside shrines in the Kathmandu Valley, Chapagain (2017) demonstrates how the acts of worshipping and associated rituals with embedded cultural values delineate the sacredness of a shrine, even when the physical condition of the shrine has eroded through constant touching and washing. Deeply rooted cultural meanings such as these are quite critical for a holistic understanding of culture and heritage. I argue that these cultural meanings, including meanings of sensorial expressions, in fact present invaluable ‘thick descriptions’ of urban cultural heritage. Two important observations are noteworthy here. First, the World Heritage declaration has designated Kandy as a Buddhist sacred city primarily based on the significance of the Temple of the Tooth Relic. However, as described earlier, the secular area of the city is a multi-religious cultural landscape laden with rich sensory and temporal experiences. The sensorial sophistication created by different religions within the secular areas is also an important attribute of the urban cultural identity. The mono-religious cultural identity of Kandy as declared by UNESCO therefore is rather inaccurate. Secondly, different religious buildings coexisting with secular spaces are critical for the composite sensorial character and cultural identity. Separating sacred and secular activities creates a dilution of cultural richness, resulting a monotonous and mundane urban fabric. One reason for this oversight is the monument-centric focus of the World Heritage processes where only important and large-scale buildings are earmarked as worth preserving. Another reason is the prevailing notion by both heritage conservation agencies and various scholars that only the sacred quarters of the city are representative of the cultural and symbolic heritage. Both these views stem from the fact that the Temple of the Tooth Relic, with its national and international prominence, takes the centre stage of the cultural symbolism and identity of Kandy. I argue that the place identity and symbolic heritage of Kandy also lie outside of the sacred centre of the Temple in the very heart of 242

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the ‘ordinary’ sections of the city and sensorial and other intangible dimensions play an equally prominent and critical role of cultural heritage. (d) Visual characteristics of Asian urban cultural landscapes have been discussed in many studies (Chung 2005; Duncan 1990; Silva 2013). Compared to most visual features of cultural landscapes, most non-visual sensory features are never permanent. Sensory qualities change when activities and settings change. Two significant theses emerge from this. First, the changing and impermanent nature of sensory qualities should be included and understood as an authentic aspect of a particular cultural heritage. Chapagain (2013) describes a parallel view in the context of buildings and material culture in Buddhist temples. The impermanence of worldly life is a central tenet of Buddhism, and Chapagain (2013) shows that the same philosophy could apply to the conservation principles of Buddhist buildings and paintings as they erode or fade. Secondly, constant shifts of sensory qualities reflect an internalized, ‘hidden’ cultural order. Discussing changes as an inherent characteristic of intangible heritage and authenticity, Su (2018) points out that subjectivity is a positive dimension and must be widely recognized. Members of a culture may intuitively recognize changes and resultant multisensory complexities in an urban space as a clear spatial order (an ‘emic’ understanding), whereas others outside of that culture may not comprehend it quite the same way, potentially leading to incorrect perceptions of the same environment as ‘chaotic’, disorderly and confusing (an ‘etic’ understanding). Therefore, urban sensorial qualities must be examined and valued as an internalized systemic order inherent within a culture. (e) Related to (d) above is the potential absence of sensory elements in an urban environment, which can also be a critical expression of culture. While the Dalada Perahera is taking place only along certain streets, the ambience in other streets becomes quieter and slowed which contrasts from the otherwise bustling activities. For instance, shops or restaurants refrain from playing loud music during the procession although it takes place elsewhere in the city, even beyond the visual range of the procession routes. It is as if the sacredness of the procession encapsulates the entire city. Additionally, people act more reverently and respectfully in these outer streets as well. Then, after the procession is over, the streets spring back to the ordinary life. This shift from a noisy sensory environment to a quieter sensory environment is an unspoken but well-understood cultural rule and is directly influenced by the sacred activity of the procession taking place in the city. During the days of the nightly procession, typical loud announcements or music played around the city and especially near the Temple are frowned upon. The only loudly resonant sounds one can hear are Buddhist prayer chants broadcast from the Temple premises. Such self-imposed quietness – silence as an experience – can also be considered a culturally laden sensory expression. In contrast, an intentionally silenced environment is noticeably missing in the Aadi Vel processions. While devotees and observers respectfully gather on either side to watch and pay homage to the deity, other ‘background’ sounds may continue uninhibited unless they are too loud drowning the drumbeats. This contrast creates an interesting comparison. The differences are due to the nature and length of time of the two events. Dalada Perahera takes place over 15 days making it much more of a formal activity whereas the Aadi Vel takes place within a single day which can be less formal. The physical transformation of the streets during the two processions is also different. The streets along which the Dalada Perahera takes place are decorated with Buddhist flags and decorative lights during the entire two weeks. In contrast, the streets used for the Aadi Vel ceremony are not decorated, except near the respective Hindu temples. These decorations usually consist of strands of woven young coconut leaves, colourful flowers, and cut banana trees which wilt if kept too long. The length of Dalada festival, along with its more permanent decorations, seems to the impose a level of more formal and important quietness in the city of Kandy. Thus, a length of a sensory absence can be regarded as an expression of a culture.

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The concept of ‘ma’ in the Japanese culture is a similar example. Broadly speaking, ‘ma’ means ‘blankness’ or ‘emptiness’. Examples of ‘ma’ in the context of built environment can be spaces in between buildings or distances between two physical points. It can also be abstractly described as ‘pauses between two elements’. Nitschke (1966) points out that ‘ma’ is an emptiness that is known and felt rather than physically seen, while such feelings of emptiness are as important as a physical experience. Ma can also be an element in musical notes; the note not heard between other notes (called a ‘rest’ in western music) is as important as all other notes. Similarly, in addition to what one hears, smells, or feels in an environment, the gaps or the pauses in between the sensory elements are important as well. The presence of quietness within the premises of a Buddhist temple is also as an important ambient quality signifying the elevated alertness of the mind, a significant goal of Buddhist meditation. These examples show that absence of a sensory quality has cultural meanings and should be identified as intangible heritage. (f) Individual sensory qualities should not be looked at in isolation. Individual sounds, smells, textures and so on are important to be deciphered and understood for their cultural relevance and significance. Sensory heritage, however, is not complete when such elements are taken as fragmented and mutually exclusive experiences. Natural sensory perception is multimodal; we as human beings do not typically use one mode at a time. Neuroscientific evidence of synaesthesia corroborates this notion by explaining that the neurons in the brain become simultaneously active and even compensate by having one neuron type acting for another. Porcello et al. (2010) emphasize the implications of multisensory understanding in the study of culture. The collective sensorium should therefore be considered holistically for the study of Sri Lankan cultural heritage as well.

Methodological implications The role sensory features play in various cultural contexts and how such features can be identified and analysed have been discussed (Davis and Thys-Senocak 2017; Fernando 2007; Henshaw 2013; Howes 2004; Kato 2009). But systematic means of collecting, recording and archiving sensory data in urban cultural environments from a heritage conservation perspective have not yet been formerly established. Similar to visual documentation, all sensory qualities can easily be individually recorded or documented as tangible, lucid data. However, as pointed out, multi-modal sensory complexity is more relevant than individual sensory modes to Asian urban heritage. I have proposed a conceptual framework for analysing collective auditory and olfactory qualities in streets of Chinatown in New York City where the specific sounds and smells were simultaneously studied and recorded as sensory maps (Fernando 2007). The maps contained a variety of data layers including the sensory type, their specific locations within the street, associated sensory generator (spatial setting or activity) and the intensity levels of the sensory quality, all produced through a set of symbols and line indicators superimposed on each street map. The detailed maps captured the specific multi-modal sensory characteristics and illustrated the sensory complexity through visual maps. While these maps represented the various sensory characteristics on streets of Chinatown at any given time, they could also be adapted to situations when sensory qualities constantly shift. Audio-visual recordings with descriptions of other sensory modes (such as olfactory, kinetic and tactile details) can further enhance the changing data shown in the maps. Another method to capture sensory qualities is to use technological devices and software. New devices can simultaneously record multi-level auditory features, simulate actual olfactory qualities and kinaesthetic elements reproducing the multi-modal sensory qualities one would experience.3 Along with geo-positioning of specific locations, these data can then be analysed and digitally archived as sensory heritage. Such data can potentially be used for comparative studies as well as for establishing the degree of importance of non-visual sensory qualities in different Asian urban contexts. 244

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Mere physical data, however, is not sufficient for examining the role of sensory qualities in urban heritage because they do not include cultural meanings behind sensory experiences. Interview questionnaires and subsequent transcripts, a common research tool to decipher environmental meanings, could be limiting as well because information shared in controlled interviews can often be highly subjective or unreliable, especially if the subject of inquiry is as elusive as cultural meanings. Heritage management practices could focus on a more comprehensively qualitative approach that: (a) allows everyday settings and activities to generate relevant sensorial characteristics without rigidly controlling urban environments through rigid regulations; (b) systematically collects and records sensory information through technology; and (c) collects qualitative and open-ended narratives and experiences from a variety of people over a long period of time. Naturally such endeavours are not easy and can be time-consuming. But they do lead to more purposeful, authentic, holistic and meaningful heritage management practices.

Conclusion Sensorial characteristics play a central role in Asian urban heritage and emphasize the magnitude of intangible dimensions of heritage. Ignoring sensory elements of an environment means the deep richness of a culture is overlooked and not interpreted fully. Several steps are proposed to enrich the sensory heritage conservation efforts. First, heritage management practices must depart from conventional monument-centric approaches to heritage conservation.4 The categorical division of cultural heritage into tangible and intangible heritages is symptomatic of the monument-centric conservation ideology and cultural heritage must be understood as a complex system in which tangible and intangible components may overlap and blur than a clear-cut mutually exclusive dichotomy. Secondly, heritage exists in multiple spatial scales and activities. Large and small buildings, spaces inbetween buildings, and the variety of activities – both planned and unplanned – taking place at several scales of settings are all reflections of cultural heritage (Payne 2006). As discussed in this chapter, everyday spaces and activities must be taken into consideration as key attributes of sensory heritage. The resultant sensory productions are an inherent part of traditions and heritage. In contrast to a universal standard, these multi-dimensional measurements of heritage can create a much richer understanding of idiosyncrasies and uniqueness of various cultural contexts. To ensure protection of such unique and exceptional intangible cultural resources, formal legal measures must be adopted (Ayu Palar 2018; Bowrey and Graham 2018). Thirdly, and most importantly, there must be a shift to readily embrace the extent of non-visual realm of heritage. The hegemony of visual aesthetics in mainstream architecture and urban design practices has resulted in heritage studies to overlook the important non-visual sensory cultural aspects. Such oversight may cause certain heritage attributes to disappear altogether if not identified and protected in a timely manner. Finally, holistic approaches towards sensory heritage scholarship and conservation must include cultural meanings as their central tenets and guiding principles. Knowledge of meanings behind sensory qualities in a cultural context is immensely critical to heritage conservation and management. Sensory heritage is also a product of culturally rich non-verbal communication patterns. New discourses are needed to discover such emic understanding of cultural knowledge bases, practices and meanings related to urban heritage.

Notes 1 As Bhattarai-Upadhyay (2013) and Chung (2005) argue, intangible heritage must include both visible and invisible arrays of traditions, arts, beliefs and rituals. 2 For a video of this sound offering, see https://drive.google.com/file/d/1w5hUcWTVKow-rLFUvLkGWaY CiU-BxD8v/view?usp=sharing.

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Nisha A. Fernando 3 Quercia et al. (2016) illustrate a method combining technology and social media to position, classify and qualitatively evaluate smells in cities and their emotive aspects. While this study provides critical smell-related data for urban land use patterns and planning purposes, similar studies can extend further to systematically examine smells (and other sensory categories) and related emotions as part of cultural heritage. 4 Heavily imposed through international regulations on conservation, this narrow and outdated view continues on despite scholarly arguments pointing to the limitations and potential threats to cultural heritage management. See Kawnda (2009), Silva (2010), Smith and Akagawa (2009), and Winter (2014).

References Ayu Palar, M. R. (2018) ‘The protection of intangible cultural resources in the Indonesian legal system’, in C. Antons and W. Logan (eds) Intellectual property, cultural property and intangible heritage, London: Routledge, 221–240. Bhattarai-Upadhyay, V. (2013) ‘Traditions overlooked: Re-thinking cultural heritage conservation in the Kathmandu valley’, in K. D. Silva and N-K. Chapagain (eds) Asian heritage management: Contexts, concerns, and prospects, London: Routledge, 157–175. Bowrey, K. and Graham, N. (2018) ‘The placelessness of property, intellectual property and cultural heritage law in the Australian legal landscape: Engaging cultural landscapes’, in C. Antons and W. Logan (eds) Intellectual property, cultural property and intangible heritage, London: Routledge, 137–156. Chapagain, N-K. (2013) ‘Heritage conservation in the buddhist context’, in K. D. Silva and N-K. Chapagain (eds) Asian heritage management: Contexts, concerns, and prospects, London: Routledge, 49–64. ——— (2017) ‘Blurring boundaries and moving beyond the tangible/intangible and the natural/cultural classifications of heritage: Cases from Nepal’, in K. D. Silva and A. Sinha (eds) Cultural landscapes of South Asia: Studies in heritage conservation and management, London: Routledge, 24–38. Chung, S. (2005) ‘East Asian values in historic conservation’, Journal of Architectural Conservation, 11(1): 55–70. Davis, L. and Thys-Senocak, L. (2017) ‘Heritage and scent: Research and exhibition of Istanbul’s changing smellscapes’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 23(8): 723–741. Duncan, J. S. (1990) The city as text: The politics of landscape interpretation in the Kandyan Kingdom, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Eberhard, J. P. (2007) Architecture and the brain, Atlanta, GA: Greenway Communications LLC. Facchinetti, S. (2014) ‘Cultural heritage management in Myanmar: A gateway to sustainable development’, European Institute for Asian Studies Briefing Paper, 6: 1–25. Fernando, N. A. (2000) ‘An analysis of the changing character of an urban street: A case study on Galle Road, Colombo, Sri Lanka’, Built Environment Sri Lanka, 1(2): 25–37. ——— (2007) ‘Culture and identity of urban streets: A case study in Chinatown, New York City’ Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Greene, P. D. (2003) ‘Ordering a sacred terrain: Melodic pathways of Himalayan Flute Pilgrimage’, Ethnomusicology, 47(2): 225–227. Henshaw, V. (2013) Urban smellscapes: Understanding and designing city smell environments, London: Routledge. Howes, D. (ed). (2004) Empire of the senses: The sensual culture reader, New York: Berg. Kato, K. (2009) ‘Soundscape, cultural landscape and connectivity’, SITES, 6(2): 80–91. Kwanda, T. (2009) ‘Western conservation theory and the Asian context: The different roots of conservation’, Paper presented at the International Conference on Heritage in Asia: Converging forces and conflicting values, National University of Singapore, Singapore. Available at: http://repository.petra.ac.id/14993/1/Western_Conservation_2009_ Timoticin_Kwanda.pdf (accessed 17 November 2018). Nitschke, G. (1966) ‘Ma, the Japanese sense of place’, Architectural Design, 36: 115–156. Pallasmaa, J. (2012) The eyes of the skin: Architecture and the senses, 3rd edition, Chichester, England: John Wiley & Sons. Payne, G. (2006) ‘A journey through space: Cultural diversity in urban planning’, in L. Asquith and M. Vellinga (eds) Vernacular architecture of the twenty-first century: Theory, education and practice, London: Taylor & Francis, 155–176. Porcello, T., Meintjes, L., Ochoa, A. M., and Samuels, D. W. (2010) ‘The reorganization of the sensory world’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 39: 51–66. Quercia, D., Aiello, L. M., and Schifanella, R. (2016) ‘The emotional and chromatic layers of urban smells’, in M. Strohmaier and K. P. Gummadi (eds) Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on web and social media, Palo Alto, CA: The AAAI Press, 309–318. Rapoport, A. (2005) Culture, architecture, and design, Chicago, IL: Locke Science Publishing. Seneviratna, A. (1983) Kandy, Colombo, Sri Lanka: Central Cultural Fund.

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The sensory heritage of Asian cities Silva, K. D. (2010) ‘Tangible and intangible heritages: The crisis of official definitions’, Journal of Housing & Building Research Centre, Special Issue: Revitalizing Historic Buildings, 6(3): 12–18. ——— (2013) ‘The city imageability: A framework for defining urban heritage dimensions’, in K. D. Silva and N-K. Chapagain (eds) Asian heritage management: Contexts, concerns, and prospects, London: Routledge, 325–344. Smith, L. and Akagawa, N. (2009) Intangible heritage, London: Routledge. Su, J. (2018) ‘Conceptualizing the subjective authenticity of intangible cultural heritage’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 24(9): 919–937. Tom, B. (2013) ‘Jiirnnoddharana: The Hindu philosophy of conservation’, in K. D. Silva and N-K. Chapagain (eds) Asian heritage management: Contexts, concerns, and prospects, London: Routledge, 35–48. Winter, T. (2014) ‘Beyond Eurocentrism? Heritage conservation and the politics of difference’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 20(2): 123–137.

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14 GHATS ON THE GANGA IN VARANASI, INDIA The making of a vernacular urban landscape and its conservation Amita Sinha

Introduction In this chapter, I explore how natural, built, and intangible dimensions of heritage are brought together through organic, historic, and ongoing processes in the making of an iconic urban cultural landscape in Varanasi in India and how its tangible and intangible heritage attributes could be defined for an effective way to their conservation. At Varanasi, where the holy River Ganga reverses its flow, the 84 ghats (steps and landings) in a 6.8 km stretch are a cultural landscape defined by situated events: natural—flooding, silting, and changing flow of the Ganga—and cultural—including ritual activities and performances that sustain public life. Ghats represent how the land-water interface at the urban settlements on the Ganga’s banks is fashioned out of the need to access the rising and falling water levels in the monsoon and dry seasons. The built fabric of the ghats is interpreted in terms of its architectural and spatial language and the historic palaces and temples lining the riverfront are compared with the alcoves, aedicules, pavilions, and platforms that populate the steps and landings. The monumental and vernacular architecture, although sharing the design grammar, are a study in contrast between private and public spaces. The ghat structures and their portable furniture have an artisanal quality to them, as they are built of local materials with a close fit between form and function, are improvised, and the product of collective efforts. They are a catalyst for diurnal and seasonal spatial practices tied to the movement of sun, moon, and the Ganga. The enacted landscape is dynamic and evolving in sustaining the spiritual life of pilgrims and local residents and building communities. Not only are the ghats a threshold to the Ganga enabling the devotee to interact with the holy river in various ways but are also the public commons of Varanasi with a rich social life. They are based upon the archetypal built form with the purpose of gaining access to rising and falling water levels in wells, tanks, and rivers. Built by royal and other wealthy patrons over 800 hundred years, their simple and utilitarian form is adjusted to the local topographic conditions. The Ganga, sun, and other gods and goddesses are worshipped on the ghats, making it a liminal zone where sacred exists amidst the profane. Varanasi is the body of Shiva and the river is the goddess Ganga incarnate, with the edge between them charged with sacred energy that erupts in the forms of syam-bhu (self-manifested) lingas (Shiva’s aniconic form). As Diana Eck (1983: 29) explains: In one mahatmya, Shiva explains, ‘My lingas are everywhere there, like little sprouts arisen out of sheer bliss. Thus, it is called the Forest of Bliss’. A forest with Shiva lingasas thick as the 248

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Figure 14.1 Tree platform at Assi Ghat. Source: Amita Sinha

fresh sprouts of spring: this is the vision of the sacred city as the Forest of Bliss, the Anandavana or Anandakanana. The landscape is inscribed by place making actions of the faithful that affirm the sacred (Figure 14.1). Around and in-between the many sacred ‘centres’, everyday life swirls—commerce, recreation, and craft making occur in spatial practices of multiple communities. Spatial practices ‘structure the determining conditions of social life’ (De Certeau 1984: 96) and articulate the design language of the ghats. The vernacular landscape of ghats represents an amalgam of material and intangible heritage that require a rethinking of current heritage policy that is exclusively focused on monumental architecture. In the first two sections of the chapter, I discuss the distinctive aspects of material and intangible heritage associated with this vernacular urban landscape. Then, a new conservation approach, based upon the dynamic landscape structured by natural and cultural events and crafted by traditional practices, is proposed for improving the legibility of the spatial and temporal structure of public life on the ghats.1

Design grammar of the ghats Place-making by residents, use of local materials, and close fit between form and function define the vernacular landscape of the ghats. The structures are made by crafting building form, i.e. with material consciousness, working with hands, using skills grounded in physical practice, and drawing upon collective shared knowledge (Sennett 2008). Two principles are discerned in interpreting the design grammar of ghats—shared vocabulary between historic buildings and steps and landings, and jugaad, (improvised or make-do) meaning to innovate with limited resources. The monumental temples and palaces on the riverfront give it a majestic

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Figure 14.2 Design grammar of Manikarnika Ghat. Source: Amita Sinha; drawing by Yini Chen

and imposing skyline while the small shrines and alcoves below on the landings are unobtrusive until one stumbles upon them. Although differing in scale, they use the same architectural prototypes (Figure 14.2). Ananda Coomaraswamy (1964: 129) called the riverside ghats as ‘the splendid civil architecture of Hindustan’. According to Havell (1913), temples on the banks of Ganges are an example of architecture as living art as it was in Middle Ages in Europe when the architect was the builder. The historic buildings are fort-like, solid and closed at the bottom for protection from flooding Ganga and open at the top for views and breezes. In contrast, the shops and site furniture are of human scale, appear to be temporary and built with easily found materials. They are examples of jugaad, a way of thinking and acting in everyday life in response to challenges and overcoming them ingeniously (Radjou, Prabhu, and Ahuja 2012). The historic and vernacular landscapes illustrate the juxtaposition of contrasting ‘static’ and ‘kinetic’ city (Mehrotra 2008). Kinetic urbanism is always in flux, occupies interstitial spaces between monuments, where marginalized communities participate in the informal urban economy. While the static city is associated with architectural monuments, the kinetic city is a temporal articulation and occupation of space. The historic palaces are a silent testimony to the passage of time and mostly inaccessible to the public, either closed up, illegally occupied by tenants, or converted into hotels. Their solid walls, however, are a backdrop to cremations, daily rituals, spectacular events, and social encounters in everyday life. 250

Ghats on the Ganga in Varanasi, India

While stairs are the dominant architectural feature of the ghats, temple spires, fort walls, and marhi (octagonal structures dividing the steps into bays) appear in syncopated rhythms. Spires are bunched up, walls stretch or are cut short, stairs widen or narrow and are steep or gentle, and the marhis are close together or spaced evenly. The prototypical elements in historic architecture—spires, bastions, jharokhas (balconies)—appear again at lower levels, embedded in steps and landings, instead of in buildings. The corner bastions of fort-palaces, built to resist the flow of the storming Ganga, are reflected in marhis, temples in aedicular shrines, and jharokhas and pavilions in colonnades, extruding from steps. Tall temple spires punctuate the skyline of the ghats and smaller shrines, further down below on steps and landings, mimic their form. The Hindu temple, as interpreted by Adam Hardy (2007), is a symbol of cosmos whose multiplicity is revealed in temple facades and spires, consisting of seemingly innumerable aedicules, carved in stone, each one a house for a god, framing a deity, and topped by a spire. The shrines on ghats consist of small aedicules in which the deity is housed in a niche, equivalent of the garbhagriha (womb-house) in large temples (Figure 14.3a). Occasionally, the shrine is fronted by a small nave, the space for gathering before the deity. New forms and materials are being used as the square aedicule becomes octagonal, pyramidal spires turn domical, and carved walls become plain and covered with tiles. The alcoves on temple exteriors, as in Panchkroshi Temple, climb down to the ghats housing lingas and icons of Ganga and other gods and goddesses. Brightly painted, the alcoves are striking against the beige steps and palace walls (Figure 14.3b). They interrupt the linearity of steps in creating volumes and pauses. Some are solid to strengthen steps, others are hollow to house deities or people. They occur in profusion on the river’s edge in Kedar, Manikarnika, and Panchganga Ghats, where they are square or octagonal, hollow or solid. Some hollow cubes contain lingas, others are meant for yogis to meditate. They conform to the image of Ganga washing over the head of Shiva as a seated yogi or a linga, celebrated in temple interiors. At Dashashwamedh and Assi Ghats, the hollow cubes and prisms house barbers and shopkeepers. Humans and gods thus populate the alcoves on the ghats and, accordingly, the interiors of alcoves could be either sacred or profane spaces. Arcades from the upper floors of historic palaces climb down—some are single storied, others two storied, solid above and open below—appearing to extrude out of the steps. At Lalita Ghat, they are just

Figure 14.3 (a) Alcoves on Manikarnika Ghat; (b) Ghat umbrella. Source: Amita Sinha

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above the Ganga and contain shrines to goddesses. The octagonal freestanding pavilion is used for ritual worship as in Manikarnika Ghat (where Vishnu’s feet are enshrined next to the water body where Lord Shiva’s wife, Parvati’s earring fell) or is used for relaxing as in those recently built at Assi Ghat. Dashashwamedh Ghat has a similar design grammar with aedicules, marhis, and alcoves populating the steps. This ghat has a higher proportion of semi-fixed and movable takhts (wooden cots). On this as well as on other ghats, they are used for many purposes—for aarti (waving of lamps) performances at dawn and dusk, display of wares, rituals, massages, group conversations, and so on. Since the ghats are always bathed in sunshine, thatched umbrellas cover them, adding a distinctive touch to the views. Old photographs and paintings show the umbrellas in profusion, adding to the picturesque effect.2 New materials such as cloth and plastic are being used these days to cover their bamboo framework.

Spatial practices at the ghats In bridging the river as holy as Ganga and a city as sacred as Varanasi, the ghats have become an iconic image with the most famous skyline in India. The ghat panorama unfolds as one travels on the boat, with the sky and water framing the shifting picturesque view. Walking to the wide-open and sunny ghats from the narrow dark lanes of old Varanasi is a study in contrast in kinaesthetic and haptic perception. Walking along the ghats is a different experience altogether, with the high and solid buildings on one side and the expansive, flowing river on the other. The body is immersed in the flow of activities in moving through or pausing. The experience is rich and stimulating, a total engagement of the proximate senses in acoustic and olfactory geographies. The soundscape of the ghats is dominated by public recitation of mantras (sacred syllables) and shlokas (sacred verses), singing of bhajans (devotional songs), chants of Raam Naam Satya Hai (God’s name is truth), and loud utterances of Om Namah Shivaya (salutations to Lord Shiva). Music wafts down the ghats from rooftops and courtyards of adjoining buildings, and social interaction among many Western tourists revolves around the vibrant sonic culture of Varanasi (Zara 2011: 242). Public life in the ghats is sustained by multiple communities—of ghatiyas (ritual priests), boatmen, aghoris(ascetics), barbers, washermen, vendors, backpacker tourists, pilgrim groups, students, mourners, among others.3 Some are actively engaged in worship, making folk-art, crafting objects, and selling wares; others observe, and participate in casual social encounters and mesmerizing spectacles. There are mourners watching impassively as the dead are consigned to flames, men and women taking a dip in the holy waters, meditating yogis, children playing badminton and hopscotch, tourists being massaged, pilgrims feasting, and artists sketching. Religious, commercial, and recreational activities occur in close proximity and structures and spaces have multiple functions and meanings. The mix of sacred and profane and the intrusion of private in the public are intriguing to visitors. There is a diurnal rhythm to activities tied to movement of sun in the sky, in worshipping, individually and collectively at dawn and dusk (Figure 14.4). Events on ghats celebrate other rhythms as well—of seasons tied to the movement of sun, and the cycle of the waxing and waning moon. The cosmic cycle of creation and dissolution of the universe is symbolically enacted in cremation rites (Parry 1981). The ghats are a polyrhythmic place where the circadian rhythm of the body corresponds to natural and cosmic rhythms. Social, biological, and natural rhythms interact to create the lived experience of time. According to Henry Lefebvre and Catherine Regulier (2014: 82): The study of everyday life has already demonstrated this banal and yet little-known difference between the cyclical and the linear, between rhythmed times and the times of brutal repetitions. This repetition is tiring, exhausting and tedious, while the return of a cycle has the appearance of an event and an advent. Its beginning, which after all is only a recommencement, always has the freshness of a discovery and an invention.

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Figure 14.4 Cycle of activities on Assi Ghat. Source: Amita Sinha; drawing by Wanhai Zuo

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The sacred is reaffirmed daily though rituals of veneration to the Ganga on the steps and in the shrines. Offerings of marigolds and bilva leaves, application of sandalwood and vermilion powder, and pouring of Ganga Jal over the linga re-appropriate and regenerate the place. Bathing, immersing ashes, washing clothes in the river, and getting on and off the boat activate the steps and shoreline throughout the day. Floating candle-wicks and watching the aarti on a few ghats extend the activities into the Ganga at dusk. Although socializing occurs throughout the day, late morning and evenings are more active with residents and tourists hanging out on the ghats. On a popular ghat, such as Dashashwamedh, devotees offer their prayers and take a holy dip, pilgrims engage in rituals, barbers ply their trade, vendors set up their carts, and tourist stroll. In the evening, the ghat is transformed with the spectacle of the aarti ceremony watched by hundreds sitting on steps and landings, on balconies and rooftops, and on boats (Sinha 2015). Space is generated in behaviour settings established in small groups of pilgrims, visitors, students, and boatmen, sitting on marhi, and on steps and landings, talking, playing cards, singing, listening to discourses, and eating. Boats are made and repaired by boatmen as are umbrellas and smaller craft items such as flower garlands and donas (leaf vessels). Food is prepared over small stoves as is tea, a popular drink on the ghats. The recurring patterns of behaviour and milieu reveal a close fit or synomorphy (Barker 1968). The octagonal form of the marhi is especially conducive to groups in a circle (Figure 14.5a); the linearity of steps favours the display of artwork and people watching. The boundaries of the social group and setting coincide in production of space in place practiced. Places are made using easily found materials—bamboo frames are erected over marhis, wooden platforms are supported by bricks and shaded by jute cloth stretched over bamboo poles, a metallic railing is installed around a linga and covered with tin shade (Figure 14.5b). Shade from the incessant sun is achieved in creative ways—lean to against the wall, cloth/burlap strung over ropes stretched between bamboo poles for astrologers and chai shops. Shelter is ingeniously made using minimal resources through jugaad. Surfaces become canvases for public art by local artists who paint mythological figures, sacred symbols, and natural forms. Graffiti art ranges from advertisements to moral strictures and quotes from great sages. Shiva and his family are popular figures as is Ganga and other goddesses. Sculptures of Bhishma, the wise sage of the epic Mahabharata, are crafted from silt deposited on the ghats after every monsoon as the Ganga recedes. The folk art celebrates living heritage by evoking myths and legends that first created the places and charged them with sacred energies.

A new conservation approach It is widely acknowledged that Varanasi Ghats embody cultural heritage, but less understood are the various ways in which its material and intangible forms are intertwined. Historic monuments built in the last three centuries are the focus of current preservation efforts, although most are in private use and do not contribute to the public realm. The steps, landings, and their structures as an enacted landscape of a rich and vibrant public life have been ignored so far (Dar 2005). This vernacular urban landscape is shaped by spatial practices that keep ancient traditions alive and vigorous. It is always in flux, its temporality a function of the Ganga’s seasonal flow and the rhythm of rituals and festivals determined by planetary motion. This kinetic aspect of the landscape necessitates rethinking the existing monument-centric preservation practice (Sinha 2017). Although the ghats possess a vivid image, they are not legible in the sense they are confusing and disorienting, especially to a first-time visitor. Legibility is a quality of the landscape that allows comprehension of its structure, i.e. recognition of parts and their organization into a coherent pattern. This attribute, when applied to time, means situating the present in the continuum of history and revealing temporal change (Lynch 1972). Through design interventions and management of spatial practices,

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Figure 14.5 (a) People sitting on a marhi; (b) Shade structure on Panchganga Ghat. Source: Amita Sinha

legibility can be improved, resulting in better comprehension of the temporal and spatial structure of ghats and their heritage. The scope of conservation should expand beyond the historic palaces to include managing public spaces of the ghats so that they are not encroached by private interests. Conservation management entails regulating practices that pollute the Ganga and promoting arts and crafts. The recently constructed concrete shade structures on the ghats mimic the umbrella form but are fixed and rigid. They are likely to be covered with silt when the Ganga floods and may require extensive repair after the monsoons. New structures should be based upon the traditional design grammar; instead of being fixed and rigid, they should be deployable so that they can adapt to kinetic urbanism. Local crafts such as bamboo umbrellas, wooden boats, clay pottery, candle wicks and flower garlands should be promoted and incentivized through subsidies. Cultural events such as Subh-e-Banaras held at dawn and aartis at

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dusks in many ghats when supplemented with organized exhibitions of arts and crafts, and music and dance festivals celebrating the Banaras Gharana (school) would promote intangible heritage and add to the vibrant public life. More specifically, as discussed in detail below, the historic monuments should be integrated into the public realm; visual aids should be designed for way-finding; narrative surfaces should be designated for folk-art; and deployable structures should be built for vending kiosks and visitor facilities.

Historic palaces The historic character of the ghats is most evident in riverside palaces built by royalty and nobility from all over the subcontinent for extended stay during their pilgrimage and as a residence by elderly family members who wished to spend their final days in Varanasi (Hegewald 2005; Singh and Rana 2006). The earliest surviving palaces were built by the rulers of Rajasthan—Man Mandir with its rooftop astronomical observatory and Rana Mahal. The eighteenth-century palaces built by Marathas include those on Balaji, Bhonsale, and Ahilyabai Ghats. Palaces were built on Kedar, Gai, Digpatiya, Darbhanga, and Jatar Ghats in the nineteenth century by rulers from different parts of the Indian subcontinent, while Chet Singh Palace and Ganga Mahal were built by Varanasi kings. Palaces continued to be built right up to early twentieth century at Assi and Tulasi Ghats. Most palaces, no longer in active use by their rulers, have been and are being converted into private hotels. Those that are lying vacant or occupied illegally by squatters can be acquired by the state using the power of eminent domain and renovated. Their adaptive use should be determined by a heritage committee of architects, art curators, and local artists, performers, and historians. The acquisition and renovation of palaces into a public facility—museum, art gallery, and performance centre—would not only preserve architectural heritage but also promote intangible heritage of fine and performing arts of Varanasi. Their solid walls, instead of being painted over with graffiti as they are presently, can serve as projection screens for sound and light shows on the history and heritage of ghats.

Visual aids The ghats are entered into from the Ganga by boat, taking the narrow lanes of the old city, or arriving at Assi Ghat in the south and Raj Ghat on the north. Stretched over nearly seven kilometres they can be walked their entire length in about 5–6 hours. Their names are painted on walls and embankments and can be seen only from the boat. There is confusion about ghat names as they have changed over time and it is not clear where one ghat ends and the other begins. Way-finding maps that can be downloaded as apps on smart phones are proposed to aid tourists and pilgrims as they walk to and along the ghats from the city or take the boat. Palaces and temples, buildings associated with literary figures, musicians and artists, and performances and festivals are marked on heritage trails beginning with entry streets and boat docking points. The apps will have local weather, an overall map of the ghats and the city, and information on hotels, cafes, bookstores, and local arts and crafts. Ghat legibility can be increased by inserting informational and directional signage on the ghats themselves, orienting the visitor to the place and its location on the riverfront. Informational signage is proposed to cover public services such as rest rooms, drinking water fountains, emergency aid, hotels and restaurants; cautionary signage such as no smoking and no littering; and educational signage about historic buildings, temples, and sacred sites. Directional signage located on the streets will aid the traveller in reaching the ghats from the city.

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Narrative surfaces The ghat landscape is replete with vibrant folk art created by local artists, found on building facades, street walls, water towers, stairs, embankments, and boats. These seemingly random efforts should be coordinated in art-making festivals when ghat surfaces are periodically cleaned and repainted: painted banners are hung from bamboo poles; alcoves are decorated, and temporary dioramas built; sculptures made from silt and clay; and boats painted and decorated. In addition, planters, portable trash cans, platforms, and embankment walls should be canvases for folk art, adding interest, colour, and vibrancy to otherwise drab surfaces (Figure 14.6). Mythological themes could be supplemented with artistic depictions of local flora and fauna, and contemporary social issues such as environmental pollution and lack of communal harmony.

Figure 14.6 Narrative surfaces. Source: Amita Sinha; drawing by Xinyue Sui

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Deployable structures The ghats are flooded during monsoons and activities either cease or are relocated on upper landings. All structures—aedicules, alcoves, and pavilions—have to be cleaned up and de-silted and the lean-tos have to be dismantled and put together again once the waters recede. Building permanent structures on the ghats means exposing them to risks of flooding and structural damage requiring maintenance. Fixed structures reduce the flexibility of ways in which spaces are used at different times of the day or in different seasons. Recently, Varanasi Municipality has erected concrete shade structures mimicking the form of bamboo umbrellas and changing cabins for women on a few ghats. Their long-term

Figure 14.7 (a) Changing rooms; (b) deployable pavilion. Source: Amita Sinha; drawings by (a) Saloni Chawla and (b) Wanhui Zuo

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sustainability is questionable since they are not flexible, portable, lightweight, or climate responsive, and thus do not have the resilience of kinetic urbanism. As David Hays (2010) describes: Good performance in architecture has conventionally meant resistance to change, including environmental impacts. In contrast, sentient architecture gauges performance in terms of responsiveness to change, building on a model of navigation borrowed from the theory of landscape architecture. Deployable structures are an example of sentient architecture. They can be transformed from a compact configuration to a stable, expanded form with energy input, demonstrating an efficient use of space, materials, and energy (Androver 2015). Their lightness and transportability are suited to changing environmental conditions. Since they are erected and dismantled quickly, they will respond readily to changes in user flow and levels of the Ganga. The jugaad way of erecting lean-tos and other shade devices on the ghats can be improved by organizing the process to make deployable structures with local materials and utilizing building skills of local communities. For example, shade structures on top of marhis and alcoves in Panchganga, Manikarnika, and other ghats are proposed to be made deployable with folding panels that expand to afford privacy as changing rooms (Figure 14.7a). The simple wooden platform used for a variety of activities can be housed in a larger bamboo structure that can be folded compactly and stored when the ghats are flooded (Figure 14.7b). Foldable tables are proposed for vendors who presently spread their wares on the ground or on wooden platforms. These can be stacked and stored at the end of the day in a gumti (small vending unit) with expanded storage space. The redesigned gumti can function as a kiosk, made of recycled lumbar, where pilgrims and tourists can get information and first aid. Deployable structures can be used for new proposed uses, such as musician gallery in Panchganga Ghat where the famous musician Bismillah Khan used to play his shehnai (oboe) on the banks of the Ganga.

Conclusion The ghats are a threshold to both the city and the Ganga where one prepares to enter into the Ganga, find one’s way to the great temples of Varanasi, to embark on the passage from death to the beyond, and to be liberated from the cycle of births. Activities associated with private life—death, worship, bodily functions—are on display in this public space. The intrusion of private into public is unsettling and provocative but also relaxing and joyful. The ghats are a liminal space between the holy river and sacred land where the eruption of the sacred in the profane creates meaningful pauses in everyday life. Here, pilgrims engage in rites of passage, aghori ascetics in subversive practices, and tourists in stepping outside their cultural frame of reference in a quest for spirituality, creating a ‘third space’ (Bhabha 1994). The distinction between monumental and vernacular becomes diffuse in their shared design grammar derived from archetypal symbols. Places are found, built, and appropriated, for worship, play, commerce and community, making the landscape not just a view but also a situated event. This dynamic urban landscape, structured by natural and cultural events and crafted by traditional practices, is of immense heritage value and requires a new conservation approach based upon a better understanding of the vernacular processes of place-making.

Acknowledgements I thank Saloni Chawla, Yini Chen, Xinyue Sui, and WanhuiZuo, Masters in Landscape Architecture students from the Department of Landscape Architecture, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign,

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USA for making the drawings included in this chapter. An earlier version of this chapter was published as ‘Living Ghats of Varanasi’, Context, India, 2017, 103–112.

Notes 1 In two-week long site workshops in Varanasi (January 2014 and 2016) conducted with Bhanuben Nanavati College of Architecture, Pune, India, the ghats were studied extensively by undergraduate and graduate students in Landscape Architecture and Architecture. The proposals are drawn from two project reports Ghats of Varanasi on the Ganga in India: The Cultural Landscape Reclaimed, 2014 and Envisioning a Resilient Cultural Landscape: Ghats on the Ganga, Varanasi, India, 2016 summarizing design studio work at University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, USA campus. The projects were partially supported by Wadsworth Endowment to the Department of Landscape Architecture. The reports can be accessed at https://amitasinhaprofile.com/creative-projects/. 2 Umbrellas are seen in nineteenth-century illustrations, in water colours by Thomas Daniell, etchings by James Prinsep, and photographs by Samuel Bourne and Deen Dayal. 3 The boatmen community is organized around the concept of hereditary rights to the ghats. Customary rules are followed in dividing wages earned from ferrying pilgrims and tourists. Assa Doron (2015) describes their cultural world in terms of a moral economy bound to Mother Ganga. The boatmen are ‘Gangaputra’, sons of the Ganga, entitling them to earn their livelihood in daily life from ritual practices and other activities related to the holy river.

References Androver, E. R. (2015) Deployable structures, London: Laurence King Publishing. Barker, R. (1968) Ecological psychology: Concepts and methods for studying the environment of human behavior, Palo Alto: Stanford University Press. Bhabha, H. K. (1994) The location of culture, London: Routledge. Coomaraswamy, A. K. (1964) The arts and crafts of India and Ceylon, New York: Farrar, Straus and Company. Dar, V. (2005) ‘Threats and prospects’, in G. Michell and Rana P. B. Singh (eds) Banaras: The city revealed, Gaithersburg, MD: Marg Publications, Vol. 57(2): 139–143. De Certeau, M. (1984) The practice of everyday life, Berkeley, CA and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. Doron, A. (2015) ‘Hello boat! The river economy in Banaras’, in A. Doron, R. Barz, and B. Nelson (eds) An anthology of writings on the Ganga, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 325–340. Eck, D. (1983) Banaras: City of light, New Delhi: Penguin Books. Hardy, A. (2007) The temple architecture of India, Chichester, England: John Wiley. Havell, E. B. (1913) Indian architecture: Its psychology, structure, and history from the first Muhammadan invasion to the present day, London: J. Murray. Hays, D. L. (2010) ‘Sentient architecture: Embracing the natural volatility of form’, in A. Serbest, M. Mahall, and G. de Bruyn (eds) Junk jet 3: Flux us! Flux you!, Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Idea Books, for Institut Grundlagen moderner Architektur und Entwerfen, University of Stuttgart, Germany, 28–31. Hegewald, J. (2005) ‘Ghats and riverside palaces’, in G. Michell and Rana P. B. Singh (eds) Banaras: The city revealed, Gaithersburg, MD: Marg Publications, Vol. 57(2): 66–77. Lefebvre, H. and Regulier, C. (2014) ‘The Rhythm analytical project’, in H. Lefebvre (ed.) Rhythm analysis: Space, time and everyday life, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 71–92. Lynch, K. (1972) What time is this place? Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Mehrotra, R. (2008) ‘Negotiating the static and kinetic cities: The emergent urbanism of Mumbai’, in A. Huyssen (ed.) Other cities, other worlds: Urban imaginaries in a globalizing age, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 205–218. Parry, J. (1981) ‘Death and cosmogony in Kashi’, Contributions to Indian Sociology, New Series, 15 (1–2): 337–365. Radjou, N., Prabhu, J., and Ahuja, S. (2012) Jugaad innovation: Think frugal, be flexible, generate breakthrough growth, San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Sennett, R. (2008) The craftsman, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Singh, Rana P.B. and Rana, P. (2006) Banaras region: A spiritual and cultural guide, Varanasi: Indica Books. Sinha, A. (2015) ‘The enacted landscape of Varanasi Ghats: Beyond the picturesque’, Visual Arts Journal, India Habitat Center, Special issue on Art in Public Places, 12 (April 2013-March 2015): 40–49. ———. (2017) ‘Introduction’, in K. D. Silva and A. Sinha (eds) Cultural landscapes of South Asia: Studies in heritage conservation and management, London: Routledge, 1–10. Zara, C. (2011) Travellers: Representation and spatial practice in Varanasi (India). Unpublished doctoral dissertation in Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London.

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15 SAFEGUARDING RITUAL LANDSCAPE OF LIVING URBAN HERITAGES The case of Navadurga Masked Dance Festival of Bhaktapur, Nepal Sudarshan Raj Tiwari

Introduction Ritual landscape, periodically expressed through religious festivals, is key to the continuity of the living urban heritage of Kathmandu Valley World Heritage Site, which was nominated also for its living urbanism exhibiting tangible linkage to its faith/belief systems. This chapter takes the case of Navadurga Masked Dance Festival that spreads over the town of Bhaktapur to relive a ritually mediated historic landscape. This urban landscape heritage, already threatened by a myriad of intrinsic and external factors of change, is fast deteriorating particularly in the aftermath of disaster in the town’s physical, social and cultural fabric precipitated by the 2015 Gorkha earthquake. The chapter takes an ethnographic and interpretive research approach to document the form and structure of the ritual landscape to examine deteriorating threats and change and to identify prospects and problems in its safeguarding. It studies the ritual landscape from the perspectives of places, routes, tangible markers, legends/story and the associated social players. The chapter analyses the start and end rituals of the festival for an enriched understanding of the overall urban ritual landscape of Bhaktapur as perceived by the traditional society through this festival. Issues in balancing developmental demands, cultural conservation and continuity of urban heritage, and the role of community in keeping up the ritual landscape are presented. A community-based approach that seeks participation of the historically diverse social entities and their place-specific activation to safeguard the continuity of ritual landscape is presented for sustaining this living, faith-based urbanism.

Living urban heritage of Kathmandu valley Kathmandu Valley World Heritage Site (KVWHS), made up of seven monument zones including a large part of Bhaktapur, is listed by UNESCO under its criteria (iii), (iv), and (vi), which respectively relate to the trait of unique architecture and building ensemble, living heritage and tradition, and a tangible link to faith/belief systems. The last two criteria highlight the importance of intangible attributes of living historical urbanism and heritage of beliefs systems expressed generally in terms of 261

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religious philosophy and symbolism and rituals and festivities practiced in the public spaces of the city. Much of the ‘livingness’ (Tiwari, Jigyasu, and Itaya 2012) of the living urban heritage of KVWHS is derived out of these expressions. The study of living historical urbanism, particularly those expressed through rituals and festivities held in public places and with public participation, would be facilitated by considering a town more as a social artefact than a cultural and technological product. Since the key carrier of living urban heritage is the urban citizen and its society, it is more important to read the town where the heritage is lived-in as a social entity. It is in the streets and pathway crossings, at dobatos (two-way crossings), chaubatos (four-way crossings) and chowks (public space at crossings) of the traditional town that this urban heritage and urbanism happens in the towns of Kathmandu Valley (Tiwari 2017b). The social group that has been traditionally, as well as contemporarily the most ardent participant in this urbanism is the Newar, the indigenous settlers of Kathmandu Valley since ancient times. Within the Newar community too, the most ancient rituals and festive celebrations that retrace the idea of settled space are carried on by the farming community of Jyapu. Some anthropologists must have been perplexed by the complex physical, social as well as cultural characteristics of the Newars to class them as ‘Indo-Aryan Tibeto-Burman’ amalgam. For Toffin (2008: 2 and 9), Newars ‘clearly belong to the Indic mainstream’ even as the presence of non-Indic components in them could not ‘be seriously contested’ and they ‘exhibit a clearly distinctive and unique culture’. Early Tibetan sources refer to the people of Kathmandu Valley as besa, most likely describing such mixed character of the local people in following both the Buddhist and Hindu faiths even within the same social group. Brihatsamhita echoes the sense in calling the ancient Nepalese architecture style as besara. But such religious, architectural and linguistically mixed character in Newar is a result of restructuring after the arrival of the Hindu and Buddhist migrants to the valley and should not deny that Newar were indigenous in the valley. Newars, particularly the farmer community of the Jyapu, descended from the Kirat aboriginals living in the valley from pre-historic times (Tiwari 2001c) and make the only community in Nepal that has been traditionally urban. They had grown to be the dominant inhabitants in the valley by the medieval period and their highly ritualistic way of life (Shrestha, Khatry, Ansari, and Sharma 1986) had brought in an era of agricultural urbanism supported with immense developments in religion, arts, crafts and commerce in the valley towns. Newars were the majority in the valley until modern day in-migration picked up upon the ‘opening’ of the valley to greater Nepal and then Nepal to the world in 1950, swelling the population with people from outside the Newar society. Newar Urbanism, in a large way, results from the replay of myths, legends, stories, social memories and rituals of their calling in an urban setting populated by such tangible elements as the spirited spots and power places, dyochhe (a type of religious building) and pith (open-to-sky shrine), temple and trees, kuwa (spring) and kulo (canal), etc. The many festivals and their ritual and cultural processes, celebrated in seasonal cycles, breathe life into these tangibles and in the process, a variety of artefacts also get associated as heritage (Tiwari 2001b). They also make the town feel like a ceremonial arena and civic life feel ‘something like a choreographed ballet’ (Levy 1990: 16). And as Newar’s contemporary life is woven, apparently purposely, into the ‘inherited life’ of the gods and the ancestors (Tiwari 2016), both add very complex dimensions to the definition of intangible urban heritage of festivals. One important sense of the place that accrues from such interweaving of inherited life, often ensconced in the seasonal public festivities is ‘the sense of sacrality’ (Silva 2015). Just as they claim ‘jhipiñdyo’ (‘We are the gods’), so they act as their gods and ancestors too in the town as they live their contemporary life. These enactments and themes make most of the festivities and rituals. Built heritage of Kathmandu valley has faced the three-local deteriorating and destructive environmental agents – the monsoon, earthquake and fire – over millennia. While fires have caused rare havocs, the safety of heritage was augmented through appropriate moderation in religious and ritual use of fire and wick lights. Huge earthquakes have been frequented with periodicities of fifty, hundred 262

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and two hundred years, longer periodicity generally meaning increased lethality. Over time and with experience, a combination of use of improved construction methods and details giving greater earthquake resilience and the practice of preventive maintenance and cyclical renewal added much life to the monuments and safety to town spaces. The annual challenge of critical deterioration from the monsoon rains and wetness on architecture and city made of mud, bricks, tile and wood was approached not only through innovations in design and detail but also dealt with the application of the culture of regular maintenance and cyclical replacement of affected and decayed parts, particularly exposed carved wood elements, the ridge and the roof. As a matter of fact, the uniqueness of heritage of Kathmandu Valley is a result of the coming together of the building materials, climate and vegetation of the valley and the conditioning environment of monsoon, earthquake and fire! (Tiwari 2017a). The living urban landscape is a result of the above conditions and the agricultural civilization supported by the very climate and lacustrine geology of the valley. Public rituals and religious festivities can be clearly seen as timed and related to the seasonality and nature at large as captured in the panchanga calendar of solar and lunar time (Pant 2017). Nowhere is this living urbanism more evident and pleasantly surviving through so many faith-based festivities and rituals than in the town of Bhaktapur. Bhaktapur is itself defined in large part by its rituals, festivals and socio-cultural memories from the various periods of history of the Kathmandu Valley. Bhaktapur, like all other traditional Newar towns of the valley, has a ritually mediated form and structure (Gutschow and Kolver 1975; Silva 2015; Tiwari 2001d). The cults of Astamatrika, the Navadurga and the Dasamahavidhya, their corresponding rituals and clans’ association and the festive replay of their memories, legends and myths in their annual and other periodicities in the public spaces dominate the expression of the living urban heritage. Between the three Malla towns in the valley, the other two being Kathmandu and Patan, Bhaktapur is the best ‘testament not only to its history, but also to the continuation of Newari society and culture within the valley’ (Silva 2015: 824). One aspect of this urban grandeur is the cultural complexity resulting from the overlapping of such replays and the inherited system of shared management of space and time by period-specific, clan-specific and citizenspecific associations.

Threats to living urban heritage and ways of its safeguard In Kathmandu Valley, settlements that had started forming in the basis of agro-forestry based economy in the Kirat period saw urban development largely based on agriculture in the Lichchhavi period (from first to ninth centuries). The indigenous society was skilled, and their craftsmanship soon led to product specializations capable of creating larger markets. By the Malla period (twelfth to eighteenth centuries), a three-pronged economy of agriculture, craft and commerce had become the mainstay of the towns. While this economy was prospering in the fertile valley that was also on the pathway of religious and trading travellers between India and Tibet, the faith based socio-cultural transformation of the indigenous population had made them quite classical and cosmopolitan. Meanwhile, the town streets had remained pedestrian and truly wheel-less – only the very ‘god of gods’ travelled in wheeled chariots. It was in the streets and the squares that the ritually mediated life pattern of the Newars was played out. This life pattern had multiple layers of urban heritage imprinted on it because the urban development in many of the towns continued over changing cultural periods and the indigenous society transformed itself over and again in the same locale. Indeed, the marvels of this civilization are embodied more in its Historic Urban Landscape than in its monuments. Although continuing urban development in the past worked as an asset for living urban heritage, the same in the modern period has been a threat and a deteriorating factor primarily because of its character, scale and speed. With the modern urban growth and development wheeled in by the motorized vehicles, quite a bit of the cultural sap of these streets and squares was squeezed out primarily as 263

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pedestrians lost priority and soon got expunged from the urban space as the vehicular occupation of space quickly multiplied. The scale and speed of the modern-day urbanization was also so radically high compared to the almost zero spatial mobility of the traditional society and social groups and an equally limited in-migration. As the narrow pathways were adapted for the vehicles and residential uses changed over to the commercial, not only the ritual stones and other kinds of markers along them were compromised and overrun by the motor vehicles and the public spaces were encroached by associated activities, such as short-term and garage parking or turning circles for the wheeled vehicles, but rampant run of business and commerce over culture also sent many of the ‘lesser’ festivities of clan and family level off the traditional neighbourhood cores of these towns. The extreme pressures of population growth, of in-migrants and failure to manage such urbanization, land use changes and services in a manner able to sustain the Outstanding Universal Value of the urban heritage, along with the compromised vernacular architectural character of streets, had actually led UNESCO to list KVWHS as ‘Heritage in Danger’ in 2003, within 25 years of its listing as World Heritage in 1979. The urban heritage of Kathmandu Valley is ‘living’, not just because it is in active practice but also because every heritage activity is participated in by several Newar social groups coming together in performing its component parts to make it a whole. Each individual component is also managed at the community or clan level in all its aspects – be it the social organization and manning of initiation, planning or implementation or its financing or even its special detailing should the stars call for it. Each individual component group is a community-based trust called guthi. The guthi is a selfperpetuating, self-financing and self-led trust, often manned by senior most males coming from the key families of the clan and funded through agricultural output of land donated by their ancestors and held in trust by them or farmed by them or tenants. This community management organization, whose history can be traced back to earliest inscriptions and written historical records of the valley from the fifth century (Tiwari 2001a), has been severely debilitated with the coming of modern system of institutional management and the legal arrangements for land ownership and tilling. The breakdown of clan association as well as the increased mobility of the spatially bound clans has meant that the social groups are no longer intact or of viable standing to carry on its community ordained functions. The guthi institutions have died away too as their financial resources got compromised with ‘land reform’ acts changing land ownership, tilling and recording system. In recent years, the loss of value of land in agricultural use has been just as destructive to this age-old system. Also, through the post-Malla centuries leading up to the present day, the modern-institutions-driven centralized management of urban affairs has wiped out the traditional community-based system. Heritage on the streets and squares had turned into hindrances in the eyes of the Kathmandu Valley urban manager, who’s planning response to increasing urban population and vehicular ownership has been to increase road network and their capacity through application of road width standards, right of way and set back regulations. Since 2012, Kathmandu Valley Development Authority has also launched a valley wide road-widening programme much to the detriment of road side heritage of streets and the expunging of intangible cultural practices tied to them. It should be remembered that quite a few of the streets radiating out of the three old towns to reach out to the settlements in the periphery have been streets in use for centuries and have many heritage buildings to their sides, across spaces, and festive practices aligned along them. Another destructive blow to the urban heritage landscape comes from the trend of globalized urban lifestyle catching up with Bhaktapur. Although culture of any people anywhere is dynamic and is in a continuous process of change, yet in the valley the changes have been so sudden and heavy that the traditional culture simply has not had time to muse and think through the change. What is more and often, the onslaught of the western lifestyle is encouraged and presented as a matter of development for the traditional, misrepresented as backward as its main anchor is Hindu and Buddhist faiths. One simple thing is the changing calendar from the lunar panchanga based Nepal Sambat or Bikram Sambat to the Gregorian and the changing holiday system. Since 264

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most festive days are based on the lunar cycle read on the dial of nakshatra (constellations) and a few others follow solar time reckoned on the dial of rasi (zodiac) and present-day calendar and business working days follow a different logic, the leisure time of the active secondary livelihood earner does not match the festivals’ schedule that follows farming practice and seasonal cycles. Nepal’s government holidays however have been criticized to be unproductive and excessive even though it has included only a few festive days as local holidays. This dismal state of the tangible and intangible heritage of the squares and the streets was further aggravated as the 2015 Gorkha Earthquake brought down the buildings about them. For months, debris was moved onto the main streets and neighbourhood squares from inner sections making them too clogged, even for pedestrians. The debris in public spaces severed the linkage between the monuments/markers and the people as cultural activities and rituals of living and faith could not be performed. Local people and community’s concern with festivals, ritual worship and other socio-cultural functions of the monuments and the associated intangible practices emerged strongly. Voices of concern and calls for reengagement were also heard from some dormant and thought to be defunct traditional trust organizations or guthi specific to some rituals, festivals and faith. The first set of issues appear to have emerged in the cultural practice and continuity aspect as the rituals and festivals which are triggered by the lunar calendar/seasonality quickly followed the earthquake event of 25 April 2015 as usual. Matsendranath Chariot festival, Mataya and Krishna Astami celebration in Patan, Gaijatra in Bhaktapur, and Indrajatra in Kathmandu generated most initial concerns. Likewise, the Gunla festivities and the stabilization of Shantipur temple appear to have taken centre stage in the case of Svayambhu. (Tiwari 2016). The local community came to realize that the damage and destruction of the huge earthquake, its debris in streets and public spaces, and even the temporary stabilization works undertaken in response there, can cause a serious infringement and interference in the use of heritage sites in realization of traditional and customary functions, including those critical in defining their ethnicity, identity and indigenousness. The use of heavy equipment to clear the streets of the debris also cleared away many marker stones on the street as inconsequential waste (Figure 15.1). Many of such stones which had strong cultural and faith-based meaning to specific community and clans were broken, unceremoniously excavated and consigned to debris deposit sites to be lost forever. The consequent loss and cultural denuding of the streets will take time to be felt as most of these edifices belonged to the impoverished peripheral community, itself reeling from the loss of buildings, neighbourhoods and society. Long occupation of emergency and temporary facilities and car parking in squares by the wealthier sections of the society and government institutions had put cultural recovery of the poor and the peripheral at greater difficulty. In the earthquake-damaged narrow urban streets, the town planners in the government saw a great opportunity to widen them to accommodate more vehicles presumably to streamline transport and augment services delivery. With this objective, and much to the detriment of the tangible as well as intangible heritage in the traditional streets of Kathmandu Valley settlements in particular, the Ministry of Urban Development issued its Basic Standards for Settlement Development, Urban Planning and Building Construction, 2072 (October 2015). After some serious representations, this new regulatory threat was moderated to some extent through the promulgation of new regulations (carried through by Clause 14. ka in 2017), which will apply to designated historic settlements. The new rules aim to preserve the main street side footprint of buildings so that the configuration and width of the traditional streets are saved. However, the threat persists as the process of designating such settlements at local level have been made quite difficult and may be scuttled by the car-oriented town development literati.

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Figure 15.1 Heavy vehicles scrap Surjemadhi square in Bhaktapur as they move debris after the earthquake. Source: Sudarshan Raj Tiwari

The five classes of living urban heritage attributes The needs and approaches to the conservation of festivals, festive expressions and rituals held in public views could be assessed through a purposeful revisit of its various deteriorating and vulnerable aspects critical to the continuity of the living urban heritage. These can be classified into five distinctive tangible and intangible attributes that hold the outstanding values as perceived by the local people owning the tradition and living in the contemporary society. These include: (1) the place/dabali (stage) – the squares with people, ancestors and gods markers; (2) streets – pathways linking associated places, stages and power spots, transition spots of symbolic dance of respect; (3) tangible markers, memory marks, stones or temples associated with the passage of the festival; (4) stories, rituals, key events, and happenings in memory – the socio-religious content and practice of festival; and (5) the associated players or dramatis personae – individuals, families, clans and caste groups. (Tiwari 2016). In the following section, an ethnographic descriptive look has been taken at the case of the Navadurga Masked Dance Festival of Bhaktapur so as to illustrate the use of these five classes of attributes in reading living urban heritage.

Navadurga Masked Dance Festival of Bhaktapur Bhaktapur, as the capital of the united Malla dynastic states of Nepal before 1482 CE, is also the oldest among the Newar towns of the valley. Like all other Newar towns of Kathmandu Valley, Bhaktapur has 266

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a ritually mediated form and structure. Since the embryonic settlement-forming ritual structure has come from the proto-Saiva faith (Tiwari 2001c) of the Kirat period and the Vaishnav influences from the subsequent Lichchhavi period was very limited in the area, the rituals of Siva-Sankara (the Saiva tantric vidya cult of Sankaracharya) and Shakta (the Saiva tantric shakti cult of Chandi scripture) practices of Hindu religious beliefs, which were popular in the Malla period, have largely mediated the development of Bhaktapur town. Therefore, most faith-based intangible urban heritage of Bhaktapur is derived from the practice of cults of Dasamahavidya (the ten vidya goddesses), Navadurga (the nine durga goddesses including Tripurasundari) and Astamatrika (the eight mother goddesses). They define in good part the living heritage of Newar urbanism here. Also, the comparatively relaxed pace of development of the town from the fifteenth century to the end of Malla period, resulting from the reduced political and economic power of the state and the subsequent loss of its role as a capital town altogether, makes it a good case for study of early Malla urban heritage. Of a number of festivals coming down to modern times as urban heritage, the festival taken as a case for this study is the Navadurga Masked Dance Festival. In the context of this festival, Navadurga refer to a number of divinities represented primarily as masks that are used by an ordained group of dancers for the annual dance. The actual number of divinities participating are fourteen – seven of the Astamatrika mother goddesses and three male divinities of Ganesh, Bhairav and Seto Bhairav and two supporting divinities of Sima and Dhuma participate as twelve masked dancers (Levy 1990; Shrestha 2003), while the remaining one of the Astamatrika mother goddess, Mahalaxmi is symbolized in a plaque and leads the troupe as Siphadyo. Siva is represented as a mask that is not donned by dancers but just tagged on as constant witness. The dance sequences in large part are re-enactments of the mythical events recalled in the Navadurga story itself. Navadurga Festival, the longest of the annual festivals celebrated in Bhaktapur, is believed to have been commissioned by King Gunakamadev in the last quarter of the twelfth century. The key celebrations, performed at 21 locales, appear grouped into three time periods: (a) The beginning public rituals of mask making starting from Gathamugah Cahre (which occurred on July 21 in 2017); (b) the central rituals of energizing and giving life to the masks and the dancers starting from Aswin Sukla Astami or Mahasthami (on 28 September in 2017); and (c) the actual dances in the designated neighbourhoods that start on Maghe Sankranti (which was on 15 January 2018), the day the sun starts moving to northwards in the winter skies. It is notable that actual masked dances are scheduled on the basis of solar calendar and the dates for the performance of key dance sequences in designated locations and neighbourhoods are annually reset by the astrologer clan, the Joshis. However, in the 21st spatial episode, the key closing sequence, when the human dancers lose the divinity and the priests transpose the divine spirits unto the kalali, an auspicious carrying pot, is again on the lunar calendar day of Vala Vala Astami or Ashadh Krishna Astami (which fell on 6 July in 2018), the eighth day of the dark moon! Likewise, the ‘birth’ sequence starts on Gathamuga Chahre or Srawan Krishna Chaturdashi, the fourteenth day of that dark moon. The name gathamuga can be read as ‘Gan-Thya-Muh-Gan’, which translates in Newari literally as ‘main stone of the stone place’ and refers to Mahadev of the crossroads, where several round stones were placed to represent a Siva-Shakti power place! The fourteenth day of waning moon is believed to be the day when Siva and Shakti are most powerfully expressed in nature. Thus, the birth, empowering and death sequences of the festival seem scheduled on lunar positions, while the actual dances in the twentyone locales are performed considering solar positions. Although this is rather a simplistic classification and the actual astrological computations take on greater complexities and deeper ritualistic significance, such luni-solar mix of calendar within the same festival makes Navadurga Dance Festival a unique one.

The place The first public ritual of the Navadurga festival that comes out on the main street of Bhaktapur is the procession of the Banamala (the caste traditionally working as flower gatherers and garland makers) 267

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men selected to don the godly masks and present the godly dances for the year that sets out from the dyochhe at Gaachhe to go to Thachhe at Yachhe by way of Sukuldhoka. At Thache, the troupe offers worship to the image of Mahadev freshly made by the Chitrakar (the caste traditionally working as painters) there – a symbolic reference to the ‘Gan-Thya-Muh-Gan’, the main deity Siva and his ritual rising on this day, the Gathamuga Chahre. The procession then moves down back to Sukuldhoka to proceed to Kumahchhe in Talaco, the residential neighbourhood of hakujyami potters, who ordain and make auspicious the mud to be used for making the masks. The troupe offers a symbolic worship to the lump of ordained mud there. The Chitrakar at Yachhe will make the masks from this auspicious material and deliver them by Mahanavami, the ninth day of the bright fortnight of Aswin/Kaula (which was on 29 September in 2017), after display at dalan (a colonnaded ground floor space often opening on the street side) of Thache at Yachhe. The Chitrakar painters paint the eyes on the masks only just before handover ritually enabling divine vision. The masks are taken by the dancers to Brahmayani pith. Apart from Gachhe, the first day’s rituals bring the places Thachhe and Talaco into the ritual map. Talaco and Yachhe are also locales for the stationing of ‘Siphodyo’ or Mahalaxmi during the ‘Ngalakigu’ street show of dances in the neighbourhoods. The ritual of energizing and giving divine life to the dance, hand and foot jingle bells and other musical instruments is performed by the Karmacharya priests in Mahasthami at another important place, Jhyatta Pau, where an ancient standing stone of Ashitanga Bhairav, the clan deity of the Banamala, is located alongside a Nasadyo (the god of music and dance) temple. On Mahanavami and Dasami, tantric rituals of formal energizing of the masks and the awakening of the spirits of Navadurga in the body of the dancers are performed at the Brahmayani pith and ghat by the Karmacharya priests. As they march into town as gods as it were, after all the ritual instalments, they perform their first symbolic dance using masks at Surjemadhi. Thence, they proceed on to take part in the paya festival of Goddess Taleju, which is clearly a later addition. This part over, the ritual departure worship is offered to ‘Krodha Bhairav’ of Taumadhi by ‘Sweta Bhairav’ of the Navadurga troupe at the Sabhu-gan cross roads, marking another ‘entry’ point in the main street. This entry is in addition to Surjemadhi, Talaco and Sukuladhoka, already identified through other rituals. In the next two days of dasain or mohini (the main Shakti cult festive period), the Navadurga troupe visit the places of residence of the important social clans who have contributed in the rituals of their initiation to bless them with prashad (ritual offering) of fruits (ta:si). They bless the Manandhar (caste name of traditional oil pressers) at Golmadhi, the hakujyahmi Kumah (caste name of potters) at Talaco, the Nayo at Yalachhe, and the Chitrakar and the Joshi at Nag Pokhari. Apparently, the Manandhar clan of Golmadhi is traditionally recognized as the key supporter and donor. Interestingly, the priest classes involved in the festival, the Rajopadhyaya, the Karmacharya and the Bajracharya, who officiate as priests of the Banamala caste group, are not blessed with similar visits. The Bajracharya however get to invite the gods over to their locality at Tachapal for the season’s first community ovation and worship. The various places visited by the dancers while performing the annual festival legitimizes at least four spots in the pre-Navadurga map of Bhaktapur: (i) Pasahchhen, (ii) the unnamed place where the goddesses took sacrifice of a pig in their anger, (iii) the Songah-Lhon spot where mother goddesses were stopped on their run, and (iv) Navadurga Dyochhen in Gachhen, where they were ultimately housed. The unnamed place appears as Ichhu, where during the Navadurga Festival, the mothergoddesses take cooked rice, an impure offering akin to the pig in the story. Pasah-Chhen is close by. Songah-Lhon’s credentials as an important place in the organization of ritual image of Bhaktapur is recognized and appears as the western boundary of Khopringga. Gachhen was its north-eastern corner of Khopringga. The location of Navadurga Dyochhen in the north-east (isana) direction fits well with the prescription in classical Hindu canon of town planning. The canons also prescribe the isana location for entry of water supply canal into the town and the in-town reservoir. It is indeed so in Bhaktapur and appears to have been true for Khopringga as well. 268

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Though all these places, linked to the initiation of the festive season and awakening of the spirit of Navadurga, are squares accessible to vehicular traffic, mass tourism has invaded Talaco the most. The public spaces of Yachhe, Gachhe, Surjemadhi and Brahmayani, although still away from organized group tours, have been used for long-term parking of trucks and cars of nearby residents. A closer look at the post-earthquake scenario at Jhyatta Pau shows that this primal space may be lost to haphazard and unmanaged reconstruction – the Nasadyo guthi space is already seriously encroached and neglected. Also, the use of Surjemadhi square as collection, loading and off-loading space for the dozers and scrappers mobilized for ‘debris management’ shows how little-thought-out urban service activities can be quite damaging to the ritual spaces. The main masked dance festivities are however made up of several dance sequences, namely as per Shrestha (2003), ‘Tva Mukegu’ (going round the neighbourhood), ‘Cha Puja’ (tantric ritual worship at dead of night), ‘Mu Baha Likegu’ (chasing the pig), and ‘Nga Lakigu Pyakhan’ (catching the fish), that are performed at 21 designated public spaces in various neighbourhoods of Bhaktapur, starting from Maghesankranti (which was on 15 January in 2018) onwards for almost six months. They are: (i) Surjemadhi, (ii) Tachapal, (iii) Kwathandau, (iv) Gaachhe, (v) Thalachhe, (vi) Inacho, (vii) Golmadhi, (viii) Yaachhe, (ix) Taumadhi, (x) Talaco, (xi) Mulaku, (xii) Gaa-hiti, (xiii) Kwachhe, (xiv) Laskudhoka, (xv) Khauma, (xvi) Tibukchhe, (xvii) Itachhe, (xviii) Yalachhe, (xix) Tulachhe, (xx) Chochhe, and (xxi) Ichchhu (Figure 15.2). The special ritual of Arati (special ritual ending prayers with offer of

Figure 15.2 The Nga Lakigu places of Navadurga Festival. Source: Sudarshan Raj Tiwari

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light) performed only at Yaachhe. Tibukchhe and Chochhe appear to remember the ancient principalities of Khopringga, Makhopringgadula, and Makhopringga (Tiwari 2001a). Ichchhu, where the agam (a tantric worship room accessible only to the initiated) of the Rajopadhyaya priests is located, appears remembered as the place of run-away exit of the divine Navadurga and their taking the sacrifice of pig in the creation story of dances. Likewise, the ritual memories of Songa Lhon, the three stones placed in the middle of the street near the Nga Lakigu Pyakhan performance place in Inacho square have been stated earlier. The dances thus seem to go to most of the central spaces of the twenty-four neighbourhoods as Bhaktapur is popularly remembered to have been sectored in the late Malla period (Gutschow 1982). Only the central spaces of Bharbacho, Tekhacho, Lakulache and Jenla seem to have been missed. It can also be observed that the dances are performed in the neighbourhoods where traditionally the Jyapu population had been concentrated. The exclusion of two of the predominantly Jyapu neighbourhoods of Jenla and Lakulache is difficult to explain unless their peripheral location is the reason for such an omission. Also, Lasku Dhoka and Khauma have a limited Jyapu presence and thus these two appear as late addition due to the location of royal palace and its arrival point from Kathmandu.

The streets The ritual processions of Navadurga dancers retrace again and again the main street of Bhaktapur which appears to have connected the two ancient arrival spaces of Talaco and Surjemadhi and which continues to form the central transport spine even for today’s town. This length of the main street more or less covers the key mythical events that are noted in the main creation story about the Navadurga Masked Dance Festival. Accordingly, the initial route of movement of the mother goddesses from Pasalache (Ichhu) to Songa Lhon and then on to Gaache, was along this main road, its alignment remaining more or less the same since ancient times. Unlike the other urban festivals such as Indra Jatra, Gai Jatra, Baha Puja or Pith Puja, Navadurga movements do not make or take a circuit, but retrace pathways from the spinal road, with Sukuldhoka as the main bifurcation point on it. True to its name, Sukuldhoka (dhoka meaning gate) appears to have been a control point of entry into the ancient settlements of the area, which were all accessed from this highway. The short street sections that come into use in rituals other than the dances in the neighbourhoods are: Surjemadhi–Copale–Gachche–Dyochhe; Surjemadhi–Jhatta Pva; Sukuldhoka– Lalachhe–Yachhe; and Kwathandau–Gachhe–Salanganesh. Additional street sections used during the Nga Lakigu Pyakhan part of the festivals are: Talaco–Mulaku in the main street and the side streets of Sukuldhoka–Khauma–Itachhe; Sukuldhoka–Yachhe–Thalachhe; and Sukuldhoka–Tulachhe–Chochhe. The main street and these side streets connect up to the main spot where ‘Siphodyo’ is stationed during the Pyakhan (dance-drama performance) festivities in the neighbourhood. From this spot, the masked dancers take inner lanes of the neighbourhood to visit the area as they accept offerings in worship and renew their annual blessings or nyasa. For some years now, the main street has been closed to heavy vehicles and four wheelers during the week days to prioritize pedestrians in the streets of the traditional town. The reach to such objective has also been helped by the continuance of traditional brick paving of streets, which has been instrumental in curbing speedy driving. The retention of occasional flagstone paving and the policy of keeping asphalt paving out of festive streets have also helped in the upkeep of its cultural ambience. If the policies are strictly adhered to, the upkeep of the basic spine of Historic Urban Landscape would be greatly helped. However, post-earthquake laxity in containing parking and movement of vehicles in main streets and squares has been very negligent. Much of the public spaces of squares and street side spaces (lachhi) have been taken over by the rich farmers, businesses and elite residents (and sometimes even by the 270

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tourism operators) for parking tractors, trucks and cars, making even pedestrian movement difficult. Even as these obstructions are cleared during festivals, the pedestrian nature of streets and the pristine and respectable views they enable to the faithful and the stranger alike are lost most of the time around the year. Continued pattern of such misuse of public places will be very costly to the heritage landscape of Bhaktapur in the long run.

The physical markers Various temples, images and markers are recognized and actively reciprocated by the Navadurga dancers in course of the various rituals and celebrations of the masked dance festival. The dancers ritually take residence at the Navadurga Dyochhe as the masks are kept there. The pith of this dyochhe is located at Gaachhe. The starting ritual on Gathamunga Chare takes the would-be dancers to Thachhe (the mould house) in Yachhe, where they worship the Lord Mahadev, who is the mugah (main stone) in the place with many stones (ganthya) – it seems like a reference to the Dugan (mala) – located at the back of Yachhe. Next place marker evoked in the second ritual of the first day is the vishwokarmadyo of Hakujyami Kumah at Talaco – the Ganesh with two tusks and trunk turned to the right. The site of the ancient upright stone of Jenla, also known as Ashitanga Bhairab (the Astabhairav associated with Astamatrika Brahmayani) and the clan deity of the Banamala is celebrated as Nasadyo during the initiation rites held there in Mahasthami. Brahmayani ghat and pith get activated on Mahanavami. On Vijayadasami, the next day, the dancers make their first brief dance at Surjemadhi as they pay homage to the Mother Goddesses resident in the court of Bakupatinarayan. The same day as they proceed to participate in the paya festival of Taleju, the Navadurga dancers seek blessings from Taleju at the Golden Gate, Lasku Dhoka. As they finish their role in the procession, they depart for Dyochhe from wayside Krodha Bhairav at Sabhu-gan. As the dancers go to the various neighbourhoods, the Salan Ganesh is offered ovation by the troupe at the top of each tour (Figure 15.3). On way, they pay brief respects to the main temples en route such as Datattraya at Tachapal, Maheswori at Inacho, Ram Chandra at Golmadhi, Ganesh at Yachhe Ganesh on way to Ngalakigu at Thalachhe. First respects are paid to Mahalaxmi here before ‘Siphodyo’ is placed at Dathu Chowk. As they arrive at each Ngalakigu place, Navadurga troupe always pay their first respects to the spirits of the key temple in the neighbourhood. For example, at the last Ngalakigu site at Ichchhu they evoke the Matangi (one of the ten dasamahavidya tantric goddesses at the agam of the Rajopadhaya priests there), while at Kwathandau, the troupe evokes Dipankar (the ancient Buddha housed in a nearby monastery) for their first respects. It is notable that not all of the neighbourhood temples are of as early origin as the Navadurga and the assimilation of such neighbourhood temples into the rituals reflects social change over time. These key temples and faith-based edifices, some already incognito because of long lost memories and surviving only in the memory of the dancers as they have repeated the rituals since time immemorial, offer an anchoring point as it were for the Navadurga dancers at the neighbourhood. Quite a few of them have also attained the status as ‘monumental heritage’ of the ordinary people. Here, the need to conserve the heritage of all, including the sundry, deserves to be reiterated also because the KVWHS recognizes only the monuments related to the rulers and the classical elite gentry. The important role of the former in defining and keeping up the character of urban heritage landscape is amply clear, and thus deserve protection.

The story The astrological (jyotish) knowledge of the Joshi required to determine auspicious days, particularly for the scheduling and conduct of the ‘Ngalakigu’ section of the masked dance Pyakhan, is one of the key clan/caste held information that needs to be protected. The same type of panchanga astrology 271

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Figure 15.3 The Navadurga pay homage to Salan Ganesh at the outset of every performance. Source: Sudarshan Raj Tiwari

information and processing jyotish knowledge is also needed for setting the auspicious moments for all other aspects of the festival, such as the ritual interactions on Gathamunga Chahre both at Thachhe at Yachhe and Kumahchhe at Talaco, and the initiation rites at Thachhe, Jhatta Pau, and Brahmayani pith and ghat. The mantra and dialogues used at all these rituals and particularly those at Jhatta Pau and Brahmayani as held in memory and in some of the later day documentation of the rituals by the Karmacharya priests need to be freshly researched and documented. The guiding hymns, songs and stories that are replayed at the Ngalakigu need to be documented and catalogued. It is suspected that quite a few of the hymns have lost their actual word contents and are maintained as caricatured sound through ritual repetition. It is obvious from the dances that the Ngalakigu dances replay some of the incidences said to have happened in the initial story; e.g. the catching of the human sacrifice ritualized as ‘fishing in the streets’ and the ‘catching of the pig’ and its forcible sacrifice, etc. Similarly, the rituals and dialogue as associated with the life-cycle rituals from birth to death as played out at Ichhu and other priestly places need to be recorded so that these may be archived and remembered at a wider level. Some of the rituals as seen in various places as well as a number of stories associated with the Ngalakigu sequence of dances in the neighbourhood have been documented by Shrestha (2003). From this source, it can be observed that Karmacharya and Rajopadhyaya priests have been the traditional keepers of information, but a potentially strong phenomenological perspective could be gleaned from other participants, such as the Banamala, the Manandhar, the Joshi, and the Bajracharya. 272

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Munangkarmi (1966) provides a creation myth and story of the Navadurga Dance Festival, which is corroborated largely by the documentation of Shrestha (2003). The story provides various contextual reasoning for many aspects of the dance festival as it is played out today. The story also explains why certain places, streets, markers, people and rituals make key requirements of the festival. It is believed that the current display of Navadurga Pyakhan is staged more or less like as restructured by King Prana Malla in 1532 (Bhandari 1968).

The people Judging from the concentration of Jyapu population in most of the neighbourhoods where the masked dances are performed, it would appear that the in-town performance is targeted at the farming community, which doubtless formed the aboriginal residents of the Kirat settlements that were already in the area when Bhaktapur was laid out as the capital by King Anandadev in the twelfth century. The social group/caste performing the masked dances, the Banamala, appears to have mainly resident about the Navadurga Dyochhe in Gaachhe, which was wholly located within the settlement of Khopringga. Khopringga was renamed Bandimagala shortly afterwards in clear recognition of the concentration of aboriginal population there (Bandima or Vernima – those of verna group). The other neighbourhoods where the dances are performed relate to the residential area of the Rajopadhyaya (Ichhu) and royals at different times in history – for example, the Yuthunimum palace (Lasku Dhoka), the Tripura palace (Thalache) and the Chanigala kwatha (Tibukche, Kwache). The locations of Yachhe and Tulachhe may also relate to the place of the Chitrakar and the Karmacharya, respectively. In the creation story of Navadurga dances, however, the Karmacharya priest is depicted as a resident of Nala, a village to the east of the valley. Likewise, in the story, the Rajopadhyaya priests hail from Pasalache, a locality thought to be close to present Ichhu in Bhaktapur. Whereas the performance at the palace areas could be argued as common festive practice of the medieval era, the importance of the Rajopadhyaya and the Karmacharya in the Navadurga story as well as in its ritual replay is obvious. The performance places Surjemadhi and Talaco could have been aimed at the two Kumal societies, the hyangujyami and the hakujyami residents there, respectively. The role of the hakujyami Kumal in the ritual preparation of mud for annual making of the masks is played out in the very start of the festival each year. The breaking down of the finances of the clan guthi, their mobility and other demands on time made of the community clans, particularly those which have a heavy time involvement such as the Banamala and Nay, have greatly added to the concerns for the conservation of this heritage. The thinning interest among the young Banamala, their need to go for contemporary employment, and the difficulty to allocate and commit time for the long period of dances involved in the Ngalakigu phase add up to pose serious questions on the sustainability of the festival. Putting in place community-based support programmes that addresses three basic problems – guthi issues including bringing in new modes of financing and membership, the issue of skill training of the younger generation of Chitrakar, Nay and Banamala in their respective areas of painting, music and dance, and identity revival social exercise in general – have been suggested as primary inputs for the conservation of festive heritage. Likewise, pedestrianization and limitation on car parking along with making streets and squares of Bhaktapur car-free for longer periods in day and evening time are expected to improve the ambience of the Historic Urban Landscape.

Conclusion A myriad of intangible heritage attributes plays a significant role in the definition of place and cultural identity of Kathmandu Valley and in similar historic cities in South Asia. Festivals, festive expressions, rituals, and the associated urban space are vital and pervasive aspects of these living urban heritages. As 273

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discussed in the chapter, these cultural practices could be classified into five distinctive tangible and intangible attributes that hold their outstanding values as perceived by local communities. These include: the place, streets, physical markers, participants, and the story narrated. This framework could be employed in understanding the function, structure, and meaning of living urban heritage and its relationship to the larger urban cultural landscape as well as in facilitating its sustenance. For sustaining this living, faith-based urbanism, it is critical to focus on balancing developmental demands, cultural conservation and continuity of urban heritage, and the role of community in keeping up the ritual landscape. An essential step in this regard would be to develop community-based approaches that seek participation of the historically diverse social entities in continually engaging in traditional practices. In this connection, reviving traditional community-based approaches, such as guthi system in the valley, are socially, spatially, and culturally appropriate.

References Bhandari, D. (1968) Nepalko Aitihasik Vivechana. Varanasi: Krishna Kumari. Gutschow, N. (1982) Stadtraum und ritual der Newarischen stadte im Kathmandu-Tal. Stuttgart Berlin Koln Mainz: Verlag W. Kohlhammer. Gutschow, N. and Kolver, B. (1975) Ordered space concepts and functions in a town of Nepal. Wiesbaden: Kommissionverlag Franz Steiner GMBH. Levy, R. I. (1990) Mesocosm: Hinduism and the organization of a traditional Newar city in Nepal. Berkeley: University of California Press. Munangkarmi, L. B. (1966) Aitihasik Katha Sangraha. Bhaktapur: Lila Brothers. Pant, S. N. (2017) Toyanath Panchanga – 2074 BS. Kathmandu: Chaturbhuja Prakashan. Shrestha, C. B., Khatry, P., Ansari, A. and Sharma, B. P. (1986) Historic cities of Asia – Kathmandu. Kathmandu: CNAS, Tribhuvan University. Shrestha, P. (2003) Bhaktapurko Navadurga Gana. Bhaktapur: Kabita Shrestha. Silva, K. D. (2015) ‘The spirit of place of Bhaktapur, Nepal’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 21(8): 820–841. Tiwari, S. R. (2001a) Ancient settlements of Kathmandu Valley. Kirtipur: CNAS, Tribhuvan University. ———. (2001b) Heritage conservation: City diagnostic report for city development strategy. Kathmandu: Kathmandu Municipality and World Bank. ———. (2001c) The brick and the bull. Kathmandu: Himal Association. ———. (2001d) ‘The town of Bhaktapur: A study of structural changes over time’, CARD Newsletter, Number 1, Lalitpur: Institute of Engineering. ———. (2016) Reclaiming and restoring Newar urbanism from the disaster of 2015 Gorkha Earthquake, Keynote Paper, International Conference on Earthquake Engineering and Post Disaster Reconstruction Planning, Bhaktapur: Khopa Engineering College. ———. (2017a) ‘Material authenticity and conservation tradition in Nepal’, in K. Wailer and N. E. Guschow (eds) Authenticity in architectural heritage conservation, Heidelberg: Springer, 169–184. ———. (2017b, September 22) ‘Reconstructing of historical urban civilization of Nepal Valley’, Madanpuraskar Karyakram Pustika, Lalitpur, Nepal: Madan Puraskar Guthi. Tiwari, S., Jigyasu, R., and Itaya, N. (2012) ‘Assessment of heritage values’, in R. Jigyasu and N. Itaya (eds) Disaster risk management for the historic city of Patan, Kyoto: Ritsumeikan University, 169–185. Toffin, G. (2008) Newar society: City, village and periphery. Kathmandu: Social Science Baha.

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16 INTANGIBLE DIMENSIONS OF URBAN HERITAGE Learning from holy cities of India Rana P.B. Singh, Pravin S. Rana, and Sarvesh Kumar

Introduction In this chapter, we explore the relationship between intangible cultural heritage and historic urban landscapes, using the ideas of heritage in the context of India. The basic concept of heritage in Indian context is referred to as dharohara that projects and maintains roots and identities of cultural landscapes. This is further explained as an ethical code of life. Taking in view UNESCO’s guidelines on the Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH), the Indian concept of ICH is defined in terms of continuity of tradition, inclusiveness in making people’s social identity, cultural representation, and fellowship of community. Among 470 such ICH as defined by UNESCO, 13 exist in India; two of these – Ramalila and Kumbha Mela – are associated with historic-holy cities of India and serves as nexus of the culture and urban space. The performances, activities and ongoing development strategies in these cities are befitting into the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) – the 2030 Agenda/Target 11.4 that emphasizes preservation, protection and conservation of national and cultural heritage, taking in view the local conditions, policies and orientation. We specifically focus on the case studies of two historic-holy cities, Varanasi and Ayodhya, illustrated with Ramalilas and pilgrimage circuits and associated rituals, to justify the validity of ICH as a resource for development of historical urban landscapes and shaping of sustainable heritage city system. Under the mission of two ‘heritage-development’ programmes of HRIDAY and PRASAD, the government of India has already been operating such measures in historic-heritage cities, with a strong vision that such heritage-inclusive development would serve as a catalyst for the fulfilment of the SDGs and national strategies of development of historic urban landscape in the purview of making them vibrant and liveable centres of global harmony, spiritual awakening, peace and deeper understanding.

Framing India’s heritage scenario In the Indian tradition, heritage is called dharohara, which is a combination of two words: dharā- (the mother earth, Prithvī/Lord Vishnu who holds) and -ihara (endeavour of identity through time). The word also carries the meaning of ‘bearing’ and ‘preserving’ the surface of the earth. Prithvi is also called dharā, dhrī, dhartī, dhrithrī, meaning that which holds everything (see Shathapatha Brāhmaṇa, a Vedic text, dated circa fifteenth century BCE: Eggeling 1882: 10.56.6; 10.59.25; 10.68.48). That is a way to explain it, i.e. in terms of the ‘root’ (shrota) and ‘identity’ (asmitā). The word also signifies a framework, of

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continuity of interconnectedness and a personality of culture; in terms of space it combines the microspace, site (sthān), the extended space, habitat (paryāvāsa), extended as ‘dwelling-ness’ and the regional projection, territory (parikshetra), and ultimately, the link to terrestrial and the cosmos (brahmāṇḍa). Additionally, it also connotes the tangible (murta), intangible (amurta) and visual (dristavya) attributes. In other contexts, the word dharohara also refers to spatial-functional symbol that links ‘locality’ and ‘universality’, consisting of four hierarchically covering layers, viz. sthān (site), parikshetra (defined territory), sīmāṅta (border transition), and brahmāṇḍa (cosmos) (Kumar and Singh 2017: 54). Altogether, the Indian word dharohara thus connotes a wide and expanded frame; therefore, it should be better translated as ‘heritagescapes’ (mostly in plural) and to be explained in the purview of ‘heritage ecology’ in relation to ‘deep-spiritual geography’ (Singh 1995: 197). It possesses the ‘spirit’ of spirituality and interconnectedness that have roots in the past giving messages, existence in present promoting experiences, and envisioning the future – what is called sanātana (EssencenessBeingness-Becomingness) – that in passage of time and space represents the eternity. This works in a unified totality for psychological well-being of soul and spiritual healing (Singh 2009a). The Sanskrit word sanātana denotes that which always is, and has neither beginning nor end (i.e. that which is eternal). This may be compared with the philosophy of sustainability that carries the seeds of ‘existence-maintenance-continuity’ (sandhrita and/or samposhita). In Eurocentric philosophy, however, such ideas are often projected and propagated as ‘static, despotic, and irrelevant to world history’ (Said 1994: 198). The heritagescapes in Indian thought can broadly be categorized into two groups, tangible (murta, visible and static), and intangible (amurta, symbolic expression of invisibility of tangible). Metaphorically, ‘heritage has two fundamental dimensions, for example as in the human soul and body, where the soul is intangible and the body the tangible part’ (Jigyasu 2015: 130). India is a home of countless ancient yet constantly evolved cultural practices that originated in the past, flowed down in the passage of time while keeping maintenance, continuity and manifestation ofsuperimpositions, and becoming part of life and subsistence. In fact, to quote Modwel (2017: 78): The most well-preserved of these are either those where members of different ethnic groups appreciate their meaning, relevance and value to their lives or they still earn a living from these activities. This has contributed to a repository of intangible cultural heritage [ICH] elements unique to this part of the world: diverse, given India’s geo-cultural existence and historical past, yet representing a composite culture that binds us in a shared heritage. The deep-seated heterogeneity of Indian traditions, in different parts of India, is expressed in vivacity and regional distinction of her intangible cultural heritage. It is debated that all heritage is inherently intangible, if heritage is seen as ‘a mentality, a way of knowing and seeing’; moreover, in Indian space of religious heritage, it is difficult to separate the tangible from the intangible (Narayanan 2015: 42–43).

Intangible cultural heritage in India The UNESCO’s 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage defines ICH as that encompasses the practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills – as well as the instruments, objects, artefacts and cultural spaces associated therewith – that communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals recognize as part of their cultural heritage (cf. Aikawa-Faure 2009). This intangible cultural heritage, transmitted from generation to generation, is constantly recreated by communities and groups in response to their environment, their interaction with nature and their history, and provides them with a sense of identity and continuity, thus promoting respect for cultural diversity and human creativity (Article 2.1, see Bandarin and van Oers 2012: 50). The 2003 Convention, among other conceptual contributions, facilitates the recognition of the role of multiple layers of identity and

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other associated intangible aspects in cultural landscapes and historic urban landscapes, among others. For the purposes of this Convention, consideration is given solely to ‘such intangible cultural heritage as is compatible with existing international human rights instruments, as well as with the requirements of mutual respect among communities, groups and individuals, and of sustainable development’ (UNESCO 2003: 3). The importance of cultural diversity in the definition of heritage values has been reaffirmed with the adoption of the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity in 2001, and of the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions in 2005. Article 4.1 of the latter defines cultural diversity that is made manifest not only through the varied ways in which the cultural heritage of humanity is expressed, augmented and transmitted through the variety of cultural expressions, but also through diverse modes of artistic creation, production, dissemination, distribution and enjoyment, whatever the means and technologies used. (UNESCO 2005: 4) Intangible Cultural Heritage, such as the Indian example, is difficult to explain or interpret, because of its complexity. Tangible heritage, on the other hand, being more visible is much better understood. It should be noted that [u]rban areas rich in cultural heritage and with a vibrant creative sector are more attractive for businesses. Promoting inclusive and sustainable economic growth through employment in culture and creativity encourages decent work. The economies of some cities draw significantly on intangible heritage such as crafts, music, dance, visual arts, traditional cuisine, and theatre that are often an integral aspect of historic urban areas. (Hosagrahar 2017: 13) Taking in view UNESCO’s guidelines in Indian context, ICH is to be best defined as: • • • •

Traditional, contemporary and living at the same time, since it is a dynamic process; Inclusive, since it contributes to social cohesion, encourages a sense of identity and helps to preserve communities and community life; Representative, since it prospers on oral skills passed on from generation to generation; Community based, since it can be defined as heritage only when it is recognized as such by the communities, groups or individuals that create, maintain and transmit it.

The most noteworthy characteristic of ICH, distinguishing it from other forms of heritage, is that it is internalized within individuals and human groups by means of complex learning and experiences which have transformed and carried on in the passage of time. It is a heritage inherent in the bearer community, and, as a result, may be viewed as the ethos of the culture. The staging of celebrations or collective expressions by means of simulated forms of interpretation, when separated from shared and internalized senses and the bonds of identity and emotions derived from them, cannot be considered ICH, however spectacular they might be from the visual perspective. The essence of ‘intangibility’ is an integral part of cultural landscape in India, where the human and natural processes and the resultant heritage represents the evolution, transformation and continuity of traditions. The complex idea of intangibility provides further difficulties to precisely bind it in the UNESCO’s frame of definition. However, another view is to consider that, through an exploration of different conceptualizations of and links between intangibility and landscape, a manifestation of reflection can be revealed that allows for many different meanings to be expressed, images to be perceived, and opportunities for further understandings to be developed of both landscape and heritage (Roe

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2017). The other unique landscape system in India is continuity and superimposition between rural and urban areas. According to the UNESCO ICH Convention 2003, the intangible cultural heritage, or living heritage, is the mainspring of our cultural diversity and its maintenance a guarantee for continuing creativity that are part of a network and interlinking system. UNESCO has broadly classified ICH into five categories: (1) oral traditions and expressions, including language as a vehicle of the intangible cultural heritage; (2) performing arts; (3) social practices, rituals and festive events; (4) knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe; and (5) traditional craftsmanship (UNESCO 2003; Singh 2015). While giving due consideration to the UNESCO Scale of ICH, the Indian perspective of the ICH, specially referring to holy-heritage cities like Ayodhya and Varanasi, could be classified into ten broad categories: (1) oral traditions, (2) performance arts, (3) Ramalila and other Lilas (variety and distinctive; historical), (4) Parikrama/Yatras pilgrimages, (5) rituals and festivals (selective), (6) traditional art and craftsmanship, (7) scholastic traditions, (8) indigenous knowledge and healing tradition, (9) memorials, icons and saints’ associated sites and performances, and (10) birth places and memorials of freedom fighters and literates (see Table 16.1).

Table 16.1 Attributes of Intangible Cultural Heritage: Ayodhya and Varanasi. Se Cultural heritage attributes (selective)

Ayodhya (major/selected ones referred)

Varanasi/Banaras/Kashi (major/selected ones referred)

1

Oral traditions

Rama Katha (religious story telling), Birha; folk songs, singing.

Katha (religious story telling), Birha; folk songs, singing, dancing.

2

Performance arts

Bhajan, Nautanki, Bharat Milap, Lok Nritya (folk dances), Ramajanma Badhai, Ramanami chanting, etc.

classical like Dhrupad, Sanskrit Theatre, Folk dance and singings, Bharat Milap, instrumental and performances

3

Ramalila- Krishnalila (theatre form of the God’s story; varieties, distinctive; historical)

at Bhagvatacharya Smarak Sadan, Bade Sthan, Gola Ghat, Lakshmankila, Janakimahal trust, Ramajanaki Mandir- Sahabganj, Kothaparcha, Fatehganj, etc.

at Ramanagar, Chitrakut, Asi Ghat, Nati Emli, Chetganj, Khojwa, Shivpur, Dashavatar Lila; Krishnalila – (Asi Ghat), Narasimhalila, etc.

4

Parikrama/yatras, pilgrimages

Chaurashikroshi Yatra, Chaudahkroshi Yatra, Panchakroshi Yatra, Ramkot ki Parikrama, Antargriha Parikrama, Kalpavas.

Chaurashikroshi; Panchakroshi; Avimukta; Nagar Pradakshina; Antargriha – Vishveshvara, Omkareshvara, Kedareshvara; Aditya (Sun) Yatra; etc.

5

Rituals and festivals (selective)

HINDU Festivals: Makara Samkranti, Matgajendra mela, Chaitra Navaratri, Rama Navami, Sarayu Mahotsav, Savan Jhula Mela, Krishna Janmasthami, Hanuman Jayanti, Gudara ka Mela, Surya Kunda Mela, MUSLIM Festivals: Muharraum, Idul-fitr/Idel-Juha, Sabbe-rat, etc

HINDU Festivals: Makara Samkranti, Maha Shivaratri, Ganga Dashahara, Krishna Janmasthami, Lolarka Chhata Mela, Naga Nathaiya, Surya Shashthi Chhatha (Karttika Purnima), Buddha Purnima; MUSLIM Festivals: Muharraum, Idul-fitr/Idel-Juha, Sabbe-rat, etc.

6

Traditional art and craftsmanship

Murti casting (sculpturing), wooden work, Special sweets (e.g. Anarsa), special breakfasts- Kachauri and Emarti, Samosa.

Murti casting (sculpturing), Shringar (icon decorative art), Silver work, wooden toy making, Silk weaving (Banarasi Sari), etc. (Continued )

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Intangible dimensions of urban heritage Table 16.1 (Cont). 7

Scholastic traditions and schooling and discourses system

RML Avadh University, Narendra Dev University of Agriculture and Technology, Gurukul Sanskrit Mahavidyalaya, KPSL Saket Mahavidylaya, Rama Naam International Bank.

8

Indigenous knowledge and healing tradition

Sanskrit study, meditation, Ramakatha Nature therapy, Yoga centres and Vyas Pitha (Rama Katha Vachak). tradition, Ayurvedic medicine and centres

9

Memorials, icons and saints’ Shri Rama, Gautam Buddha; Five Jain associated sites and related Tirthankaras: Rishabhadev, Ajeetperformances natha, Abhinandananatha, Sumanthnatha, Anantnatha; Tulasi; Nanak/ other Sikh saints; Muslim Mazars: Hazrat Noah, Shesh Paighambar, Hazrat Sayyad Shah (Adgada Mazar).

10 Birth places and memorials of freedom fighters and literatteurs, and related celebrations

Narendra Deva, Mangal Pandey, Chakbast and Mir Babar Ali Anis (Urdu poet), Umrao Jaan, Begum Akhtar (singer of Ghazal, Dadra, and Thumri genres of Hindustani classical music).

B.H.U., M.G.K. Vidhyapith, S. Sanskrit University, CU Tibetan Studies, Parshvanath Jain Institute, Institute of Textile and Weaving, Udai Pratap PG College, Darul Salfia Islamia,

sites related to Shankarachaya, Tulasi, Kabir, Ravidas, Dadu, Nanak, etc., Rani Lakshmi Bai; Muslim Mazars: Sheikh Salim Chisti, Sheikh Ali Hazim, Shah Taiyyab Banarasi, Ghazi Miyan, Chandan Shahid. Pt Gopinath Kaviraj, L.B. Shastri, Bismillah Khan, Pt. Ravi Shankar, Premchand, Bhartendu Harishchandra, Jaishankar Prasad, Ram Chandra Shukla, Birju Maharaj, Girja Devi, and others.

Source: Rana P. B. Singh

By June 2019, UNESCO’s list for ICH for Humanity already comprised of 508 such representative listings, including 166 ‘Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity’, located in 122 state parties, predominantly in developing countries. India records 13 ICH elements, which include: the traditional performance of the Ramayana, tradition of Vedic chanting, Sanskrit theatre of Kutiyattam, religious festival of Ramman, ritual theatre of Mudiyettu, Kalbelia folk songs, Chhau dance, the Buddhist chanting, ritual singing of Manipur, traditional utensil making, yoga, New Year celebration of Nawrouz, and the biggest bathing festival of Kumbha Mela. Moreover, additionally the two others, i.e., (14) Durga Puja of Kolkata as the best tradition of public performance of religion and art, and (15) Amchi Sowa-Rigpa, a traditional Tibetan system of medicine, will be included in the List in 2020. Among the above ICH elements, the performance of Ramayana and Kumbha Mela are directly connected to the urban heritage of holy cities of India. In addition, pilgrimage circuits are also aspects of intangible heritage that shapes the urban form and space in historic cities in India. We discuss below how these ICH elements are integral parts of historic urban landscapes of the country.

Religious festivals in the urbanscape of historic-holy cities To illustrate the intangible dimensions of urban heritage of holy cities, two cities from north India are taken into consideration, viz. Ayodhya and Varanasi, representing two of the oldest living cities of the world and recording a continuous settlement history since ca 1000 BCE. The seven most sacred and

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Figure 16.1 India: The seven sacred cities, including Ayodhya and Varanasi. Source: Rana P. B. Singh

salvation-endowing (mokshadayini) cities of India include Ayodhya, Varanasi (also known as Banaras or Kashi), Mathura, Maya-Haridvar, Kanchi, Avantika-Ujjain, Puri, and Dvarka (Figure 16.1). Both Ayodhya and Varanasi are located in the Ganga River basin. Ayodhya (latitude of 26°47′16.67″ N and a longitude of 82°11′54.79″ E) is situated on the right bank of the holy river Sarayu (Ghaghara, a major tributary of the Ganga). Varanasi (latitude of 25°19′3.52″N and a longitude of 82°58′26.09″ E) is on the left of the crescent-shaped bank of the Ganga River, and popularly called Kashi or Banaras, and is known as the cultural capital of India. Both cities present examples of traditional habitat, culture and interaction, and the continuity of living traditions of life.

Ramalila at Ramanagar: an example of environmental theatre as ICH Originally proclaimed as ICH in 2005 by the government of India, UNESCO has incorporated the ‘Rāmalila’ – traditional performance of the Rāmāyana in its representative list of ICH 90 declared on 4 November 2008. The Ramalila is a dramatization of the epic journey of Rama, the seventh incarnation of the Hindu God Vishnu. The Ramalila, a theatrical form of story of the Ramacharitamanasa (old

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Ramayana), is performed in a series of scenes that include song, narration, recital and dialogue. It is performed across northern India during the festival of Dashahra, held each year according to the ritual calendar in autumn (September–October, Hindu month of Ashvina). The most representative Ramalilas are those of Ayodhya, Ramanagar and Banaras, Vrindavan, Almora, and Madhubani. The Ramalila of Ramanagar is unique in the whole world. In the city of Banaras, Ramalila holds for different periods at different sites according to their tradition and historicity, ranging from the period of ten days to 31 days (Singh 2009a: 305–309). Ramalila recalls the battle between Rama and Ravana and consists of a series of dialogues between gods, sages and the faithful. Ramalila’s dramatic force stems from the succession of icons representing the climax of each scene. The audience is invited to sing and take part in the narration. The Ramalila brings the whole population together, without distinction of caste, religion or age. All the dwellers of the township participate spontaneously, playing roles or taking part in a variety of related activities, such as mask and costume making, and preparing make-up, effigies and lights. However, the development of mass media, particularly television soap operas, is leading to a reduction in the audience of the Ramalila plays, which are therefore losing their principal role of bringing people and communities together. Nevertheless, Ramalila at Ramanagar is still surviving in its traditional form. The township of Ramanagar is known for the Gate of the Fort, Royal Museum and the Ramalila. The Fort was built in 1752. The Ramalila is performed for 31 days during September–October. This performance is an example of environmental theatre in natural setting, which takes place at 20 locales, where different events are held such as birth of Rama (no. 1), wedding procession (no. 6), killing of Bali (no. 18), the battle (no. 22–26), meeting the brothers (no. 29), and coronation and sermon (no. 30–31) (Figure 16.2). Udit Narayan Singh (1796–1835), the former king of Varanasi, started this in 1800, but the location of the sites and scenes were finalised only in 1825, when the Girja (Durga) temple was built. In the regime of Ishvari Narayan Singh (1835–1889), all the dialogues and citations were finally composed with the help of scholars, priests and most notably Bhartendu Harishachandra (1840–1885), known as the father of modern Hindi. In the chain and continuity of the kings, the last one, Maharaja Vibhuti Narayan Singh (1927–2000), was a lifelong patron of the Ramalila and was the key figure in making the play internationally acclaimed and known (that is how this lila is referred to as ‘Maharaja’s Ramalila’). By his death on 25 December 2000, a great setback to the Ramalila occurred; his successor, Ananta Narayan Singh, is trying to sustain the Ramalila in its traditional form, pattern, dialogues, involvement and selection of actors and spatial arrangement (Figure 16.2). The total area in which the lila spreads is about 260ha. On average, 10,000 people watch it every day; but on special days, like that of the killing of demon Ravana and Bharat Milap (meeting of brothers, the 29th day, near the King’s palace), the number of spectators reaches over half a million. In fact, the whole area becomes a part of natural setting in which an ‘environmental theatre’ serves as moving platform: various scenes and incidences are performed at different places and, according to the scene, the performance moves and the audience and spectaculars follow the moving actors and scenes in action. The enactment of Rama’s exile and wandering, triumph over the evil Ravana, and subsequent return to rightful kingship provides an occasion for, and in many respect parallels, the widespread practice of Hinduism. The performance style of this Lila is an amalgamation of the wordless tableaux (the jhanki) and processional drama where the actors move from place to place and exchange dialogues. The Ramalila of Ramanagar is the only such performance where no modern means of light and fixed stages are used. The grounds of Ramalila belongs to the royal family, but the organization, maintenance, performance and management of Ramalila are under the jurisdiction of the All India Kashiraj Trust, located in the Ramanagar Fort in Varanasi. No specific measures are taken to conserve the Ramalila and its performance sites, except at the level of whitewashing and a little repairing by the royal family. There is

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Figure 16.2 Ramalila at Ramanagar, Varanasi: 31-day performances at 20 sites. Source: Rana P. B. Singh

no such specific organization to take care of preservation and conservation; however, the All India Kashiraj Trust has a special task-force committee to look after the maintenance, management and performance of the Ramalila. Ayodhya also records a history of performing a traditional form of Ramalila at many places in the city. The notable one is known as anavarat (‘continue without break’) Ramalila, organized by the

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Ayodhya Research Institute in their premises for last fifteen years. In every evening, the performance presents scenes of traditions from different parts of India, and sometimes from other South and Southeast Asian countries. This is sponsored by the Department of Culture of the state government of Uttar Pradesh. On the line of theme-based pilgrimage circuits related to Rama’s story, an abbreviated form of Ramayana circuit, linking twelve sites in and around the city, has been started in 2017, and now this is serving as a rich intangible heritage resource for the city’s development.

Kumbha Mela, Allahabad (Prayagaraj) Festivals at sacred sites (melas) in India are a vital part of Hindu pilgrimage tradition. The Kumbha Mela (the festival of the Sacred Pitcher), inscribed as ICH in 2017, is one of such melas, during which participants bathe or take a dip in a holy river. This festival is held four times every twelve years, rotating between the holy cities of Allahabad (Prayagaraj) located at the confluence of the Rivers Ganga, Yamuna and the mythical Sarasvati; Nasik on the Godavari River; Ujjain on the Shipra River; and Haridvar on the Ganga (Figure 16.3), and is attended by millions of people irrespective of caste,

Figure 16.3 Kumbha Mela sites in India. Source: Rana P. B. Singh

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creed or gender. Bathing in these rivers during the Kumbha Mela is considered an endeavour of great merit, cleansing both body and spirit. The Allahabad and Haridvar festivals are routinely attended by millions of pilgrims (13 million visited Allahabad in 1977, some 18 million in 1989, over 68 million in 2001, over 70 million in 2013, and over 105 million in 2019), making the Kumbha Mela the largest religious gathering in the world. It may also be the oldest (Dubey 2001). There are two traditions that determine the origin and location and timing of the festival. The origins of the location of Kumbha Mela are found in ancient texts known as the Puranas, which tell about a battle between gods and demons wherein four drops of nectar (amrita) were supposed to have fallen to earth on these mela sites (Singh and Rana 2002: 294–295). The second tradition establishes the timeframe and is connected to astrological phenomena. The following list demonstrates the astrological periods of the four melas and the years of their most recent and near future occurrences: • • • •

Allahabad (Prayaga) – when Jupiter is in Aries or Taurus and the Sun and Moon are in Capricorn during the Hindu month of Magha (January–February): 1965, 1977, 1989, 2001, 2012, 2024, 2036. Haridvar – when Jupiter is in Aquarius and the Sun is in Aries during the Hindu month of Chaitra (March–April): 1962, 1974, 1986, 1998, 2010, 2021, and 2033. Ujjain – when Jupiter is in Leo and the Sun is in Aries, or when Jupiter, the Sun, and the Moon are in Libra during the Hindu month of Vaishakha (April–May); 1968, 1980, 1992, 2004, 2016, 2028, 2040. Nasik – when Jupiter and the Sun are in Leo in the Hindu month of Bhadrapada (August–September): 1956, 1968, 1980, 1992, 2003, 2015, 2027.

Its primary bearers, however, belong to akhadas and ashrams, religious organizations, or individuals living on alms. Kumbha Mela plays a central spiritual role in the country, exerting a mesmeric influence on ordinary Indians. The event encapsulates multiple aspects of the country’s intangible heritage – the science of astronomy, astrology, spirituality, ritualistic traditions, and socio-cultural customs and practices – making it extremely rich in knowledge. As it is held in four different cities in India, it involves different social and cultural activities, making this a culturally diverse festival. Knowledge and skills related to the tradition are transmitted through ancient religious manuscripts, oral traditions, historical travelogues and texts produced by eminent historians. However, the teacher–student relationship of the sadhus in the ashrams and akhadas remains the most important method of imparting and safeguarding knowledge and skills relating to Kumbha Mela.

Pilgrimage circuits and their spatial manifestation as ICH in holy cities Through the centuries, Hindu devotees have engaged in pilgrimage travel to find what is timeless and eternal to renew them physically and spiritually. As well, pilgrims also share a bond with those who have walked the pilgrim’s path in the past through replicating their sacred journey (Singh 2013). As such, pilgrimage in Hindu religious tradition is a process of gaining access to the ‘way’ or going from a mundane state to a state of transcendence through engagement with the spirit of sacred places, where faith is increased, regulated, constantly revived through rituals performed along the way and at sacred destinations (cf. Singh 2009b: 76). In historic and holy urban landscapes, the intangible heritage shapes the sacred boundaries at different levels, ranging from the core area (axis mundi), mostly having central nexus, to outer and regional boundaries (Jigyasu 2015). These boundaries are implemented and reinforced through processional routes conceptualized into a metaphysical frame, respectively as micro-, meso-, and macro-cosmos (Singh and Rana 2018). The spiritual homology of the sacred territories further shows the interlinking relationship between

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human beings and the cosmos, occurring in a strong state of connection to the sacred, where ‘one sees one’s own soul’ (Singh 1994: 194). The idea of sacrality demarcated by these routes suggests order (spatial limit), wholeness (cosmological representation), and power (faith system) of ‘belief-place-nexus’ (Singh 2002). These three perspectives of sacredness may be compared to the notion of territoriality which provides a form of classification by boundary, and a form of enforcement or control by a belief system that represent intangible heritage in a historic urban landscape (Singh 2002; Jigyasu 2015). In both Varanasi and Ayodhya, the Panchakroshi pilgrimage routes represent such an example.

Panchakroshi Yatra, Varanasi According to prescribed and conventionally accepted rules, pilgrims that participate in the Panchakroshi Yatra are to complete the pilgrimage over a period of six-days, staying overnight at five ‘halt stations’, where there are 44 dharmashalas (or pilgrims’ rest houses) for pilgrims to choose from. Of the total 108 shrines and images attached to this route, 56 are associated with Shiva, 11 with Vinayakas (Ganesha), and 10 with the Shiva’s assistants (Figure 16.4). The most auspicious period for participating

Figure 16.4 Varanasi: Panchakroshi Yatra Circuit and 108 associated shrines and temples. Source: Rana P. B. Singh

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in this pilgrimage is the intercalary month of the leap year, referred to as the mala-masa, the ‘month of pollution’, or adhi-masa (the ‘extra month’). According to the Hindu lunar almanac, there will be 37 mala-masas between 1945 and 2047. The recent most one fell between 16 May to 13 June 2018 (Hindu month of Jyestha). According to our recent survey during this period, over 74,000 Hindus (pilgrims 44.0%, and pilgrimage-tourists 56.0%) performed this pilgrimage. The longitudinal studies conducted earlier show that there has been no noticeable cultural change regarding the Panchakroshi pilgrimage outside of its socio-structural aspects. As well, there seems to be an increasing tendency for pilgrims to use vehicles and other modes of transportation while performing the pilgrimage (Singh and Rana 2018).

Pilgrimage routes in Ayodhya Ayodhya has developed five pilgrimage routes in the passage of time, viz. Chaurasikroshi, Chaudahakroshi, Panchakroshi, Ramkot ki Parikrama and Antargrihi Parikrama. Among these, the latter two are minor and relatively less popular (Figure 16.5). The three major pilgrimage routes of Chaurasikroshi, Chaudahakroshi, and Panchakroshi define the three sacred territorial limits of Ayodhya. Like most of the pan-Indian holy centres, Ayodhya too displays a three-tier cosmogonic territory, respectively as macro- (i.e. mandala, the Outer one), meso- (i.e. Kshetra, the Middle one), and micro- (i.e. Puri/city, inner sanctum) cosmos; all are demarcated by routes and linked archetypally by temples/shrines and are described in the ancient mythologies, which are frequently cited in various rituals, group-chanting and sacred walks. Panchakroshi represents the microcosm (Puri/City, inner sanctum) in three-tier cosmology of Ayodhya. The Panchakroshi Yatra is organized on auspicious day of Ekadashi (11th day in waxing

Figure 16.5 Ayodhya: Pilgrimage Routes. Source: Sarvesh Kumar and Rana P. B. Singh

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Krishna Paksha, dark fortnight) of Karttika month (October-November); the day is sacred in Hindu religion as it is related to god Vishnu, the god of sustenance in the trinity of Hindu. The pilgrimage journey takes more than five hours to complete and is associated with many sacred places, ghats, and water-pools of Ayodhya. More than 50,000 pilgrims have participated in the Panchakroshi in 2018. Pilgrims first take holy dip in the Sarayu River as purification ritual, then start Panchakroshi Yatra barefooted, and most of pilgrims perform the journey without eating and intake of water. As per the rule, Panchakroshi Yatra always starts and ends at the same point. On the way, pilgrims pay darshana (auspicious glimpse) to deities at the sacred places which are linked on the route. Traditionally, Panchakroshi starts from Lakshman Ghat along the Sarayu River (Figure 16.5), and passes through Svargadvara Ghat or Naya Ghat; however, presently local people start Panchakroshi from the nearest sacred places of their home (Kumar and Singh 2015). Mauni Baba ka Sthana (the place of reticent or silent sage) is the main halt station of Panchakroshi journey. The pilgrims perform the three main rituals in the whole journey; starting first snana (holy bathing) in the Sarayu River, second conducting dhyana (meditation) and performing pujas at various sacred places that are associated with Panchakroshi, and third performing dana, donating food and money to the poor (Kumar and Singh 2013). On this occasion pilgrims also offer sugarcane and sweet-potato to various deities while following local traditions. The intangible heritage practices are the integral part of making and re-creating sacred geography and liveability in the urbanscapes, therefore help to maintain the cultural identity of the holy-heritage cities. In the context of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) as discussed above (see Table 16.1), Ayodhya and Banaras, are both fully suited to be designated as a site of intangible cultural heritages and their associated attributes be given place in the inclusive heritage development on the scale of SDGs. Remember that ICH are the ethereal breath (prāṇa) of heritagescapes; therefore, their role in holistic development should receive attention. In the case of the pilgrimage journeys and intangible activities, while there have been attempts to improve the routes, financial issues and the lack of political and public will have caused these attempts to fail at different levels. If something is not done to fix the failing infrastructure and aesthetics of these resources, then in many ways it would cost the hearts and souls of thousands of pilgrims who perform this pilgrimage and be part of intangible activities every year.

Shaping sustainable heritage city system in India The structuring, shaping and operating of the Sustainable Heritage City (SHC) system may be arranged into a 6-tier operation: (1) setting the vision for SHC of the venture; (2) identifying the SDGs Target 11.4 and Inclusive Heritage Development, IHD, strategies; (3) achieving the political cohesion; (4) building the SHC frame; (5) measuring the SHC’s potential and the progress; and (6) ensure accountability and responsibility (see Table 16.2). The structural shaping is rationally befitting both of the cities, Ayodhya and Varanasi. In the successful operation of the Sustainable Heritage City System, community participation together with performances of ICH is the key energy in the functioning and maintenance of the system by making rational balance among social (religious and cultural heritage), physical (housing and community development), and economic (cultural-heritage tourism) attributes of heritage-holy city.

Heritage and pilgrimage inclusive development: framing HRIDAY and PRASAD To integrate heritage conservation and tourism with national development, the Ministry of Tourism and Culture and the Ministry of Urban Development of the Government of India have recently conceptualized two innovative and appropriate national programmes of interfacing and counter-depending missions: (i) Heritage City Development and Augmentation Yojana (HRIDAY), and (ii) Pilgrimage

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Rana P.B. Singh et al. Table 16.2 Shaping Sustainable Heritage City (SHC) System. 1. Setting the vision for SHC of the venture:↓

Identifying – an Inclusive heritage city vision is tune with the heritage city’s identity and long-term Inclusive heritage development, IHD, strategy; relevant multi-stakeholders and mechanisms; the existing governance and organizational mechanisms for historic heritage city solutions

2. Identifying the SDGs Tr. 11.4 and IHD Strategies↓

Developing heritage city infrastructure (e.g., Internet of Things); Identifying and developing smart and sustainable heritage city services in the purview of SDGs Target 11.4 containing within the so-called ‘Urban Sustainable Development Goals’.

3. Achieving the Political Cohesion↓

Local governments should obtain the necessary political approval and backing to ensure that the strategic programme is pursued as related to IHD. This includes the adoption of the programme/targets through consensus

4. Building the SHC Frame↓

Improvement of existing traditional infrastructure and new infra-structure must be built under the IHD; developing an action plan for Public-Private Partnerships programmes; ensuring long term services via good operationmaintenance of Sustainable Heritage City, SHC.

5. Measuring the SHC’s Potential and the Progress↓

Consisting of monitoring and evaluating potential and work programme required to achieve the UN – SDGs Target 11.4, emphasizing a set of sustainable development targets related to heritage cities and heritage sites and settlements.

6. Ensure Accountability and Responsibility↓

Involves evaluating, reporting and learning from SHC process and related experiences. The reflective process of evaluation will feed into a process of continuous learning, which in turn will influence and inform the IHD of the future vision and strategy for smart and SHC

Source: Kumar (2018)

Rejuvenation And Spiritual Augmentation Drive (PRASAD). In both programmes, the ministries of Culture and Tourism and Urban Development plan to collaborate to strengthen and promote heritage sites and centres of pilgrimage-tourism by making the environment green and sustainable while befitting into the roots of culture, traditions and society and also image of sites. The three major sites selected earlier at priority level include Varanasi, Mathura, and Ajmer. Under the banner of new government in Uttar Pradesh, an agreement between the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the government of Uttar Pradesh has been made on 24 March 2017 to develop and transform five cities as special sites for intangible cultural heritage and religious tourism. The five cities are Ayodhya, Varanasi, Mathura, Gorakhpur, and Agra. Special plans are under preparation for conservation and rejuvenation of heritage and religious sites in these cities to promote pilgrimage-tourism and spiritual message for global harmony (Singh 2015). The national mission on the Heritage City Development and Augmentation Yojana (HRIDAY) aims for the conservation of distinct characters of the heritage cities, those maintaining the continuity of their traditions of heritage (tangible, intangible, and cultural landscapes, including written, oral, and performed ones), and they would be used as a resource for sustainable development and ecological restoration. Heritage development here means not only the beautification of the city and conservation of the heritage site but also the sustainable development of the entire city with respect to its cleanliness, planning, and livelihood of the local people and economy.

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Cultural heritage sites are true representative of the divine order and human’s deep faith involvement, that is how it may be accepted as a religious ‘resource’, but it has scientific, recreational, aesthetic, economic and sacramental values too. Thus, the metaphorical meaning of ‘HRIDAY’ (literally ‘heart’) is the core concern for the ‘inclusive-sustainable development of heritage-and-pilgrimage cities’ in India. This frame would be taken as the core concern under the HRIDAY Programme. The protection, augmentation, management, authenticity and integrity of properties (both tangible and intangible) are also important considerations, together with the above specific characteristics (Singh 2015). In the above context, three basic meanings are embedded in the process, that include: a political meaning – to assure responsibility for the decisions; a cultural meaning – to save culture rootedness and sense of continuity; and a didactic meaning – to promote citizen’s participation. With a view to beautify and improve the amenities and infrastructure at pilgrimage centres of all faiths, a national mission on Pilgrimage Rejuvenation And Spiritual Augmentation Drive (PRASAD) has been announced and an amount of 1000 million Indian rupees (US$ 15 million) in the national government’s budget for 2014–2015 has been proposed for this initiative. Under PRASAD, the old historical-cultural pilgrimage routes and associated sites would also be developed. These two schemes together plan to achieve the following objectives: • • • • • • • •

Planning, development and implementation of heritage sensitive infrastructure. Service delivery and infrastructure provisioning in historic city core areas. Preserve and revitalize heritage wherein tourists can connect directly with city’s unique character. Develop and document a heritage asset inventory of cities – natural, cultural, living and built heritage as a basis for urban planning, growth and service provision and delivery. Implementation and enhancement of basic services delivery with the focus on sanitation services like public conveniences, toilets, water taps, street lights with use of latest technologies in improving tourist facilities/amenities. Local capacity enhancement for inclusive heritage-based industry. Create effective linkages between tourism and cultural facilities and also the conservation of natural and built heritage. Urban heritage adaptive rehabilitation and maintenance, including appropriate technologies for historic buildings retrofitting.

The interconnectivity and reciprocity between pilgrimage and tourism are an integral part of human travel. That is how ‘pilgrimage-tourism’ is conceived as a solution for the alternative to modern tourism; this is more inclined to spirituality and peace. Pilgrimage-tourism is considered now as a strategy for heritage awakening, deeper experiences and transferring the religiosity into global humanism and spirituality (Rana 2014). The sustainable frame of pilgrimage-tourism and heritage should be promoted in philosophical, organizational, and managerial ways. The eco-healing approach to pilgrimage-tourism is considered as a post-modernist way to consider pilgrimage as a bridge between recreation and spirituality. In this way, pilgrimage-tourism will provide a rational alternative for cultural consciousness and strategy for poverty alleviation. A deeper sense of attachment to places is a pre-requisite for spiritual awakening. Once one can develop deep feelings (of love) to a place that would help care for it – a path that helps one to have realization leading to revelation. As the ‘caring for the place (the Earth)’ is inherent in the pilgrimagetourism, it provides opportunity to intimately sense and feel deeply for the place and the people – their behaviour, their heritage, and the present in which they live, act, and keep the glorious tradition alive. The approach to study tourism has so far been the study of its economic activity. This focus limits the scope and answers to many questions posed as consequence to modern tourism. On the line of

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‘commodification approach’, proposed by Ashworth (1991: 111), the ‘eco-healing package’ may be explained here which extends the horizon of potential resources in pilgrimage-tourism as an alternative tourism, expected that it will fulfil the objectives of PRASAD. The state government of Uttar Pradesh has recently made agreement with central government to promote pilgrimages centres of north India, viz. Mathura, Ayodhya, Varanasi, and Gorakhpur – associated predominantly with particular religious sect, i.e. Krishnavites, Ramaiates, Shaivites, and Nath Yogis, respectively. In these holy cities, for overall development, ICH will be given special consideration, keeping and maintaining their cultural personality evolved in the past and illustrated with notable festivities, art, sculptures, performances, religious rituals and chanting, etc.

Sustainable development and intangible heritage Unlike the Millennium Development Goals, as a result of a concerted effort from many sectors, the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) contain an explicit heritage target, Target 11.4, it calls for making cities and human settlements inclusive, and safeguard the world’s cultural and natural heritage. The Target is contained within the so-called ‘Urban Sustainable Development Goals’, a set of sustainable development targets related to heritage cities and settlements. Of course, the SDGs is focused on achieving representation of heritage in the major policy papers of Agenda 2030, focus has been shifted to ‘implementation’ through public participation and PPP (public–private partnership). Therefore, the mission that ICOMOS has given its Focal Point for the SDGs in the new term is to ‘steer a coordinated process of advocacy to advance the implementation of UN Agenda 2030 SDGs and Habitat NUA (New Urban Agenda) from the perspective of cultural and natural heritage, within the framework of the ICOMOS mandate and inputs from strategic partners’ (Yildirim 2016: 1). The NUA, a framework laying out how cities should be planned and managed to best promote sustainable urbanization within the purview of culture and cultural heritage that will keep the vitality and image of holy-heritage cities. Activities toward accomplishing this mission include liaising with stakeholders at national, regional and local level (e.g. holy-heritage cities like Ayodhya and Varanasi), and across governance sectors (public, private, civil society, experts/academia), in particular for: 1. Localizing implementation, by providing guidance and direction to stakeholders to adopt tools of implementation, 2. Monitoring implementation, with a focus on Indicator Target 11.4.1 defined by the UN (expenditure and share of budgets allocated to heritage) to achieve consistent and comprehensive data collection, 3. General advocacy, for mainstreaming culture and heritage within sustainable development, by increasing visibility and outreach across the UN system and the public sphere. The SDGs Target 11.4 reads, ‘Strengthen efforts to protect and safeguard the world’s cultural and natural heritage.’ From the perspective of historic preservation in the ancient culture like India, the goal looks great, the target thought to be good, but the indicator in view of the contemporary scenario, frankly, is terrible. While making plans and strategies in this direction, the hard realities to be kept serious consideration: (1) while the SDGs set targets for nations, most of the implementation will need to take place preferably at the city level; (2) the SDGs have much to say about what but much less about how or by whom; and (3) goals are great, but the real tests of success will be implementation, bottom up experimentation, and localization in a way that it befits to the tune and mood of urban culture! Considering all the diagnostic niches and consequences, let us march and make ‘pilot models’ at the level of holy-heritage city, like Banaras and Ayodhya. Following of the six such procedures

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represent a direct commitment to heritage conservation in the spectrum of SDGs and NUA (Rypkema 2016): • • • • • •

Leverage ICH and overall cultural heritage to strengthen social participation and the exercise of citizenship by reviving the age-old traditions and performance; Develop vibrant, sustainable, and inclusive urban economies, building on ICH and cultural heritage; Support urban economies through promoting heritage conservation activities; Promote regeneration while preserving cultural heritage, while vitalizing the messages carried and aesthetics involved; Include culture as a priority component of urban plans and strategies that safeguard cultural heritage; and Support leveraging ICH and cultural heritage for sustainable urban development, together with Master Plans and Comprehensive Development Plan, CDP.

Conclusion Conserving heritage renews a sense of identity and can inspire new smart and sustainable pilgrimage city and sacred town development patterns, with an emphasis on the valorization of the assets of the poor. In the other context of SDGs of social sustainability of heritage city is based on social groups of local living peoples, pilgrims, and sadhus (Hindu religious ascetic), resulting into social beliefs in the form of intangible cultural heritage. According to the ancient history, Varanasi and Ayodhya have been the holy-heritage cities where various social groups through the religious faiths of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Islam (mostly Sufism) meet together in making multiple visitation sites of heritage importance and nexus of harmonious life. As one of the largest industries, tourism is associated with many of the prime sectors of the world’s economy. The economic sustainability of Varanasi and Ayodhya is regulated by annual visit of tourists, around recorded two million, in each of the places, in 2017. Both pilgrimage cities bear various interrelated phenomena to which people are affiliated with belief system, faith, and spiritual merits. Thus, pilgrimage-tourism could promote, sustain and maintain economic and cultural sustainability. A recent study remarks that [i]f the urban SDG is to prove useful as a tool as intended for encouraging local and national authorities alike to make positive investments in the various components of urban sustainability transitions, then it must be widely relevant, acceptable and practicable. (Simon et al. 2016: 60) This is valid in the case of Indian heritage cities, where one always faces the problem of linking locality and universality. Taking into account demand, pressure response, and multifactor versus single factor, and also considering two metrics: the traditional dimensions of sustainability (equity, economics, and environment) and the later against forming the Liveability Principles of Partnership for Sustainable Communities (PSC), making a bridge between the age-old traditions and high-tech smart city plans, would make a platform where both old and new meet in a way that make and maintain the heritage city. Urban environments offer a variety of spaces that can host ICH and related transmission and training activities such as cultural centres, museums, libraries and theatres. Conversely, the move from surrounding rural to nearby urban centres may also make it easy to find appropriate performance and other spaces for the enactment and revival of ICH. In an urban context, ICH frequently has a close

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interaction with the physical fabric of the urban centres in which it is performed, practised and enacted, and examples of where safeguarding cultural spaces and places for the performance of ICH has become an issue of major importance and as a levering tool for the urban development (Blake 2016). This is already used in the on-going Master Plans of the two holy cities of Ayodhya and Varanasi. In ancient cultural tradition of urban centres, like South Asia, development of sacred cities while making a bridge between historicity and modernity, the role of cultural attributes is essential because they serve as the nexus of regulating the life and vitality. Think cosmically, see globally, behave regionally, and act locally but insightfully. This is an appeal for cosmic vision, global humanism, and self-realization on the path towards SDGs Target 11.4 in making holy-heritage cities vibrant and liveable centre of global harmony, spiritual awakening, peace and a deeper understanding where ICH has to play a distinct role in developing and maintaining urban landscapes (Singh 2017: 26).

References Aikawa-Faure, N. (2009) ‘From the proclamation of masterpieces to the convention for the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage’, in L. Smith and N. Akagawa (eds.) Intangible heritage, London: Routledge, 13–44. Ashworth, G.J. (1991) Heritage planning. Conservation as the management of urban change, Groningen, The Netherlands: GeoPers. Bandarin, F. and van Oers, R. (2012) The Historic Urban Landscape: Managing heritage in an urban century, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Blake, J. (2016) ‘Safeguarding intangible cultural heritage in the urban environment: Some experiences gained from implementing UNESCO’s 2003 convention’, in S. Labadi and W. Logan (eds.) Urban heritage, development and sustainability, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 109–128. Dubey, D.P. (2001) Prayā ga, the site of Kumbha Mela, New Delhi: Aryan International Publisher. Eggeling, J. (trans.) Shathapatha Brāhmaṇa. (1882) Sacred books of the east series, vols. 12, 26, 41, 43, 44. Oxford: The Claredon Press; reprinted in 1989 by Delhi: Motilal Banaridass; (originally dated circa BCE 1500). Hosagrahar, J. (2017) ‘Culture: At the heart of SDGs’, The UNESCO Courier: Many Voices, One World, No. 1(April– June), Paris: UNESCO, 12–14. Jigyasu, R. (2015) ‘The intangible dimension of urban heritage’, in F. Bandarin and R. van Oers (eds.) Reconnecting the city: The Historic Urban Landscape Approach and the future of urban heritage, Chichester: WileyBlackwell, 129–144. Kumar, S. (2018) Cultural landscape and heritage of Ayodhya-Faizabad: A geographical analysis, an unpublished Ph.D. thesis in Geography. Varanasi: Banaras Hindu University. Kumar, S. and Singh, R.P.B. (2013) ‘Waterfront cultural landscape of Ayodhya (India), an ancient sacred abode of gods’, South Asian Affairs (Gifu Women’s University, Japan), 9(1): 6–17. ———. (2015) ‘Interfaces of Hindu pilgrimage routes and agricultural landscape: A study of Ayodhya, India’, in N. Kohdrata (ed.) Proceedings, 4th ACLA International Symposium on Agricultural Landscape of Asia: Learning, Preserving, and Redefining: 11–13 September 2015, Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia: Udayana University, 38–49. ———. (2017) ‘Rationales for inscribing “the heritage sites, riverfront and pilgrimages routes of Ayodhya” in the UNESCO World Heritage List’, Sthāpatyam, Indian Journal of Architecture and Art, 3(9): 51–77. Modwel, N. (2017) ‘Community involvement in cultural mapping and safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage in India’, in G. Chitty (ed.) Heritage, conservation and communities: Engagement, participation and capacity building, London: Routledge, 78–91. Narayanan, Y. (2015) Religion, heritage and the sustainable city, London: Routledge. Rana, P.S. (2014) Pilgrimage tourism: A study of Varanasi, Sagar: SRME Publishers. Roe, M. (2017) ‘Landscape and intangible cultural heritage: Interactions, memories and meanings’, in M. Stefano and P. Davis (eds.) The Routledge companion to intangible cultural heritage, London: Routledge, 317–332. Rypkema, D. (2016)Habitat III: Quito, SDGs, NUA, UN-Habitat, and heritage. [Online]. Available HTTP: http:// forum.savingplaces.org/blogs/special-contributor/2016/11/01/quito-sdgs-nua-un-habitat-and-heritage (accessed 29 April 2018). Said, E. (1994) Culture and imperialism, Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin. Simon, D., Arfvidsson, H., Anand, G., et al. (2016) ‘Developing and testing the urban sustainable development goal’s targets and indicators – A five-city study’, Environment and Urbanization, 28(1): 49–63.

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Intangible dimensions of urban heritage Singh, R.P.B. (1994) ‘Sacred geometry of India’s Holy City, Varanasi: Kashi as cosmogram’, National Geographical Journal of India, 40(1–4): 189–216. ———. (1995) ‘Heritage ecology and caring for the Earth: A search for preserving harmony and ethical values’, National Geographical Journal of India, 41(2): 191–218. ———. (2002) Towards the pilgrimage archetype. The Panchakroshi Yatra of Banaras, Pilgrimage and Cosmology Series: 3. Varanasi: Indica Books. ———. (2009a) ‘Making the heritagescape: Intangible’, in R.P.B. Singh, (ed.) Banaras: Making of India’s heritage city, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 303–321. ———. (2009b) Geographical thoughts in India: Snapshots and visions for the 21st century, Planet Earth and Cultural Understanding Series, Pub. 2. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ———. (2013) Hindu tradition of pilgrimage: Sacred space and system, New Delhi: Dev Publishers. ———. (2015) ‘Banaras, the cultural capital of India: Visioning cultural heritage and planning’, SANDHI, A Journal of Interfacing Science-Heritage and Technology-Tradition of India [IIT Kharagpur, India], 1(1): 100–128. ———. (2017) ‘Appraising the Indian cultural landscape: Envisioning ecological cosmology in the 21st century’, North Eastern Geographer (Guwahati, India), 39(1–2): 3–28. Singh, R.P.B. and Rana, P.S. (2002) Banaras region: Spiritual and cultural guide, Varanasi: Indica Books. ———. (2018) ‘Kashi and Cosmos, India: Pilgrimage circuit of the Panchakroshi Yatra’, in D. Olsen and A. Trono (eds.) Religious pilgrimage routes and trails, Oxfordshire, UK: CABI, 167–179. UNESCO. (2003) Convention for the safeguarding of the intangible cultural heritage, Paris: UNESCO. ———. (2005) Convention on the protection and promotion of the diversity of cultural expressions, Paris: UNESCO. Yildirim, E. (ed. compiled) (2016) ICOMOS focal point for the UN sustainable development goals, Agenda for 2017–18. Istanbul: ICOMOS. Available HTTP: www.icomos.org/images/DOCUMENTS/Secretariat/2016/ICOMOS_ Focal_Point_for_SDGs_112016/ICOMOS_FP_SDG_Memo_201611241.pdf (accessed 15 December 2017).

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17 CULTURAL ROUTES IN CHINA The urban heritage trails of Chóngqing Junli Chen and David Jones

Introduction Cultural routes are an important part of cross-national terrestrial and aquatic cultural landscapes. Often developed for trade, like the Silk Road or China’s Grand Canal or the Suez Canal, they can also embody cultural values like religious pilgrimage, defence corridors like the Great Wall of China or the Kokoda Trail, or spiritual journeys like the Australian songline network. In the last 20 years, ICOMOS has recognized the merit and absence of this cultural heritage type in its Lists and Declaration’s/Charter’s, identifying it as a ‘gap’, prompting many nations to revisit their World Heritage Lists and their national heritage tapestries to see whether such corridors exist and possess international heritage merit. In the case of China, cultural heritage is still in its infancy as a discipline and philosophy. While international places like the Grand Canal, the Great Wall and the terracotta army at Xi’an have been subject to considerable research, government activity and investment, there is need of investigation of cultural routes topic in China’s context. The mountain-city trails in Chóngqìng embody the urban planning philosophy of ancient Chóngqìng and local culture of the place. As a potential exemplar of a cultural route in China’s context, its character has been threatened by fast urbanization that is eroding its importance as an urban pattern and heritage of the city. This chapter reviews ICOMOS’s concept of Cultural Routes as a cultural heritage type internationally, with a focus upon China and its corresponding relationship with the Historic Urban Landscape concept. This discussion raises challenges and opportunities for urban cultural heritage conservation in China.

Cultural routes and Historic Urban Landscapes In the 1200s, Venetian Marco Polo (1254–1324) set out on a journey westward that is now celebrated as the ‘Silk Road’. The Silk Road has long been recognized as a highly significant trade and exchange route, a journey through multiple cultural histories, and a vehicle that enabled major transmissions and exchange of technology, food, culture, and art between the ‘East’ and ‘West’. Today, the cultural heritage of the Silk Road has been elevated into World Heritage status in recognition of its contribution to human history (Zhan 2013). The World Heritage citation for the ‘Silk Roads: The Routes Network of Chang’an-Tianshan Corridor’, a property of approximately 5,000 km stretching from Chang’an/Luoyang, the central

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capital of China in the Han and Tang dynasties, to the Zhetysu region of Central Asia, states that: The Silk Roads were an interconnected web of routes linking the ancient societies of Asia, the Subcontinent, Central Asia, Western Asia and the Near East, and contributed to the development of many of the world’s great civilizations. They represent one of the world’s preeminent long-distance communication networks stretching as the crow flies to around 7,500 km but extending to in excess of 35,000 km along specific routes. While some of these routes had been in use for millennia, by the 2nd century BC the volume of exchange had increased substantially, as had the long distance trade between east and west in high value goods, and the political, social and cultural impacts of these movements had far-reaching consequences upon all the societies that encountered them. (UNESCO 2014: 1) The Silk Road, or rather Roads, is an exemplar of the emergent ‘cultural routes’ definition now being pursued by ICOMOS internationally (Jokilehto et al. 2005). Significant cultural routes, whether land-based and/or water-based, are a current topic among ICOMOS internationally and its representatives (Blair 2013; M. R. Taylor 2013). These are journey routes that humans used that changed the course of national, regional and or international histories and cultures. Such a definitional scope brings to mind the pilgrimage Routes of Santiago de Compostela: Camino Francés and Routes of Northern Spain (UNESCO 2015); the Natchez Trace in the United States (Daniels 1962); Gandhi’s Salt March in India (Thakar 2017); Krishna’s walk around the Govardhan Parvat in India (Chhaya 2000; Chhaya et al. 2014); the inland waterway of China’s Grand Canal (Q. Chen 2015); Admiral Zheng He’s maritime voyage of discovery in 1421 (Menzies 2002); the slave routes that brought indentured labour from the Pacific islands to Australia or from Africa to the Indian Ocean islands (Allam and Jones, Chapter 36, this volume; Jokilehto et al. 2005: 84); the Kokoda Trail in Papua New Guinea (MacInnis 2007); and the Aboriginal songlines (‘dreaming tracks’) in Australia (Chatwin 1987; James 2013; Jokilehto et al. 2005: 84; Neale 2017). Interestingly, these are all routes typified by long distances – the traverse of regional tracts of lands and/or waters, the movement of humans, their artefacts, and knowledge – that often link multiple urban settlements. They are more often not small-scale and internalized within cities like Melbourne’s Shrine Walk down Swanston Street or ‘The Central Axis of Beijing (including Beihai)’ (UNESCO 2013) or the mountain trails of Chóngqing (Jones et al. 2018). Cultural routes also represent a mix of tangible and intangible heritage and values. Routes have enabled and guided culture, societies, movements, peoples, and individuals historically and or geographically through changes in character, morals, ethics, and experiences. Cultural routes often involve the movement of people in ‘revolutions’ of social innovation, and often are the glue that binds history and stories intentionally to express and teach these concepts to the viewer. Many scholars perceive cultural routes as a linear expansion of the scale of a cultural landscape (Blair 2013; McBryde 2014) and as a typological element to organize cultural heritage resources (Diti et al. 2015). In the discipline of landscape architecture, Potteiger and Purinton (1998: 11) have typologically categorized them as ‘narrative experiences’, small-scale geographical design narratives, whereby they are: Routines, rituals, or events that represent or follow narrative structures; e.g., festivals, processions, reenactments, pilgrimage, daily journeys, crossing the threshold … [and can involve] Tours and rituals enact narratives, selecting and organizing the experience of place into temporal sequences. The major tourist route through Prague, from the Powder Tower, to Old Town Square, across the Charles Bridge, and up to the Castle, follows the sequence of public monuments and spaces established centuries earlier by the coronation route of the kings.

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The formal discussion of Cultural Route as a cultural heritage category by ICOMOS was initiated after the Routes of Santiago de Compostela: Camino Francés and Routes of Northern Spain was added to the World Heritage list in 1993 and originated from the deliberations of the ‘Expert Meeting on Routes as a Part of our Culture’ held in Madrid, Spain, in 1994. In the Report on the Expert Meeting on the Routes as a part of our Cultural Heritage (ICOMOS 1994a: 2), cultural routes were described as a social phenomenon rather than as an expression of one exceptional incident or moment. Thus, a perception that ‘cultural routes’ comprised routes that combined ‘exchange’ and ‘journey’ and excluded those that represented a way (or actual route) used for traveling. The experts defined the cultural worth of a route in ‘the dynamics (commercial, philosophical, religious) which it may have generated or favoured (transfer of goods, knowledge, know-how) and by the symbolic significance it represents for anyone using it’ (ICOMOS 1994a: 2). The experts identified routes related to religious events, trade activities (e.g. the Caravanserai of Iran), military campaigns (e.g. Hannibal’s crossing of the Alps in 218 BC), sports events (e.g. the Greek marathon route), as well as specific events or those regularly repeated over time. The Report (ICOMOS 1994a: 3) defined ‘cultural routes’ as consisting of the following elements for considering a route as having exceptional universal cultural heritage worth: • • • •

Spatial characteristics – the length and diversity (varying) of a route reflect the interest of the exchange and the complexity of the links that it maintains (or maintained). Temporal characteristics – how long it has been in existence and the frequency of use, which could be multiannual, annual, seasonal. It must have established its identity through diachronic practice over sufficient time to leave its imprint on mankind. Cultural characteristics – the fact that it includes cross-cultural aspects (or effects), e.g. it links remote ethnic and cultural groups and fosters their mutual progress through exchange. This reflects its capacity to bring together different peoples. Role or purpose – the fact that it has been used to exchange spiritual goods (religious or philosophical) or basic necessities for the survival of communities or has contributed to their development (trade in foodstuffs, minerals, manufactured goods, etc.).

With the adoption of the Report (ICOMOS 1994a), ICOMOS established the ICOMOS International Committee on Cultural Routes (CIIC) in 1998, that met several times examining the topic and reviewing related documented studies before drafting the ICOMOS Charter on Cultural Routes that was adopted in 2008. The Charter on Cultural Routes (ICOMOS 2008: 3–5) reinforced the original combined themes of ‘exchange’ and ‘journey’, and defined Cultural Route elements as comprising the following: 1. Context: Cultural Routes occur in a natural and/or cultural context upon which they exert an influence and which they help to characterize and enrich with new dimensions as part of an interactive process. 2. Content: A Cultural Route must necessarily be supported by tangible elements that bear witness to its cultural heritage and provide a physical confirmation of its existence. Any intangible elements serve to give sense and meaning to the various elements that make up the whole. 3. Cross-cultural significance as a whole: The concept of Cultural Route implies a value as a whole which is greater than the sum of its parts and gives the Route its meaning. 4. Dynamic character: In addition to presenting physical evidences of its historic path, along with cultural heritage elements, Cultural Routes include a dynamic factor that acts as a conductor or channel through which the reciprocal cultural influences have flowed. 5. Setting: The Cultural Route is closely linked to its setting and forms an inseparable part of it. 296

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Definitions on the aspects of Cultural Routes given in the earlier Report and the Charter appear to be variable. While the definitions for exceptional universal cultural heritage value in the Report (1994a) stressed the scale, duration, cultural influence and travelling purpose to identify cultural routes as possessing universal cultural heritage value, the definitions in the Charter (2008) emphasized the attributes and components of cultural route. While they are drafted with different intentions, there are similar emphases in the two documents. In terms of ‘Temporal characteristics’ in the Report (1994a), the notion is implicated in the description of ‘Dynamic Character’ in the Charter (ICOMOS 2008: 3). Additionally, the Charter (2008) defines it as including ‘cross-cultural significance as a whole’ (ICOMOS 2008: 4) that is reflected in the term ‘cultural characteristics’ in the Report (ICOMOS 1994a: 3). In comparing with the Report, the Charter (ICOMOS 2008: 6) includes routes of different scales when discussing the ‘types of cultural routes … according to their territorial scope: local, national, regional, continental, or intercontinental’. But recognition of local-level cultural route designations and identifications appear absent despite recognition of them at the ‘Expert Meeting’ and in the Report (1994a: 2). Analogous to Potteiger and Purinton (1998), the Charter (2008) also articulates the notion of a descriptive narrative with a cultural route, as a travel route of human beings in the past (that may continue in use today), that possessed and or may continue to possess a dynamic character and or may have existed or continues to exist as a cultural phenomenon. Jokilehto et al. (2005: 19), in ICOMOS’s report Filling the Gaps that appraised the content and numerical frequency of World Heritage Listings, concluded that it is immediately apparent that the most represented categories are architectural properties (341), historic towns (269), religious properties (234) and archaeological properties (171); these constitute 69 per cent of the cultural properties on the List. Cultural routes (8) … have a much lower representation. Jokilehto et al. (2005: 36) also concluded that the theme ‘movement of peoples’ is divided into two main parts: a) migration, nomadism and slavery, b) routes and systems of transportation. This latter is in turn divided into: 1) cultural routes and canals … [6 times], 2) pilgrimage places and places of mythical origin … [21 times], 3) centres of trade and exchange of goods … [53 times], and 4) systems of transportation (caravan routes and oases, land road transport and bridges, water transport, navigation, harbour and canals, railroads, stations, tunnels and viaducts, aviation and airports). Jokilehto et al. (2005: 19) made it very evident that cultural routes were part of the human cultural legacy and that such needed to be addressed by ICOMOS member signatories for inclusion in the World Heritage List. The limited number of route heritage may imply a gap of both number and category of Cultural Route in heritage nomination. Cultural Routes could be considered an aspect of cultural landscapes, and thus share similarities with Historic Urban Landscapes. For example, properties of Cultural Routes included in the World Heritage List to date have been inscribed using one or more of the following criteria (UNESCO 2018: 1): • •

•

Criterion (ii): exhibit an important interchange of human values, over a span of time. Criterion (iv): be an outstanding example of a type of building, architectural or technological ensemble or landscape which illustrates (a) significant stage(s) in human history or within a cultural area of the world, on developments in architecture or technology, monumental arts, townplanning or landscape design. Criterion (vi): be directly or tangibly associated with events or living traditions, with ideas, or with beliefs, with artistic and literary works of outstanding universal significance. 297

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The application of these criteria to date has placed an emphasis upon proving cultural routes as a ‘specific, dynamic type of cultural landscape’ (ICOMOS 1994a: 2). The notion of cultural landscapes is understood as ‘cultural properties [that] represent the combined works of nature and of man’ (UNESCO 2017: 16). The bias in this definition has been upon the tangible aspects that resemble human value and identity (M. R. Taylor 2013). As urban places are gathering venues for large populations of people and represent often physical manifestations of human aspirations through space and time, there is an increasing recognition that cities also reflect or embody both the tangible and intangible interactions between nature and humans, making them a type of a cultural landscape (K. Taylor 2016). UNESCO’s Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape (UNESCO 2011: 3) reflects this recognition by narrating that urban areas, ‘as the result of a historic layering of cultural and natural values and attributes’, implies a city’s dynamic character as comprising a particular type of cultural landscape. Thus, cultural routes may also be considered as ‘narrating’ urban areas and ‘as the result of a historic layering of cultural and natural values and attributes’. As a consequence, cultural routes and Historic Urban Landscapes, both as cultural landscapes, involve several similarities in terms of definition, dynamic character, and context.

Cultural route heritage of China China, as a country with a long-civilized history, understands its heritage as strongly emphasizing historic values (Lu 2014). As Article 3 of Principles for the Conservation of Heritage Sites in China states: ‘The heritage values of a site are its historic, artistic, and scientific values, as well as its social and cultural values’ (China ICOMOS 2015: 61). In this statement, Chinese historic and cultural values are perceived as parallel values instead of understanding historic value as being a part of cultural value. Lu (2014: 4) has claimed that: ‘Historical value will remain the focus of mainland China in many years to come. Ignoring or diminishing historical value would cause confusion and might undermine China’s conservation efforts’. This stress upon historic values embodies the way China classifies its cultural heritage. Seen from the official website of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage (SACH)1, heritage in China is categorized into four groups: (1) China’s World Heritage; (2) National Key Cultural Heritage Protection Units; (3) Historic and Cultural Famous Cities; and (4) Historic and Cultural Famous Towns and Villages. While SACH categorizes National Key Cultural Heritage Protection Units (National Heritage List) into ‘ancient ruins, ancient tombs, traditional buildings, grotto temples and stone carvings, and important modern sites’, Y. Chen’s (2014: 167) statistical analysis shows that traditional buildings account for more than 40 per cent of every List in China’s regime, followed by ancient ruins (20 to 30 per cent). A comparison between the way cultural heritage is categorized by ICOMOS’s Charter’s/Recommendation’s and SACH’s categories (including National Key Cultural Heritage Protection Units and Famous Historic and Cultural Towns and Villages) shows why gaps in understanding the meaning of cultural heritage exists today in China. This does not mean that China has not attempted to address these gaps. Rather, like other states parties, they are one of several parties grappling with comprehending more and more new heritage types contained in the ICOMOS international categories that have and have not been included in the Chinese National Heritage List (Y. Chen 2014) despite the SACH’s current seven categories. However, heritage with cultural route attributes (though categorized as ancient ruins and traditional buildings) first appeared in the 6th National Heritage List in 2006. There are only eight heritage properties with cultural route attributes that have been recognized in China’s National Heritage List. As reflected in Filling the Gaps (Jokilehto et al. 2005: 19), and the definitions and scope of The Nara Document on Authenticity (ICOMOS 1994b), there is still a need for more effort from both China and the 298

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international community to understand and conserve cultural heritage and the widening types of cultural heritage. In addition, the academic discourse on Cultural Routes heritage in China is in its formative stage and often investigated at a cross-province scale. Table 17.1 summarizes the characteristics and substance of these discussions over the last 10 years that involve about 30 properties that are cross-province in scale, or even cross-country (China) in scale. Within the current academic discourse on heritage in China, Li and Yu (2005: 9) concluded that cultural routes are ‘a social phenomenon instead of a container of an event’ proposing two different linear landscapes – Cultural Routes and Heritage Corridors. From their perspective, the Long March route, which was a military retreat route undertaken by the Red Army of the Communist Party of China in 1934–1935, is important in its historic meaning, but cannot be regarded as a cultural route. Research by Chan (2009), Ding (2009), J. Yang (2011), and J. Wang and Ruan (2009) all interpret cultural routes as a heritage type. Few scholars critically review the definitions of cultural routes and the origins of this concept, and this absence may be reflective of China’s perception of cultural exchange and promotion of the union of Chinese and European perceptions that have similar motivations, historical contexts and heritage resources. A lone voice from Ding and Song (2015) has written that the Wudang Pilgrimage Road (roads in mountains that are less than 10 km in length) and the Beijing’s Central Axis, together with eight other cultural routes in China, are by definition compliant and have important cultural significance. However, neither of these two places fits within the Charter (2008) definitions. Ding and Song (2015) argue that there is a need for a systematic reconsideration outside of Eurocentrism about the origin and development of the ‘cultural route’ concept. Interestingly, ‘Cultural Route’ first appeared as a term or a type of heritage by the Council of Europe in 1987 with the Declaration of Santiago de Compostela. The Council’s website states that ‘Cultural Routes demonstrate, by means of a journey through space and time, how the heritage of the different countries and cultures of Europe contributes to a shared and living cultural heritage’ (Council of Europe 2018). This Eurocentric-bias is a conclusion echoed by Jokilehto et al. (2005) at the international level in their assessment of gaps in World Heritage List inclusion, and K. Taylor (2017) in his deep appraisal of Asian cultural landscapes. Huang et al. (2011), when discussing ‘cross-regional, historicity, culture, dynamic and linear’ heritage, argue for the linking of an old residential community with cultural themes that include the Second World War, pointing to the need to integrate and renew old residential areas and their city culture within ‘cultural routes’. However, as result-oriented research, Huang et al. (2011) paid little attention to ‘cultural route’ meanings and theories in their research. Lu et al. (2016) have proposed ‘cultural routes’ as integrating the conservation of industrial heritage. Other publications focus upon the historic study, using the ‘view’ or ‘lens’ of cultural route without engaging the cultural routes themselves (Q. Chen 2015; Mo 2012; X. Wang 2010; Z. Wang 2012; Wu 2012). In 2015, the Principles on the Conservation of Heritage Sites in China twice mentions ‘Heritage Routes’. The first instance is when defining a ‘heritage route’ as a route: … created by activities related to transportation, the migrations of people, trade and commerce, or military movements within a specific geographic area and consist of road or water transportation networks together with associated sites. Heritage routes may demonstrate the interactions of different cultures and have resulted in cultural development along transportation routes. The significance of this category of heritage lies in its cultural diversity. (China ICOMOS 2015: 59) Thus, the policy and definitional emphasis is upon ‘cultural diversity’ reflecting the historical context of China and the way it views its history. The second instance is in the chapter on Conservation and Management Process that states:

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Time

Province

World Heritage List property (2018)

Grand Canal

Sui Dynasty to about 2400 years

Zhejiang, Suzhou, Shan- ✓ dong, Hebei, Tianjin, Beijing Silk Road 200 BC to 16th Shanxi, Gansu, Ningxia, ✓ century AD Qinghai, Xinjiang, Henan Tea-horse Tang Dynasty to Yunnan, Xizang, Road end of the Republic Sichuan, Guangxi, of China, about Hunan, Guizhou 1000 years Hui business Began from Tang Anhui, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, people’s road Dynasty, prospered Jiangxi in Ming and Qing Dynasty’s Shu Road From Shang DynSichuan-Shanxi asty to Republic of China Sea Silk Road Tang Dynasty to Shandong, Jiangsu, ZheMing Dynasty, jiang, Fujian, Guangabout 1000 years dong, Guangxi, Hainan South Silk Warring States Sichuan, Yunnan Route period to Late of Ming and early Qing, about 2000 years Yunnan1903-1910 built Yunnan, Vietnam period, about 100 railway years

Name

Transportation/ Commercial

cross-province

Transportation

cross-country

cross-province

Transportation/ Military/ Political Transportation/ Commercial/ Political Transportation/ Commercial

cross-province

cross-country

cross-province

Transportation/ Commercial/ Political Transportation/ Commercial/ Political Transportation/ Commercial

Function

cross-province

Scale

✓

SACH Famous Historic and Cultural Towns and Villages place (2018)

cross-province

✓

✓

SACH National Key Cultural Heritage Protection Units place (2018)

✓

✓

✓

Tentative World Heritage List property (2018)

Table 17.1 Recent Cultural Routes Discussions in China’s Academic Articles and their World and National Heritage Recognitions

1689 to second and third decades of 20 century, about years Jin Dynasty to Republic of China, 800 years Qin to Ming and Qing Dynasty’s, 1500 years Qing Dynasty, about 300 years

Yulin military defense system BeijingShenyang Qing cultural corridor Lingnan Qin to Ming and corridor Qing Dynasty’s, 1500 years Moergen to 1685-1917, about Mohe ancient 200 road Mazu pilSong Dynasty to grimage road Today Caihua & from 1600 Tuoma ancient Tea Road Qingjiang From Basalt road cultural route Huai Salt Hongmingwu to transport Daoguang, about road 500 years Tangfan Tang Dynasty, 300 ancientroad years,

West Beijing ancient road

Tea Road

cross-province

cross-province

within Province cross-country cross-province

cross-province cross-province

cross-province

Beijing, Hebei, Liaoning

Jiangxi, Guangdong, Hunan, Guangxi Heilongjiang

Fujian, Taiwan Hubei

Hubei Jiangsu, Anhui, Jiangxi, Hunan, Xinjiang, Henan Shanxi, Gansu, Qinghai, Xizang,

(Continued )

Transportation/ Political

Transportation/ Commercial Commercial

Commercial/ Transportation

Transportation/ Commercial/ Military Transportation/ Military/ Political Religious

Immigration/ Political

Transportation/ Commercial/ Military Military

cross-province

within Province

Commercial

cross-country

Shanxi

Fujian, Hubei, Jiangxi, Henan, Shanxi, Hebei, Neimenggu Beijing

Sanxia heritage corridor Lijiang heritage corridor

Chongqing, Hubei Guangxi

From Qin to now

From Qin to now

Menggu, Liaoning, Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Henan, Shandong, Gansu, Qinghai Immigration The end of Yuan Hunan, Hubei, Shanxi, road to and Ming and Qing Sichuan, Chongqing Sichuan Dynasty Hanjiang cul- Ancient age Hubei, Henan, Shanxi tural route

Immigration

Transportation/ Immigration/ Commercial/ Military Transportation/ Commercial Transportation

cross-province

cross-province

within Province

cross-province

Immigration/ Political

Transportation/ Political Transportation

Commercial/ Transportation Commercial/ Transportation/ Military

Function

cross-province

cross-province

Chongqing

1 century BC to 6 century AD, almost 700 years

cross-province

Guizhou

Guizhou ancient road Huangge ancientroad Xianbei cultural route

cross-province

Sichuan, Hubei, Chongqing, Hunan, Guiyang

Scale

cross-province

SACH Famous Historic and Cultural Towns and Villages place (2018)

Yunnan, Guangxi

SACH National Key Cultural Heritage Protection Units place (2018)

From south Song, about 900 years Warring States period to republic of China, about 2000 years From Tang to Ming & Qing Dynasty From Tang to 1970s

Tentative World Heritage List property (2018)

Baiyue ancient road Sichuan salt ancient road

World Heritage List property (2018)

Province

Time

Name

Table 17.1 (Cont).

Ordos City, Inner Mongolia AutonomousRegion, and Xunyi County, Shaanxi Province Jingqing County, Hebei Province

Qin Dynasty

Ming to QingDynasties

Pinglu County, Shanxi Province

Han to QingDynasties

within province Transportation

cross-province

within province Transportation

✓

✓

✓

Transportation/ Military

within province Transportation

✓

Immigration/ Transportation/ Commercial Transportation/ Commercial within province Transportation

cross-province

cross-province

✓

Source: Adapted and revised by the authors from Dai et al. (2016) Notes: No Cultural Routes in China have to date been categorized as Famous Historic and Cultural Towns and Villages.

Jingqing Courier Route

Anji County, Zhejiang Province

Dayu County, Jiangxi Province

Qinghai, Gansu, Shanxi, Sichuan, Xizang, Yunnan Henan, Hubei

Song to QingDynasties

The Spring and Autumn Period to Republic of China Ming Dynasty

Nanxiang Pass

Mei Pass and Old CourierRoute Dusong Pass and Old CourierRoute Plank Road along Yellow river Qin Dynasty Road

Ancient age

Zangli corridor

Junli Chen and David Jones

Heritage routes reflect cultural interaction and information flow along transport and trade routes together with exchange of goods. This interaction promoted cultural development and prosperity along the route, enabling cultures in the region to develop and thrive. A heritage route may include single elements such as stone carvings, architecture, or historic villages, as well as complex systems such as urban areas or cultural landscapes. Conservation of a heritage route needs to be undertaken in the same manner as a heritage site by conserving all the main elements while preserving the entirety of the route as a complex and integral entity. (China ICOMOS 2015: 59) This text places emphasis upon the integrity of conservation and management of cultural route as distinct from the elements and their entirety or authenticity. The Principles (2015) offer no significant difference in defining what is a heritage route and principle to manage it internationally and in China, except that the latter places an emphasis upon ‘cultural diversity’. To date (2018), there are 52 Chinese heritage properties included in the World Heritage List and 60 properties included on the Tentative World Heritage List. Of these, three in the former list and four in the latter list comprise linear route heritage. However, among them, the Beijing Axis with its city-scale attribute and the Great Wall with its defence role fit uncomfortably in the Charter (2008) in terms of ‘cross-cultural significance’, and ‘dynamic character’ (for the Great Wall). From current international cultural heritage principles and practices, the heritage significance for a cultural route is strongly placed upon the attributes of large-scale and long-duration while smallerscale, daily walking trails within a city with significant cultural value may have been overlooked in definition, heritage assessment, and inventory priorities. Such scenario includes culturally rich regions like the Asia-Pacific area where foot traffic has historically long been associated with trade, pilgrimage, religion and science. A good example is the urban mountain trails of Chóngqìng, China.

The mountain-city trails of Chóngqing Chóngqìng, formerly known as Chungking, is located in southwest China (Figure 17.1). With a history of more than 2,000 years and being the largest city in central China today, Chóngqìng has functioned as the key economic and financial hub of the upper Yangtze River catchment since the Qing Dynasty (approximately from 1636 to 1912) and continues today as one of only four direct-controlled municipal cities of China (the other three being Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin). Uniquely, Chóngqìng is the only municipality in China located away from the coast. The urban area of Chóngqìng is known as Central Chóngqìng and covers approximately 5,473 km2. The Yuzhong District (Central Chóngqìng District), with an area of 23.71 km2, is the geographically central, historically oldest, and most densely populated district of Chóngqìng. As the original site of the metropolis of Chóngqìng, it is located on a peninsula confined by the major trade navigation routes of the Yangtze and the Jialing Rivers. Historically, there are four major periods of development of the ancient town of Chóngqìng. They are: 1) Jiangzhou city construction (managed by Yi Zhang) in the Qin Dynasty (316 BC); 2) Jiangzhou city construction (managed by Yan Li) in the Three Kingdom Dynasty (226 AD); 3) City construction (managed by Daya Peng) in the South Song Dynasty (1240 AD); and, 4) City construction (managed by Li Dai) in the Ming Dynasty (1371 AD) (Shu 2016). The Ming Dynasty construction period resulted in a walled city, somewhat reminiscent of a medieval European city, located strategically in a hilly peninsula encircled by the Jialing and Yangtze Rivers. This fortified city was characterized by nine ‘water gates’ and eight ‘fire gates’ interlinked internally across the peninsula by a series of trails that commenced at the gates. The reference to ‘water’ and ‘fire’ alludes to the reverence of feng shui theory2 that is embedded in Chóngqìng’s urban structure (Figure 17.2). The 17 gates have the symbolic role of ‘water’ to control ‘fire’, which derives from the five elements of feng shui theory. Thus,

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Figure 17.1 Location of Chóngqing, Yuzhong and main urban area. Source: Junli Chen and David Jones

Figure 17.2 Map of Chóngqing: location of trails and gates. Source: Junli Chen and David Jones

Junli Chen and David Jones

only nine water gates opened with access to two rivers and the eight fire gates were closed all year to complete the feng shui urban structure.3 Another interesting fact is each gate had its own role linked to the different functions of the port, which is also echoed in the folk song ‘Chongqing song’ (Xu and You 1984: 17–19). Walking trails historically used to interlace the town internally, linking the old city gates and the city’s water/wharf edges. While the core functional role of the walled city was to provide a defendable fortified city high above the rivers of the upper Yangtze (Dong 2004), the walls and gates ensured that Chóngqìng was able to host a secure trade, commercial, administrative and cultural venue for which the internal trails enabled efficient internal movement of goods and services despite the steep hilly landscape within. These walking trails evolved into major movement conduits, locally called ‘mountaincity trails’, that characterize this Historic Urban Landscape today. Serving as transit conduits for goods, services, knowledge, and people historically, they continue these tangible and intangible functions today albeit changes in functions across the peninsula, new historical layers (e.g. tourism industry), and the tensions (e.g. property ownership change in urban renewal process) because of contemporary multi-storey urban complexes. Thus, to cater for this unique hilly geographical context, the trails historically evolved to inter-lace this mountainous topography. The way these streets adapted to this uneven and often steep topography resulted in the creation of flexible public spaces making these streets not only a space for transportation, but also venues and stages for social activities including small businesses, playing mah-jong (a Chinese tile-based game which is popular in South China) and chatting. The way Chóngqìng people dealt with this natural geographical environment historically informed the nature of Chóngqìng’s collective cultural reputation of being flexible in problem solving and social activities but being stubborn in the pursuit of aims. These walking trails, therefore, epitomize the way the people of Chóngqìng engage in their social activities today (Figure 17.3). The Yuzhong Peninsula, located at the junction of Yangtze and Jialing River, has been perceived as the ‘birthplace of modern Chongqing’ in the Yuzhong Image Design Planning and Control Regulations, authored by the Chongqing Architecture Design Institute of China (CADIC 2003). The Image Design (CADIC 2003), the result of an international design competition invited by the Chongqing Municipal People’s Government, celebrates Chóngqìng’s old town area and mountain-city reputation, identity and image. The Image Design (CADIC 2003) stresses the ‘Mountain, River and City three-dimension image’ of a ‘vertical gardening’ city, proposing to enhance Chóngqìng’s urban spatial quality and to improve its living environment. This is the first strategy of its type in China that addressed, through a design lens, the visual and spatial qualities of a whole District.

Figure 17.3 Photos and conceptual spatial ordering of a mountain-city trail. Source: Junli Chen and David Jones

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The ‘mountain-city trail’ (山城步道) system is one of 10 landscape elements in the Image Design (CADIC 2003). This element comprised nine trails across the Peninsula, the original nine trails that have maintained their historical authenticity in use and relative alignment, traversing the Peninsula generally in a north-south direction. The longest trail is 3.6 km long, while the shortest trail is approximately 1.5 km long. In Chongqing’s example, its mountain-city trails constitute the unique character of the old mountain city. Their historical continuity of use, lineal ‘design’ and the function of these routes, that thread across the Yuzhong Peninsula, inter-connect with the old city gates and the extant riverine wharfs as well as key commercial and political buildings and places on the peninsula. The Image Design (CADIC 2003) perceives these trails as a characteristic walking trails network that links the important public spaces and historic buildings of the peninsula, offering an important function of relieving the inconvenience of vehicle use in a north-south direction on the peninsula. Though not all of the trails were constrained in old gates area, they still played a role in linking the bottom and top of the mountain (or mountain city), and many trails feature steep walking trails with steps that are hard to be replaced by vehicle roads (Figure 17.2). Because the north-south-direction of trails are dissected by vehicle roads in an east-west direction, the Image Design (CADIC 2003) proposed adding some cross-street overpasses, some sidewalks across streets, and additional signage and navigation aides to assist trail navigation. Four of the trails were planned to be regenerated from 2003–2007; five were planned to be regenerated from 2008–2017 (CADIC 2003, 2017). However, because demolition of some old buildings and the construction of new buildings and vehicles roads were happening all over the Peninsula, the 2008-2017-phase recommendations have not been realized. Furthermore, only one of the trails proposed in the 2003–2007 phase is largely embraced with and now used by tourists and the public (CADIC 2017). Since the Image Design (CADIC 2003), considerable research and official plans have focused upon planning and design strategies to address the transportive-nature of these mountain-trails and the public spaces they interconnect (Deng and Huang 2006; Yan and Zhou 2004; Yang 2007, 2011; Zhang 2004). These strategies include economic and design initiatives. Most of which have little been acted upon, due to the lack of connecting such initiatives to land use planning actions in the annual Yuzhong District Plans, or the formalization of such initiatives being recognized as conservation measures, or in the social enrichment of the Districts’ residents. Additionally, only a few scholars have examined these mountain-trails to comprehend the heritage values of the places and the meanings they have pertinent to feng shui theory, the different roles of each gate, and the relationship of each gate to people, water(s), mountain(s) and town(s). As a consequence of this lack of comprehension, some mountaintrails are gradually fading, losing the peninsula’s tangible and intangible sense of place, character and atmosphere, which largely come from changes to the visual character of trails and generational and occupation changes to the residents living along these mountain-trails. These concerns can be discerned from community thoughts expressed on China’s biggest social media platform, sina.weibo.com, by searching key words like ‘mountain-city trail’ or ‘old Yuzhong’.

Challenges facing China in navigating the concept of cultural routes While the adoption of the ICOMOS’s 2008 Charter on Cultural Routes has advanced ‘cultural routes’ as a heritage type, its ‘concrete’ components and characteristics remain vague, with the possible intent to absorb more cultural heritage properties based upon diversified characteristics and context. Most cultural route heritage around the world, and in China, assume and comprise large-scale travel routes with a long history. What is lacking is an international-level systematic reconsideration of this concept that is outside of historically ‘monument-centric’ European-centric interpretations and ideas about the origin, development, scale, and scope that have historically informed ICOMOS’s Charter’s/Declaration’s. M. R. Taylor (2013) and K. Taylor (2017) have alluded to this in their Cultural Routes and Asian Cultural Landscapes 307

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appraisals, and we argue that vernacular and ethnographically characterized Cultural Routes are little understood and embraced within this Charter (2008). The latter tensions are emblematic in Australia ICOMOS’s activities in formulating its internationally recognized ‘Burra Charter’ in 1979 (Australia ICOMOS 1979), together with subsequent amendments (Australia ICOMOS 2013), to ethically embrace Australia’s tangible and intangible ‘new’ history and its multi-faceted Indigenous ‘history’; of which Australia’s songlines uncomfortably fit within the Charter (2008) due to their spatial and functional complexity. For cities built before motorized vehicles existed, the everyday walking experience was the form of every-day travel. Pre-vehicle waking trails inside cities were used daily and nightly. But until today, no one has tested how smaller and less celebratory or symbolic trails and routes are accommodated within the notion cultural route embodied in the 2008 Charter. This may be because historic towns and urban areas are well-known and understood concepts for scholars and the public. When we think of heritage conservation in urban areas, we think of conservation of towns or buildings as the core visual fabric of places but more often not of the circulation systems that spatially interconnected the physical fabric, shape our views of this fabric, and serve as the ‘blood lines’ for human, environmental and wildlife movements within the fabric. In doing so, we may have ignored the fact that many cities or urban areas in China are being transformed from old towns that possess major organic and designed circulation systems into new ‘modern’ digital cities adopting internationally generic formal morphological circulation systems. Trails are implicit in the planning and construction philosophy of a town, so can they be regarded as cultural routes? What is the heritage merit and significance of these types of trails? Additionally, a comparison between ‘cultural routes’ and ‘Historic Urban Landscape’ attributes (context, contents, tangible/intangible, cross-cultural significance as a whole, dynamic character, setting) points to considerable similarities between the two constructs when the former definitional type is interlaced into the small-scale level of a city of urban landscape. This validates the need to review the current definition on cultural route both internationally and in China to consider recognizing heritage of this type. Cultural landscape definitions have long emphasized the interaction(s) between people and their environment. Such definitions offer a more comprehensive lens in which to appreciate and learn from our city heritage. The understanding and conservation of cultural landscapes is still in its formative stage in China (Han 2018). As China’s cities are experiencing vast changes due to fast urbanization, concern about urban heritage as being cultural landscapes is less focused than debate about and research into rural places and landscapes. Across China, there is but a few regulations or policies specific at a local or city level that specifically focus upon urban cultural landscape heritage identification and conservation; much less research considers typologies that may include urban cultural route. Cultural Route and Historic Urban Landscape concepts may offer us a new lens to look at urban heritage conservation and their relationship with sustainable development. Chinese cities, with their long histories and their current role as gathering venues for growing populations, are places that combine histories, images and values that tell of the history, spirit and endeavours of the Chinese populace. There are today many challenges facing Chinese cities in terms of cultural heritage conservation. As Shan (2007: 9), Vice-President of the [Beijing] Palace Museum expresses it, ‘the starting point of urban heritage conservation is understanding’. One-third of the cultural properties on UNESCO’s World Heritage List are historic towns or comparable areas. However, among 103 National Historic and Cultural Cities in China, only five are listed on the World Heritage List. Perhaps this is the reason for why many of China’s urban cultural heritage and key features of these cities have been destroyed in recent city renewal processes. Even if some heritage buildings are left, the ‘setting’ of them has been effectively removed. Another issue is that the Chinese heritage conservation practice is too highly focused upon tangible aspects rather than tangible and intangible heritage. Without coveting all the intrinsic values of our inherited Chinese heritage, it is very hard to 308

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transform this cultural heritage into being cultural resources and legacy narratives for the larger community. Along with the loss of intangible values, we are witnessing the physical, generational and ‘cultural baggage’ memory loss of our citizens as important participants in heritage conservation. Our citizens, and the residents within such places and properties, should be the most vibrant power in safeguarding their living environment(s).

Conclusion In China’s current urbanization period, the contradictions between economic development and urban heritage conservation are remarkable. The cultural heritage sector has become very vulnerable to the strong wave of economic development (Shan 2007), with traditional buildings and fabric of our cities disappearing fast. Cultural landscapes, often illustrate a specific relation between people and nature and can reflect techniques of sustainable land use, fostering strong links between culture and sustainable development (Rössler and Lin 2018: 3). Chinese cities have evolved from the age of walking. By respecting and including their walking system into heritage considerations, some areas of Chinese cities may have the potential to continue their dynamic movement characteristics, not just their authenticity and continuity of use, but a sustainable and healthy Historic Urban Landscape model as well. By understanding the concepts of cultural heritage internationally and in the Chinese cultural context, more cooperation in policy making and practice can be expected between the urban planning sector and cultural heritage sector, nationally and locally. Also, public participation should be embraced as a significant contributor in identifying and selecting (and managing) this type of heritage. Citizens are dynamic actors and users of cities and heritage conservation should not be disconnected from its citizens. The adoption of the ICOMOS’s Charter on Cultural Routes (2008) has advanced cultural routes as a heritage type, but its concrete components and characteristics remain unclear reflecting the Charter’s (2008) infancy in comprehending a robust internationally relevant typological Cultural Routes framework. What we do know is that cities (especially those ones that have evolved from ancient times) constitute human aspirations and possess memories through space and time. A city is a very tangible entity and we more often associate with its physical fabric or its architecture as the possessor of heritage rather than the spaces within buildings, the intangibility of places and their regular and or intermittent/ seasonal activities/uses. The heritage values of Cultural Routes such as walking trails (or mountaintrails) inside cities, thus, may be no less important than large-scale Cultural Routes because both tell a narrative of past (and current) human creations/developments/uses.

Acknowledgements The authors wish to acknowledge the thoughts and assistance of Dr’s Beau Beza and Igor Martek from Deakin University, Lingxi Hu from the Chongqing Architecture Design Institute of China, and Professor’s Guiwen Liu, Lin Huang, Jie Zhu, and Chunlan Du together with Dr’s Zhongde Wang, Huangsong Mao, Guangcan Gu, and Xiangbing Xu from Chongqing University.

Notes 1 In China, the main administrative organization responsible for cultural heritage conservation is the State Administration of Cultural Heritage (SACH). One of its main responsibility is to approve qualifications of Chinese institutes to conduct heritage conservation practice, research, training and repairs.

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Junli Chen and David Jones 2 Feng shui (traditional Chinese: 風水; simplified Chinese: 风水), also known as Chinese geomancy, is a pseudoscience originating from China that claims to use energy forces to harmonize individuals with their surrounding environment. In Chóngqìng’s ancient town case, the 17 gates include ‘water’ and ‘fire’ elements from the ‘five elements’ in feng shui theory, and this arrangement of 17 gates is also symbolized in a ‘nine palaces and eight diagrams’, informed by compass school of feng shui. 3 Most of these gates (four remain today), and the accompanying walls, were demolished around 1929.

References Australia ICOMOS. (1979) Australia ICOMOS Guidelines for the Conservation of Places of Cultural Significance (‘Burra Charter’). Available at: https://australia.icomos.org/wp-content/uploads/Burra-Charter_1979.pdf (accessed 17 December 2018). Australia ICOMOS. (2013) Australia ICOMOS Charter for Places of Cultural Significance, The Burra Charter, 2013 (Burra Charter). Available at: https://australia.icomos.org/publications/charters/ (accessed 17 December 2018). Blair, S. (2013) ‘Editorial: Connecting cultures and continents: The heritage of routes and journeys’, Historic Environment, 25(3): 4–10. Chan, J. (2009) ‘A new cultural heritage type – the conservation of cultural route’ [关注新型文化遗文化线路遗产 的保护], China Ancient City [中国名城], 5: 4–12. Chatwin, B. (1987) The Songlines. London: Jonathan Cape. Chen, Q. (2015) The Evolution and Value of Ming Qing Grand Canal from the View of Cultural Routes [从文化线路的角 度看明清大运河的演变与价值研究], Unpublished Master’s Thesis, Beijing University of Technology, China. Chen, Y. (2014) ‘Research on the theoretical and practical developments of new categories of cultural heritage in China since 2000’, in Proceedings of the Conference on International Principles and Local Practice of Cultural Heritage Conservation, National Heritage Center of Tsinghua University & ICOMOS China, 166–182. Chhaya, R. (2000) Designing in Sacred Landscapes – A Case Study of Govardhan Parvat: Krishna’s Form in Nature. Unpublished Master of Landscape Architecture Thesis, University of Adelaide, Adelaide. Chhaya, R., Jones, D.S., and Meikle, H. (2014) ‘Krishna’s form in nature: Sacred landscape and the Govardhan Parvat in India’, in Proceedings of the International Federation of Landscape Architects Asia Pacific Congress, Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia, 28–30 April 2014, Institute of Landscape Architects Malaysia, Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, 402–430. Available at: www.ifla2014.asia/ (accessed 17 December 2018). China ICOMOS. (2015) Principles on the Conservation of Heritage Sites in China. Los Angeles: The Getty Conservation Institute. Available at: www.getty.edu/conservation/publications_resources/pdf_publications/pdf/ china_prin_heritage_sites.pdf (accessed 17 December 2018). Chongqing Architecture Design Institute of China (CADIC). (2003) Yuzhong Image Design Planning and Control Regulations [渝中半岛城市形象设计控制规定]. Chongqing: Chongqing Architecture Design Institute of China. Chongqing Architecture Design Institute of China (CADIC). (2017) Special Planning of Pedestrian System in Yuzhong District of Chongqing [重庆市渝中区步行系统专项规划]. Chongqing: Chongqing Architecture Design Institute of China. Council of Europe. (2018) Explore All Cultural Routes. Available at www.coe.int/en/web/cultural-routes (accessed 20 December 2018). Dai, X., Li, W., and Liu, J. (2016) ‘A study on status, features and development strategies of Chinese cultural routes’ [中国文化线路的现状, 特征及发展对策研究], 中国园林, Chinese Landscape Architecture, 32(9): 77–81. Daniels, J. (1962) The Devil’s Backbone: The Story of the Natchez Trace. New York: McGraw-Hill. Deng, Y. and Huang, G. (2006) ‘The design of pedestrian space of Chongqing’ [装饰], Art & Design, 9: 113–114. Ding, Y. (2009) ‘An interpretation on ICOMOS Cultural Route Charter’ [国际古迹遗址理事会 (ICOMOS) 文化 线路宪章], China Ancient City [中国名城], 5: 51–56. Ding, Y. and Song, Y. (2015) Cultural Route Heritage in China [中国文化线路遗产]. Shanghai: Orient Publishing Centre. Diti, I., Torreggiani, D., and Tassinari, P. (2015) ‘Rural landscape and cultural routes: A multi-criteria spatial classification method tested on an Italian case study’, Journal of Agricultural Engineering, 46(1): 23–29. Dong, J. (2004) The History of Chinese City Construction (3rd ed.). Shanghai: China Building Material Press. Han, F. (2018) ‘World Heritage cultural landscapes: An old or a new concept for China?’, Built Heritage, 3: 68–84. Huang, L., Xiao, H.W., and Xu, J.F. (2011) ‘Urban cultural route: New idea for urban community renewal – Case study on Yuzhong district in Chongqing’, Applied Mechanics and Materials, 71/78: 1749–1755. Available at: www. tib.eu/en/search/id/BLCP%3ACN080027495/Urban-Cultural-Route-New-Idea-for-Urban-Community/ (accessed 6 December 2018).

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Cultural routes in China ICOMOS. (1994a) Report on the Expert Meeting on the Routes as a Part of Our Cultural Heritage. Paris: ICOMOS. Available at: http://whc.unesco.org/archive/1994/whc-94-conf003-inf13e.pdf (accessed 6 December 2018). ———. (1994b) The Nara Document on Authenticity. Paris: ICOMOS. Available at: www.icomos.org/charters/nara-e. pdf (accessed 1 September 2018). ———. (2008) ICOMOS Charter on Cultural Routes. Paris: ICOMOS. Available at: www.icomos.org/images/ DOCUMENTS/Charters/culturalroutes_e.pdf (accessed 1 September 2018). James, D. (2013) ‘Signposted by Song: Cultural routes of the Australian Desert’, Historic Environment, 25(3): 30–42. Jokilehto, J., Cleere, H., Denyer, S., and Petzet, M. (2005) The World Heritage List: Filling the Gaps – An Action Plan for the Future = La Liste du Patrimoine Mondial: Combler les lacunes – Un plan d’action pour le futur. Documentation, München: ICOMOS. Available at: http://openarchive.icomos.org/433/ (accessed 1 September 2018). Jones, D.S., Liu, G., Chen, J., Martek, I., Hui, L., Beza, B., Zeunert, J., and Roös, P.B. (2018) ‘Greening Chóngqìng: Creating a Green City on the Yangzi (Cháng Jiāng) towards Enhancing ‘Double Happiness’’, in Biophilia Smart Resilience: e-Proceedings of the 55th International Federation of Landscape Architects World Congress 2018, 18–21 July 2018, Marina Bay, Singapore, 152–167. Available at: www.ifla2018.com/eproceedings (accessed 1 September 2018). Li, W. and Yu, K-J. (2005) ‘New direction in the conservation of World Heritage: Cultural routes (cultural itineraries)’, Urban Problems, 4: 7–12. Available at: http://en.cnki.com.cn/Article_en/CJFDTOTALCSWT200504002.htm (accessed 1 September 2018). Lu, F., Kang, W., and Luo, J. (2016) ‘Industrial heritage conservation and application in the lens of cultural routes’ [文化线路视野下东北地区工业遗产保护与利用], China Ancient City [中国名城], 8: 58–64. Lu, Z. (2014) ‘Evolution of cultural heritage conservation philosophy through the lens of the revised China principles’, in The Conference Proceedings of the International Principles and Local Practice of Cultural Heritage Conservation, National Heritage Center of Tsinghua University & ICOMOS China, Shanghai, 1–10. MacInnis, P. (2007) Kokoda Track: 101 Days. Fitzroy, VIC: Black Dog Books. McBryde, I. (2014) ‘Reflections on the development of the associative cultural landscapes concept’, Historic Environment, 26(1): 14–32. Menzies, G. (2002) 1421: The Year China Discovered the World. London: Bantam Press. Mo, Z. (2012) The Trade Route of Qingjiang River Region in the Lens of Cultural Route [文化线路视域下的清江流域 商路研究]. Unpublished PhD Thesis, Central China Normal University. Neale, M. (ed.) (2017) Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters. Canberra, ACT: National Museum of Australia. Potteiger, M. and Purinton, J. (1998) Landscape Narratives: Design Practices for Telling Stories. New York: John Wiley. Rössler, M. and Lin,. R. C. H. (2018) ‘Cultural landscape in World Heritage conservation and cultural landscape conservation challenges in Asia’, Built Heritage, 3: 3–26. Shan, J. (2007) ‘Urban cultural heritage protection and cultural city construction’, [城市文化遗产保护与文化城市 建设], City Planning Review [城市规划], 233(5): 9–23. Shu, Y. (2016) The Spatial and Historic Evolvement of Chongqing Main Urban Area [重庆主城空间历史拓展演进研究]. Unpublished PhD Thesis, South West University, Chongqing. Taylor, K. (2016) ‘The Historic Urban Landscape paradigm and cities as cultural landscapes. Challenging orthodoxy in urban conservation’, Landscape Research, 41(4): 471–480. ——— (2017) Landscape, Culture and Heritage: Changing Perspectives in an Asian Context. Unpublished PhD Thesis, Deakin University, Australia. Taylor, M. R. (2013) ‘International overview of cultural routes: Research and stewardship’, Historic Environment, 25(3): 16–28. Thakar, B. (2017) દ ાંડીય ત્ર: The Salt March. Unpublished Master of Landscape Architecture Landscape Design Master Class Project, Deakin University. UNESCO (2011) Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape, Paris: UNESCO World Heritage Centre. Available at: https://whc.unesco.org/uploads/activities/documents/activity-638-98.pdf (accessed 1 June 2018). ———. (2013) The Central Axis of Beijing (Including Beihai). Online. Available at: https://whc.unesco.org/en/tentati velists/5802/ (accessed 1 September 2018). ———. (2014) Silk Roads: The Routes Network of Chang’an-Tianshan Corridor. Online. Available at: https://whc. unesco.org/en/list/1442 (accessed 1 September 2018). ———. (2015) Routes of Santiago de Compostela: Camino Francés and Routes of Northern Spain. Online. Available at: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/669 (accessed 1 September 2018). ———. (2017) Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention. Available at: https: https://whc.unesco.org/en/guidelines/ (accessed 1 September 2018). ———. (2018) The Criteria for Selection. Online. Available at: https://whc.unesco.org/en/criteria/ (accessed 1 September 2018).

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Junli Chen and David Jones Wang, J. and Ruan, Y. (2009) ‘Cultural route as new heritage type – The interpretation on cultural route charter’, Urban Planning Forum [城市规划学刊], 4: 86–92. Wang, X. (2010) ‘‘Cultural route and historic culture study’ [文化线路与古代历史文化研究]’, Ethnic Art [民族艺 术], 2: 35–41. Wang, Z. (2012) ‘The historic perception on Shudao cultural route’ [蜀道文化线路的历史学认知], The Journal of Baoji University (Social Science) [宝鸡文理学院学报], 5: 23–27. Wu, X. (2012) ‘Yidao cultural route and ethnic cultural exchange’ [驿道文化线路与民族文化的交融], Guizhou Social Sciences [贵州社会科学], 9: 123–126. Xu, K. and You, Z. (1984) ‘The history of the gates of Chongqing’ [重庆各城门史], in The Past and Present of Chongqing [重庆古今谈]. Chongqing, China: Chongqing Publishing Group. Yan, L. and Zhou, W. (2004) ‘Re-creation of a living street’ [规划师], Planners, 20(5): 77–78. Yang, J. (2011) Strategy for Development of Mountain-city Trails in Chongqing Yuzhong Peninsula Based on Adaptive Selforganization [基于自组织适应性的重庆渝中半岛山城步道 发展规划策略研究]. Unpublished Master’s Thesis, Chongqing University. Yang, Z. (2007) Analysis of Landscape Character of Traditional Streets of the Mountain City Chongqing. Unpublished Masters Thesis, Chongqing University. Zhan, G. (2013) ‘Nomination of the silk road to the World Heritage List’, Historic Environment, 25(2): 88–100. Zhang, H. (2004) ‘The ecological design of Chongqing mountain-city trails’ [山城步道的生态化设计. 生态经济], Ecological Economy, 11: 114–117.

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18 FINDING HUMAN WELL-BEING IN HISTORIC URBAN LANDSCAPES Julie Williams Lawless

Introduction Historic places facilitate a spectrum of human–environment interactions. There are qualities of the historic environment, like the walkability of the place and the social connections found through cultural traditions, which illustrate positive impacts of heritage conservation that contribute to human well-being. Concepts such as the sense of place and community identity describe metrics of what good conservation practice aims to achieve, but also of the positive human health outcomes at a social and psychological level that a historic place provides. In the value-based approach to heritage conservation, we rely on establishing a strong relationship between attributes like place identity and sense of community to reinforce people’s commitment to the practice of conservation (Mason 2000). If we can add to our understanding of these values by expanding to include associations like health and well-being, we create a future of conservation practice that can encompass greater human–environment interactions experienced in Historic Urban Landscapes (HULs). Is it not time to consider that the link between heritage conservation sites and human well-being is more impactful than we suppose? The purpose of this chapter is to explore the associations between heritage environments and human well-being, construct a theoretical argument that reasons human well-being is a part of a heritage values system, and that if we recognize it as such, we can apply well-being to conservation practice. In the argument that follows, I outline an idea that human well-being and conservation intersect and explain a model whereby well-being can integrate into conservation practice, specifically in evolving environments like HULs.

The idea of human well-being To establish the connection between heritage conservation and human well-being, the first step is to define the idea of human ‘well-being’. Using a basic definition, well-being is ‘a good or satisfactory state of existence’, which may be characterized by emotional happiness, physical health, and social prosperity (MICRA 2018). These characteristics echo the work of environmental psychologists like Judith Sixsmith, who posits the idea that healthy personal associations to an environment (i.e. the ‘sense of belonging’) are strongest when there is a balanced intersection of good social, psychological, and physical health (Sixsmith 1986; Figure 18.1). Seeing the definition of human well-being described as having these three key components – social,

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PHYSICAL [ENVIRONMENT]

PSYCHOLOGICAL [ENVIRONMENT] WELL-BEING

SOCIAL [ENVIRONMENT]

Figure 18.1 The intersection of good social, psychological, and physical environments creates a sense of well-being and inspires a sense of belonging. Source: Julie Williams Lawless

emotional, and physical – supports the paradigm of human–environment interaction, and thus the argument that manipulating one can impact the other. If we can identify the attributes of the historic environment which most readily exemplify these well-being dimensions, we should be able to orient our conservation practices to serve both the healthy human and the historic environment.

Historic places and human well-being Planning for human well-being is provided for in most comprehensive community plans through the monitoring of natural resources, access to health services, provision of housing and food security and future planning for manageable responses to population growth. If we look specifically at heritage planning, there is often mention of preserving environments or components that provide a sense of place or a community spirit (ICOMOS 2008). These associations, or senses of place, spirit, cultural identity, place attachment, etc., form a bond between individuals to form community. Therefore, when we talk of preserving a sense of place or sense of spirit what we really attempt to create is a healthy sense of community identity that becomes part of the heritage identity exemplified in tangible and intangible heritage attributes (Russell 2010; Shamsuddin 2008; Silva 2015). Residents often admire their historic cities because of the sense of well-being they enjoy in those places (Rajapakse 2018; Silva 2011). People’s participation in heritage conservation activities has afforded them an array of positive benefits on their social wellbeing, such as personal enrichment, social learning, less anxiety, and satisfaction from sharing heritage products with others (Power and Smyth 2016). Other benefits of social well-being derived from living in historic places include increased sense of community, self-esteem and civic pride (Reeves and Plets 2016; Silva 2014). There also are studies that show how therapeutic historic environments could be (Kaplan 1989) and how historic characteristics positively impact people’s preferences of and attachment to places (Nasar 1998). The fact that many newly designated sites in Asia attribute the overall sense of place and spirit to the authenticity of heritage places promotes the notion that community well-being and heritage identity are also inextricably linked (Lawless and Silva 2017). In addition to such social and psychological well-being, particularly in the practice of urban heritage conservation, the preservation of a site can also contribute to physical well-being. In many such situations,

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historic precincts are pedestrianized, stimulating residents and visitors to walk and be physically active in a more serene environment with less noise and air pollution. In some cases, the preservation of a cultural landscape within an urban area provides a small means to conserve nature within an overbuilt area. In others, preservation can combat other physical/environmental ailments that derail healthy communities by providing access to fitness areas, create offsets to pollution, or provide additional resources for safe recreation and community programmes (Giles et al. 2009). The relationship between historic environments and human well-being is most strongly identified through literature outlining three key components of the human–environment interaction: the idea of seeing healthy self-identity as a reflection of positive community identity (Russell 2010); a relationship between personal emotional strength and community resilience (Huang and Wong 2014; Silver and Grek-Martin 2015); and creating healthy environments in the pursuit of sustainable development (Tweed and Sutherland 2007). Under these topics, heritage is described as an important attribute of the environment and as having an integral association with the well-being of individuals and the sense of community (Leyden 2003). Short of direct acknowledgement that heritage conservation practice plays a role in well-being (either individual or community), both tangible and intangible heritage attributes are associated with human well-being because they may enrich social connections or be used as an ancillary way to measure the success of other policies or governmental programmes (Huang and Wong 2014). Despite gaps in the literature, there is evidence to support the intersection of well-being and heritage to establish a basic working theory.

Well-being as a heritage value As seen above, associations to heritage help create a healthier sense of community. But how do we make this nexus between well-being and heritage useful to the practice of heritage conservation? Using a community-centred approach to heritage planning based in community values like healthy identity and well-being can provide a common rationale for heritage conservation. This idea of well-being, that relative state of health connecting to heritage conservation, we come to understand, is a heritage value. As much as other heritage values exist, well-being is a goal in most individual and community lives. Values, in heritage conservation practice, can be addressed as both a noun and a verb. A value, as an idea, can be used to generate consensus on a conservation plan. It can provide a common goal or direction to successfully solve problems. A core value can provide the central belief on which to build successful models of intervention. Values can inspire stakeholder investment, both emotionally and financially. In the globalizing world, value becomes an inherent mark of prioritization in governance, plan-making, and marketing. Increasing value is a common goal in most any profession, and certainly in any community – whether that value is based in monetary pay-out, sustainable practices, or community satisfaction. Mason (2000) categorized a set of community values related to the conservation of heritage as a means to understand the relationship between heritage sites and community outlook, much in the same way ecological conservation has been tied to community environmentalism. His research also considers the values of a community as both ideas and as means. Distilled down to six primary categories, the idea is that we look at heritage and historic preservation in terms of: historic and artistic value, social and civic value, spiritual or religious value, symbolic or (personal/community) identity values; as well as, research, natural environment, and economic values (Mason and Avrami 2002). By using a value-centred approach to heritage conservation, both tangible and intangible heritage play a critical part in defining the meaning of heritage to a community (Mason and Avrami 2002). Into this mix of values, we can add ‘well-being’ as a heritage value. This approach, referred to from this point as the ‘value-systems approach’, can provide richer data from which to negotiate the process to preserving a historic landscape/site. 315

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These heritage values are subjective, and context driven; giving a community a chance to fully appreciate the deep-rooted connection between heritage and identity. More importantly, they are not static and concrete. Heritage values work quite practically because they can change and adapt based on the needs and perceptions of the community (Mason 2000). By examining community-level awareness on heritage value systems periodically, a rational connection between community support and planmaking for effective conservation practice could be developed. This malleable approach to assessment, visioning, and planning seems ideally suited to evolving environments such as Historic Urban Landscapes (HUL) (UNESCO 2011).1 Since the adoption of the Nara Document on Authenticity, UNESCO allows intangible cultural expressions – qualities like spirit of place and cultural practices – to have similar importance in the criteria for heritage conservation as the artistic and material preservation of monuments and sites (UNESCO 2018). Particularly in the discussions of the conservation of evolving environments like HULs, the elements of sustaining cultural traditions, beliefs, and practices align with human well-being at the emotional and social levels. Because there is less focus on a physical monument and more so on intangible attributes of culture, we can approach these conservation activities as a matter of sustaining the people as much as sustaining the natural or built environment. As we explore the utility of using the value-systems approach in heritage conservation, it is important to keep focus on the types of values that drive current conservation plan-making, not only in heritage conservation but in new development planning and design more broadly. In an increasingly challengefilled economic and social climate, the more we can connect values to good practice, the less abstract our reasoning for prioritizing projects may seem to community stakeholders and policy-makers. For example, connecting the ideas of human well-being to heritage conservation plays a role in preserving critical historic sites and cultural heritage, as well as, focusing on the greater need for environmental and social practices to keep healthy lifestyles and emotional health in the forefront of community visioning. By shaping an argument to connect human well-being, community values, and heritage conservation, we can provide a mission-driven strategy to serve multiple purposes under one plan. The conceptual foundation of both heritage conservation and well-being programmes, as viewed through the lens of value-systems, display parallel outcomes. As mentioned above, Sixsmith’s study places the locus of personal well-being at the intersection of healthy social, psychological, and physical influences (Sixsmith 1986; Figure 18.1). If we critically view the heritage value system, we can see certain similarities whereby attributing meaning to values such as artistic, social, and symbolic values represent a healthy social and psychological community or natural, economic, and historic values may represent a healthy social and physical community. An imbalance in one value impacts the health of the community, just as Sixsmith attributes an imbalance of social or physical health to change in overall individual health.2 Successful approaches to conservation recognize a balance in the preservation of the physical environment, the sense of place or psychological environment, and the sense of a community awareness or social environment (Russell 2010). A key component to a successful heritage programme is having a group of stakeholders with a strong community association willing to support the plan (Clark 2008). This association, creating a collective identity, not only supports the implementation of heritage goals, but can boost individual stakeholder’s idea of self-worth through promoting community involvement as part of the collective identity. That is, being a part of a strong heritage programme can be socially and psychologically healthy for both the individuals and whole community. If in fact, the strength of heritage is rooted in the support of and association to the community, it does not seem so farfetched that that same community may be finding success in other types of healthy community activity (Clark 2008). If we look across the disciplines of urban planning and design, beyond the practice of conservation, we find similar relevance to the impacts on human well-being: aim for positive community associations, increase variability and diversity, and sustain environmental connections. 316

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The irony of conserving heritage landscapes is that, to successfully preserve the past, we must carefully consider the future of a place to avoid unnecessarily creating an obsolete field of work. Both our care of the physical place and continuity of the cultural environment must entail a balance of practices designed to educate, preserve, and enrich how people interact and associate with the history. Historic urban landscapes are special because they evolve, live, and dynamically hold the truths of our past while catering to the day-to-day struggles of our reality. To effectively meet the needs of these special environments, evolving conservation practice must meet and exceed our usual way of doing business. One way to do so would be to consider our approach to conservation through value-system based practice and discovering new opportunities to sustaining the urban landscape. How we apply that value-system and assess the values in the face of development becomes an imperative component to success. The concept of well-being as a key heritage value might be used to further the agenda to conserve and protect the historic urban places as a matter of healthy living. Conservation practice should be both relevant and specific as to how this could best be employed to benefit the people most impacted by heritage conservation: those living, working, and playing in and around heritage landscapes. Also, if this well-being heritage value is going to be a practical tool, it needs to be rather universal to different types of heritage policy programmes.

Improving well-being in urban heritage management In order to build the connection between heritage conservation and human well-being, a conceptual model is proposed here. The model, to be referred to as the ‘Heritage Map’, could be used to analyse impacts of development, policies, and programmes on communities using a people-centred approach.3 The Heritage Map is outfitted like a standard model for heritage environments where well-being factors are correlated with heritage values, as seen in Figure 18.2. In the Heritage Map, a historic place is conceptualized in terms of its associated heritage values; values are also described in terms of their constituent tangible and intangible heritage attributes. Then, using attributes based in each category of heritage values, the degree to which the values may make an impact on the social, psychological, and physical health of the whole heritage environment is represented. The people-centred focus, or the overall well-being of community, remains at the heart of the Map, indicating the primary goal of the heritage conservation programme. The Map can be used as an assessment tool in development planning or heritage conservation and how such activity impacts each heritage value and level of community well-being could be measured. Considering how we assess each value as it contributes to the richness and ‘health’ of a heritage environment, each of the six identified heritage values becomes an influencing layer, building to a total realm of impacts within each of the three areas of context (physical, social and psychological). The context of the physical environment of the Heritage Map includes all attributes of heritage conservation that influence the physical heritage environment, such as materiality, architecture, and tangible artefacts. Likewise, social and psychological contexts are assessed. Within these contexts we can examine the influence of traditions, activity, and behaviour as intrinsic parts to understand the cultural and heritage landscape, only now we see these as elements of the specific heritage landscape. We can investigate the influence of the economy; in particular, what impact the role of the local economy in development plays in the success and health of the community. The sense of community assesses the emotional psychology of the community as a whole, while each serve as an influencing part of the assessment on the outcomes of interactions within the environment generated by policies and practices. The map, read as a whole, creates a visual and analytical tool to see specific impacts within multiple layers of influence. Based on the level of impact, each ‘value ring’ can be weighted; creating a visual assessment of overall impact. In total, we can use the new model to see the relative influence of the 317

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Figure 18.2 The ‘Heritage Map’ would assess policies and programmes using heritage values as each layer of a concentric ring surrounding the well-being of people, community, and heritage. The values themselves can be assessed between social, psychological, and physical influences on the heritage environment. Source: Julie Williams Lawless

heritage values, the tangible and intangible heritage attributes, and programmes and policies on the overall well-being of the people. Following, are three examples to illustrate the use of the Map in exploring the nexus between heritage conservation and well-being.

Lilong urban landscape, Shanghai, China Let us revisit the programme to preserve the HUL of the lilong in Shanghai. An examination of the cost/benefit analysis sponsored by the World Heritage Institute of Training and Research in the Asia and the Pacific Region (WHITRAP) and conducted by the University of Pennsylvania’s Historic Preservation Programme’s summer field studio indicates that the Heritage Map could be useful to understand further impacts from the study’s promoted outcomes and recommendations (WHITRAP 2014). The published study document describes an analysis that specifically mentions metrics based on social capital, historic/cultural preservation, sustainable environmental factors, and economics. The goal of the study was to find an economically feasible option for both historic preservation and sustainable development to occur within these historic neighbourhoods. The report details the costs and benefits using each metric to show how specific preservation policies could contribute to the programme. Using the Heritage Map, these same outcomes could be assessed as direct impacts on the community well-being. Instead of merely treating the outcomes as an indicator of economic feasibility, it could instead relate outcomes of economic viability based in community success and strength by visualizing an assessment where the community’s shared values are at the centre. In the current analysis, each metric is seen as an isolated impact on the neighbourhood. If the ring model of the Heritage Map were used, we could instead see how each metric interacted by ring weight (thicker weight for more positive impacts; thinner weight for less positive impacts) to assess it as a total programme outcome, not as individual pieces. The utility of a holistic review is that one component can be seen to have

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impact without overshadowing other values. We see the importance of values on social, psychological, and physical well-being factors in the environment. In the case of the lilong neighbourhoods, we can see the biggest impacts in the physical environment of the historic housing cluster, but also where economic changes may cause impacts to the psychological environment (see Figure 18.3).

Melaka, Malaysia The Heritage Map can be used as an additional assessment tool for policy programming in existing designated HULs. Both using the value-systems approach to identify the values of the community, over the values of the state party, and using the Heritage Map as an assessment tool to ensure those values are retained by the impacts of the programme will not only give power to the community, but also legitimize the idea that the designation and planning are intended to benefit the people and the heritage. Applying the Heritage Map to the WHS listing in Melaka, Malaysia, we can assess heritage values categorically, but also look more intensely at both positive and negative attributes within each category of heritage values. Melaka, Malaysia is an urban setting designated as a World Heritage Site in 2008 as part of a collection of sites representing the plural development of heritage along the Historic Straits of Malacca (Ministry of Culture, Arts, and Heritage 2007). Despite the type of listing, it easily qualifies as a HUL as well. If we apply the Heritage Map tool to the designation of Melaka as an academic assessment of its potential, we must first consider that at the heart of the assessment is the well-being of the people. In the initial designation of the city, the Government of Malaysia enacted the designation to protect resources against inappropriate development – a very place-centred, not people-centred

Figure 18.3 Using the lilong of Shanghai as an example, we input attributes into each value ring as a heritage value category, organized by whether they influence the physical, social, or psychological environments of the historic place. In this way, we can see the total impacts of the suggested programme for each environment. The fuller the ring, the more positive the impacts. Source: Julie Williams Lawless

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approach. Each of the heritage values are in fact represented within the context of Melaka: there is great historic and artistic richness in the environment; multiple religions are represented, despite the majority Muslim population of the country; the city itself, and particularly the core historic area contains specific cultural identities including ethnic Malay, Indian, Chinese, and European cultures; there are strong economic ties within the neighbourhoods, the river and hillscape play a pivotal role in both design and sociality in the city; and there is considerable research activity using the physical and cultural fabric of the city, which highlights the importance of education, innovation, and design within the historic core of the city (Lawless 2015). There are quite a few specific landmarks and icons that play a role in the richness of the tangible heritage of Melaka. Even more so, both the distinctness of specific traditions and the plurality of 500 years of blending cultures are equally dynamic forces in establishing the unique culture and heritage of Melaka. In short, what makes Melaka special and worthy of designation is also what establishes the identity and culture of the people (Daniels 2005; Idid 2008). Therefore, if the Heritage Map is applied to this setting using the WHS listing as the impetus of change, we assess whether implementation changed the impacts of influences on each attribute and heritage value (see Figure 18.4). In retrospect, the designation certainly plays a role to increase the research value, by promoting study of the heritage environments. It also establishes guidelines for the understanding and protection of the historic and artistic landscapes, natural environment, and symbolic/identity attachments. On a positive note, economic resources increased due to increased tourism activity; this is an expected impact from designations. However, some may criticize that personal economics and certainly social connections were strained due to increased demand for resources from tourism, redevelopment of neighbourhoods to provide for tourism, and increased populations of outsiders visiting the city (Lawless 2015). Using the Heritage Map to model impacts of influences within each heritage value, the weight of each ring is adjusted relative to the impact (thicker or thinner). The visual model represents the total holistic impacts on the people at the centre. In the example of the designation of Melaka, owing to greater impacts, we would see thicker rings representing the values of research, historic and artistic landscape, and identity attachments, but due to less positive impact, thinner rings for personal economics and social connections (Figure 18.4).

Figure 18.4 Using Melaka as an example, the Heritage Map not only provides a holistic assessment for communities indicating the types of influences but can also be used for a comparative analysis among heritage values. In this Figure, we use the Physical Environment section of the model to do in-depth discovery into the influences of the listing on the physical heritage of Melaka. Each ring’s weight indicates the amount of positive impact the attribute has on the environment: the thicker the ring, the more impact. Attributes with a very thing ring are far less positive. Source: Julie Williams Lawless

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Dujiangyan, China Within many cultural landscapes, particularly those in Southeast Asia and East Asia, the traditional practices expressed in the cultural landscape are value-rich and impacted heartily by the influences of tangible and intangible heritage (Lawless and Silva 2017). Many are already sustainable; there are already strong collective identities, and there are already resilient building practices. As an assessment tool is useful for redevelopment, particularly to help endangered landscapes where the possibility of piecemeal development can dramatically alter a landscape over time. The value-systems approach and Heritage Map tool provide useful evidence of where and how impacts of redevelopment may affect the community. Using the lens of well-being could have great utility to critically examine how disaster recovery and planning for heritage sites is implemented, particularly in HULs, such as the case of Dujiangyan, China. Dujiangyan is a pilot case for WHITRAP’s Historic Urban Landscape study and was deeply impacted by the Wenchuan earthquake in May 2008, in the Sichuan Province of China (WHITRAP 2014). In their study of recovery, Huang and Wong (2014) found a strong statistical association between life satisfaction and recovery efforts in Sichuan. During the earthquake, the Qiang culture was particularly affected through significant losses to tangible heritage, including buildings, historic documents, and historic artefacts, including exhibitions of Qiang culture stored in the Beichuan Qiang Culture Museum, which was buried in debris. In addition, attributes of the Qiang culture are handed down through music and oral traditions, but there was a significant loss of life among the Qiang cultural population. Some estimates put the loss of life at nearly ten per cent of the Qing population (Johnson 2018). Most of the buildings that survived the earthquake were traditionally built structures of the Qiang that had escaped inappropriate modern construction. Both the sustainability of these structures and the associations tied to them proved invaluable in recovery efforts (Johnson 2018). It was the cultural associations of the survivors that proved most influential in the recovery. Survivors attributed the strength of the Qiang community (identity) and reliance on the traditions to relieve stress and trauma in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake. Then, as recovery planning and rebuilding were underway, community members returned to traditional crafts and music as a coping mechanism, both revitalizing the Qiang traditions and easing emotional trauma (Huang and Wong 2014). In this example, well-being and values-system approach could be used to guide and assess recovery and planning programmes to ensure that programmatically plans address the individual and community values aligned with the protection and continuity of the tangible and intangible attributes of Qiang culture. An assessment tool, like the Heritage Map, would be useful in both pre- and postdisaster recovery planning to ensure that the well-being of people, community and heritage remain at the centre of plan-making (Figure 18.5).

Conclusion The idea of being able to promote a city or a neighbourhood as both healthy and historic adds value to both designations. Especially for policies or programmes that may find economic and social challenges that create barriers to widespread implementation, attacking these barriers from a health and social development perspective may provide additional resources, social capital, and funding. In today’s social and political climate, funding may be more likely tied to healthy living or service programmes more so than funding available for strictly historic preservation. By combining the ability to pull on both of those we may be able to benefit the community at a much larger scale. Buying the theoretical argument and understanding the utility of the Heritage Map concept only gets us so far in research and practice. The next step involves actively pursuing a case study in which to implement the value-systems approach and Heritage Map assessment from start to finish. While the Historic

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Figure 18.5 An application of the Heritage Map to the recovery of Dujiangyan, China visually depicts the psychological importance of cultural associations to the historic fabric and people, as well as the benefits of traditional rituals in the face of significant physical losses in the environment. While Huang and Wong (2014) found statistical evidence of this, the visualization tool of the Heritage Map may aid the discussion with varied audiences to understand where recovery efforts may be most beneficial. Source: Julie Williams Lawless

Urban Landscape programme from UNESCO provides an excellent setting for this research, it will take a multi-disciplinary approach to actively use the tool in the field. Practitioners from public health, planning, conservation, social work, and government will be necessary to implement the programme. Once a setting has been established and access granted, the first step involves establishing the value system of the community. While in this description I have used the basic categories of each of the six types of values, in practice, each community would need to identity the specific value in the category (relevant history or art, the specific attributes of their social identity, etc.). The next step involves identifying the relevant tangible and intangible attributes of the heritage environment with influence on the community. These steps essentially ‘fill-in’ the base layer of the Heritage Map. Once established, the programme/development/change agent should be identified and assessed in part or whole using the map. For each agent of change, the impacts on each significant value and influence are rated/scaled as they impact the community positively or negatively. The summation of all impacts of change are then assessed based on the overall relative impact on the community. Obviously, this process would take considerable resources of time, personnel, and community input. However, the pragmatic utility of the Heritage Map is that it does not necessarily require any specific skills to administer. Access to the appropriate information and people means that the assessment can be completed by researchers in the field, government administrators, community activists/volunteers or even students. The ease with which it could be used makes the Heritage Map concept useful and pragmatic as a way to begin a discussion on agents of change in heritage settings. Within the research paradigms and practices of conservation we readily see a connection between the purpose or vision of preservation and the people it serves. People enjoy a sense of place that contributes to

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a collective community identity and expands our social relationships, which root the conservation of both tangible and intangible heritages. In the face of great community and personal challenges such as natural (or human-made) disasters, the rally cry of the community gives us resiliency and a sense of purpose to recover physically and emotionally from the trauma. This community often centres on a memorial tribute or cause that instils purpose. Likewise, we use community connections and more personal responses to support community level initiatives like greening and sustainability: we save the past for the future generations. Each of these characteristics draw on values that can simultaneously be seen as both positive reasons for community-level action like heritage conservation and sustainability, as well as positively affecting human well-being with improved physical and environmental health and good emotional and social outcomes.

Acknowledgements The author would like to thank Tyler Griffin, graduate student in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at Florida State University, for her tremendous assistance and attention in gathering research materials for this project.

Notes 1 As an example, in a comprehensive view at Melaka, Malaysia, we can see the role each one of Mason’s categorical values plays in defining the importance of the city’s history and heritage to the community. A read of the site’s World Heritage nomination dossier and stroll through the city proper provide details on the heritage richness of the place (Ministry of Culture, Arts, and Heritage 2007). While designated as part of a site listing, the city presents itself as an evolving urban landscape. The confluence of historical migrations, pluralistic religious practices and sites, the distinct identity and food culture of the Baba Nyonya, the economic value of the traditional Chinese shop-houses, and the siting of the city at the confluence of a river and the sea make Melaka distinct, unique, and historic (Lawless 2015). Understanding the role in which each value contributes to the unique heritage not only provides the criteria for listing a historic resource, but also the points under which community management and response can be directed for the future preservation of the physical and cultural attributes (UNESCO 2005). 2 Consider this position using each of the types of well-being described above: social, physical, and psychological well-being. Promoting policies that encourage the conservation of the physical fabric of an urban landscape will likewise promote the community associations with the landscape. An urban landscape such as the historic lilong housing complexes of Shanghai preserves the physically walkable neighbourhood while also preserving the strong community social network of the neighbourhood. There is a direct connection between maintaining the historic physical urban landscape and the social urban landscape (WHITRAP 2014). 3 This model of Heritage Map is in fact based on some existing paradigms and models from wellness and sustainability that serve as a basis for a heritage conservation tool. In 1991, Goren Dahlgren and Margaret Whitehead published the ‘rainbow model’ describing the social and economic influences on human health. This model places people at the centre of activity and describes the layers of influences on their health such as lifestyle choices, community activity, work and living conditions, and general social conditions (Dahlgren and Whitehead 1991). Later evolution of this ‘rainbow’ into a concentric ring model created an assessment tool to identify impacts of sustainable development on community (Barton and Grant 2006). These models defined the role of human well-being’s importance in urban planning and design to link urban development goals to human well-being outcomes. The intention was to promote the causes envisioned by the (United Nations-appointed) Brundtland Commission’s 1987 report on global sustainability, which first defined the idea of ‘sustainable development’ (Barton and Grant 2006). As with the rainbow model, in the ‘ring model’ people are at the centre of a ring of influences; each level articulating one layer of influence on human health. In this model, each layer represents an attribute of the environment under development: natural, built, and community activities; including attributes like economics and lifestyle. In addition, Barton and Grant (2006) included sustainability attributes that may contribute to impacts of climate change and biodiversity. While the focus of using these types of models has typically been to understand the impacts of neighbourhood-level development, the theoretical concept behind these may be adapted to create a starting point to identify a relationship between heritage conservation plans and human well-being.

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References Barton, H. and Grant, M. (2006) ‘A health map for the local human habitat’, The Journal for the Royal Society for the Promotion of Health, 126(6): 252–261. Clark, K. (2008) ‘The cultural value of heritage: Evidence from the Heritage Lottery Fund’, Cultural Trends, 17(1): 23–56. Dahlgren, G. and Whitehead, M. (1991) The social model of health, Stockholm, Sweden: The Institute for Future Studies. Daniels, T. P. (2005) Building cultural nationalism in Malaysia: Identity, representation, and citizenship, New York: Routledge. Giles, W., Holmes-Chavez, A., and Collins, J. (2009) ‘Cultivating healthy communities: A CDC perspective’, Health Promotion Practice, 10(2): 86s–87s. Huang, Y. and Wong, H. (2014) ‘Impacts of community and satisfaction with governmental recovery on psychological status of Wenchuan earthquake survivors’, Social Indicators Research, 117(2): 421–436. ICOMOS. (2008) Québec declaration on the preservation of the spirit of place, Paris: ICOMOS. Idid, S. Z. A. (2008) Melaka as a world heritage city: A commemorative book on the inscription of Melaka into the UNESCO world heritage list, Johor Bahru, Malaysia: Urban Design and Conservation Research Unit, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. Johnson, I. (2018) ‘After-shocks of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake’, New York Review of Books, 9 May 2018. [online]. Available at:www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/05/09/after-shocks-of-the-2008-sichuan-earthquake/ (accessed 2 September 2018). Kaplan, S. (1989) ‘Past environments and past stories in human effectiveness and well-being’, in G. Hardie, R. Moore and H. Sanoff (eds) EDRA 20: Changing paradigms, Oklahoma City, OK: Environmental Design Research Association, 223–228. Lawless, J. W. (2015) ‘Melaka as a cultural landscape’, Journal of Space and Communication, 1(1): 37–45. Lawless, J. W. and Silva, K. D. (2017) ‘Towards an integrative understanding of “authenticity” of cultural heritage: An analysis of world heritage site designations in the Asian context’, Journal of Heritage Management, 1(2): 149–159. Leyden, K. M. (2003) ‘Social capital and the built environment: The importance of walkable neighborhoods’, American Journal of Public Health, 93(9): 1546–1551. Mason, R. (2000) ‘Assessing values in conservation planning: Methodological issues and choices’, in M. de la Torre (ed.) Assessing the values of cultural heritage, Los Angeles: The Getty Conservation Institute, 5–30. Mason, R. and Avrami, E. (2002) ‘Heritage values and challenges of conservation practice’, in J. M. Teutonico and G. Palumbo (eds) Management planning for archaeological sites, Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute, 13–26. MICRA. (2018) Webster’s revised unabridged dictionary. [online]. Available at: www.dictionary.com/browse/wellbeing?s=t (accessed 1 August 2018). Ministry of Culture, Arts, and Heritage. (2007) Historic cities of the straits of Malacca: Melaka and George Town, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: Government of Malaysia and UNESCO. Nasar, J. L. (1998) The evaluative image of the city, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Power, A. and Smyth, K. (2016) ‘Heritage, health and place: The legacies of local community-based heritage conservation on social wellbeing’, Health & Place, 39: 160–167. Rajapakse, A. (2018) ‘Exploring the living heritage of Galle Fort: Residents’ views on heritage values and cultural significance’, Journal of Heritage Management, 2(2): 95–111. Reeves, K. and Plets, G. (2016) ‘Cultural heritage as a strategy for social needs and community identity’, in W. Logan, M. N. Craith and U. Kockel (eds) A companion to heritage studies, Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 203–214. Russell, I. (2010) ‘Heritage, identities, and roots: A critique of arborescent models of heritage and identity’, in G. S. Smith, P. M. Messenger and H. A. Soderland (eds) Heritage values in contemporary society, London: Routledge, 29–41. Shamsuddin, S. (2008) ‘Making places: The role of attachment in creating the sense of place for traditional streets in Malaysia’, Habitat International, 32(3): 399–409. Silva, K. D. (2011) ‘Mapping meaning in the city image: A case study of Kandy, Sri Lanka’, Journal of Architectural & Planning Research, 28(3): 229–251. ———. (2015) ‘The spirit of place of Bhaktapur, Nepal’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 21(8): 820–841. Silva, L. (2014) ‘The two opposing impacts of heritage making on local communities: Residents’ perceptions – A Portuguese case’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 20(6): 616–633. Silver, A. and Grek-Martin, J. (2015) ‘“Now we understand what community really means”: Reconceptualizing the role of sense of place in the disaster recovery process’, Journal of Environmental Psychology, 42(1): 32–41.

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PART IV

Fostering sustainable urban heritage

19 INTEGRATED MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS OF THE URBAN WORLD HERITAGE PROPERTIES OF KATHMANDU AND SAMARKAND Kai Weise

Introduction World Heritage properties are required to have a clearly defined management system. Article 108 of the Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention states: ‘Each nominated property should have an appropriate management plan or other documented management system which must specify how the Outstanding Universal Value of a property should be preserved, preferably through participatory means’ (UNESCO 2017: 31). Such a management system must adapt itself to the condition, characteristics and local governance system of the heritage property. This chapter provides an overview of the management challenges that historic Asian cities inscribed on the World Heritage List face and the need for them to develop integrated management systems. The information is based on the outcome of the Second Cycle of Periodic Reporting of World Heritage in Asia and the Pacific (UNESCO 2012) that was carried out between 2010 and 2012. The vast amount of information that was collected has sadly only been partially used to determine priorities in planning related to World Heritage, with insufficient research having been done on the real implications. In this chapter, comparisons are made on factors affecting urban World Heritage properties in Asia along with their protection and management. This would include urban sites of Bukhara, Galle, Lijiang, Luang Prabang, Macao, and Melaka. A detailed discussion of Kathmandu and Samarkand is also given. The need for new tools and broader collaboration with relevant related sectors has become clearer as conservation practitioners begin a dialogue with those involved in the development sectors. This has come to a major wrangling as links are desperately made between heritage and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, target 11.4 of which aims to ‘strengthen efforts to protect and safeguard the world’s cultural and natural heritage’ (United Nations 2015).

Integrated management systems A documented management system is required by the Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention. Such a system would vary based on the specific characteristics and

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needs of the site as well as the overall governance system in the country. Nevertheless, there are some very explicit requirements that the management system needs to fulfil, which could broadly be defined as having to address all pertinent issues the heritage property is facing and might face in the future. To fulfil this task, it would require an integrated approach which takes into account all the relevant sectors, authorities and regions, which might go beyond the confines of heritage management (Figure 19.1). Such management systems might have different names: integrated management plan (e.g. Kathmandu Valley), integrated management processes (e.g. Lumbini, Birthplace of Lord Buddha), integrated management system (e.g. Samarkand – Crossroad of Cultures) or comprehensive conservation management plan (e.g. Darjeeling Himalayan Railway). However, they all have common components, which include the following: 1. Definition of property including values, attributes and boundaries. 2. Overall vision, management principles, management objectives and management approach. 3. Management frameworks which include institutional and legal provisions along with resources (financial, human and equipment). 4. Plan of action which determines actions to address identified issues along with required management parameters. 5. Planning of related sectors, particularly tourism and disaster risk management, along with regional planning and, depending on sites, also sustainable community development, agriculture, etc. The integrated management system would differentiate between routine actions carried out by the site managers, time-bound actions or projects carried out by specialized experts and contractors, and emergency response which requires special training and resources. This necessitates coordination among all related authorities, stakeholders and local community, which is possibly the most challenging part of establishing the system. The system only works when there is commitment from all relevant parties, beginning with the government at the highest level, but also from the local community.

Figure 19.1 The stages and components of preparing an Integrated Management of heritage sites. Source: Kai Weise

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Changing understanding of heritage and its management The need for integrated management systems for heritage properties is now even more critically required since the definition and scope of cultural heritage has changed drastically over the past decades. Initially, the focus would have been on monuments or ruins along with archaeological artefacts with little interest in the context or continued function and human interaction. These could easily be fenced off or placed in a secure museum display providing the best possible conditions for safeguarding in original form and material. Even the cultural heritage sites in urban contexts were segregated from their chaotic surroundings to allow for strict protection. This has changed considerably with the growing importance of intangible heritage. Furthermore, there is a realization that the context as well as ongoing human activity is as much part of the significance as is the material object. This means that an ancient structure might still need to perform certain functions which require it to be maintained and restored. It also means that the wear and tear of human activities needs to be integrated into conservation planning. This change in understanding is still in progress. In many countries, there is clear hesitation to deal with the complexity of living sites. The responsible authorities and their legislation is geared towards ‘fencing-in-heritage’ and controlling development in the surrounding buffer zone with little understanding or skill in dealing with community activities. When entire historic cities or parts thereof are deemed cultural heritage sites where entire communities live, then a completely different approach to protection and management is required. The traditional authoritarian approach is hardly relevant. Heritage properties have begun to encompass areas beyond the specific monuments and often include urban fabric along with the surrounding context of the landscape. The management of such vast areas goes beyond standard conservation practice, requiring expertise from numerous related sectors to be included. This multi-sector coordination planning is something that still needs to be addressed seriously in the management of complex cultural heritage sites. The walls that exist between the various sectors of government and experts must be broken down. Means of inter-sector communication and collaboration is a critical part of dealing with cultural heritage sites. The inclusion of communities, their habitat, and livelihood requires an entirely different approach to conservation. In most cases, the communities and their activities are part of the significance of the heritage site and, therefore, needs to be protected. This of course changes the entire approach, requiring the communities to become caretakers. This then also becomes the basis for developing resilience of the heritage site, allowing for cultural continuity even in most adverse circumstances. There is a lack of tools and vocabulary to address this changing understanding of cultural heritage sites. The division of the notion of heritage into tangible immovable property being dealt with by the 1972 World Heritage Convention (UNESCO 1972) while intangible heritage has its own 2003 Convention (UNESCO 2003) creates great confusion. For example, World Heritage places great importance on the concept of authenticity (ICOMOS 1994), while its definition and criteria are considered unacceptable for intangible heritage. Dealing with an urban cultural heritage property requires consideration of both categories of heritage. To sidestep this dilemma, the phrase ‘Living Heritage’ is often used, which could refer to the linkage between the tangible and intangible aspects of a complex cultural heritage site. The Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) approach is another such attempt to bring together the threads of complexity binding the urban to the concept of landscapes, including the tangible and the intangible as well as social, economic and environmental sustainability and cultural diversity. The UNESCO (2013b)-published brochure New Life for Historic Cities: The Historic Urban Landscape Approach Explained seems to focus more on regeneration of Western cities than controlled development of bustling Asian cities. The question that furthermore arises here is that whether the landscape approach would be the best means of dealing with the urban setting.

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The changing definition of cultural heritage which takes into consideration the overall complexity of such sites requires management systems that address related issues. This is particularly clear when we look at urban sites where living heritage flourishes and there is ongoing change. Furthermore, the challenges faced by cultural properties through growing impact of development as well as natural events makes it essential that a clearly defined management system is established to not only safeguard heritage but also to ensure the sustainability of these sites.

Issues in managing urban world heritage properties Asia The Second Cycle of Periodic Reporting of World Heritage in Asia and the Pacific was carried out between 2010 and 2012 with all State Parties and site managers filling out on-line questionnaires, a set for the State Parties and a set for each of the World Heritage properties.1 The second set of questionnaires had two main sections, the first being ‘Factors Affecting the Properties’ while the second focusing on ‘Protection, Management and Monitoring of the Properties’. Assessing the outcome, particularly focusing on the urban sites, provides a certain perspective on the challenges faced by the site managers of such sites. Considering that the next cycle of periodic reporting should soon begin, this could be an interesting indicator for how much progress has been made over the past six years in understanding urban cultural heritage sites. For this section, the following urban World Heritage sites in Asia have been chosen to be reviewed: Bukhara (Uzbekistan), Galle (Sri Lanka), Lijiang (China), Luang Prabang (Laos), Macao (China) and Melaka (Malaysia). The outcome of this is then used as a basis for a more detailed assessment of the management systems that have been established for Kathmandu (Nepal) and Samarkand (Uzbekistan).2 For each of the examples, a short description of their management issues as well as threats are provided as per the outcome of the periodic reporting exercise, followed by an overall review. The text is based on the Retrospective Statement of Outstanding Universal Value3 and the content of the Periodic Reporting questionnaires.

Bukhara, Uzbekistan The Historic Centre of Bukhara was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1993 based on criteria (ii), (iv) and (vi). A minor boundary modification was done in 2016 and now the property consists of 216 ha with a 339 ha buffer zone. The property is the historic centre of an Islamic city in Central Asia from the tenth to seventeenth centuries. The inscription focuses not only on the wonderful monuments which include the mosques, madrasahs and the citadel, but also the tightly knit urban fabric. The criteria also mention the importance of the city for Muslim theology, particularly Sufism. The threats that have been identified include insensitive construction, particularly during the early Soviet period. Natural disasters have also affected the property including regular earthquakes. Furthermore, the conservation of the earthen buildings has been challenging due to rising damp and efflorescence, along with termite infestation of timber elements. The need to lower the street level is a further issue that many historic cities face as road maintenance keep adding material over the street finish without removing older damaged layers. The assessment carried out through the periodic reporting exercises indicates that authenticity and integrity of the site has been compromised along with the outstanding universal value being impacted. According to the site managers, the negative impacts on heritage site were infrastructure development related to water supply, transportation and non-renewable energy facilities, as well as infrastructure for tourism, visitors and recreation. There are also problems of pollution of ground water and air. Physical conditions that negatively affect the property include temperature, dust, water as well as the impact of 332

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earthquakes and potential fires. The site managers considered certain commercial and housing development as positive along with improved facilities for heritage interpretation and visitors. There is also a positive trend of society’s values to heritage and the ritual, spiritual, religious and associated use of heritage. Protection and management of the historic city is carried out by enforcing strict laws for conserving cultural heritage as well as linked to urban planning. Bukhara was designated a historic-architectural reserve in 1883. Furthermore, a Master Plan for Bukhara was prepared in 2005. State Programme for complex activities on research, conservation, restoration of monuments of cultural heritage of the historic centre of Bukhara and their adoption to the modern needs is being carried out for the period 2010–2020. Moreover, a Management Plan has been developed along with a GIS database of urban fabric. Based on the periodic reporting, legislation and management are considered adequate. The enforcement of regulations as well as collaboration between the various levels of government could be improved. The collaboration between the various site managers and coordinators is fair, though this was considered non-applicable for land-owners. Local communities and indigenous people are included in decision-making. Fifty per cent of finances are provided by the national government, 44 per cent by the regional government with some support from multilateral and international donors. Human resources for managing the World Heritage property are considered below optimum. In general, all aspects of the site were acceptable.

Galle, Sri Lanka The Old Town of Galle and its Fortifications was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1988 under criterion (iv). The fortified city was founded by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century, but mainly developed to its present extent by the Dutch in the eighteenth century. The settlement lies within the main ramparts using European planning principles mixed with South Asian architecture. The clearly demarcated settlement was said to have been well maintained keeping its authenticity and integrity. The settlements structure has been maintained and many buildings are being restored. There has been some worry concerning developments linked to tourism infrastructure as well as developments in the nearby town, particularly the cricket grounds adjacent to the main entrance to the fortified settlement. Though boundary modifications of the heritage property have been discussed, these have not yet been finalized. However, the assessment carried out through the periodic reporting process indicated that authenticity and integrity were being compromised and that the outstanding universal value was being impacted. Potential negative impact has been identified as being caused by storms, change in ocean waters, tsunami and tidal waves, along with alien and invasive marine species. There is also the threat of fire. The major negative impact has been solid waste and pollution impacting marine areas as well as air quality. Local and linear utility lines have also had major negative impact along with land conversion. Furthermore, social change, loss of traditional lifestyles and values also goes hand-in-hand with certain illegal activities that might destroy heritage. There have been mixed results from commercial developments, visitor accommodations, housing along ground and marine transportation. This comes with the contradictory impact of tourism and visitors which is also closely linked to the changing values of the locals towards heritage. There has been positive impact of improved heritage interpretation and visitor facilities. Protection and management of Galle is well established under the coordination of the Galle Heritage Foundation that was created in 1992 under an Act of Parliament. The fortification and public buildings are owned by the Department of Archaeology with national level protection under The Antiquities Ordinance of 1948 (revised 1998). An inventory of important privately owned buildings has been declared as protected monuments. To better control development the Urban Development 333

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Authority Law is also being applied. A specific challenge is to control the modification of private buildings for tourism purposes. Based on the periodic exercise outcome, some critical points were identified including the need for improved management of the areas surrounding the property. No buffer zone was identified at the time of inscription. Furthermore, discussions have taken place to redefine the boundary, particularly considering the bay area where many shipwrecks are to be found. The management system could be improved particularly in respect to interaction between the various levels of government, implementation of the management system as well as the preparation of annual work plans. Funding is half from the central government and half from international donors. It was noted that collection of visitor fees and visitor data is difficult since the property is a living entity consisting of residences, offices, school and religious institution. This makes it so much more important to monitor.

Lijiang, China The Old Town of Lijiang was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1997 under criteria (ii), (iv) and (v). A minor boundary modification was carried out in 2012 with the property size becoming 145.6 ha with a buffer zone of 582.3 ha. The settlement that lies at an elevation of 2400 metres on a small plain boasts a pleasant environment, thriving local culture and an outstanding example of human habitat. Since the twelfth century, the town became an important centre on the ancient Tea and Horse Road and the southern Silk Road. Important to this heritage site is its location in the landscape, the water system and the contextually well-adapted buildings by the Naxi people with influence from the traditions of Han, Bai and Tibetans. The town is well-preserved, and the water supply system is still functioning (Figure 19.2). The city structure, as well with streetscapes and architectural styles, has been preserved. The local intangible culture of the Naxi society has also been promoted. The periodic reporting exercise has shown that there is compromise on authenticity and integrity and the outstanding universal value has been impacted. There is clearly negative impact of ground and surface water pollution along with solid waste issues. Furthermore, there is also the negative impact of wind, temperature, dusts as well as pests. Land conversion is also an issue. Additionally, there are threats of earthquakes, storms, flooding, drought, temperature fluctuation as well as fires. Commercial developments, visitor accommodation and associated infrastructure as well as local and linear utility lines are considered as having both negative and positive impact on the property. Similarly, changes in traditional ways of life and knowledge systems are considered to have both negative and positive impact along with the changes in identity and social cohesion in the local population. The impact of tourism is both positive and negative. Illegal activities and deliberate destruction of heritage is a threat. There are positive results of ritual, spiritual, religious and associative uses of the heritage site, along with changing values of society towards heritage. Management activities along with research and monitoring are considered to have positive impact on the property. The water resources and crop production are considered positive, along with developments in housing, water infrastructure, transportation infrastructure and related effects. The protection of Lijiang is ensured through specific authorities at various levels responsible for World Heritage, based on laws and regulations for the protection of cultural relics as well as for ‘Famous Historic and Cultural Cities, Towns and Villages’. A conservation Master Plan also exists along with manuals and business plans which also attempts to control tourism and commercial development. According to the periodic reporting exercise, the management system is well established along with adequate legislation and involvement of all stakeholders including communities and indigenous people. However, funding and resources are clearly not considered to be adequate. Funding is from various 334

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Figure 19.2 The streetscape of Lijiang that retain the character of the ancient settlement for tourists. Source: Kai Weise

grants and the income from visitors with no clear security. Improvements need to be made in terms of facility, equipment and infrastructure for managing the site as well as providing training to local heritage managers. It is also stated that advocacy is needed to ensure that the society doesn’t only enjoy and profit from the heritage but also participate in its protection.

Luang Prabang, Laos Luang Prabang was inscribed on the List of World Heritage in 1995 based on criteria (ii), (iv) and (v). A minor boundary modification was carried out in 2013 with the property area becoming 820 ha along with a buffer zone of 12,560 ha. The town is located between the Mekong and Nam Khan rivers surrounded by mountain ranges. From the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, the town became the capital of the powerful kingdom of Lane Xang (Kingdom of a Million Elephants), and a centre of Buddhism in the region. The fusion between Lao and French Colonial townscape and urban architecture is exceptional. The town and landscape are well-maintained, as well as the main monuments and temples that are maintained by the monks who have upheld their culture and rituals. There are threats due to rapid development largely due to tourism, which puts pressure on the communities to transform their residences to tourist accommodations or built illegal structures. The use of inappropriate material, particularly concrete, over a longer period has had a negative impact on material authenticity of heritage buildings.

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The periodic reporting exercise has shown that authenticity and integrity of the place have been compromised. According to the site managers, there are no factors that are considered purely negative, though several are considered to be both positive and negative, such as housing, visitor accommodation and associated infrastructure, the impact of tourism, visitors and recreation as well as society’s valuing of heritage. Positive factors are indicated as ground and air transportation infrastructure, along with fishing, collecting aquatic resources and subsistence wild plant collection. Management activities are also considered positive along with ritual, spiritual, religious and associative uses. Identity, social cohesion and changes in local population and community is also indicated as positive. The protection of Luang Prabang is based on several government decrees, particularly for monuments and religious buildings as well as assigning responsibility for the protection of cultural heritage to the Ministry of Information and Culture. A lot of planning has gone into Luang Prabang through French support, particularly with laws on urban heritage protection and the establishment of a dedicated World Heritage Department along with national and local heritage committees. Particularly interesting is the Safeguarding and Enhancement Plan (SEP) which differentiates between aspects defined by regulations leaving other aspects to decisions by the communities and local heritage committees. According to periodic reporting exercise, the management system and legislation seem to be partially adequate, though various aspects could be improved. The communication and coordination between all stakeholders, including authorities and community and visitors, is good. It is interesting to note that most of the budget comes from international sources: 50 per cent from multilateral funding and 30 per cent from international donors, leaving the remaining 20 per cent to government funding from different levels. Luang Prabang boasts some very innovative ideas, such as the establishment of the Heritage House which has now become the Heritage Department which coordinates between different sectors. There is also the decentralized cooperation between the French commune of Chinon and Luang Prabang. Furthermore, a lot of studies or research has been done linked to management of the site which includes the PSMV (site protection and enhancement plan), SCOT (territorial coherence scheme) and revised urban plan along with GIS based inventories.

Macao, China The Historic Centre of Macao was inscribed in 2005 under criteria (ii), (iii), (iv) and (vi). The area of the property is about 16 ha with a buffer zone of about 107 ha. Macao was a Portuguese settlement from the mid-sixteenth century until it was returned to China in 1999, playing an important role in trade. The property includes 22 buildings and public spaces that define the ancient port city with its amalgamation of numerous cultural influences, particularly between Portugal and China. The historic settlement remains intact; yet, the setting has been changing rapidly due to economic growth. Land reclamation that was begun in the nineteenth century has changed the coastline. However, the historic centre is still visually connected with the sea and the river, which was the historic route of trading boats coming into Macao. Special planning guidelines have been established focusing on retaining the visual corridors. The site is said to retain its authenticity with the historic core still retaining its material authenticity along with original functions and associated living traditions. According to the outcome of periodic reporting, the site managers believe that the main negative factors affecting the property are housing and commercial development, and both these factors would be for areas outside the property. Additionally, the impact of tourism, visitors and recreation was considered both negative and positive. The remaining factors that were indicated were all considered to be positive: major visitor accommodation and associated infrastructure of interpretative and visitation facilities; ground transport and marine transport infrastructures; renewable energy facilities and non-renewable

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Figure 19.3 The view from Guia Hill in Macao is defined by gigantic buildings, though views to the sea are partially protected. Source: Kai Weise

energy facilities; ritual, spiritual, religious and associative uses of the site; society’s valuing of heritage; research and monitoring activities as well as management activities. The heritage of Macao is protected through a series of Law Decrees and Chief Executive Directives. The overall urban planning of Macao, even beyond the buffer zone, is being carried out to ensure the visual link between the historic port city and the seascape. The site management also assures that the property will be restored and reused in-tune with the site character and in close partnership with the community. According to periodic reporting, the management system is fully adequate with excellent coordination between all levels of authorities. The legal provisions are going through reform for a more unified legal basis to better protect the World Heritage property. The boundaries and buffer zone

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are considered adequate where strict regulations are enforced. The issues arising are linked to visual impacts due to developments beyond the buffer zone, which is being addressed through overall urban planning measures (Figure 19.3). A hundred per cent of the funding comes from the local municipality, which allows for adequate human resource capacity with a strong incentive for training. The revenue collection from tourism and taxes from the gaming sector are reinvested into various community welfare programmes with a focus on heritage conservation work. All conservation work is carried out with proper procedures, including research, testing and ensuring compatibility of materials. The information is also stored in a database for professional and academic use. The collaboration with stakeholders was considered effective.

Melaka and George town, Malaysia Melaka and George Town, historic cities of the Straits of Malacca, are a property consisting of two trading ports that were inscribed in 2008 under criteria (ii), (iii) and (iv). The area of the property including both settlements is about 219 ha with a buffer zone of about 393 ha, which was established after a minor boundary modification was carried out in 2011. These cities were testimony to a living multi-cultural heritage. The architecture and townscape are influenced by the culture of the Malay Archipelago, India, China and Europe. The main attributes of this property are the settlement, the architecture and the unique blend of cultures of port settlements. The property is said to have retained its integrity and authenticity with all elements being present. The listed monuments and sites have been restored with appropriate treatment and according to the conservation guidelines and principles. According to periodic reporting, the only negative impact comes from illegal activities both in connection with construction as well as inappropriate uses of historic buildings. Major visitor accommodation and associated infrastructure is considered making both negative and positive impact on the property. This is also the case with changes in traditional ways of life and knowledge system as well as with community identity, social cohesion, and changes in local population and community. There is a long list of positive impacts on the site as well, which include: interpretative and visitation facilities; ground, marine and air transport infrastructure and the effects arising from the use of this transportation infrastructure; ritual, spiritual, religious and associative uses of the towns’ heritage, as well as society’s improved valuing of heritage; and impacts of tourism, visitor and recreation. Melaka faces several major issues, which also led to the need for the minor boundary modification of both the property and the buffer zone. The link to the Straits of Malacca along the Melaka River is critical, particularly since large areas of land reclamation has left the port city high and dry. The extension of heritage boundary in 2011 also took into consideration the area around the historic Chinese cemetery. Furthermore, development pressures, particularly in respect to tourism infrastructure and accommodations, have been another major threat to the city which received 12 million tourists in 2016. According to periodic reporting, the management system is sufficient and well-implemented with sufficient collaboration with all stakeholders. Funding is received by the government: 70 per cent from the central government, 20 per cent from regional government, and 10 per cent from the local government. The site management has been registered as incorporated governing entities for both cities to better coordinated activities. At the local level, a special task force monitors the World Heritage Site. At the federal level, a management committee, consisting of officials from both cities and chaired by the Minister of Information, Communications and Culture, coordinates the development and management of the properties. The protective measures for the properties are considered adequate, though the conservation of shop-houses needs to be carefully enforced.

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Lessons learned There are some very basic lessons to be learned from the above examples, listed below, which indicate the critical need for and the factors to be considered in integrated management systems for heritage sites in Asia. 1. Definition of property including values, attributes and boundaries. • •

Defining boundaries of complex urban sites is difficult, and, except for one, all the sites above have carried out minor boundary modifications. Urban sites are in general large and complex and need to deal with the expansion of the site over time while there has often been internal change.

2. Overall vision, management principles, management objectives and management approach. • •

The need for community involvement in managing complex sites has been shown, particularly when the focus has been on the urban fabric. The intangible heritage focusing on communities and their activities are stated as being significant even if this is not reflected in the criteria for inscription.

3. Management frameworks which include institutional and legal provisions along resources (financial, human and equipment). •

Governance of urban sites is usually closely related to a strong municipal governance system, requiring powers to be devolved to local authorities. Municipal authorities are generally wellorganized in comparison to more rural areas.

4. Plan of action which determines actions to address identified issues along with required management frameworks. •

Factors affecting urban properties are often specifically dealing with infrastructure and various forms of development, though assessment of these as positive or negative varies. More detailed comments such as the rising level of roads are also relevant to many sites.

5. Planning of related sectors particularly tourism, disaster risk management along with regional planning but depending on sites also agriculture, sustainable community development, etc. •

•

Urban sites are strategically located within the wider landscape that become part of the significance of the property and thus needs to be maintained. The environment provides the overall context for the city even when covered with buildings and infrastructure. Most of the urban sites receive large number of visitors, possibly due to easy accessibility and good visitor infrastructure, which then becomes a liability. Most site managers consider visitors and tourism to be both positive and negative factors.

The stories of Kathmandu and Samarkand The lessons learned from the previous sites, assessed through their Retrospective Statement of Outstanding Universal Value and the outcome of the Second Cycle of Periodic Reporting, can be tested on two very different urban World Heritage properties: Kathmandu Valley in Nepal and Samarkand, the Crossroad of Cultures in Uzbekistan.4

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Integrated management plan for the Kathmandu valley The Kathmandu Valley was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1979 under criteria (iii), (iv) and (vi). The property consists of seven monument zones, which include the three palace squares of Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur, the two Buddhist stupa ensembles of Swayambhu and Baudhanath, and the Hindu temple complexes of Pashupatinath and Changu Narayan. The criteria clearly focused on ensuring that the monuments are considered within their urban context along with aspects of intangible heritage. The understanding of this site varied greatly between the international experts and the local authorities, particularly when it came to defining the attributes of the property. The boundaries were changed several times. While the listed monuments were conserved, the surrounding urban context was lost to uncontrolled development. This led to Kathmandu Valley being placed on the ‘List of World Heritage in Danger’ in 2003. The World Heritage Committee requested the redefinition of the boundaries and buffer zones and the establishment of an integrated management plan. The integrated management plan (IMP) for Kathmandu Valley was prepared and established by a team of national and international experts supported by UNESCO.5 This led to the removal of the property from the List of World Heritage in Danger in 2007. The World Heritage Centre/ICOMOS Mission of June 2006 commented on the IMP: In brief, the establishment of the IMP of the Kathmandu Valley could be seen as a MODEL PROCESS for all World Heritage Management Plans. It is not a study document to describe the site or to provide ideals for the site-management, but has gone through a thorough process of site-based information gathering and commitment by the concerned site-management authorities, and the draft has incorporated the viewpoints and realistic possibilities of the complex management structure. (Stovel and Okahashi 2006: 2) There were several important aspects of the integrated management plan for Kathmandu Valley that provided the basis for dealing with historic urban cultural heritage properties. The first step was to clarify that the attributes of the property had to include the complex urban context surrounding the listed monuments, particularly in respect to the clearly defined significance of related intangible heritage. This was done through the redefinition of boundaries and buffer zones but also by ensuring the devolution of powers to the local authorities and site managers. Dealing with community and on-site activities, such as festivals and rituals, can only be dealt with by the site managers and not by central government authorities. A further contribution was the introduction of the concept of ‘sustainable development’ into the management discourse. Here, conservation needed to contribute to the development of the site, though respecting the significance of the historic context. This dialogue with the local site managers and community members was the basis for implementing the integrated management plan. It was also the basis for dealing with the management issues that were identified. The issues-based management system ensures that the ground realities are addressed. For Kathmandu Valley, the main issues were categorized under the following headings: identification of World Heritage and its values, legislation, planning and policy, operationalizing of site management, community and awareness, visitors, information and research, and sustainability of management. The management system, which included the institutional, legal and economic frameworks along with a comprehensive Plan of Actions, was developed to address the identified issues. The Coordinative Working Committee that was established to ensure close collaboration between the Department of Archaeology, the municipalities and the seven site managers continued functioning and was the mechanism for postearthquake response.

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The integrated management plan is a dynamic system which needs to be reviewed and amended according to changing circumstances. The plan was reviewed, and a draft amendment was developed in 2015, just before the Gorkha earthquake struck and damaged many of the monuments. The process of review included community discussions and review of past implementation of management processes. Particular importance was given to disaster risk management linked to the threat of earthquakes since it was understood that every eighty to hundred years a large earthquake strikes Kathmandu. An international symposium was held in November 2013, titled Revisiting Kathmandu, Safeguarding Living Urban Heritage. The participants of the symposium discussed the linkages between authenticity, site management, community involvement and disaster risk management (Weise 2015). The outcome of these discussions was the basis for developing the culture-sector rehabilitation plan after the Gorkha earthquake (Figure 19.4). Though

Figure 19.4 The chariot festival of Macchendranath in Kathmandu that continued after the 2015 earthquake showed resilience of the local community. Source: Kai Weise

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the 2015 amendments were never fully adopted, the Coordinative Working Committees established between management of the seven monument zones continued to function during the post-earthquake rehabilitation phase.

Management frameworks and processes for Samarkand – crossroad of cultures Samarkand – Crossroad of Cultures was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2001 under criteria (i), (ii), and (iv). At the time, the World Heritage Committee acknowledged the extension of the site boundaries to include the archaeological sites of Afrosiab, the entire Timurid City, and the Russian extension of the town in the nineteenth century, as well as Ulugh-Bek’s Observatory. The attributes of the World Heritage property were therefore defined as the historic town as well as the Islamic architecture. The Committee also requested the preparation of an integrated management plan and to report back in 2004. In 2005, further requests were made including a Reactive Monitoring Mission to assess the impact of the large-scale restoration and urban landscaping programme. The mission was undertaken in 2006 which again underlined the importance of the management plan and a coherent urban conservation and planning policy. A draft brief management plan was prepared, development work continued, and a further mission was sent in 2006, followed by a Reinforced Monitoring mission in 2009.6 This led to the Committee requesting the State Party to focus on the conservation of the traditional urban fabric, the development of structural restoration projects, and the creation of an adequate management framework. The process of establishing the Management Frameworks and Processes began with an International Workshop in October 2010.7 A team of national and international experts was brought together to develop the required management system.8 The management planning went on for two years and the final documents were submitted to the World Heritage Committee in 2013. The Committee made the following comments: This coherent urban conservation and planning policy for the management of the property and the buffer zone provides clear principles for the preservation and use of the property. It sets out the management frameworks and processes and contains guidelines for conservation and restoration, as well as monitoring and reporting principles. (UNESCO 2013a: 125) The main approach to the management planning lay in identifying issues that were affecting the property, particularly the attributes of greatest significance. As previously discussed by the World Heritage Committee, the issues focused around large-scale restoration works, urban landscaping, infrastructure development including roads and sewage, conservation strategy for residences and monuments, demolition of traditional houses, inventory and documentation of historic features, and the means of managing these issues. The management system needed to address all this while taking care of daily running of the World Heritage property. Resolving issues in the governance system in Uzbekistan was clearly a top-down approach which allowed for clear decisions to be taken on conservation approaches; however, there was no dialogue with the affected communities. The welfare of the local citizens was given high priority through a commitment to sustainable development. Particularly important was clarifying the conservation approach for the various components of the property which included the archaeological site of Afrosiab, the medieval Timurid city as well as the nineteenth century Russian extension. Conservation of the medieval city was particularly complex. The general focus was on the conservation of the existing town form and architectural components, with a prohibition on further interventions such as demolition, street widening and inappropriate new constructions. The remaining fragments of the ancient city walls were to be conserved. The positions 342

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Figure 19.5 The beautification around monuments in Samarkand with alien trees and green lawns. Source: Kai Weise

of the city gates were also to be demarcated to provide an understanding of the extent of the Timurid city. The monuments were to be maintained in the present state of restoration wherever possible to ensure that there was no further negative impact on the authenticity of the monuments. The areas directly surrounding the monuments were not to be beautified or unnecessarily changed whereby changing the context (Figure 19.5). The areas which had been cleared of its original fabric were to be rehabilitated phase-wise. The inappropriate landscaping was to be removed accordingly. The traditional urban fabric was to be conserved, while considering the improvements to the standard of living of the community. The services needed to be upgraded without changing the structure and the significant attributes of the city. The Mahalla Centres were to remain as the community centres in their traditional configuration with the historic buildings being conserved in their original form.

Conclusion As our cultural heritage sites are understood in their full complexity, which includes not only the monument but also the environment, living heritage, along with consideration of sustainable development, it is necessary to determine a management system that can address the multifaceted character of heritage properties. This requires a multi-disciplinary team working on issues that go far beyond heritage conservation. In these complex settings, it is necessary to develop a holistic governance system 343

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that ensures long term sustainability. The integrated management system must help coordinate the various aspects sectoral plans while keeping mind the overall vision for the heritage property while of course also ensuring that the attributes addressing outstanding universal value are safeguarded. Historic cities have a character that was developed over centuries by powerful rulers, local communities and in some cases by floating populations or visitors. Historic cities and their urban context must be understood as living heritage, which means that there is constant change. The fabric and open spaces have a character which is unique and has persisted over time. That which provides continuity to the living heritage is what needs to be safeguarded. It is the resilience of the communities which has ensured the continuity of historic cities. That which has survived over centuries and we have inherited today is that which has been resilient, has been of value and past generations have conserved. The past communities conserved these aspects not due to a contrived desire to conserve but rather due to their general belief, customary activities and functional requirements. The continued management of such heritage sites must be based on this understanding. It is not conservation but continuity of these historic cities that need to be ensured, and this can only be achieved through resilience of the communities that have come to be the caretakers.

Notes 1 The author of this chapter was a mentor for the Second Cycle of Periodic Reporting for South and Central Asia and part of the team that prepared the final report for the entire Asia-Pacific to the World Heritage Committee and the UNESCO Publication. The final report on the results of this Periodic Reporting exercise for Asia and the Pacific was presented to the World Heritage Committee during its 36 Session in Paris in 2012 (available at: https://whc.unesco.org/en/activities/682/). The outcome was also published under the series of UNESCO Papers, no. 34, Understanding World Heritage in Asia and the Pacific, The Second Cycle of Periodic Reporting 2010–2012, which is available at http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0021/002182/218275e.pdf. 2 The author facilitated the preparation and establishment of the management systems for the World Heritage properties of Kathmandu Valley and Samarkand as a consultant to UNESCO. 3 The World Heritage properties without Statements of Outstanding Universal Value were requested to prepare retrospective ones as part of the Second Cycle of Periodic Reporting process. 4 The preparation and establishment of the World Heritage management for both these properties was facilitated by the author in the capacity of UNESCO Consultant. 5 The team of experts included International Expert Prof. Herb Stovel from Carlton University in Ottowa and Kai Weise as national expert in Municipal Planning, supported by the Department of Archeology under the Director General Kosh Prasad Acharya, Junko Okahashi at the World Heritage Centre, and Elke Selter at the UNESCO Kathmandu Office. 6 A Reinforced Monitoring mission was carried out 9 to 14 March 2009 by Francesco Bandarin, the Director of the World Heritage Centre, and Amir Pasic for ICOMOS. 7 The international conference ‘Development of a Management Plan for Samarkand – Crossroad of Cultures’ was held from 25 to 28 October 2010 in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. 8 A National Team of Experts was established under Abdusafikhan Rakhmanov, Deputy Head and Main Architect, Board of Monuments of the Ministry of Culture and Sport of the Republic of Uzbekistan. The formulation of the management frameworks and processes was led by Rakhmatulla Salikhov, Architect Tashkent General Planning Institute, and Maysara Naberaeva, Head of Samarkan Regional Office of the Board of Monuments. This process included four workshops that were carried out in June 2011, November 2011, March 2012 and July 2012, and was facilitated by the author (UNESCO consultant), Kaori Kawakami (Associate Expert, World Heritage Centre) and Sanjarbek Allayarov (Culture Officer, UNESCO Office in Tashkent).

References ICOMOS. (1994) Nara Document on Authenticity, Paris: ICOMOS. Stovel, H. and Okahashi, J. (2006) World Heritage Centre/ICOMOS Mission Report to Kathmandu Valley June 2006, Paris: UNESCO. UNESCO. (1972) The Convention Concerning the Protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage, Paris: UNESCO.

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World Heritage of Kathmandu and Samarkand ———. (2003) The Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, Paris: UNESCO. ———. (2012) Understanding World Heritage in Asia and the Pacific: The Second Cycle of Periodic Reporting 2010–2012, Paris: UNESCO. ———. (2013a) Decisions Adopted by the 37th Session of the World Heritage Committee (WHC-13/37.COM/7B), Paris: UNESCO. ———. (2013b) New Life for Historic Cities: The Historic Urban Landscape Approach Explained, Paris: UNESCO. ———. (2017) Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention, Paris: UNESCO. United Nations (2015) Sustainable Development Goals, Sustainable Development Knowledge Platform. [online]. Available at: https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/topics/sustainabledevelopmentgoals (accessed 29 July 2018). Weise, K. (ed.) (2015) Proceedings of the Symposium ‘Revisiting Kathmandu, Safeguarding Living Urban Heritage’, 25-29 November 2013, Kathmandu: UNESCO Kathmandu Office.

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20 ERASURE AND APPEARANCE A critical view on urban heritage management practices in China, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam John C. Stallmeyer and Lynne M. Dearborn

Introduction In the past 20 years, literature has emerged within heritage studies that explores the ways heritage is erased and the implications of such erasures for heritage management and visitor experience. This literature focuses a critical lens on issues of erasure and highlights its political, social, cultural, and economic motivations. (e.g. Fibiger 2015; Holtorf and Kristensen 2015; Silverman 2010). In this chapter we extend the treatment of erasure, positing that erasure is accompanied by commensurate appearance. Like the erasures to which they are inextricably linked, appearances are laden with political, social, cultural, and economic motivations, including: solidifying a religious heritage, developing a coherent national identity, and developing economic benefits of heritage tourism, among others. In examining erasure and appearance in the context of contemporary heritage, we approach the two terms not as separate; instead we understand them as a single process in which the introduction of one implies the other. We see them as a dyad linked through management policies and practices. Furthermore, these two have the ability to occur in either order, with erasure at times occurring first followed by appearance, or vice versa. In either case, one suggests the existence of the other. This chapter is organized into five main sections. After this introduction, we then explore the erasure–appearance dyad (EAD), explicating its operation through policies and practices of description, prescription, and proscription. Next we examine the EAD in the realms of tangible and intangible heritage, using UNESCO-inscribed World Heritage sites Luang Prabang and Hoi An. The fourth section explores the EAD in two locations on UNESCO’s World Heritage Tentative List, examining uses of description, prescription, and proscription in these contexts. While these cases all represent the EAD process in the Asian context, the process occurs wherever heritage is identified and sought out by visitors, albeit with the influence of particular social, cultural, economic, and political context. The conclusion considers how an awareness of the EAD might inform construction of multiple urban heritage narratives and how those multiple narratives can enrich ‘heritage-scapes’ (Di Giovine 2009) for residents and visitors.

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Erasure and appearance Understanding erasure and appearance in contemporary heritage contexts requires a clear definition of terms. For heritage, two of erasure’s definitions are of interest. First, erasure is literally an act of deleting or ‘removing something completely’ (Cambridge University Press 2018). In heritage contexts, this addresses erasure’s active nature and the conscious goal to remove specific objects, ideas, practices, or memories. While usually an intentional act, erasure can result unintentionally from heritage management policies and practices. For example, as this chapter’s cases show, when the physical context for intangible heritage is removed intentionally due to its incongruous relationship to an authorized heritage, intangible heritage can quickly be erased. A second meaning of erasure is the trace left by the attempt to erase. As in writing, erasing sometimes results in marks – physical erasures – that remain on the page. In heritage contexts, objects, ideas, practices, or urban memories that were meant to be erased, at times leave traces, becoming instead new appearances (see for example, Fibiger 2015). Two definitions of appearance make its reciprocal relationship vis-à-vis erasure clearer. First, appearance is the ‘the act or instance of appearing’; a coming into existence (Morris 1973: 62). This includes the creation or recreation of heritage objects, or the creation of facsimiles of heritage objects. Within this appearance, it is easy to see a relationship to questions of authenticity. In heritage contexts, a second meaning of appearance, ‘the act of becoming noticeable’ (Cambridge University Press 2018), occurs by the very act of naming something as heritage. Naming brings the heritage into being through appearance. As with erasure, appearance can be intentional or unintentional. Valorizing particular built objects and commensurate heritage tourism development can give unintentional appearance to heritage sites. Appearance elevates the profile of heritage objects or brings to consciousness previously unknown heritage objects. Simultaneously operative in heritage contexts, erasure and appearance are linked through practices of heritage designation and management. These practices are not neutral; rather they are laden with the values that underpin much of contemporary heritage discourse, which explicitly or implicitly values or devalues certain aspects of heritage. This discourse, or what Laurajane Smith calls the ‘Authorized Heritage Discourse’ (AHD), results in a definition of heritage that ‘promotes a certain set of Western elite cultural values as being universally applicable’ (Smith 2006: 11), giving appearance to a particular heritage. The AHD is grounded in the history of western notions of conservation and preservation that link contemporary discourse to the writings of Ruskin and Morris and to the birth of archaeology and architecture as professional bodies of knowledge authorized to define heritage (Smith 2006; Wells 2007). Furthermore, this discourse initiates the policies and practices of heritage management which are activated through description, prescription, and proscription. As Figure 20.1 shows, erasure and appearance are linked through and take place by means of these three processes that describe, prescribe, and proscribe various tangible and intangible heritage and the management practices meant to ensure their continued existence. In the context of heritage, description, ‘[t]he process or technique of … transmitting an impression of with words’ (Morris 1973: 357), is used to enumerate the salient features of heritage. However, these descriptions are not neutral. Rather, these descriptions, as discursive practices conducted within the context of contemporary heritage management, are grounded in the AHD (Smith 2006; Wells 2007). This management practice builds on a western male-dominated perspective that values a specific heritage (Wells 2007: 3). While more contemporary heritage documents, such as the Nara Document, have as their goal a more relativistic approach to heritage, in practice they fall back on previous models that underpin the AHD (Wells 2007). Thus, the descriptions of heritage objects developed by contemporary management practices tend to invoke definitions of heritage, authenticity, and truth that are informed by the AHD. Description, simultaneously constructed by and resulting from the AHD, activates erasure through omission of competing heritages. And with its focus on heritage objects, description of the physical

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Figure 20.1 The erasure–appearance dyad. Source: John C. Stallmeyer

heritage can effectively erase intangible lived experience – that which imbues the heritage-scape with meaning. Likewise, description gives appearance to heritage that may otherwise have been invisible. For example, as shown in the Chang Mai case below, the description of Chang Mai heritage gives appearance to the Lanna kingdom and heritage that has otherwise been invisible to outsiders experiencing the city. Description, in concert with prescription and proscription, can give appearance to objects that are only marginally authentic, that is to say have been created, or recreated through approved heritage processes. Thus, description enables erasure and appearance, as the following examples illustrate. Prescription is the ‘the act of telling someone else what they must have or do’ (Cambridge University Press 2018). Within heritage management, prescription sets down recommended actions meant to ensure the survival of heritage as described. In the context of contemporary heritage practice, these actions are thought beneficial to the achievement of a cohesive heritage-scape. Both erasures and appearances occur through such prescription. From recommended removal of incongruous built elements to rules that set out how new objects are to be constructed within a given context, prescription has wide-ranging influence on the construction of heritage-scapes, as well as visitor experience. Prescription is always explicit, setting out what should be done. Unlike description, it only operates explicitly. What is left out of any prescription is excluded because of erasures rooted in the heritage description. Proscription, ‘to forbid an action or practice officially’ (Cambridge University Press 2018), in the context of heritage management policy and practice, includes rules and regulations that forbid and prohibit particular actions, especially with respect to built heritage. As with description and prescription, proscription suggests an active process that intercedes through management practice and through discursive intervention. Hence, by prohibiting a certain action or object, another is given appearance. Thus, proscription brings about to the same extent that it eliminates. Proscription is particularly evident in rules for preservation and conservation of heritage objects. Here again Ruskin’s continuing influence is clear. A review of his ‘Lamp of Truth’ reveals the strong prohibition of various ‘architectural deceits’ that may influence the truthfulness of the architectural object, and therefore, we might argue, influence the authenticity of the heritage object (Ruskin 1849). As we will see, proscription to cleanse heritage objects and larger landscapes of undesirable components plays an important role in erasure within the context of built heritagescapes (Dearborn and Stallmeyer 2010). With this common foundation of terminology, this chapter now examines how description, prescription, and proscription undergird erasure and appearance in four East and Southeast Asian cases in relation to UNESCO World Heritage inscription and Tentative Listing.

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Examples from UNESCO inscribed World Heritage While the EAD is evident in heritage locations across the globe, an examination of two UNESCO World Heritage sites shows how description, prescription, and proscription facilitate the appearance of heritage and enable its erasure. Luang Prabang, Laos, and Hoi An, Vietnam, were inscribed on the World Heritage List based on criteria (ii) – exhibiting ‘an important interchange of human values, over a span of time or within a cultural area of the world, on developments in architecture or technology, monumental arts, town-planning or landscape design’; and (v) – providing ‘an outstanding example of a traditional human settlement, land-use, or sea-use which is representative of a culture (or cultures), or human interaction with the environment especially when it has become vulnerable under the impact of irreversible change’. Luang Prabang’s inscription also references criteria (iv) – offering ‘an outstanding example of a type of building, architectural or technological ensemble or landscape which illustrates significant stages in human history’ (UNESCO 2017: 25–26). Luang Prabang’s inscription decision noted: Luang Prabang represents, to an exceptional extent, the successful fusion of the traditional [Laotian] architectural and urban structures and those of the European [French] colonial rulers of the 19th and 20th centuries. Its unique townscape is remarkably well preserved, illustrating a key stage in the blending of two distinct cultural traditions. (UNESCO 1996: 47) Hoi An’s 1999 inscription stated: Hoi An Ancient Town is an exceptionally well-preserved example of a South-East Asian trading port dating from the 15th to the 19th century. Its buildings and its street plan reflect the influences, indigenous [Vietnamese] and foreign [Chinese, Japanese, European], that have combined to produce this unique heritage site. (UNESCO 2000: 17) Nomination and inscription of both sites focused largely on the physical fabric – urban formations, buildings, monuments, and their material qualities. Conservation plans for both sites concentrate on material preservation to protect physical elements and remove offending elements, insuring the inscribed area reflects its ‘original’ condition. Management plans describe the buildings within the preservation zones through a classification system unique to each site and growing from the schema of inscription. In each locale, categorization is based upon physical features salient to the perceived historical, cultural, and scientific value of the built heritage. Table 20.1 shows each site’s classification system. The descriptive basis of each suggests a value system that has been applied to the physical fabric’s categorization. The filter for each category offers a means to control the preservation, conservation, and future development at each site, to mold the built heritage to an ‘authentic’ image. Yet, while the classifications for each site were developed by experts in architectural and built heritage conservation, at the time of listing, both sites were populated by local communities with actual historic relation to the inhabited site and needing the ability to dwell and evolve as a community (Poulios 2014).

Luang Prabang Located at the confluence of the Mekong and Khan rivers in northern Laos, Luang Prabang consists of 29 villages, each centered around a physically and culturally significant Wat complex linking the village community to the religious context in an inseparable socio-spatial matrix (Lebar and Suddard 1967). The town’s urban form derives from a layering of civilizations and their governing ideologies. The

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John C. Stallmeyer and Lynne M. Dearborn Table 20.1 Classification systems with associated criteria for built structures in Luang Prabang and Hoi An. Classification LUANG PRABANG Black: Buildings included in the inventory of the PSMV Red: Buildings included in the inventory of the PSMV Orange: Buildings not included in the inventory of the PSMV White: Buildings not included in the inventory of the PSMV Yellow: Buildings not included in the inventory of the PSMV HOI AN Special Category

Category I

Category II

Category III

Category IV

Criteria

Buildings of the inventory constitutive of the dossier of the presentation of Luang Prabang to UNESCO Buildings to be preserved and restored Buildings worth[y] to be preserved and restored Buildings that can be replaced Buildings perturbing the landscape

All original elements of these unique architectural and artistic structures have been maintained in an integrated manner. These elements have special historical, cultural and scientific value. All original elements of these unique architectural and artistic structures have been maintained in an integrated manner. These elements have special historical, cultural and scientific value. All original elements of the front building, facade and roof tiles have been maintained in an integrated manner. These elements have historical, cultural and scientific value. The yin-yang tiled roofs and some original elements of the house have been maintained in situ. These elements have some historical, cultural and scientific value. These houses are built in modern style using modern materials like concrete. They do not contribute cultural significance to the complex of architectural monuments in Hoi An Ancient Town.

Source: Lynne M. Dearborn and John C. Stallmeyer

non-orthogonal clustering of villages, absent an urban core, represents, ‘an ancient Tai settlement pattern known elsewhere only from archeological remains’ (UNESCO 2004: 23) confined by the geography of the peninsula. An ancient symbiotic trading relationship existed among the villages, with each producing a specialty (e.g. textiles, wood carving, food product) to exchange with neighbors. This urban settlement formed the center of its muang within the Kingdom of Lan Xang; Luang Prabang, one of the three smaller kingdoms that resulted when Lan Xang was subdivided in the early 1700s, paid tribute to the Siamese court in Bangkok, and to courts at Hue and Beijing (Stuart-Fox 1997). As French colonial interests expanded from Vietnam in the late nineteenth century, much of what had been the Lan Xang Kingdom came under French control. French-Siamese Treaties, finalized in 1904 and 1907, set the borders of the French Protectorate of Laos with its colonial administration in Luang Prabang (Savada 1995). Thus began French influence on the town’s built environment, including an orthogonal overlay on the organic pattern of village streets, new institutional building types, and a fusion of Lao and French forms and details within the residential fabric of the villages (Dearborn and Stallmeyer 2010). While Laos has experienced significant change and political upheaval since the 350

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French administration departed in 1945, this has not substantially influenced the town’s contemporary physical appearance. After Luang Prabang’s World Heritage listing in 1995, the local state’s authority, La Maison du Patrimoine, published the Luang Prabang Management Plan or Plan de Sauvegarde et de Mise en Valeur (PSMV) in 2001. Regulating all aspects of the built environment throughout the various preservation zones (Dearborn and Stallmeyer 2009), the PSMV incorporates description, prescription, and proscription, enabling erasure and appearance in the built environment. The PSMV defines and describes the protected areas: The Preservation Zone (ZPP-Ua), Protection Zone (ZPP-Ub), Nature and Scenery Zone (ZPP-N), and The Monasteries Zone (ZPP-M), providing regulations for the buildings within each zone (La Maison du Patrimoine 2001). It also inventories and classifies all the buildings in the zones according to the five classifications given in Table 20.1. These classifications provide the first part of a detailed description of the built environment and the extent to which each element contributes to the vision of Luang Prabang’s heritage as enumerated in the nomination documents. An eight-volume appendix extends this description to include details to guide in the preservation, conservation, and new construction in the various zones. Volume one details the town’s architectural types. Buildings are divided into six construction types and four formal organizations, yielding 24 architectural types that are then used to categorize each building in the inventory (La Maison du Patrimone 2001, Appendix – Fascicule No. 1 Types Architecturaux, 2). In addition, manuals 2 through 4, in the appendices, provide descriptions of architectural details, building materials, and prescribed colors, respectively. The last two Luang Prabang classifications in Table 20.1 – buildings which can be replaced and buildings perturbing the landscape – are also noteworthy for their ability to categorically place built objects outside of the city’s heritage, erasing by omission any architecture that does not conform to the ideal of a Lao-French syncretic architecture. Buildings in these categories, coded white and yellow respectively in the PSMV, include mid-century modern examples of French colonial architecture executed in concrete (Figure 20.2A) and the shop fronts (Figure 20.2B). These descriptions accomplish erasure and appearance. The justification, and thus the management plan for the city, ‘is almost entirely architecturally focused, emphasizing a harmonious blend of indigenous and colonial building styles’ (Long and Sweet 2006: 245). This focus on the physical elides, and thus erases, the social, political and cultural fabric of the city and deftly eliminates a more critical, and ‘inconvenient’ engagement with the city’s complex and contested history – as royal capital, French colonial outpost, and as transformed under communist rule (Dearborn and Stallmeyer 2009). The description of Luang Prabang’s heritage enumerated in the nomination and detailed in the PSMV enables the Lao government to ‘strategically use the resources and expertise of UNESCO and the French government to develop and maintain an uncomplicated version of Lao history and nationhood’ (Long and Sweet 2006: 449). Thus, through heritage preservation documents for Luang Prabang, the Lao government gives appearance to ‘a unified Lao national identity in a country of great and sometimes controversial ethnic and cultural diversity’ (Dearborn and Stallmeyer 2009: 253). For example, naming the former royal palace in Luang Prabang The National Museum and carefully preserving it, suggests a location of national pride and unified identity. However, it is a location of erasure where the personal effects of the former king are on full display but no mention is made of his removal from the throne by the communist government and his presumed death in a ‘seminar camp’ (Dearborn and Stallmeyer 2010). This erasure is a descriptive removal but also a case of erasure as trace. Likewise, through omission, the justification’s description erases the everyday life of residents and their intangible heritage from a meaningful role in the landscape. More concretely, the PSMV quite literally facilitates the removal of buildings. By categorizing and describing structures as ‘buildings 351

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Figure 20.2 Luang Prabang: (A) Example of building that can be removed; (B) Shopfronts on Sakkaline Road. Source: John C. Stallmeyer

which can be replaced’, the description facilitates the removal and thus erasure of these buildings. This process also erases whatever everyday activities they housed. At the same time a commensurate appearance of facsimile heritage buildings takes place through prescriptions that require formal characteristics of the valorized heritage. A notable occurrence of this process can be seen at the southern tip of the peninsula, where several white coded ‘buildings which can be removed’ have indeed been removed and, in their place, the tourist landscape has been given appearance in the form of the Mekong View Hotel, shown in Figure 20.3A. A modern reproduction of the valorized building typologies described in the PSMV, but now devoid of any semblance of everyday life, this location is now given over to new tourist accommodation that is part of

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Figure 20.3 Luang Prabang: (A) Mekong View Hotel; (B) Proscribed building materials and intangible heritage. Source: John C. Stallmeyer

an old-world colonial and Lao time capsule, heavily sanitized by boutique hotel experiences and ‘heritage’ recreations, such as gas-powered street lights and brick-paved lanes. It offers a chance to step back in time, with the past, that ‘other country’, being an imagined ‘better experience’ than the present. (Travers 2008: 111, 113) The appearance of this tourist landscape that proliferates in Luang Prabang is facilitated by the prescriptions contained in the PSMV, which enumerate rules for the preservation and conservation of existing category I, II, or III buildings. It states, ‘rehabilitation work to keep to original, possibility for evolution to be determined case by case, on consent of La Maison du Patrimoine. Demolition prohibited. In case of demolition by accident or malevolence, reconstruction to keep identical to original’ (La

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Maison du Patrimone 2001: 16). But the PSMV also defines the forms and materials for new replacement construction within the various zones of protection where white coded building are being replaced: ‘[a]ny new building will be constructed by respecting characteristics of one of those architectural models listed in the Fascicle no 1: Architectural types, of the Recommendation Notebook’ (La Maison du Patrimone 2001: 51). In other words, when a white-coded building is removed, it is to be replaced with a building that follows the regulation and duplicates the formal rules of the regulation. The Mekong View Hotel stands as an exemplar. The PSMV prescriptions provide the formal aesthetics of new construction, the materials, construction techniques, as well as lot coverage regulation. All of these are key elements in the appearance of heritage simulacra that only purport the authentic and work in concert with the descriptions, resulting in appearance and erasure in the heritage landscape. The final piece of the EAD in Luang Prabang is the PSMV’s proscriptions. These take several forms. First, there are several buildings or portions of buildings categorized as ‘perturbing the landscape’ (La Maison du Patrimone 2001: 16). These are primarily additions to structures that contribute to the heritage landscape but are out of keeping with the heritage vision. Unsurprisingly, the PSMV calls for these to be removed stating, ‘[i]n case of rehabilitation works these buildings could be subject to prescriptions intended to attenuate their negative impact in the urban landscape’ (La Maison du Patrimone 2001: 16). The potential effect of such a regulation is that improvements to the structure could result in the required removal of an important piece of the building in terms of the function and livelihood of the owner. For example, as Figure 20.2B shows, shopfronts have been added to an inventoried building along Sakkaline Road, the impact of removing this piece of building would result in the compromised viability of the shops. Thus, no construction of any kind seems to be taking place, raising the potential for unintended erasure through neglect. Other proscriptions on materials and forms are found throughout the PSMV. One important proscription is the prohibition of roofing materials other than tile, wood, straw, and bamboo. In some cases, this may have the potential to unintentionally erase activities of everyday life. Figure 20.3B shows the making of traditional rice crackers in a building whose metal roof certainly does not meet the requirements of the PSMV. Reconstruction of this building, a building that can be replaced per the PSMV, would likely result in the displacement of this everyday activity given its limited incomeproducing potential versus the cost of meeting the material requirements of the PSMV. Together the descriptions, prescriptions, and proscriptions put in place in the PSMV and implemented throughout Luang Prabang have the potential for intended and unintended erasure and appearance, a fact made clear in UNESCO’s Impact report (2004) that assessed development in Luang Prabang since its inscription.

Hoi An Hoi An’s location in central Vietnam’s Quang Nam Province provides important context for its heritage as an ancient trading port reflecting indigenous and foreign influences. Throughout its history, the site’s proximity to small waterways and a deep harbor made it ideal for local-village trade that grew into extensive foreign commerce, especially with Japanese, Chinese, Dutch, Portuguese and French who lived and traded in Hoi An (UNESCO 2008a; Ursula 2010). By the early twentieth century, although eclipsed by Da Nang, many Chinese traders and their local wives maintained businesses in Hoi An (Ursula 2010). Rich from this historical mixing, Hoi An’s heritage was spared during the twentieth century’s conflicts with French and American forces (UNESCO 2008a). Vietnam’s post-war development bypassed the town, targeting it for anti-Chinese and anti-capitalist policies (Avieli 2015). These conditions impoverished Hoi An’s residents and left its physical fabric vulnerable and in disrepair. The Ancient Town’s close proximity to the waterway (Figure 20.4A) exposes it not only to storm surges but to flooding of the water-facing shophouses during unusually high tides. 354

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Figure 20.4 Hoi An: (A) Waterfront urban fabric; (B) Shophouse Museum. Source: John C. Stallmeyer

In the early 1980s, a Polish architect working nearby alerted officials to the town’s unique heritage and it slowly gained attention (Di Giovine 2009). In 1985, Hoi An became a national heritage site and, with Doi Moi reforms, international tourism increased (Ursula 2010). The 1991 publication of The Lonely Planet Guide to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia featuring Hoi An gave further unintended appearance to the town (Di Giovine 2009). Recognition of the town’s physical fragility and its rising international profile prompted officials to focus on Hoi An’s potential for UNESCO’s World Heritage listing (Huong 2016). 355

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Hoi An’s description in the World Heritage List nomination focused on the historic town’s monuments. While technically accurate, the description failed to acknowledge Vietnam’s unresolved postwar property ownership, or the well-documented impacts of development and modernization pressures attendant with World Heritage Listing in other locations (Avieli 2015). The State Party’s initial focus on ‘the material fabric approach’ to heritage preservation, described neither the wholly integrated ‘living heritage’ present in the inscribed area nor potential impacts on ecological resources within Hoi An’s broader context (Huong 2016: 276, 279), effectively erasing these as heritage context. Apropos to the focus on material heritage, the municipal government set up two protection zones within the town’s confines. The 30-hectare Zone I ‘Intact Protection Zone’ includes listed monuments and areas ‘determined to be part of the monuments’ original elements, which must be protected in their original state’. The 280-hectare Zone II, labeled the ‘Ecological Environment and Landscape Protection Zone’, surrounds Zone I and allows new structures ‘that contribute to the promotion of the monuments’ value’ so long as they do not affect the architecture or its natural and ecological context (UNESCO 2008a: 29). Through prescription and proscription, regulations for each zone detail requirements, including specific techniques and materials, to preserve the monuments and their context and what is allowed and prohibited in each zone (Avieli 2015). Hoi An’s inscription lists over 1,350 heritage relics, including 1,254 heritage buildings, categorized as: communal houses, pagodas, temples, assembly halls, family chapels, residential houses, shrines, tombs, wells, and bridges, which are placed in five categories listed in Table 20.1, based on their perceived heritage value vis-à-vis Hoi An’s UNESCO designation (UNESCO 2008a). Of the 1,254 heritage buildings, 1,103 are residential, with 131 classified as Special or Category I; 228 in Category II; 335 in Category III; and 409 in Category IV. Strictly enforced and requiring special permits, the technical and material restoration regulations are expensive for families with few resources; thus, urgent, minor repairs and basic amenity add-ons (e.g. bathrooms) often are completed covertly (Avieli 2015). In 2008, The Heritage Homeowner’s Preservation Manual for Hoi An World Heritage Site was published to help homeowners in Zone’s I and II understand and assess their homes’ conservation needs, and contribute to Hoi An’s built heritage preservation. Conservation, the manual points out, includes maintenance, restoration, adaptation, and possibly even reconstruction, while the purpose of conservation, a fundamental task for homeowners, ‘is to maintain the cultural significance of a historic building and its context…. Restoration involves returning the building to the state which is identified as being most culturally significant and may require the removal of inappropriate later additions’ (Tran et al. 2008: 9). This description contains all the elements necessary for erasure and appearance under the aegis of heritage conservation while often ignoring many of the realities of contemporary existence. The manual describes the two traditional Hoi An residential structures: Shophouses and Family Chapels and the urban contexts where they are located, and provides a map of heritage buildings in Zone I and II. Hoi An’s documentation identifies 1,064 of the 1,103 traditional residential structures as shophouses, the remainder are family chapels (UNESCO 2008a). All family chapels are classified as Special or Categories I or II, indicating they are perceived as ‘unique architectural structures’ with ‘special historical, cultural and scientific value’ or in the case of the six in Category II, ‘the front building, facade and roof tiles’ have value for Hoi An’s heritage. By naming and describing these two types of residential structures as those with value for the World Heritage site, they are given appearance and leave all other residential structures vulnerable to erasure. Simultaneously, this process encourages the appearance of simulacra of unique architectural structures, shophouses for example. Given the large number of shophouses, the homeowner’s manual focuses on maintenance, restoration, and adaptation of this building type. The manual prescribes strategies that follow best practices for urban design of street spaces, reduction of moisture damage within buildings, and passive cooling, through further description via classification typology. However, it also prioritizes particular spatial orders, details, and material qualities within the shophouses. It notes that ‘[s]hophouses are built on 356

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long and narrow lots along the street’ (Tran et al. 2008: 12) and form an enclosed street. It describes deep shophouse overhangs along the street that create desirable intermediate space and ‘contribute to the unique architectural beauty of the ancient town’ (Tran et al. 2008: 23). With respect to overhangs along streets, regulations for Zone IIA prescribe overhangs and their specifics, [n]ew building parts or components blocking the facade of the house should not be added. Corrugated iron eaves may be permitted as long as they do not encroach upon pavement space. They can range from 0.8 to 1.2 meters in width, painted in brown on both faces, with a wooden or brown-painted metal frame. For buildings with deep setbacks, it is permitted to widen the overhang, but not exceeding 3 meters and not encroaching upon the pavement space. (Tran et al. 2008: 43) At the same time, they proscribe overly deep overhangs and those that block the view of elements of the façade perceived as authentic. Thus, while the appearance of overhangs along the street are encouraged through the regulations, because they contribute to desirable spatial qualities of the street and the beauty of the town’s architecture, regulations also seek to erase what is perceived as modern and thus offensive to the ancient town’s character, by encouraging ‘[a]dding buildings and building components constructed in traditional architectural style with traditional materials, as well as planting trees … to hide modern architectural items’ (Tran et al. 2008: 43). The choice to describe Hoi An through its physical qualities and place emphasis on preservation of the physical fabric, prioritized the value of physical heritage – the tangible containers of Hoi An’s heritage. Throughout the regulations, for example, through prescriptions that promote regulated façade examples and proscriptions against modern buildings and modern building materials (Tran et al. 2008), the appearance of certain built heritage is prioritized while other heritage, like traditional medical practices, is erased. Lack of explicit mention of activities important to the historical identity of the ancient town and the environmental qualities supportive of the embedded, pre-inscription-lifestyle, tacitly devalued those critical aspects of Hoi An’s heritage identity with the potential to erase them not only from local collective memory but from tourist experience as well. Failure to initially conceptualize Hoi An’s heritage as a tightly interwoven mix of physical qualities, intangible assets, and a deeply rooted living community ultimately led to the erasure of important nonphysical components of Hoi An’s heritage. The city was historically a regional hub for traditional medical practices of China and Vietnam; traditional pharmacies lined several streets in the ancient town. While the city’s residents continue to use traditional medical practices, these were not explicitly described, nor were strategies for their safeguarding included in the initial conservation plans for Zone I. Consequently, in 2008 the last traditional pharmacy was moved from Zone I to an outlying area, making room for a souvenir shop (UNESCO 2008a). Likewise, as Figure 20.4B illustrates, ‘traditional houses’ transformed into ‘living museums’, while preserved materially and offering owners a permanent income, limit the structure’s utility as a home (Tunprawat 2009). The transformation of the ancient town from a living community existing in deteriorating physical conditions to a tourist-oriented district resulted in a wellpreserved but ‘empty shell’ missing its active resident community and their ‘traditional lifestyle, religion, customs and cooking’ (Avieli 2015: 51). While the municipal government has sought to address this through new supports for local residents and through the monthly lantern festival (Di Giovine 2009), it will be difficult to re-embed or give appearance to the living community when economic development associated with World Heritage tourism so strongly influences transformations in the district.

Examples from World Heritage tentative lists The desire to preserve an unusual place or practice perceived as in danger, and the promotion of extraordinary place identity often encourage heritage conservation efforts. The potential profit from 357

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cultural heritage tourism offers strong incentives for heritage conservation. As Luang Prabang and Hoi An illustrate, inscription on UNESCO’s World Heritage List is valuable for the appearances that bring sites to the attention of tourists, particularly in developing countries where tourismfocused development is economically important. However, description, prescription, and proscription employed in the management of these sites enable erasure of multiple, competing, and contentious heritages, offering visitors an uncomplicated narrative accompanied by visually pleasing scenery. States parties who intend nominating a site for UNESCO World Heritage inscription must first submit the site to UNESCO via their country’s Tentative List and just this can elevate its tourism profile. Two examples from the Tentative List illustrate that the EAD begins well before World Heritage List inscription.

Zhouzhuang In 1986, Zhouzhuang in China was ‘one of the few remaining traditional settlements in the lower Yangzi region’ (Wang 1992: 139). Untouched by the influence of manufacturing or tourism, this ancient village supported agricultural trade, fishing, farming, and fifteen small factories. Despite the beauty of its surrounding lakes and canals; its Ming and Qing period, white-washed, tiled-roofed, wood-framed houses; and its nineteen stone bridges, the population was declining and aging, and looked to the past rather than the future (Wang 1992). Recently introduced in China, international tourism was seen as a means to revive the town (He and Henwood 2015), bringing new interest and economic opportunity. In the late 1980s, to direct its tourism development, the township created the Zhouzhuang Tourism Development Company (Xu and Tao 2001). Before becoming a heritage tourism destination, Zhouzhuang was only accessible by ferry, creating a slower pace of life and leaving residents’ lifestyle and buildings untouched by modernization, as Figure 20.5A, from 1988, shows. The State Party describes the town’s heritage as including a ‘unique layout in town planning [which] honors the principle of harmonious interaction between the humankind and the nature, and emanates a strong sense of liveliness and dynamic livelihood’, and the condition to be ‘preserved … and [to] appear as charming as they used to be, showing their uniqueness in town layout, architectural style, environmental landscapes, and traditional lifestyle’ (UNESCO 2008b). The Protection Plan for Zhouzhuang Old Town, implemented early in the twenty-first century (Xu and Tao 2001), carefully demarcated historic and vernacular neighborhoods representative of the described heritage (Warfield 2018). Although the description specifically mentions traditional lifestyle as an important quality of Zhouzhuang’s heritage to be preserved, Xu and Tao (2001) suggest that when the protection plan was implemented, some residents were forced to relocate, effectively erasing them from the heritage zone to ‘make it easier for the [Zhouzhuang Tourism Development] company to manage the attraction’ (p. 357). This enabled the appearance of the heritage tourism landscape, where it had not previously existed. A comparison of Figures 20.5A and 20.5B, taken from approximately the same location 20 years apart, illustrates the touristic transformation of Zhouzhuang’s quaint white-washed, tile-roofed houses along the canal, now a major heritage tourism attraction, full of tourist boats lined by shops and tea houses serving tourists. Prescriptions in the protection plan enabled reconstruction of formerly demolished traditional style buildings, bridges, and old gardens and with these, the appearance of the carefully framed heritage tourism landscape in Zhouzhuang Old Town, including staged blacksmith and grass weaving workshops, apparently not crafts original to the Old Town, to lend an air of authenticity to the cultural atmosphere the managers are seeking to create (Xu and Tao 2001). Likewise, the tourist landscape in the heritage zone has encouraged the appearance of tourist boats, and a proliferation of craft shops, restaurants, tea shops, and sidewalk cafés (Warfield 2018; Xu and Tao 2001).

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Figure 20.5 Zhouzhuang canal (A) in 1988 and (B) in 2008. Sources: (A) John C. Stallmeyer; (B) James P. Warfield

The protection plan for the Old Town proscribes industrial materials, new construction, new hotels, service facilities, and buses within the protected area. These proscriptions attempt to maintain the ambience of an ancient market village because this is what appeals to tourists. Shanghai’s urban residents, seeking to escape the mega-city’s fast pace, noise, and pollution are drawn to Zhouzhuang’s idyllic village setting (Fan et al. 2009). However, ever-increasing tourist numbers and the large-scale tourist accommodations built outside the protected zone, have erased Zhouzhuang’s peaceful, slow atmosphere and given way to polluted canals (Xu and Tao 2001). Zhouzhuang competes for tourists with other watertowns in the Yangtze River Delta but enjoys an international reputation as one of China’s ‘must-see’ locations, thanks to prominent New York Times and CNN features in 2015. Careful management at Zhouzhuang involving appearances and erasures that ‘enhance its beauty’ and attraction as a heritage site has resulted in the creation and 359

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branding of a mature tourism destination grossing over 27 million US dollars in 2015 (China Daily 2016), certainly exceeding the late 1980s vision for economic development.

Chiang Mai Enabling appearance on the global tourism map is one reason for states parties and authors of tentative listing documents to include a site on the World Heritage Tentative List. The case of Chiang Mai, Thailand, a location already well-known among international tourists, provides insight into other motivations. In 2015, Thailand’s National Committee for World Heritage entered the ‘Monuments, Sites and Cultural Landscape of Chiang Mai, Capital of Lanna,’ on the country’s Tentative List of heritage and thus indicated its appropriateness for World Heritage Listing. Since 1296 CE, when King Mangrai conceived Chiang Mai as the cultural, social, economic and political center of his recently established and increasingly important Lanna Kingdom (Thailand National Committee for World Heritage 2015), a distinctive culture has been associated with the city and its hinterlands. Chiang Mai’s history includes periods of relative independence, interspersed with periods of control by other powerful kingdoms, most recently the absorption of the Lanna Kingdom into the Kingdom of Siam during the rule of King Chulalongkorn around the turn of the twentieth century. This ultimately led to Chiang Mai’s subservience to Bangkok within the modern state of Thailand. A select subset of Lanna heritage has long been appropriated by The Tourism Authority of Thailand to promote the uniqueness of Chiang Mai and northern Thailand to international visitors (Baedcharoen 2016). However, the recent inclusion on Thailand’s Tentative List of a substantial serial citation of six groups of geographically dispersed properties that ‘collectively form the wholeness of the tangible evidences, as well as the associated intangible traditions … [that] define and display the outstanding universal values of Chiang Mai as the capital of Lanna’ (Thailand National Committee for World Heritage 2015: 7) enables the reappearance of the Lanna Kingdom as an ‘efficacious power in the face of [contemporary] political and cultural domination from Bangkok’ (Johnson 2011: 511). This description also supports the appearance of a renewed and locally defined Lanna cultural identity, distinct from the rest of Thailand, and with the potential to re-present the original purpose and meaning of Lanna heritage to the people with historical ties to the former kingdom. In enabling the reappearance of important aspect of Chiang Mai’s urban heritage identity, this listing and accompanying description could be read as an attempt to erase Bangkok’s political domination of the previous century and reestablish the unique and autonomous identity of Chiang Mai as the center of Lanna culture.

Conclusion The cases outlined above show that numerous consequences accompany identification of heritage. The erasure–appearance dyad provides a means to understand how these consequences are interconnected and how they manifest through policies and practices of heritage management. We have shown that erasure and appearance, as a single process of reciprocal, rather than opposing acts, operates intentionally and unintentionally, through description based in the AHD, through prescription that valorizes particular heritage, and through proscription that prohibits other forms, materials, and activities. Together, these tend toward creation of an uncomplicated, more easily commodified heritage narrative. This process sometimes operates explicitly, removing and replacing ‘inconvenient heritage’ (Dearborn and Stallmeyer 2010), other times implicitly through value-laden documents that describe, prescribe, and proscribe heritage vis-à-vis implicit understandings and definitions of terms like significant, authentic, and historic. In the context of heritage tourism, valorized built objects are given appearance through intentional management practices and policies; erasure almost always follows. Simultaneously, specific erasures meant to manage the heritage context, preserve and conserve it for future generations, or present its authenticity, give unintentional appearance to objects meant only for consumption. 360

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A comparison of the Asian cases discussed here with heritage in other regions might identify similarities and differences in the EAD process across different contexts. In heritage contexts where living heritage and built environment form an inseparable socio-spatial complex, the EAD has real-life consequences for residents. Recognition of the EAD is a first step toward an alternative heritage management approach. Such awareness has the potential to illuminate a polyvalent heritage narrative, where urban heritage is understood as the intersection of ‘systems of activities’ that are inseparable from associated ‘systems of settings’, including the built environment (Rapoport 2005). Such an alternative heritage narrative would be more complex, and perhaps lesseasily commodified, but would tell richer stories of human habitation. A first step to the telling of these stories is including a concrete set of measures within heritage identification and management processes that require assessment and reflection with a focus on alternative narratives and voices. Revealing these narratives and bringing these alternative voices to the table in a formal way could ameliorate some negative consequences of the EAD process.

Dedication We dedicate this chapter to the memory of our colleague, teacher and mentor James P. Warfield, Professor Emeritus of Architecture at The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His generosity, lifelong passion for teaching, and dedication to the study of people and their vernacular environments remain an inspiration to us. Godspeed Jim on the next journey.

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21 SUSTAINABLE URBANISM AND HISTORIC URBAN LANDSCAPE CONSERVATION Farhana Ferdous, Julie Williams Lawless, and Kapila D. Silva

Introduction While there are varying definitions of the notion of sustainability, it is a consensus that sustainability deals with eliminating problems for future generations. Although the endeavour of sustainability itself began in the 1800s, a truly sustainable approach to development that meets the three pillars of sustainability – environmental, economic and social – is now a global concern that reflects a shift in collective societal paradigms and scientific understanding. In September 2015, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals, which included 17 Goals in which the protection of the world’s natural and cultural heritage is considered an important step under the ‘Goal 11: Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable’ (United Nations 2015). This viewpoint is further emphasized and clarified through the New Urban Agenda and the discussions within the context of Habitat III, a United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development which took place at Quito, Ecuador in October 2016 (United Nations 2017). It lays out standards and principles for making urban settlements sustainable through policies, regulations, urban planning and design, local economies, and local implementation. In this chapter, we explore the nexus between sustainable development and the conservation of historic urban environments. We specifically discuss the sustainable future for historic urban areas by highlighting how to implement the contemporary concepts of urban sustainability and green urbanism in conserving urban heritage. A growing body of literature has recently focused on the means of achieving sustainability through heritage management. Logan and Larsen (2018) have identified that, in heritage studies, there are four possible ways that link the concept of sustainability to heritage: heritage vs. sustainable development as incompatible entities, sustaining heritage for future, sustainable development for heritage, and heritage for sustainable development, each approach having a specific definition of the notions of heritage and sustainability, and increasingly integrating the two concepts together as one moves from the first approach to the last. In this chapter, we move toward the latter two approaches; we explore the reciprocal relation between heritage and sustainable development. To a greater degree, historic cities evolved or designed to be sustainable; thus, contemporary inquiry of sustainable urban planning has much to learn from historic cities. At the same time, historic urban settlements could benefit from the emerging thoughts on how to make human habitats sustainable, especially in their adaptation to modern ethos and life in their quest for relevance and survival in a dynamic global context.

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Sustainable urbanism has not always been a central focus in designing and laying out a city until recently. But the notion of sustainability is inevitable due to the unsustainable nature of cities, rapid urban sprawl, and the consequent social, environmental and economic problems. Current discourses on sustainable urbanism revolves around the concepts like the green urbanism, biophilic cities, U-city, compact city, and the zero-carbon eco-city. They are probably the most environmentally sustainable models for cities, focusing on the efficient use of energy and reduction of the dependency on fossil fuels, but they turn out to be the least socially and economically sustainable. Due to this reason, these models of city design become more acute when they are applied to preserve Historic Urban Landscapes. An approach to sustainable urban heritage, therefore, should critically review the applicability of these contemporary models of sustainable urbanism and widen the discussion to search for holistic and integrated approaches to sustainable development and heritage management in historic urban environments.

Sustainable urbanism According to United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Goal 11, ‘sustainable cities and communities’ by 2030, almost 60 per cent of the world’s population will live in urban areas. The world’s cities occupy just 3 per cent of the Earth’s land, but account for 60–80 per cent of energy consumption and 75 per cent of carbon emissions (UNDP). Since 1990s, a multitude of new concepts, theories and strategies in design, planning, construction, and management of cities have been proposed to address these concerns to make cities sustainable. These approaches fall under the umbrella term ‘sustainable urbanism’. Sustainable urbanism, broadly speaking, is about ways of transforming the structures and processes of interdependent natural, engineered, and social systems that operate at multiple urban scales with the goal of measurably advancing the well-being of people and the planet (ACERE 2018). The improvement of human and planetary well-being could span across temporal scales (near-term and long-term) and spatial scales (global, urban, micro-urban, and building scales) (De Schiller et al. 2006) and could be achieved through actions across environmental (resource use with less ecological impact), economic (efficient use of resources with economic return) and social (well-being, health, and resiliency of diverse communities) dimensions (NASEM 2016). Strategies of sustainable urbanism, therefore, focus on a variety of aspects of an urban environment, including natural ecosystem, green and open spaces, buildings, energy, transportation, infrastructure, amenities and socio-economic development of local communities. For the last few decades, a number of new ideologies have influenced the theory of sustainable urbanism in which the concept of sustainability is paired with ecology, nature and smart technology. Farr (2008) acknowledged the concept of sustainable urbanism as a comprehensive eco-design solution. Beatley (2000, 2011, 2016) emphasized ecology-based land use planning by integrating nature into urban design. Mostafavi’s (2010) concept on sustainable urbanism is very similar to Beatley, where nature and ecology are the main design foci of urbanism. Waldheim (2006) introduced the landscape urbanism concept which first appeared in mid 1990s and from then became a very popular theoretical phrase and design solution for both landscape and urban design domain. Newman et al. (2009) and Haas (2012) introduced resiliency in city design and New Urbanism as a movement to design future cities, which advocates return to small-town urban forms with a design focus emphasizing humanscale, pedestrian-friendly streets, with an end to suburban sprawl. Duany et al. (2009) proposed an extensive manual on smart growth, which not only explains the overarching ideals of smart growth but is also a resource that takes the time to show smart growth principles at each geographic scale (region, neighbourhood, street and building). Another emerging concept is ‘smart city’, in which urban networks and services are ‘made more flexible, efficient, and sustainable with the use of information, digital, and telecommunication technologies’ (Mohanty et al. 2016: 60). 364

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Among these approaches, some stand out when it comes to implementing the theories successfully in the design of sustainable cities, which include: biophilic cities, green urbanism, eco-city, ubiquitous eco-city, and zero-carbon city. It is useful for this chapter to briefly elaborate on some of the approaches of sustainable urbanism to explore how historic urban areas could benefit from these sustainable strategies.

Biophilic cities Beatley (2011: 45) notes that a biophilic city is ‘at its heart a biodiverse city, a city full of nature, a place where in the normal course of work and play and life residents feel, see, and experience rich nature – plants, trees, animals’. Biophilic urban strategies include: the integration of nature at multiscale spaces (from indoors to regions); reclaiming, restoring and conserving exiting ecosystems; compact, dense, mixed use, and walkable urban neighbourhoods; restoring altered urban hydrology; production and use of renewable energy; food sustainability; limiting private vehicle use; and daylit and healthy buildings, among others (Beatley 2011, 2016).

Green urbanism Green Urbanism is a conceptual model for zero-carbon emission and zero-waste urban design. Introduced in the 1990s, it advocates compact, energy-efficient, and resource-saving urban development to transform and re-engineer existing city districts and to regenerate the post-industrial city centres (Lehmann 2010). It supports return to small-town urban forms that emphasize compact, human-scale, walkable neighbourhoods; pedestrian-friendly streets and less dependency on automobiles to avoid suburban sprawl; and increasing the efficiency of resources and their consumption. Compact development conserves both resources and money necessary for construction and future maintenance. Green Urbanism makes every effort to minimize the use of energy, water and materials at each stage of the city’s or district’s life-cycle, including the embodied energy in the extraction and transportation of materials, their fabrication, their assembly into the buildings and, ultimately, the ease and value of their recycling when an individual building’s life is over (Lehmann 2014). It also promotes the safeguard of cultural heritage and biodiversity, locally based food production, and community health.

Eco-city The term eco-city originated from Richard Register in his 1987 book Ecocity Berkeley: Building cities for a healthy future. The concept of an ecocity is based on the characteristics of healthy, self-sustaining natural ecosystems and living organisms. Its key objectives are: a. b. c. d.

to provide healthy abundance to its residents (walkable access to basic urban services; public transit; healthy and accessible local food production); not to consume resources than it produces (conservation of energy and non-renewable resources, renewable sources of energy; recycling resources); not to produce more waste than it can assimilate (clean air, water, soil, and energy); not to be toxic to itself or nearby ecosystems (biodiversity conservation).

In an ecocity, people’s lifestyle would have less planetary impact and its social order would follow principles of fairness, justice, and reasonable equity (promotion of culture, capacity building, education, equitable economy, and quality of life) (Ecocity Builders 2011). An ecocity could be a part of a cluster 365

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of ecocities (ecological metropolis), a larger eco-region, and a global-scale ecological network of ecoregion systems (Ecocity Builders 2011).

Ubiquitous eco-city In a ‘ubiquitous eco-city’ (u-eco-city), urban information and services are provided to residents through high-tech ubiquitous computing, with sensors and communication resources embedded in urban elements, to increase the quality of life while minimizing environmental impacts (Tan 2015). Although the theory behind the development of u-eco-cities is not new, the recent technological advances along with the positive perception and behavioural change in the public on the sustainability issues now provide some optimism in realizing a sustainable u-eco-city. There are currently no fully fledged u-eco-cities that exist. Primary characteristics of a u-eco-city includes, but not limited to, five key aspects known as 5-E (Kline 2000). These include: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Ecological integrity: U-eco cities regulate human activities by not only managing each type of activity but also protecting and restoring natural ecosystems. Economic security: U-eco cities support economic growth and security by addressing essential links, including education, training, environmental soundness and occupational safety. Enhanced quality of life: U-eco cities improve people’s quality of life by addressing their yearnings for decent, safe, enjoyable places to live, work and play. Empowerment with responsibility: U-eco cities are responsive to the needs of community residents, business people, and visitors. Electronic infrastructure: U-eco cities provide the state-of-the-art infrastructure and their digital monitoring and management systems.

Zero-carbon city Urban development that significantly reduces carbon dioxide emission from its urban systems and processes is perhaps the most widely adopted approach in sustainable urbanism. Many countries as well as international organizations are now planning for a low-carbon or zero-carbon environment for a sustainable future. The principles for low-carbon urbanization developed for China by the China Urban Sustainability Coalition (2015) best represent the key tenets behind this approach of sustainable urbanism. These principles target achieving three key goals: (a) low-carbon urban form (compact, efficient, mixed-use and functionally balanced urban design; non-motorized transport as a major transit mode; reduced private vehicle use; quality public spaces); (b) resource efficiency (upgrading management processes and technology in industrial and commercial sectors; high energy and environmental performance of buildings; waste and water recycling; improve urban ecological water cycles); and (c) inclusive urban governance (multi-stakeholder participation in city governance; establishing clear socio-environmental thresholds and assessment mechanisms for urban investments). Objectives, concepts and strategies laid out in these sustainable urbanism approaches share similar values and ideas for the most part with some principles and practices unique to each one. Therefore, rather than adhering to a specific theory, a derivation of core dimensions shared by these approaches is much more beneficial for sustainable urban development as well as integrating sustainable urbanism practices into urban heritage conservation. Such a set of sustainable urban dimensions allows greater flexibility in identifying context-specific ways of making historic urban environments sustainable.

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Dimensions of sustainable urbanism The objectives of making an urban environment sustainable could focus on three broader strategic dimensions that include: developing multimodal and energy-efficient transportation options and greater accessibility within cities; enhancing the liveability of cities with necessary amenities and economic opportunities available at the neighbourhood scale for a healthy and resilient life; and improved performance of places and buildings in terms of their use of energy and of restored ecosystems. These strategic dimensions are interdependent, and they also interweave the ‘triple bottom-line’ of sustainability – ecology, economy, and equity – in many ways. In the description of these dimensions given below, we also briefly indicate how they may be related to historic cities, and then later in the chapter we go into more details of how they can be implemented in urban conservation.

Sustainable transportation and accessibility Sustainable transportation is an emerging concept that focuses on the idea of ‘the city of short distances’ with sustainable corridors and links. Walkability, density, the ease of public transportation and integrated street network are key concepts in designing the sustainable and accessible urban environments. Sustainable transportation relies on accessibility to all infrastructure networks available for varying mobilities, such as by foot or bicycle. The green streetscape and multimodal connectivity provide an excellent framework for sustainable community planning from the regional scale all the way down to the building scale. Most historic cities in Asia are compact, walkable and well-connected within, and still could function without much car dependency, which are important in making them sustainable. The following three sub-themes can describe the key principles of sustainable transportation and accessibility. a.

b.

c.

Promote walkability and bicycle networks: A way to reduce the use of energy for transportation and to increase social interaction is to promote pedestrianism in an urban area. Historic urban environments generally contain existing networks of pathways for walking and non-motorized vehicular transportation, enhancing walkability and bicycle networks obvious and contextual. In some environs, the promotion of these networks not only advances the opportunity to meet sustainability goals, but to also help preserve historic pathways and human scale within densely populated urban environments. Another vital component is to increase accessibility in the urban area for people of all ages and mobility and sensory capacities. To encourage pedestrianism in an urban area, the pathways and public spaces should be designed for human comfort, social engagement, and safety of people. Interconnected street networks: A well-linked urban area promotes walkability and the connectivity between its residents and the amenities and opportunities available in the area. Historic cities are generally characterized by densely built urban environments with narrow pathways and interconnected street networks. Motorized vehicles are eventually adapted into these streets leading to issues of congestion and pollution. The challenge is to generate pathways that contend with both vehicular and walking mobilities without sacrificing the historic pattern of the built environment. Transit-oriented development (TOD): TOD is a way to combine regional planning, city revitalization, suburban renewal, and walkable neighbourhoods (Calthorpe 2011). The primary principle is to develop a multimodal mass transportation, centred around rail/bus stations and with associated urban infrastructure (walkable public areas with mixed use), that reduces the dependency on the personal use of vehicles. These transit-focused communities are designed to connect different areas together with a primary urban centre or several centres. As a goal of conservation is to preserve and enhance the historic context, sensitively designed TOD can optimize the (re) integration of transportation opportunities into historic cities and/or take advantage of existing networks to connect historic cities to their larger regions.

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Sustainable neighbourhoods and resilient community The liveability of a city is a measure of its sustainability, and that liveability is connected to the socioeconomic benefits available and accessible to city residents and their safety and wellness. The notion of density, compactness and mixed use has a long relationship in developing a resilient, healthy, and liveable place. Therefore, integrating the following design principles is imperative to achieve sustainable urbanism. a.

b.

c.

d.

Increased density and compactness: Density is an inherent characteristic of any urban environment. Dense and compact city design increases accessibility and walkability and facilitates sustainable transportation. Compactness and density also greatly impact the social equality and sense of community among city residents. Compact city design helps to eliminate food deserts by promoting easy access to fresh, healthy food, which may have a long-term impact on public health. Historically, the urban realm allowed for the compact development of housing and commercial uses into a symbiosis that culminated into communities where one lived, worked, and played in a defined neighbourhood. Mixed use zoning: A place is considered highly liveable when amenities and services for all or most of day-to-day wants and needs are readily available within a walking or comfortable distance from one’s home. Mixed use developments are therefore an essential attribute of sustainable urbanism. Compact neighbourhoods ‘complete’ with amenities for living, learning, working, playing and praying have more cultural and economic vitality, and are central to bringing social equity to an urban community. Most historic urban environments were once compact and complete neighbourhoods. Healthy environments: The connection between health and sustainable development is often discussed in terms of creating healthy environments for people (Barton and Grant 2006). Key attributes of these healthy environments can readily be used to describe historic urban environments as well: walkable, socially connected, and strong community identity/place attachment. These attributes contribute to the factors that enhance public health at the community level (Dahlgren and Whitehead 1991). In addition, wellness and resiliency of urban community are also associated with mitigation of environmental pollution, increased adaptability for effects of climate change and natural disasters, abundance of food and water, and having access to nature for therapeutic and recreational benefits. Social connectivity and engagement: An objective of connected, compact, complete and healthy urban environment is to increase social interaction and connectivity among its residents for a myriad of social, emotional and economic benefits. An emerging strategy of sustainable urbanism is the use of smart technologies to increase intra- and inter-connectivity of urban communities. Inclusion of communities in active decision making related to the development, conservation and functioning of their neighbourhoods is also central to this theme.

Sustainable and greener environments Energy-efficient built environment augmented with greenery is a core goal of most theories on sustainable urbanism. This objective focuses on the form-based bias of current architectural theories and practices for sustainability. Improving the energy efficiency of buildings is an often-overlooked strategy that can help alleviate many of the challenges that cities face and thus improve the overall energy efficiency in the city. High performance building and infrastructure reduces indoor air pollution because they offer cleaner and better ventilation than traditional buildings. In many Asian cities, the largest contributors to

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the highest air pollution-related illness rates are residential and commercial energy use. The following three key concepts are important design considerations to achieve sustainable environments. a.

b.

c.

Biophilia (connection with nature): Protection and restoration of ecosystems and biodiversity, along with increased green areas and affording urban residents with access to nature at all spatial scales (indoor to macro-regions) are the key steps to create biophilic urban environments. Increasing the extent of vegetated surfaces that shade buildings and paved areas is a simple way to reduce the amount of solar radiation in built areas. Network of green areas come with the benefit of improved air quality, therapeutic effects and urban aesthetics as well. Natural landscapes often represent sacred association between people and place, leading to nexus between nature and cultural heritage, as recognized in the cultural landscape concept, which is very much applicable to the Asia-Pacific context (Taylor 2013). Reusable/renewable resources: Advances in technology have increased both the availability and compatibility of reusable and renewable resources and sources of energy. As technology becomes less expensive to integrate into new and existing development, access (and expense) to it becomes easier for more people. In addition, with innovation, renewable energy sources such as solar and wind have become more compatible with design in a way that detracts less from historical buildings, thus allowing it to be integrated into historic urban areas with less intrusion. High performance buildings and infrastructure: Like renewables, innovative technological advances allow more access to these technologies to improve energy use in buildings and urban infrastructure. These technologies could be integrated into historic buildings and cities and into infill developments in historic urban areas to enhance their liveability and energy performance.

Making urban heritage sustainable Most anyone working in heritage conservation knows that historic cities are inherently sustainable and that connecting sustainable urbanism and Historic Urban Landscapes is obvious and rational. Historic cities typically espouse the qualities that new urban developments strive to achieve: sense of place, community identity, economic diversity, walkability, social spaces, and a mix of housing forms (Nocca 2017). However, so much of the focus of sustainability concentrates on new ideas, new forms, and new development; not on the existing historic urban fabric (Soule 2015). The above-mentioned dimensions of sustainable urbanism, therefore, provide a way to recognize the embedded sustainable traits of heritage landscapes. Breaking down the elements of each dimension, we can see where opportunities exist to re-introduce old forms of sustainable elements and practices back into historic cities, what historic traits can be replicated in new urban areas and seek opportunities to adapt the historic city to meet the sustainable goals and development potential (Leifeste and Stiefel 2018; Slavin 2011). Common links between sustainable urbanism and heritage conservation indicate a mutual goalorientation. Sustainable urbanism exists to balance development between economics and the environment, while heritage conservation exists to balance development between economics and cultural history. Both concepts strive for the careful growth of the urban environment as a matter of socioeconomic gain without the attenuation of the existing circumstances. Despite what we know to be true, it is not enough to espouse that everything old is new again. To fully integrate the idea of the historic city as a sustainable environment, we must offer ideas and programmes into urban development that introduce and enhance the dimensions of sustainable urbanism, described above, both environmentally and socio-economically.

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On the environmental front One aspect of connecting sustainable urbanism and historic cities comes back to the point that many historic urban environments contains elements of the physical attributes of sustainability, making them a natural promulgation of the concept. Such typical attributes include, but not limited to, dense, compact, walkable and mixed-use urban form with interconnected streets. For most historic urban environments, it is only a matter of upgrading these internal attributes’ performance and maintenance to enhance their cultural function, modern desirability, and perhaps aesthetics. From this end, we can examine a few key ideas that, if implemented in a historic urban environment, make it more sustainable in ways that are meaningful and identifiable. 1.

2.

The notion of ‘RE’: Placing the focus of development action on the concepts of regeneration, renewable resources, retrofitting and adaptive reuse, without causing harm to historic character, function, structure, and authenticity. The stock of old buildings in historic cities is a renewable resource to be regenerated, retrofitted and reused. They already embody energy spent in their construction. For the most part, they are built to respond to local climate and to be lessdependent on non-renewable sources of energy. Some of the most energy-efficient building materials are also some of the oldest used materials, like stone, wood, adobe, earthen bricks and tiles, and straw. Sustainable building practices revisit these materials time and again for energy conservation, local sourcing, and local character. Adaptive reuse of historic urban buildings is an obvious sustainable practice. Improve energy-efficiency and reduce energy use: Historic urban areas and their building forms evolved overtime for climate adaptability with less or no dependency on mechanical heating and cooling for human comfort. In most cases, their residents developed innovative ways to cool or heat their buildings passively or with inexpensive locally sourced materials. In urban conservation, it is critical to identify and then to restore such historical energy-efficient design principles, technologies, materials and elements used in urban form and buildings. These attributes ascribe scientific research value to the heritage of those places. Greater attention and resources should be allocated to restore such inherent sustainable place attributes than for maintaining a historic appearance via building façade preservation. However, incorporation of modern technology into historic buildings in their adaptive reuse for contemporary functions and needs may be necessary. In such scenarios, care should be taken to do innovative and appropriate adaptations of energy-efficient technologies without causing significant change to historic character or materials (De Bouw et al. 2016; Pracchi 2014). Energy-efficient refurbishment of historic buildings can be concentrated on two methods: (a) improving indoor climate through mechanical systems, surface insulation, and the use of recycled materials; and (b) generation of renewable sources of energy (De Bouw et al. 2016). The use of products like ductless heating and cooling systems and tankless water heaters not only provide efficiency but are also widely accessible on the open market today. Improvement of the indoor climate achieved through energy refurbishment in fact enhances the durability of historic structure, materials, and furnishing of historic buildings (De Bouw et al. 2016). At the urban scale, innovations like self-healing asphalt and solar street lighting are becoming useful in retrofitted urban areas. Historic buildings could also be retrofitted with mechanisms to generate renewable forms of energy like solar and wind power. Nevertheless, there certainly are limits to the reconciliation of heritage values with energy savings and comfort optimization (De Bouw et al. 2016). To entice public and private participation in the restoration and retrofitting historic places for energy-efficiency, many cities have developed energy performance evaluation and rating systems that are coupled with the funding given for urban and building conservation as well as education programmes on energy-efficient renovation (Purcell 2018).

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3.

4.

5.

Establish connectivity: To bring about the implementation of desired sustainable goals in mobility and transportation, a few very real changes need to occur in most historic cities. The overall reduction of private transportation, increased uses and access to public transportation, increase pedestrianization, and the improvement and connection of networks of existing streets and alleyways can bring about real change, but accomplishing it will take serious action. In most historic cities, pedestrian pathways determined the normative mobility patterns for centuries. Careful study and connection between multiple mobility paths and ways is necessary. Smooth transition between and connected networks of pedestrian, public transit, and street networks increases the likelihood that more people will benefit from the overall mobility network, thus decreasing private transportation use (Slavin 2011). For greater socio-economic benefit for local communities, historic areas should be well-connected to the rest of the city and to a network of urban centres in the larger region, ideally via mass transit. Greater connectivity also means increased flow of visitors to historic areas, which could be an issue. For example, in the case of places like Melaka, Malaysia, its alleyways are used for residential common space, pedestrian access, and small motorways. Locals who are used to the multitude of activities adapt, but as tourism has increased in the city due to its listing as a World Heritage Site, increasing conflicts in these spaces cause problems. In this example, redefinition of the alley harms the local norms while favouring the tourist traffic. Ignoring the tourists in favour of the local culture increases discontent and can cause negative economic impacts if tourism is lost (Lawless 2015). Sustainable design of streets and squares: Streets and public squares in historic cities can be restored to be sustainable while maintaining the historical character of the place. These sustainable design principles and strategies include: (a) provision of transportation options that reduce energyconsumption (walking, biking or mass transit; transit systems operated on renewable sources of energy); (b) reduction in material consumption (design solutions that use recycled materials; require less infrastructure; increase durability of streets and street furniture; and that use precast or modular construction elements); (c) reduction of impacts on the environment (eco-friendly solutions that encourage and support biodiversity and reduce pollution; use of permeable paving, bioswales and rain gardens for storm water infiltration; trash recycling); (d) support healthy urban living (features that support community liveability; public services; access to nature and public art; public safety and security; and reflect historical and cultural context); and (e) support sustainability during implementation (solutions that support local economy, resource management needs and social, economic and ecological impacts during construction; use of non-toxic materials; minimize construction ‘footprint’; use of local materials; use of native plant species for landscaping; renewable fuels for construction equipment) (Bevan et al. 2007). Increase green cover and conservation of natural areas: Historically, parks, green spaces, gardens, shrines, and open space played an important and sacred role in the city, particularly in the Asian realms. Preserving these spaces provide untold environmental benefits like fresh air, clean water, increased drainage, and cooler microclimate. These spaces also serve to provide a vital connection between the environment and the spiritual and social nature of the community (Lawless and Silva 2017; Taylor 2013; Thakur 2011). Conservation emphasis and strategies of natural areas in historic cities vary depending on the scale and ecosystem type of the natural landscape. Historic cities that are nestled in large-scale natural settings that play a vital role in their sense of place and urban heritage require complex biodiversity and ecosystem restoration along with viewshed conservation. Historic cities with internal and moderate-scale of green areas, like parks, boulevards and gardens, simply need their daily and seasonal upkeep, along with thoughtful introduction of new green areas to enhance the sustainability and local character. Some historic cities never had significant green areas as an aspect of their urban form; new smaller and dispersed green areas could be carefully integrated into those places without altering their historic character. Restoration of nature, especially 371

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of agricultural lands and watershed, is also a part of making a historic place socially and economically sustainable through preserving local farming, food production, and drinking water (Silva 2017; Tripathi et al. 2018; Wahurwagh and Dongree 2015).

On the economic and social fronts Theoretical principles of sustainable urbanism and heritage conservation both emphasize that lasting environments are rich in community identity and social cohesion. These attributes work hand-in-hand with the idea of compact and diverse development, but the reality is that social identity and cohesion are a required component of any successful neighbourhood because without the interest and vitality of community involvement, the built environment will suffer from lack of maintenance and ownership (Sixsmith 1986). From the perspective of sustainable urbanism, some strategies to make a historic urban area socially and economically sustainable include: 1.

2.

3.

Mixed use of amenities available: In historic cities, people lived within their neighbourhood relying on the available services and businesses to meet their needs. This requires a good mix of uses from schools and places of worship to essential personal services and commercial enterprises within walkable distances from housing. People live, work, and play within the neighbourhood. Modern cities moved away from this pattern in the twentieth century, but many of the older Asian cities retain this type of development. It makes for that desirable compact city and the sought-after social community dynamic that is essential to healthy communities (Lawless 2015). To meet the needs of modern sustainability, not only is the mixed-use nature of the compact city better environmentally, it also serves to heighten diverse population and social access (Silberstein and Maser 2014). A critical aspect of maintaining the diversity of uses in a historic area is to maintain a desirable number and choice of housing and a long-term resident population within the area without rampant gentrification and touristification (Zukin 2012). Community engagement: Sustainable development of urban heritage thrives on the active participation of its resident community. However, the type of engagement matters. Really listening to the people is a critical part of understanding how to implement change that is both constructive and compatible to the built environment and the social milieu (Silberstein and Maser 2014). A critical aspect of successful community engagement is to keep in mind that communities as well as individuals hold different values on heritage, what it means to be sustainable and how to achieve lasting sustainability, shaped by their cultural, political and personal experiences and perspectives (Appleton 2014). These views could be conflicting, leading to lack of support from community groups for development/conservation of urban heritage. Countless projects have missed their mark because of the lack of quality engagement. Building awareness, consensus, and capacity of a diverse cross section of stakeholders for inclusive, empowered and effective participation in managing their urban heritage forms the way for social sustainability (Hosagrahar 2018; Turner 2015). Emerging smart technologies could be used to develop connectivity of stakeholders. Economic opportunities: Heritage is an asset of cultural capital and heritage-led economic development is a meaningful way to advance both urban conservation and sustainability (Throsby 2012). Heritage protection has implications to local and regional economic systems, including investments, consumption, labour, infrastructure, services, ecology, social equity, and other cultural activities (Nijkamp 2012). The process starts with mapping the economic values of the historic place and then enabling their potential. Economic values include the use values connected to property values, tourism and other culture-based industries. There also are many methods available for heritage-related economic valuation (Nijkamp 2012; Ost 2012). Appropriate and context372

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4.

5.

specific heritage investment policies, regulation (on specific use and ownership of heritage properties, type of commercial transaction and development, rates of fees and tax, penalties, etc.), and incentive instruments (fiscal incentives, access to credit, tax concessions, grants, etc.) enable property markets, tourism, promotion of localized cultural industries, amenity/infrastructure improvement, and job creation opportunities (Throsby 2012). Ensuring the retention of traditional craft and job types not only serves to preserve economic sustainability but likely assists in the retention of traditional knowledge needed to preserve the material fabric within the historic city itself. This twofold advantage ensures economic diversity, traditions’ longevity, and intangible heritage sustainability. New jobs and economic opportunities are needed, most particularly jobs centred on underserved services in the local living economy (Silberstein and Maser 2014). To generate sustainable economic activity in a historic urban core, all stakeholders should take part to determine the trade-offs between conservation and development and the desired level of change in the place, promote a combination of regulations and incentives, and bring about public-private partnerships for socio-economic development and heritage conservation (Licciardi and Amirtahmasebi 2012). Provision of financial support: Both heritage conservation and sustainable development can be expensive. Both are often overlooked because of the financial responsibilities required to implement and maintain programmes. Access to ongoing and varied financial support is critical in the success of the historic and sustainable city. The types of support must allow for diverse use and timing. Grants, loans, and tax incentives work in implementing programmes, but often the support for additional services and technologies is needed. It makes little sense to create a sustainable environment without a sustainable fiscal support and economy Disaster resiliency: All cities need to consider disaster response and resiliency as a necessary part of planning and design. Effective planning for resiliency includes: multi-hazard risk assessment; protection for infrastructure and vital facilities; building regulations and land use planning; ecosystem restoration; risk preparedness, early warning and response mechanisms; recovery plan; financial and administrative framework; and training and public awareness (UNISDR 2012). Strong social ties and community identity assist in the recovery process and can be used in planning for resiliency in the economy and social community (Huang and Wong 2014). An effective approach to making historic cities sustainable is to implement disaster planning into regular conservation efforts, including design and construction, materiality, adapted use, and planning (Ripp 2017).

Conclusion While there are many theories on sustainable urbanism, they share several key goals and strategies. Those shared objectives advocate for making cities ‘compact’ (higher density and walkable), ‘complete’ (locally generated and available amenities; mixed-use places; social diversity; economic opportunities), ‘connected’ (sustainable transit options; connections to nearby communities; smart technology), ‘green’ (access to nature; higher density of greenery), ‘efficient’ (high-performance buildings and infrastructure), and ‘safe’ (healthy; resilient) (USGBC 2018). These strategies of sustainable urbanism focus mostly on the physical aspect of urban environments; therefore, they have been criticized for lack of concern on the social and economic sustainability of urban areas. Misinformed focus on the tripartite sustainable dimensions of ecology, economy and equity in urban development could also have detrimental impact on heritage if cultural values in places are not part of the equation (Hosagrahar 2015; Skrede and Berg 2019). The ability of eco-cities to achieve their utopian ambitions may be limited by the realities of operating within a profit-driven, entrepreneurial planning environment (Rapoport 2014). Promotion of smart technologies has also been critiqued for their unintended democratic and environmental consequences which could make cities less resilient in the face of certain social and climatic risks (Viitanen and Kingston 2014). How 373

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smart technologies could truly make cities sustainable in the context of climate change has also been questioned (Cavada et al. 2016). Therefore, rather than adhering to a specific theory, in this chapter we advocated for a derivation of core dimensions of urban sustainability shared by these approaches for the purpose of overcoming their limitations and for integrating their core principles into urban conservation in a beneficial manner. A key element to understanding the scope of sustainable urbanism is to accept the holistic principle that everything is in a relationship with everything else (Silberstein and Maser 2014). The interrelated parts of the urban environment include not only the built and natural components, but also the human and cultural relationships that build the social and economic foundations that keep a city alive and vital. Within the urban landscape, there are elements of history and cultural tradition that bind people to a place. Often this relationship is described simply as ‘community’, but it goes deeper than that. The binding elements of people and place also speak to the sustaining relationship of how people react and move through an environment. Community is strongest and most sustainable when people achieve social, psychological and physical satisfaction within their environments (Sixsmith 1986). Building strong community helps ensure the vitality of the urban environment beyond the sustainable environmental practices that will also contribute to a lasting landscape. Therefore, when we discuss the relationship between sustainable urbanism and heritage conservation, we must ensure connections between the community, the cultural landscape, and the urban systems. Historic cities evolved responding to local climate, ecology, resources and culture, and thus, for the most part, are sustainable. There are lessons to learn from them on sustainable urbanism, and those lessons should first guide their heritage conservation. However, their survival also depends on the adaptation to a rapidly shifting social, ecological, and economic context. Consequently, the emerging thoughts on how to make human habitats sustainable are quite relevant for urban heritage management. The new frameworks on sustainable urbanism help to recognize and then to revive, strengthen, and uphold the sustainable dimensions embodied in historic cities. The new thinking on urban sustainability also facilitates identifying the potential in historic cities to integrate novel ideas of sustainability in an appropriate manner that enhances and endures their urban heritage.

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22 REGENERATION OF A HISTORIC URBAN LANDSCAPE WITH PEDESTRIAN-ORIENTED STREETSCAPE DESIGN The case of Deoksugung-gil Street in Seoul, South Korea Sung-Kyun Kim

Introduction In Seoul today, along with the expansion of vehicular traffic, the streets for automobiles are getting wider, while the number and space of pedestrian passages are gradually shrinking, and the vegetation that made the walking space more comfortable is decreasing. The historic street network that once served pedestrians for hundreds of years has lost its traditional role due to policies that prioritize vehicular traffic. Western-style grid streets have been introduced for smooth traffic flow, and the historic street structure has been transformed into a lattice structure, resulting in increased vehicular traffic on main streets, and more through-traffic, which attempt to avoid traffic jams on main streets, on the network of narrow historic streets. Residents in historic urban areas now suffer from traffic accidents, smoke, noise and parking problems. Statistics from 2016 show that 220,000 traffic accidents have occurred, 4,200 people have died, and 330,000 people were injured in Korea. Of these, nearly onehalf of the deaths were recorded while walking. Out of the deaths that occurred while walking, half occurred while crossing streets (NPA 2017). These statistics show the risks encountered by pedestrians in a poorly designed walking environment. This phenomenon is in fact pervasive in historic streets of many old cities. Traditionally, streets have been used for a variety of purposes other than for the primary means of passage, such as meeting, talking, sitting, resting, and playing with children. The street was once the central space of social life of the local community. As traffic engineering approaches in modern urban planning aimed primarily at the traffic flow, the diverse functions of these streets are ignored, and they are transformed into desolate roads for the sole purpose of movement (Appleyard 1981; Hass-Klau 1990). These streets have thus become boundaries and barriers that divide communities from the rest of the society. In the conservation of historic urban areas, specific attention should then be given to the regeneration of the traditional role of streets as the primary socio-cultural space of the community life. While it is necessary to accommodate automobile use, solve traffic problems, and make roads safer, it is also 377

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necessary to make use of the advantages of the traditional functions of streets for more vigorous communities, rather than converting all roads into spaces of the automobile. In this regard, this chapter presents the urban conservation project of ‘Deoksugung-gil Pedestrian Oriented Green Streetscape Design’ in Seoul, which applied the concept of a pedestrian-centred or a shared street, as part of the regeneration of Seoul’s Historic Urban Landscape.

Sustainable urban regeneration and pedestrian-oriented shared street From separation to sharing To protect people from cars, the primary strategy introduced under modern traffic planning was to separate pedestrians from cars in space and time. This concept has evolved into the mechanisms of highway, motorway, and pedestrian-only street, which separated cars and pedestrians in existing urban areas. This separation has certainly improved the safety of pedestrians in areas where cars are concentrated facilitating the traffic of automobiles. However, the separation of pedestrians and cars has led to the prevailing perception that cars are a priority, prompting people to drive vehicles at high speeds on narrow streets, just as they are on the main streets. The pedestrian-only streets, an outcome of this separation, have been successful in some residential areas and shopping centres in urban areas (Brambilla and Longo 1977). Nevertheless, it is impractical and uneconomical to secure considerable amount of space in urban areas, where land price is high, primarily for pedestrian-only streets. It also fails to meet the needs of residents who want to bring their cars directly into the front of their houses. Moreover, due to lack of adequate solutions for handling local traffic, vehicles are often allowed to pass through designated pedestrian zones again (Houstoun 1990; Rubenstein 1992). Especially, when there is already difficult traffic congestion within the street network in a historic urban area, it is not easy to introduce a pedestrian-only zone within the traditional street structure (Kim 1996). The shared street concept, which acknowledges the wishes of the residents who want to bring their cars to the front of their houses and makes streets around residences more secure by reducing volumes and speed of cars while maintaining existing traffic system to some extent, is discussed all over the world (Ben-Joseph 1995; Hass-Klau 1990) and is introduced in many places in Korea, including Deoksugung-gil Street, the first example of a shared street in Korea.

The concept of shared street Shared street is a way to improve the living environment of urban residents, to make streets friendlier to people, and to vitalize the quality of streetscape by eliminating passing traffic and allowing minimum vehicle entry. This is achieved by modifying road design and applying special traffic rules in high density urban areas where it is difficult to change the urban infrastructure (Korean Land Corporation 1988). This concept was first adopted in the late 1960s when setting up the Woonerf District in the new city of Delft, Netherlands. Instead of separating vehicles from pedestrians as in the existing streets, it allows the use of cars to the extent that it does not infringe on other uses of and activities on streets. In addition, the concept of shared street was established from the viewpoint that a residential road should be recognized as a place of living, not merely for a function of passage, and that the use of automobiles should be considered from the viewpoint of safety and comfort of residents. The fundamental concept of shared street is the integration of traffic and pedestrian activity as a positive principle for street planning. Unlike pedestrian-only streets, the shared street can be applied in various forms while securing the connection with surrounding amenities in various road systems. It can be applied in multiple urban 378

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scenarios as well, such as existing residential areas, new commercial areas where it is difficult to secure pedestrian-only streets, and historical cities. To achieve these goals, it is necessary to introduce tangible mechanisms that reduce driving speed, bypass traffic and traffic volume, prohibit on-street parking, and that cause considerable inconvenience in driving of vehicles. Shared streets have been very successful in several countries in terms of reductions in traffic accidents, increased social interaction and children’s play, and a high degree of satisfaction by the residents. To date, there has been a tendency for the shared street to be introduced in countries with compact and dense urban areas.

Characteristics, types, and design elements of shared streets Ben-Joseph (1995) mentions the general features of a shared street as follows: The shared street is a road, a square, or a road and a square connected. Cars and pedestrians share the whole road, but pedestrians take precedence, and the drivers entering the space get the feeling that they are entering a pedestrianized space. The shared street is not only a means of transportation facility but also a living space for citizens; thus, people should be able to walk or run anywhere on the road. The space does not need to consist of raised sidewalks and curbs like in conventional streets. There are two types of shared streets: a vehicle–pedestrian mix that does not clearly distinguish between driveway and pedestrian area, and a vehicle–pedestrian disparate type that separates the driveway and the sidewalk by steps and bollards. The former is often used for access roads in residential areas where the number of users is limited, and the latter is used for areas where an unspecified number of pedestrians and vehicles are expected to pass through, and where existing vehicular traffic is required to some extent. In the case of Deoksugung-gil Street, vehicle–pedestrian separate type was introduced. Since pedestrian space and vehicle space are not entirely separated on the street, when designing a shared street, it is important to draw attention of automobile drivers to reduce the car speed and passing traffic should be suppressed as much as possible. Some typical methods of achieving this objective include the following (Figure 22.1) (Korean Land Corporation 1988): (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (12)

refraction (crank) driveway; curved (slalom) driveway; fort and image fort; removing height difference of sidewalk and driveway; minimum driveway width; furnishing flower and tree planters; traffic circle (mini-rotary); choker; hump or image hump; bollard; interlocking block or brick paving; and emergency pocket parking lot.

Effects and problems of shared street Positive outcomes of adopting shared street designs in urban spaces include the reduction of vehicle speed, traffic accidents, traffic volume and noise from traffic; social benefits and satisfaction of people; streetscape improvements; and ease in maintenance of street space.

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Figure 22.1 Design tools for the shared street design. Source: Sung-Kyun Kim

(1) Reducing vehicle speeds. The phenomenon of driving at high speed on residential streets is facilitated by the street layout, width, paving type, etc., which are aimed at making a smooth traffic flow, and therefore, there is almost no effect of deceleration by setting speed limits on those streets. The effect of vehicle deceleration should be sought by street design techniques for various speed limits and the overall atmosphere of the road which is designed to make drivers feel like intruders. The effect of vehicle deceleration in shared streets has been proven by various researches (Hass-Klau 1990; Korean Land Corporation 1988). (2) Reducing traffic accidents. Although people may believe that shared streets could increase traffic accidents, such streets are usually safer than conventional streets when they are designed to favour people over vehicles. Traffic accidents are reduced by attentive driving and slowing down of speed. Major accidents are less destructive, even if they occur. Studies have shown that traffic accidents on shared streets are 20 per cent less than those on conventional roads, and fatal accidents have decreased by more than 50 per cent (Hass-Klau 1990). (3) Reducing traffic volume and noise. The traffic on roads is significantly reduced due to the design of shared street, which is designed to be uncomfortable for the passing vehicles. Reduced traffic volume leads to reduction in noise on streets as well. Data indicate that the number of residents using a vehicle has decreased in shared streets (Hass-Klau 1990). (4) Social benefits and satisfaction of residents. A shared street is not merely a traffic system for passing vehicles, but it has the advantage of being recognized as a social space where people stop, meet each other, and make social exchanges, and where children can play with confidence and safety. Shared streets improve social contact between residents. Some neighbours dislike gatherings of people on neighbourhood streets, but several studies show that, in general, residents want to improve their residential environment even if driving their cars on shared streets are uncomfortable (Ichikawa 1984; Korean Land Corporation 1988). (5) Improving streetscape. To distinguish street network from other areas in the development of roads with shared streets, special consideration is given to the quality of road facilities, which contribute greatly to overall landscape improvement. Installation of a shared street leads to the beautification of the area. (6) Benefits of street maintenance. It is desirable to encourage the participation of residents in the planning of shared streets. Residents who participated often tend to feel that the sidewalk near their houses as an extension of their property and thus willingly take care of streets after construction. Streets built with community participation are relatively cleaner and better maintained than publicly managed roads in a municipality and thus could save maintenance costs in the long-run. 380

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Some of the negative consequences of the use of shared streets include higher costs, design issues associated with infrastructure provision, and managing people’s expectations. (1) Costs. Construction of a shared street is generally costlier than conventional asphalt-covered streets because the entire street including the driveway is paved with an interlocking block, brick or the like, to give the entire road an image of a pedestrianized space. In addition, the cost of installing facilities to control vehicle entry and speed and installing various landscaping facilities to make the streetscape visually pleasing are also expensive. However, costs can be fully compensated indirectly through the advantages of shared streets, such as the reduction of the number of traffic accidents, creation of a pleasant environment, and continued maintenance by residents. (2) Design problems. It is usually difficult to handle the drainage of new pavement and connect with existing water drainage networks when an existing road is changed into a shared street, along with the existing trees, manhole covers, and underground utilities. Existing road design standards, as they are based on achieving smooth flow of car-oriented traffic, can cause conflicts in the design of a shared street. Therefore, flexibility in the implementation of regulations or revision of the road design criteria for a shared street is required. (3) Practical problems. Initially people may oppose an installation of a shared street due to the lack of knowledge of the new street concept or due to other personal interests. Therefore, it is desirable to give residents enough opportunity to understand the meaning and purpose of shared street design, to gain opinions of residents through their participation in the decision-making process, and to develop a greater interest in the collective benefit of the larger community than personal interests in order to succeed in the introduction of a shared street. Another practical issue is to prevent vehicular traffic flood into nearby areas when traffic on one street is controlled. To prevent such a phenomenon, it is necessary to adopt an area-wide approach in which traffic management in the surrounding area is planned together along with the shared street design on a single street.

Shared street design in Historic Urban Landscapes In most historic cities, the street network was formed as pedestrian-centred because of their compact size and having all urban amenities in a walking distance, as well as due to the nature of transportation that was available. These historic streets are generally irregularly shaped, curvilinear with uneven width, and with many extended spaces on the sides. Many are cul-de-sac roads, are not well-connected to each other, and are continuously enclosed by walls and buildings. Most are also relatively narrow alleys in contact with a wider road in various forms. A traditional street that was not originally planned for vehicles can be considered a shared street in some sense. Therefore, the concept of shared street can be easily introduced in historic urban areas when mechanisms for restricting vehicle speed and volumes and improving the safety and comfort of pedestrians are installed in traditional streets. The shared street concept could also be easily adapted in irregular traditional streets morphologically and functionally. Unlike grid-like, car-oriented roads, irregular traditional streets naturally discourage traffic volume and speed. Irregular road conditions such as various widths, leftover spaces and walls in traditional streets can be efficiently used in the design of the shared street by street-line adjustment. For example, with the introduction of a crank or slalom in a wider area of a street, the width of a sidewalk can be adjusted to serve as a resting place that could accommodate urban social life. Until now, the approach to the shared street has focused on the decrease of vehicle speed and traffic volume rather than to facilitate a pedestrian-friendly environment; the behaviour of people in 381

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the street is thus not emphasized much. Therefore, a more desirable approach in historic urban areas where the street life is already extant is to focus on how to maintain the social behaviour in the existing street rather than merely applying the concept of space-sharing between the vehicle and the pedestrian. To do this, the behavior of residents in the traditional street should be studied first, and strategies should be device to accommodate vehicles without significantly affecting the social behaviour in place. In the case of regeneration of historic urban areas, the history, meaning, and values of the place should be fully studied, reflected in the street design, formed more positively, and be maintained. Introduction of a shared street design for the regeneration of a historical urban area usually changes the existing street pattern and its use unlike in a new city. Therefore, the implementation of a shared street will always encounter problems such as disagreement and opposition from residents or the related government departments and experts. The success of shared streets depends on how well one can convince multiple stakeholders and reconcile the conflicting interests. To preserve and manage a sustainable historical landscape, it is necessary to positively engage residents in the planning stage. Participation in the planning stage helps to understand the lives of residents in the place and to garner their affectionate support to keep the streets cleaner and safer after they have been created.

The case study: Deoksugung-Gil Street in Seoul The area where Deoksugung-gil Street is located was the site of Korean modern history from the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries. The Deoksugung Palace, the last palace of the Joseon Dynasty (1392–1910 CE), is located on this namesake street. The area was the centre of modern diplomacy where foreign embassies of major western countries, such as the US, UK, France, Russia, and Germany, were also situated during the last Korean dynasty. It was also the centre of modern education and religion, where the first girls’ high school and the first Protestant Church are located. There were also the first Western-style hotel and café, which were diplomatic and social meeting places, and the first women and children hospital. The Deoksugung-gil Street runs in the middle of this historic area and was a historically significant street during the Joseon period. It was called ‘Deoksugung-dol-damgil (Deoksugung Palace Stone Wall Street)’ and has been remembered as a path of romance and parting of ways. During the Japanese colonial period (1910–1945), public facilities such as the Supreme Court, the Family Court, the Seoul District Court and the Public Prosecutors’ Office were built along the street and the heavy security of the surrounding area became the dominant aspect of the image of the place. In 1994, the Korean government decided to move these public facilities to the Gangnam District in Seoul. Subsequently, the Seoul City government conducted a national design competition for the street from Daehanmun Gate to Gyeonghyangsinmun Newspaper (900 m length, 9–20 m width) in order to regenerate the historic landscape from heavy traffic congestion and poor maintenance of the area. The present author proposed the pedestrian-oriented shared street concept and won the competition and designed the current street in 1996–1997. The goals were to preserve the historic landscape, to increase the quality of life, to create the street identity and a sense of place based on its history, culture and nature, and to create a pleasant pedestrian-oriented green street. The design objectives included the following: • •

Introduction of the concept of shared street to improve the safety of pedestrians, reduce vehicle speed and volumes, and improve street environment. Strengthening the identity and image of the historical landscape in connection with the surrounding historical buildings. 382

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• • •

Creation of spaces for citizens’ walking and outdoor activities by expanding the sidewalks. Improvement of the landscape environment by expanding landscape and street amenities. Creation of a barrier-free street that can be used without difficulty by the elderly and disabled.

Analysis of the site condition In-depth studies of the following site conditions were carried out to gain a comprehensive understanding of the site, its issues, and design potential. 1)

2)

3)

4)

5)

Natural environment analysis. Climate (rainfall, sunshine, ventilation, micro-climate, etc.), topography (slope, elevation, etc.), and vegetation, etc. For vegetation analysis, old trees with several hundred years of age in the surrounding area were surveyed. From this analysis, patterns of past vegetation were deduced and reflected in the planting design. Human environment analysis. Population composition of residents; user behavior analysis; status of land use and land ownership; building status; public facilities around the site and the park; history and culture; and regulations and higher-level planning analysis. Landscape and environmental colour analysis. Landscape analysis in the site; visual analysis from the site; environmental colour analysis of surrounding buildings, walls and trees to choose colour of paving and street furniture. Interpretation of historical and cultural landscape. Interpretation of historical and cultural meaning of the place, such as ‘the street of parting’, ‘the road of romance’, etc., and to strengthen the positive meaning such as ‘the way of romance’, and to change the negative meanings, such as ‘the way of parting’ into a positive meaning through design. Traffic analysis. Traffic network, traffic volumes, passing-traffic, passing speed, traffic of left and right turns at intersection, road structure (width of driveway and sidewalk, shape, step difference), traffic regulation of surrounding roads, parking demand and parking status, pedestrian status, etc.

The basic design concepts The intent of the design concept in structural terms was to introduce the concept of shared street, where pedestrians and cyclists have the priority in the use of the street (Figure 22.2). To reduce the number of passing vehicles as much as possible, one-way traffic was adjusted to the areas with less impact on passing traffic. Adapting the shared street mechanisms of separating driveway and sidewalk, the street was designed to reduce the traffic volumes to 3,000 cars per day for efficient function. Traffic regulation (at design speed of 20 km/h) and various design techniques were introduced to suppress traffic volume. The entire street has many entry spaces on its sides. Between them, the nodal point (square) and the path (road) are divided. Each nodal point has a resting and gathering place. Each nodal point and pathway have a unified image, and each section is designed to be unique. Removing the walls with low historical value of surrounding public buildings and creating gardens inside helped to enlarge the visual scope and the green space of the landscape (Figures 22.4 and 22.5). Any leftover space was used to create an outdoor activity space for residents, workers, students, and visitors. In thematic and aesthetic terms, the design concept was a pursuit of a sense of place reminiscent of the modern image of Korea in the late nineteenth century. The expression of modern images was achieved by composition of landscape, selection and quality of materials, style of landscape facilities, sculptures, signs, fountain, etc. Creating a pleasant walking environment and various street scenes with various themes was

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Figure 22.2 The master plan. Source: Sung-Kyun Kim

also an aspect of this intent. The quality of the landscape was improved by increasing the quality of the vegetation design and the careful consideration of the materials of paving and street facilities.

Design features of the street Street structure In the design of the driveway, many traffic control features were introduced to decelerate traffic speed. These included: a ‘S’ curve serpentine (slalom) type alignment, traffic circle (mini-rotary), humps, image humps, rumble paving and street signs, etc. (Figures 22.1, 22.2, 22.3, and 22.4). The width of the driveway was made 3.5 m where a car and bicycle can pass easily, but two cars cannot pass at the same time. This width also prevents illegal parking or dual lanes. On the narrowed driveway, pocket parking lots, which were designed to decelerate traffic speed, were installed for passing vehicles in an emergency. To suppress the roadside parking, parking spaces were removed by installing bollards and planting trees on the side of the street. In the design of the sidewalk, the driveway and the sidewalk were designed to be of the same height to emphasize the image of a special space that pedestrians prevail (Figures 22.3, 22.4, and 22.5). Existing sidewalk was extended up to the edge of the driveway. The width of the sidewalk was determined by patterns of shadows cast by surrounding buildings and walls in the morning, evening,

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summer, and winter, and the predicted pedestrian behaviour. For example, sidewalks were widened in places where shadows do not occur in winter. Areas for rest were created in these widened spaces. The Deoksugung-doldam-gil Street (Deoksugung Palace stonewall street) that runs from Daehanmun Gate to the Central Plaza has a relatively wide sidewalk. Here the driveway was designed as a ‘S’ curve serpentine road that is visually soft and gentle, giving a unique image of pedestrian space (Figure 22.4). The Jeongdong-gil Street (that runs from the Central Plaza to Saemunan-gil) has a relatively narrow sidewalk, and so the street is designed as a gentle refraction type (crank). The sidewalk near the Seoul City Hall Annex has a ‘C’-shape curve alignment to create a wide garden-like space on the wider side of the street.

Planting Existing ginkgo trees were retained, and other species of trees were planted to complement the ginkgo (Gingko biloba) trees. There are old native trees in the area, such as sophora (Sophora japonica), zelkova (Zelkova serrata), apricot (Prunus armeniaca var. ansu) and oak (Quercus acutissima), etc., which are older than several hundred years. Similar trees were planted to revive the past ecological and historical image of this area as primary street-trees in each path and nodal space. Outside of the walls of the Deoksugung Palace, the zelkova trees were planted to make tree corridors. When they grew older, branches of zelkova trees in both sides of the wall cross over the wall. This ‘tree crossing’ symbolizes ‘meeting and loving’ instead of ‘separating and parting’ meaning of the old street. In addition, people can experience the colour of leaves change in autumn from yellow to brown and appreciate the autumn colour longer because of the time difference of the ginkgo and zelkova trees autumn leaves’ colour change. The walls of other surrounding public institutions were removed, and the greenery of the streets were expanded by creating gardens and green spaces inside the institutions (Figures 22.4 and 22.5).

Paving The entire area was designed as a barrier-free space. Paving is predominantly red and light brown brick laid in different patterns that closely match the image of the surrounding modern red and light brown brick buildings, based on the results of the environmental colour analysis of the surrounding area. To maintain the continuity of the entire space, a granite band pattern along the main driveway was introduced. Braille block is laid side by side along the granite strip pattern laid parallel to Deoksugung Palace stone wall, so that the blind can safely walk (Figure 22.4). Plate tiles with simplified images of the surrounding modern buildings were placed on the street floor to enhance the modern image of the surroundings and to provide information about the nearby historic buildings (Figure 22.6).

Night lighting Lighting is designed not only to illuminate the road, but also to enhance the appeal of the landscape. The lights are modern-style half-globes placed on metal poles at pedestrian scale. There are also spotlights to highlight various features of the street, such as fountains, stone walls, crossings, floor surface, etc.

Other facilities Other facilities, such as sculptures, fountains, fences, benches, trash-cans, etc., are designed to have a modern expression and visual similarity in colour and form. Movable and permanent seating is provided. Art works are provided combining with seating and improving the streetscape.

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Figure 22.3 Deoksugung-doldam-gil Street (before and after). Source: Sung-Kyun Kim

Figure 22.4 City Hall Annex Plaza (before and after). Source: Sung-Kyun Kim

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Nodes (plazas) Five nodal points or plazas were created along the entire street. Three of them were of considerable size. At the Daehanmun Palace Gate Plaza, this space plays the role of entry to both the Deoksugung Palace and Deoksugung-gil Street. It was thus designed to match the function and image of the Deoksugung Palace

Figure 22.5 Central Plaza traffic circle (before and after). The front gate and walls of the old Supreme Court were demolished, and gardens were created inside. Source: Sung-Kyun Kim

Figure 22.6 Plate tiles of historic buildings and old maps of the site. Source: Sung-Kyun Kim

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Gate, and for people to gather and take photographs of the changing-guard ceremony at the Palace Gate effectively. The City Hall Annex Plaza is located in front of Seoul City Hall Annex, which was the old Supreme Prosecutors’ Office. The walls of the Annex were demolished, and gardens and resting areas were created inside of the demolished walls along the street (Figure 22.4). The Central Plaza is located at the intersection of three streets and is the western entry to the Deoksugung-gil Street. The place has been used as the entrance of the Jeongdong First Church and Seoul Museum of Art (old Supreme Court). In this intersection square, a traffic circle (mini-rotary) is installed to slow down vehicle speed. In the inside of the mini-rotary, there is a music-fountain and sculptures as a focal point with adjacent sitting areas. This floorfountain has several aerated jets which run following the sounds of music. Sitting areas, especially those with floor-fountains, create an inviting environment for people to relax. The sitting areas became very popular as places for eating during lunch time (Figure 22.5). Maps of the 1800s to 1900s were installed around the mini-rotary to show the history of the area and to enhance the symbolism and image of the space (Figure 22.6). The front gate and walls of the Seoul Museum of Art (old Supreme Court) were demolished, and a garden was built inside to connect the inner space with the central square and to create a more environmentally friendly space image. Apricot trees, which symbolize the country and hometown for Korean people and are presumed to exist in the area in the past, were planted around the traffic circle to give hometown image (Figure 22.5).

Sustainable aspects of Deoksugung-Gil Street Sustainability in the streetscape is one of the most important concerns for urban regeneration. Sustainable streets are designed and operated to create benefits relating to movement, ecology and community that together support a broad sustainability agenda embracing environmental, social, and economical sustainability (Greenberg 2009). The sustainable urban streets create more liveable communities (Bevan et al. 2007) and play an important role in forming the visual image of sustainable cities, as it is one of the most important factors which help in city success, and tourist attractions. In this regard, Deoksugung-gil street design has been a representative example of sustainable regeneration of a Historic Urban Landscape in terms of environmental, social and economic sustainability.

Environmental sustainability Shared street development can achieve improved air quality by reducing car speed and volume and encouraging people to walk rather than drive, resulting in fewer greenhouse gas emissions. Creating a pleasant green pedestrian-oriented street was one of the main objectives of the street design. In addition to decreasing the traffic speed and volume, more street trees were planted, the walls of public buildings were demolished, and gardens and green spaces were created. The greens in the premises of public buildings were connected to the streets to increase the overall green space along the street, making people feel as if they were in a park (Figures 22.4 and 22.5). Zelkova trees were planted around the Deoksugung Palace wall to match the extant zelkova trees inside of the palace walls to enhance their presence and coverage. In this manner, trees were planted in abundance to link the street with green areas that were cut off due to the development of the surrounding area, thus forming a regional green network (Figures 22.4 and 22.5). Due to the profusion of luxurious trees on the streets and gardens, the temperature in the summer is lower than in the surrounding area and urban heat island effects have been reduced. This extensive green coverage transforms CO2 to the oxygen, removes fine dust, and constitutes habitat for birds and other wildlife. The permeable paving bricks persist abrasion, allow seeping of storm water into the ground, and improve the water table and vegetation of the area by storing water underground. Street trees play an important role in sustainable urban design by minimizing 388

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storm water runoff, reducing water pollution, and creating a greener and healthier appearance of the street. In this respect, Deoksugung-gil Street is a representative example of environmentally sustainable street development.

Social sustainability The shared street concept sustains social well-being by making it fit enough for public walking and gathering where social interaction can occur on a regular basis and encourage outdoor activities (Rehan 2013). As a result of the development of Deoksugung-gil shared street, spaces for pedestrians were increased, resulting in an increase of various social activities in the street. The extended pedestrian areas in the shared street have become suitable places for performing street theatre, music and artistic exhibitions (Figure 22.7b). The streets play an important role for encouraging and introducing the unknown artists and the revival of traditional arts and promotion of information. During lunchtime in the week, the event of dosirak (it has two meanings of ‘lunch’ and ‘pleasure in the city’ in Korean) is held regularly on the streets and plazas (Figure 22.7c), where office workers in the surrounding area bring their lunches and eat together, turning the streetscape into community meeting and communication spaces. On the weekend, various city festivals and performances, such as ‘Night Walking in the Jeong-dong Area’ are held. In the winter time when there are not many people outdoors, the ‘Tree-Wrapping’ event led by city women group has been held to warm the cold winter atmosphere (Figure 22.7a). Thus, pedestrian-oriented streetscape design causes sustainable social development.

Figure 22.7 Events on the streets: (a) tree-wrapping, (b) street performances, (c) dosirak event, and (d) street vendors. Source: Sung-Kyun Kim

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Many people who were living and working around the streets participated in the street design process, and they continued to organize many community events and maintain the street after construction. The residents who participated often tend to feel that the sidewalk near their house as a continuation of their house and willingly take care of the street after construction. The street is much cleaner and better maintained than publicly managed roads in the municipality and have saved maintenance costs in the longrun. Deoksugung-gil Street has become a community plaza where people from Seoul and all of the Korea gather and communicate with each other. It is a representative example of socially sustainable street development.

Economical sustainability The pedestrian-oriented street development may be considered as one of the least costly and most efficient strategies for constituting urban sustainability. Deoksugung-gil Street cost only about US$900,000 for construction and became a favourable space for the citizens. Compared with other public projects, construction of the shared street is relatively inexpensive considering the high effect and satisfaction of people. It is an example of a very successful project with very low public investments. Constituting and expanding the pedestrian areas in different urban scales, from a large district to a neighbourhood, and to a single-building, provide environmental quality improvement in a short time. The shared street encourages many commercial activities such as street venders, etc., and the streets bring a lot of economic benefits to the surrounding commercial space (Figure 22.7d). The land value along the street has increased significantly. The Deoksugung-gil shared street has been proved to be a very effective and representative example of an economically sustainable regeneration of a Historic Urban Landscape.

In retrospect In Deoksugung-gil Street, the concept of shared street has a great effect on improving the landscape of a traditional street while solving traffic problems. Since its completion in 1998, pedestrian traffic has substantially increased in the street. The street has been safe for pedestrians and attractive enough to encourage a variety of urban activities. It is regarded as very successful for conserving and regenerating Seoul’s Historic Urban Landscape; reducing traffic accidents, traffic volumes and vehicle speed; increasing pedestrian traffic; improving landscape aesthetics; and generating a higher degree of satisfaction by the users. The street seems to be achieving its objectives of sustainable regeneration of the historic Seoul. As a result, the Deoksugung-gil Street was recorded as the first ‘Street that People Want to Walk on’ by the Korean Government in 1999. It was selected as ‘the Most Beautiful Road in Korea’ by the Korean Government in 2009, and as ‘the Handsomest Place in Seoul’, according to an Internet Survey conducted by the Seoul City Government in 2017.

Conclusion Streetscapes in historic cities were not formed to accommodate modern-day vehicles, and thus managing the complicated and unsafe traffic conditions has become a perennial difficult problem in the traditional urban landscapes. The concept of differential separation, introduced to protect pedestrians from the risk of a vehicle, played a major role in protecting pedestrians from vehicles on a road, but most of the roads also became vehicle-first roads, causing pedestrians being pushed over to narrow sidewalks, and gradual loss of many of the traditional functions of a street that had served as a place of living in the past. In most Asian countries, traffic problems with cars and motorcycles in historical urban landscape are very serious. The preservation policy of Historic Urban Landscapes in many Asian 390

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contexts has largely focused on historic buildings, and urban traffic problems and their negative impact on the historic area and its civic life have been disregarded, making solutions more difficult. The example of Deoksugung-gil Streetscape Design has proved that a pedestrian-oriented streetscape is very effective in a historic urban area to solve these traffic problems as well as to preserve and regenerate the historical urban landscape. The shared street concept, instead of separating the vehicle from the pedestrian as in the conventional practice, allows the use of a car to the extent that it does not infringe on pedestrians’ use of and activities on roads. The concept respects the wishes of residents who want to bring their cars to the front of their houses and makes streets more secure by reducing car volume and speed while maintaining the existing traffic system to some extent. Especially, shared streets support and activate various roles of the urban space, such as making the urban landscape livelier, making scenery more beautiful, increasing the number of visits of citizens and tourists, revitalizing the surrounding stores, and reviving the local economy. It also plays an important role in the sustainable regeneration of the historic city by creating more green space to mitigate the urban heat island effect, to reduce air pollution, to enrich the green coverage of the area, and to connect local green space to the reginal networks. From the experience of the Deoksugung-gil Street Design in Korea, the shared street concept is found to be a very useful strategy for the sustainable regeneration of Historic Urban Landscapes in the Asia-Pacific region.

References Appleyard, D. (1981) Livable streets, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Ben-Joseph, E. (1995) ‘Changing the residential street scene’, Journal of American Planning Association, 6(4): 504–513. Bevan, T. A., Sklenar, O., McKenzie, J. A., and Derry, W. E. (2007) ‘Sustainable urban street design and assessment’, in The Proceedings of Third Urban Street Symposium, Seattle, WA, 1–14. Brambilla, R. and Longo, G. (1977) For pedestrians only: Planning, design and management of traffic-free zones, New York: Whitney Library of Design. Greenberg, E. J. (2009) ‘Sustainable streets: Foundations for an emerging practice’, The 88th Annual Meeting of Transportation Research Board, Washington, DC. Available at: https://trid.trb.org/view/880808 (accessed 8 August 2018). Hass-Klau, C. (1990) The pedestrian and city traffic, London: Belhaven Press. Houstoun, L. (1990) ‘From street to mall and back again’, Planning, 56: 4–10. Ichikawa, K. (1984) ‘Living environment and design of Woonerf’, International Association of Traffic and Safety Sciences, 8: 40–51. Kim, S-K. (1996) ‘Study on designating a pedestrian-only zone’, Seoul National University Agricultural Research, 21(1): 47–60. Korean Land Corporation. (1988) Planning and design of shared street, Seoul: Korean Land Corporation. National Police Agency (NPA). (2017) Traffic accident statistics in 2016, Seoul: National Police Agency of Korea. Rehan, R. M. (2013) ‘Sustainable streetscape as an effective tool in sustainable urban design’, HBRC Journal, 9(2): 173–186. Rubenstein, H. M. (1992) Pedestrian malls. Streetscapes and urban spaces, New York: John Wiley & Sons.

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23 TOWARDS SAFER AND RESILIENT HISTORIC URBAN ENVIRONMENTS Rohit Jigyasu

Introduction The historic urban areas in the Asia-Pacific region that have withstood the test of time are becoming increasingly vulnerable to natural as well as human-induced hazards. Their vulnerability is not only physical but social, economic and institutional as well. Besides the adverse impact of natural hazards, one also cannot underestimate risks to urban cultural heritage from chemicals, war and terrorism. In the absence of any comprehensive legal framework for protection, historic urban areas are vulnerable not only to impending disasters but also susceptible to damage during emergency and post disaster recovery phases. This chapter elaborates on the underlying reasons for increasing disaster vulnerability of historic urban areas in the Asia-Pacific region that notably include: population growth; urbanization and poverty; the impacts of the predominant neoliberal paradigm of economic development; loss of traditional knowledge, capacity and management systems; planned as well as unplanned urban sprawl; failing infrastructure; and effects of climate change. In the light of these challenges, the chapter discusses a possible way forward to increase the resilience of historic urban areas through various mitigation and adaptation measures to be implemented with the help of monitoring indicators and performance guidelines, recognizing historic urban areas as assets for sustainable future of local inhabitants. The territorial planning approach rather than the conventional master planning approach restricted to urban jurisdiction is needed to address the vulnerabilities and risks that are created in the larger urban ecosystem and landscape. The chapter concludes by advocating integrated framework for urban disaster risk reduction that seeks to support the Historic Urban Landscape approach (UNESCO 2011) and consider multiple hazards, vulnerabilities and potential negative impacts on people, housing, infrastructure, livelihoods as well as heritage attributes for building a safer and resilient historic urban environment. Towards this end, an agenda for action is also proposed, considering the specific physical, social, economic and institutional context.

Urban heritage at risk In the built environment, monuments of almost every culture have captured the imagination and awe of their people. They mean much more than the physical object itself, as imposing and beautiful as it may be, and convey a sense of identity, strength, beauty, know how, technical skills, social structure and economic prowess, among others. Committees are formed to defend, maintain, and in some cases, 392

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rebuild them; funds are donated and allocated locally, collected internationally and expended critically when it works well and, otherwise when not. Institutions are set up to identify and create awareness about monuments and various international organizations and national governments are supporting conferences and seminars around the world to discuss them, establish policies regarding them, and dissuade anyone from destroying them. Examples include Machu Picchu in Peru, The Taj Mahal in India, Borobudur in Indonesia, the Washington Monument in United States, the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan, the Pyramids in Egypt, Taxila in Pakistan, the Eiffel Tower in France, and so on. However, what has not happened is that the context in which these monuments reside, or historic urban areas in general, have not received the attention or support they deserve to maintain their vitality and quality, protect their structural integrity and heritage values, and stimulate their local economies and provide safe and resilient environment as their populations, occupancy and economies undergo various transformation processes. These historic urban areas in the Asia-Pacific region are still-ignored cultural resources defined through their distinct morphology, urban fabric, architecture, community structure and boundaries, which have carefully evolved through sensitive understanding of the local communities about their environment in which they have co-existed harmoniously, sustaining various inter-relationships and built environment over generations. Moreover, these historic urban areas that have withstood the test of time are becoming increasingly vulnerable to natural as well as human-induced hazards. Their vulnerability is not only physical but social, economic, institutional and attitudinal as well. This is well exemplified by the increasing instances of damage to urban heritage due to disasters. Examples include: Mexico City (The News 2017); historic settlements in Central Italy (The Guardian 2016); World Heritage Monument Zones of Kathmandu Valley (Holley 2015); historic town of Bhuj in Gujarat, India (Bedi 2001; Vasavada and Booth 2001), due to earthquakes in 2017, 2016, 2015 and 2001 respectively; Fires in the World Heritage Town of Lijiang in China in 2013 and 2014 (Jiang 2014); and the Old Town of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom in 2002 (Stead 2017) (Figure 23.1). Climate change is increasing the number of disasters. From 1988 to 2007, 76 per cent of all disaster events were hydrological, meteorological or climatological in nature. These hazards are adversely impacting natural and cultural heritage. Take, for example, the case of forest fires in Eastern Europe in 2008, which posed a high risk to the archaeological site of Olympia in Greece. Flash floods due to unprecedented heavy rains in India’s Uttarakhand State in 2013 destroyed many heritage structures in the region, while storms in Western Europe in 2010 inundated many historic town centres such as Rome. Due to high intensity rainfall, increased instances of urban flooding have been reported in recent decades. Examples include Kerala, Chennai, Srinagar, Mumbai and Surat floods in India in 2018, 2015, 2014, 2005 and 2006 respectively, and massive floods in Pakistan and Thailand in 2010 and 2011 respectively. Heavy rains in Thailand caused the World Heritage Site of Ayutthaya to remain submerged in water thereby causing insurmountable loss to the foundations of historic built structures. These tragedies need not have happened as they did, had there been prior recognition of the loss of traditional knowledge systems due to unplanned development and resulting vulnerabilities of these historic places and actions could have been taken beforehand to save lives, property and heritage. The likelihood of increased weather extremes in the future, therefore, gives great concern that the number or scale of weather-related disasters will also increase, thereby dramatically increasing their impact on heritage in the not too distant future. Besides the adverse impact of natural hazards, one also cannot underestimate risks to cultural heritage from chemicals, war and terrorism. The destruction of historic cities of Alleppo in Syria, Mosul in Iraq, Palestine and terror strikes such as the one in the historic district of Mumbai (on 26 November 2008) are significant cases to illustrate the point. An important aspect to consider here is the increasing complexity of crisis in which disasters due to natural hazards as well as conflicts are intertwined, where former may lead to the latter or the latter may form the context of the former. Take for example the case of Haiti, 393

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Figure 23.1 The earthquakes in 2015 caused extensive damage to the historic settlements such as Sankhu in Kathmandu Valley, Nepal. Source: Rohit Jigyasu

which in fact was the first independent nation in Latin America having secured its independence way back in 1804. Yet the country is one of the poorest in the region and faced a military coup in 1956 marking 29 years of dictatorship, series of riots in 2008, political crisis in 2015, several disasters caused by natural hazards such as earthquake in 2010 killing 160,000 people and displacing 1.5 million causing outbreak of cholera, and a hurricane in 2015 killing 1300 people (Laurent 2015; Peace Insight 2017) In the absence of any comprehensive legal framework for protection and disaster risk management, historic urban areas are vulnerable not only to impending disasters but also during emergency and post disaster recovery phases. In fact, there are several instances where post-earthquake reconstruction measures have served to destroy significant components of the cultural heritage rather than protecting them. This is exemplified in the case of post-earthquake reconstruction following the Gujarat earthquake of January 2001, due to which many historic towns, traditional villages and cultural artefacts of various kinds including museum collections suffered extensive damage and some destroyed (Bedi 2001). Ironically, during the relief and reconstruction phase in Bhuj, even more damage was inflicted on cultural property through demolition and neglect. In some cases, the fabric of many historic towns was completely replaced with ‘modern’ urban layouts, insensitive to the local way of life. Artefacts from the historic museum in Bhuj were looted or destroyed for lack of a proper disaster preparedness plan in place to deal with the eventualities that disasters create. How many more historic urban areas do we need to lose before national and local governments and the international community provide support to their continued existence? How many more unique places will disappear and with them their examples of past skills, building details and neighbourhood configurations that have lessons for the future? Besides other measures, protecting historic urban areas would necessitate effective urban disaster risk management.

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Reasons for increasing disaster vulnerability of historic cities and urban areas The major underlying causes for increasing vulnerability of historic cities, especially in the developing world, are rapid population growth, urbanization and poverty (Jigyasu 2016). The job opportunities provided by the cities leads to migration of people from rural areas. As a result, local communities are losing control of both public and private resources as traditional community management systems are eroded and increasingly replaced by alien systems of management, which in many cases serve to increase vulnerability rather than decreasing them as responsibilities are diluted. Coupled with these problems is the issue of failing infrastructure, which is unable to cope with increasing pressure and changing needs of the city’s inhabitants. Moreover, unplanned and, in many cases, even planned development often pays partial or total disregard to the traditional built fabric, thereby increasing disaster vulnerability (Jigyasu 2016). The heritage structures are often subjected to incompatible additions and alterations and in some cases are also engulfed by new poorly constructed structures posing challenges to accessibility during a disaster situation (Figure 23.2). Take the case of Kyoto in Japan, where most of the heritage buildings and traditional neighbourhoods, which were erstwhile located in open green areas, are surrounded by massive new developments making their accessibility increasingly challenging (Toki et al. 2004). Since many important heritage sites and monuments are located within historic cities/urban areas, an important challenge is how to protect these sites during emergency situations both in terms of evacuation of trapped inhabitants and visitors, salvage of heritage as well as access for rescue and relief (Figure 23.3). Historic urban areas are also increasingly vulnerable to disasters because of the loss of local ecology that was often considered while planning historic cities in harmony with the natural environment and thereafter regulated through traditional beliefs and practices. Take for example the case of Bungamati in Kathmandu Valley, where ritual processions along the periphery of this traditional settlement

Figure 23.2 The historic urban fabric of Kathmandu has undergone rapid transformation due to incompatible additions and alterations thereby increasing its vulnerability to earthquakes. Source: Rohit Jigyasu

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Figure 23.3 The narrow lanes of the historic preservation district of Sanneizaka in Kyoto, Japan, pose major challenge for effective emergency response to save people and heritage in the event of a disaster. Source: Rohit Jigyasu

determined the limits for new development. This ensured that traditional water systems, flora and fauna could be judiciously utilized for sustaining the local population, providing them with livelihoods and at the same time reduce disaster vulnerability and increase resilience. However, gradually the traditional urban boundaries are breaking up, disturbing delicate ecological relationships and exposing historic urban areas to increasing risks from external hazards. For example, historic urban areas of Bangalore, Chennai and Srinagar in India where filling up of canals and lakes for new development

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have led to increased instances of drought and flooding. Freak instances of fires in the lakes of Bangalore due to disruption in water flow and recharge have adversely affected the safety of the inhabitants (Abraham 2018; Jayaraman 2015; Romsoo 2014; Sengupta 2015). Coupled with these issues, there are general misperceptions due to which heritage is associated with underdevelopment. This has led to a usually uncontrolled and incremental process of transformation in the occupancy and economic base of historic areas as well as its physical fabric. Take the case of World Heritage City of Ahmedabad in India, where local communities increasingly sell their historic houses to property developers, who pull them down for new structures that are either incompatible with the traditional urban fabric or are their fake look-alikes (Magicbricks 2017). The new property development also disrupts traditional community structures as local inhabitants, who are often unable to pay for them, move out of the area and frequently these are turned into expensive rented properties used as hotels and homestays. This however cannot be squarely blamed on misperceptions as historic urban areas have degraded to a considerable extent due to lack of investment in upgrading of the public infrastructure because of which local inhabitants prefer to move out in search of a better quality of life. Such social change in historic urban areas adversely affects their resilience to disasters due to gradual weakening of traditional social networks that provided a mutual support system among communities for response and recovery.

Contribution of urban heritage to resilience Although urban cultural heritage is increasingly vulnerable to disasters, it should not be seen merely as a passive victim of disaster. In the face of disasters, traditional communities in historic cities often develop a vocabulary of resilient features in the urban environment that intentionally or unintentionally contribute towards prevention and mitigation, emergency response and recovery. For example, many traditional buildings located in urban areas performed well during the earthquakes in Gujarat (2001), Kashmir (2005), Haiti (2010) and Nepal (2015), demonstrating traditional knowledge for earthquake mitigation that has been accrued over generations through successive trials and errors. There are several cases where the historic urban fabric characterized by a series of interconnected courtyards has helped in emergency escape of residents from densely inhabited areas such as historic settlements in Kathmandu which were recently struck by devastating earthquakes. Moreover, these traditional settlements have well established networks of rest places (locally called Paatis and Sattals) and water sources, wells, stone water spouts (hitis), water tanks and ponds that are strategically located at open squares and at street junctions and village entrances (Figure 23.4). These serve as places for settlers and visitors to carry out daily activities. In the event of a disaster, these resting places can also be used for sheltering the injured, while water sources used for drinking can double as a local fire hydrant. These public places typically used for community gatherings, playing traditional music or just chatting can also help maintain a rapport among the local people facing catastrophe. In this way, the tangible attributes carrying intangible/social values have the potential to enhance cooperation among residents during a crisis and may well serve as sites for disaster preparedness training. As mentioned before, traditional urban planning based on local geography and available natural resources have also served to build the resilience of traditional urban communities. For example, traditional planning of Ayutthaya with networks of canals and check dams as well as houses built on stilts ensured that local communities have adapted their way of life to live with the risk of floods. Recovering traditional knowledge systems in urban planning and management and identifying their potential role in disaster risk reduction is an important challenge to be addressed for enhancing safety and resilience of historic urban areas. Last but not the least, traditional management systems also have tremendous potential in securing collective action among communities for post-disaster recovery. The rich expression of heritage is 397

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Figure 23.4 Traditional water systems in Kathmandu Valley, known as hitis, are inherent part of the historic urban fabric that also provide sustainable source of water in the event of damaged water pipes disrupting the municipal water supply following disasters. Source: Rohit Jigyasu

also a powerful means to help victims recover from the psychological impact of the disaster. In such situations, people search desperately for identity and self-esteem. Traditional social and religious networks that provide mutual support and access to collective assets often represented by urban heritage are an extremely effective coping mechanism for community members (UNISDR 2013). This was well demonstrated following the 2015 Nepal earthquake as networks of traditional guthi (communal trusts) provided support to local communities in their transition from response to recovery phase (Figure 23.5). Cultural dimension in general and heritage in particular also play an important role in sustainable recovery and rehabilitation of communities following a disaster. There are many examples to show that successful reconstruction projects have taken into consideration local building traditions and way of life through deeper engagement with communities. Take the case of owner-driven reconstruction undertaken in Gujarat following the 2001 earthquake, where NGOs and the local government facilitated development of innovative design and technologies based on traditional ones that seek to respect the local social, cultural and environmental context through sensitive use of local design, materials and construction techniques, while introducing structural and non-structural measures that help in reducing vulnerability and risks to disasters.

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Figure 23.5 Following 2015 Nepal earthquakes, the traditional community networks were instrumental in voluntary help to salvage heritage fragments from collapsed temples. Source: Rohit Jigyasu

However, loss or degeneration of traditional knowledge and capacity has certainly contributed to the increasing vulnerability and physical condition of the historic urban areas. Many heritage structures and urban areas are also vulnerable due to inherent defects in their design and construction or additions and alternations done over time. Moreover, while appreciating the positive role of heritage, we should not discount the fact that many cultural beliefs and practices result in fatalistic approach of interpreting disasters as ‘God’s will’ and undertaking no proactive measures to reduce disaster risks.

Challenges and priorities Disaster risk reduction for historic cities and urban areas presents us with some unique challenges, which are briefly elaborated in this section. First, how can we reduce disaster vulnerability of historic cities and urban areas, while retaining their tangible and intangible heritage values that are embedded in their morphology, rituals and community structures? This is indeed a challenge for historic areas since we cannot simply widen the roads to improve accessibility during emergency situations. How can we integrate heritage needs in the existing urban planning and management systems? Urban heritage issues cannot be seen in isolation since they are inherently linked to various sectors of urban management such as land use, transportation, infrastructure, environment, and the like. The challenge is how to address heritage aspects in various sectors, while recognizing heritage as an important sector itself. The local governments responsible for managing historic urban areas need to understand the underlying reasons for their vulnerabilities and establish social and financial programmes to address them. The first step is to build an awareness of the value of this vanishing

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cultural resource to realize the multifold benefits these areas and settlements may offer most importantly for the local inhabitants. Local communities and their urban social structure are inherent part of historic cities and urban areas. In fact, local communities can also effectively assist as volunteers during emergency situations. The challenge is how to engage them effectively for sustainable disaster reduction initiatives. Local non-governmental and civic society organizations can also play a very important role in bridging the gap between government and local communities. This would necessitate effective awareness raising programmes to sensitize community members on impending risks to lives and heritage and the significant role communities can play as volunteers in reducing risks as well as responding to disasters. Media can play a crucial role in achieving this. A related challenge is the appropriate scale or level and tools for their engagement. For example, ‘Disaster Imagination Game’ (DIG) is a very useful tool by which local communities and other stakeholders can identify all the risks in their surroundings and can devise effective mitigation measures through discussions. The DIG methodology serves to engage local government and experts, while also helping community members to prepare themselves for future adverse events. It includes many activities, from collecting all available data on the site (related to both cultural heritage and disaster risk) to working directly with the local community (as this is a collaborative project among citizens, experts, and governments). The objective is to establish what kind of risks could affect the cultural heritage site (Kim 2017). Moreover, there needs to be greater cooperation between agencies and professionals from heritage and disaster management fields. Sendai Framework on Disaster Risk Reduction adopted in 2015 has clearly advocated reducing risks to cultural heritage in the national policies on disaster risk management (UNISDR 2015). Heritage concerns need to be mainstreamed into larger urban disaster risk reduction policies and programmes, which need to be further integrated into various urban development sectors such as sanitation, water supply, housing, environment, infrastructure and services. This would also require capacity building initiatives at various levels and coordination between various sectors. For emergency response, heritage professionals and agencies need to work closely with civic defence organizations. Considering the above-mentioned challenges and priorities, disaster risk management of urban cultural heritage is need of the hour. On one hand, this would necessitate each heritage site and museum located in urban areas need to have its own disaster risk management plan that is tailored to its specific characteristics. On the other hand, urban cultural heritage needs to be well integrated into overall disaster risk management policies and plans at national, regional and city levels. There is also a need for an integrated framework for urban disaster risk reduction that seeks to consider multiple hazards, physical, social, economic, institutional and attitudinal vulnerabilities and exposure, and consequent potential negative impacts on people, housing, infrastructure, livelihoods as well as heritage attributes for building a safer and resilient historic urban environment (Figure 23.6). Various components of disaster risk management plan of cultural heritage before, during and after a disaster would include prevention, mitigation and preparedness measures, emergency response procedures, and recovery and rehabilitation process. However, investing in disaster risk reduction through mitigation and preparedness makes much more economic sense than investing heavily on response and recovery as previous experience in Nepal, Myanmar and Italy have aptly demonstrated. Going by the widely accepted principle of ‘Building Back Better’, recovery and rehabilitation processes should incorporate mitigation of risks for future disasters.

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Figure 23.6 In just a few days after 2015 Nepal earthquake, the communities in the historic urban areas of Kathmandu valley restarted their heritage-associated livelihood activities amid rubble, showing their resilience in the face of adversity. Source: Rohit Jigyasu

Agenda for action The following specific activities are envisioned to achieve safe and resilient historic urban environment: • •

•

•

To create an information base to identify and assess risks to historic urban areas and to document assets and liabilities of communities inhabiting these areas and their traditional knowledge systems for coping with urban disasters, Various mitigation and adaptation measures to be implemented through monitoring indicators and performance guidelines, recognizing historic urban areas as assets for sustainable future of local inhabitants. This would necessitate developing viable options to upgrade, retrofit and manage physical growth of historic urban areas in a way that vulnerability of these areas is reduced. This will essentially involve introducing improved building materials and methods in a way that structural integrity and heritage values of these areas are maintained. In this process, the programme will strive to address urban transformation processes through guided change that maintains a scale and set of urban functions in a traditional community, which has evolved through experience over generations. To develop appropriate performance and structural safety standards for improving the resilience of infrastructure and the built fabric of historic urban areas. The programme will operate on the premise that urban infrastructure needs to and will include ‘mitigation furniture’ – dykes and levees, windbreaks, raised walkways, and platforms that will protect vulnerable areas and offer safe haven as required for the future and at the same time do not distort the heritage values of these areas. Territorial planning approach extending over the larger ecological footprint of the historic city rather than conventional master planning approach restricted to urban jurisdiction is needed to address the vulnerabilities and risks that are created in the larger urban ecosystem and landscape.

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•

•

To formulate principles/considerations, which can help the governments as well as NGOs to develop policies for emergency management and rehabilitation of historic urban areas in addition to the mitigation efforts that can limit losses to the heritage values. This will involve emergency escape, access routes and other preparedness plans for emergency and reconstruction. Decision makers, aware of the resource their historic urban areas represent, will help in preventing post-disaster loss to historic urban areas through measures such as insensitive demolition after a disaster, as well as, aim to maintain populations and limit displacement and eviction in existing community structures. Finally, it is paramount to find ways and means to regenerate traditional livelihoods. To this end, it will specifically address opportunities for supporting small local industries. It is hoped that these will primarily be the result of local initiatives and will specifically create jobs through the integration of disaster mitigation methods and devices with home improvement and community welfare programmes. Towards this end, these industries can design and manufacture alternative home furnishings by producing building materials, windows and doors, and structural elements which are not only compatible to the heritage values embedded in the historic areas but also build upon local skills and capacities, which can be utilized to improve their performance against disasters. Therefore, the local economy should be the basis for rehabilitation of the area and create tools and systems, financial, technical and social, to support local economic development in the area and reduce their vulnerability to disasters and build resilience through opportunities for livelihood regeneration. It is important to recognize that ‘tourism’ is not the only solution to historic urban areas’ viability or utility to future development. Indeed, it is to look at the local skills sets as a basis to create opportunities for existing crafts communities to apply their technologies that have evolved over time and develop new products and designs for the future.

International and national initiatives Since 2010, UNISDR and partners have mobilized a political commitment to building resilience through the Making Cities Resilient Campaign and have so far engaged over 2,500 cities that have committed to implement the Ten Essentials for building resilience. These Ten Essentials are outlined in Table 23.1. The Fourth Essential calls for resilient urban development and design. Cultural heritage is recognized as a source of urban resilience and a system for the risk-sensitive protection of cultural heritage assets in the city is strongly recommended as part of this Essential. This would necessitate the following measures: • • • • • •

Legislation and/or policies for the risk-sensitive protection of cultural heritage assets in a city (regional/national territory). Guidelines for the protection and retrofitting of cultural heritage assets (for all relevant hazards and climate change). Preparation of disaster risk maps for cultural heritage assets. Risk monitoring system especially tailored for cultural heritage assets. Legal and financial instruments and incentives that facilitate the protection/retrofitting/maintenance of cultural assets. Allocation of budget provided for maintaining and protecting cultural heritage.

The Handbook for Local Government Leaders, developed as part of the campaign, makes specific reference to the importance of protecting cultural heritage as part of the campaign. The handbook gives an example of the work being carried out by the city of Venice to protect it from flood inundation. 402

Towards safer and resilient environments Table 23.1 Ten essentials for making cities resilient. 1.

Put in place organization and coordination to understand and reduce disaster risk, based on participation of citizen groups and civil society. Build local alliances. Ensure that all departments understand their role in disaster risk reduction and preparedness. 2. Assign a budget for disaster risk reduction and provide incentives for homeowners, low income families, communities, businesses and the public sector to invest in reducing the risks they face. 3. Maintain up to date data on hazards and vulnerabilities. Prepare risk assessments and use these as the basis for urban development plans and decisions, ensure that this information and the plans for your city’s resilience are readily available to the public and fully discussed with them. 4. Invest in and maintain critical infrastructure that reduces risk, such as flood drainage, adjusted where needed to cope with climate change. 5. Assess the safety of all schools and health facilities and upgrade these as necessary. 6. Apply and enforce realistic, risk compliant building regulations and land use planning principles. Identify safe land for low income citizens and upgrade informal settlements, wherever feasible. 7. Ensure that education programmes and training on disaster risk reduction are in place in schools and local communities. 8. Protect ecosystems and natural buffers to mitigate floods, storm surges and other hazards to which your city may be vulnerable. Adapt to climate change by building on good risk reduction practices. 9. Install early warning systems and emergency management capacities in your city and hold regular public preparedness drills. 10. After any disaster, ensure that the needs of the affected population are placed at the centre of reconstruction, with support for them and their community organizations to design and help implement responses, including rebuilding homes and livelihoods. Source: UNISDR (2012)

A flood defence system is being developed that comprises a system of barriers that can be raised from the bottom of the lagoon to protect the city during storm surges (UNISDR 2012). The Sendai Framework on Disaster Risk Reduction adopted in 2015 clearly recognizes culture as a key dimension of disaster risk reduction and the need to protect and draw on heritage as an asset for resilience through a number of important references. The challenge is to implement this policy, which requires considerable building of capacities at international, national and local levels and the setting up of the necessary institutional mechanisms, complemented by data collection and monitoring (Dean and Boccardi 2015). It needs to be emphasized that heritage concerns need to be included in existing urban vulnerability reduction programmes at the national level. Here, I would like to cite the example of India where thirtyeight cities including many historic ones have been taken up as part of the nationwide Urban Earthquake Vulnerability Reduction Project (UEVRP) initiated by UNDP and Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India. The programme is aimed at the sustainable reduction in earthquake risk in the most earthquake-prone urban areas across the country, creating awareness among government civil servants, technical institutions, NGOs, community-based organizations (CBOs) and communities about the following: earthquake vulnerability and possible preventive actions, developing and institutionalising earthquake preparedness and response plans, and practise these through mock drills; developing a technical-legal regulatory framework to promote safe construction and systems to ensure compliance; providing capacity building for certification by government civil servants and professionals (engineers and architects); and promote information-sharing on best practices and tools for effective earthquake risk management, including the creation of information systems containing inventory of resources for emergency operations (UNDP/India 2013). Heritage concerns need to be included in each of the above-mentioned goals of the programme.

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Conclusion The pressures on historic urban areas will surely continue to grow as land values continue to rise and land use controls are modified. If these areas are to survive, these must continue to play important roles in the urban development process by providing a safe and resilient environment, improving the quality of life of local inhabitants through increasing their livelihood opportunities and addressing their basic needs, and at the same time finding out viable roles for these areas within overall economic development while ensuring that these areas continue to play a crucial role in maintaining historical continuity as they should. This will require support to demonstrate their capacity to positively contribute to the future. Their heritage values, their indigenous knowledge systems, their economic potential and their social structure can only be identified, elaborated and disseminated if the structural integrity of these historic areas is improved in a holistic manner. All these issues certainly reinforce the need to initiate a concerted effort aimed at reducing risks to historic urban areas and sensitize city managers, architects, planners, conservation professionals, and emergency managers towards these issues and also train them for the effective ways and means of coping with these issues at the national as well as local level. Therefore, the main goal is to reduce risks to the population and physical fabric in historic urban areas through the use of sustainable conservation and development practices. It should be clear from the outset that we are dealing with living entities. It is not really desirable to ‘freeze’ these places in time and pretend that they are still ‘alive’; rather, what is more important is that these historic urban areas are seen as evolving. As they change, adaptation is to be encouraged within a set of performance guidelines that will recognize historic urban areas as assets and resources for the sustainable future of local inhabitants. The national and international donor community should also recognize historic urban areas as resources for local economic growth and invest in them for providing safe and resilient environment while retaining their heritage values to the best possible extent.

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24 RURAL DEVELOPMENT A strategy for urban heritage management in the Asia-Pacific region Dennis Rodwell

Introduction Orthodox predictions of rapid urbanisation between now and 2050 are based on linear projections of nineteenth and twentieth century models of rural to urban transition, involving mass concentrations of industrial and other workers dependent on physical hubs and systems of communication and exchange that pre-date today’s information and communications technologies (ICT). International outsourcing and exchange at the larger scale and locally based working at the smaller scale are already significant features of the socio-economic landscape in many regions of the world and are on an escalating increase. Physical location is no longer a critical factor in many fields. Major cities will continue as locations of choice for many, but not of necessity for the majority. For the global prediction of 70 to 75 per cent urban proportionality by 2050 to be realised, India, currently predicted to be the most populous nation by 2022, will need to reverse its current two-thirds to one-third rural to urban population ratio. Recent projections for China, thereafter the second most populous nation, suggest that its current urban population bias may have reached an optimum, including if that nation is to continue to feed itself. The phenomenon of ‘ghost cities’ supports this appraisal. Taking its cue from the case of India, this chapter questions the inevitability as well as the sustainability of continuous urbanisation and presents a counter paradigm, in which ICT and the unlimited opportunities it affords for universal education and digital marketing allied to innovations in localised renewable energies and in fields such as permaculture, will amplify options for more distributed forms of development, expand individual and community lifestyle choices, and reinforce the global to local environmental agenda. It argues that a territorially balanced approach, prioritising the multiple advantages and opportunities of rural transition including regionally diffused urban settlements compared to concentrations in mega cities, has the potential to alleviate the pressures of migration and development that threaten surviving urban heritage across the Asia-Pacific region, and should be positioned as a central platform for the management of Historic Urban Landscapes. In parallel, this chapter critiques aspects of heritage conservation orthodoxy and argues for a repositioning of the UNESCO Historic Urban Landscape initiative to embrace an inclusive understanding of urban heritage as a prerequisite for its wider recognition and safeguarding in the region.

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Questioning the established paradigm of urbanisation Trends in urbanisation: the Indian context This twenty-first century is widely depicted as the ‘urban century’. Indeed, the term is included in the sub-title of the first volume authored to promote the 2011 UNESCO Recommendation (UNESCO 2011a), The Historic Urban Landscape: Managing Heritage in an Urban Century (Bandarin and van Oers 2012). The generalisation, however, is misleading. Urbanisation is conditioned by multiple variables in place, time and cultural context. At the scale and diversity of India, the potential exists to leap-frog the received wisdom and historical patterns of urbanism that have led to the destruction of so much urban heritage elsewhere (Figure 24.1).

Population statistics and forecasts In 2007, the urban proportion of the world population rose above 50 per cent for the first time. In 2011, the total global population reached 7 billion; in 2017, 7.5 billion. Current predictions include that overall population numbers will exceed 8 billion by 2030, with an urban proportion

Figure 24.1 Bhopal, Peer Gate area, India. Mirroring destruction elsewhere, urban heritage is currently under serious threat in cities throughout India. Here, a Moghul-influenced former courtyard house has lost its original inner complex and the right-hand portion has been demolished pending redevelopment. Source: Carsten Hermann

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of 60 per cent, and reach between 9 and 10 billion by 2050, with an urban proportion of between 70 and 75 per cent. From this it can be seen that the overall urban population is projected to double in real terms by 2050 and the rural population to remain static or slightly reduce. This computes to up to 3.5 billion new urban dwellers between now and 2050, averaging over 100 million each year. In December 2018, the population of India reached 1.36 billion, of which 33 per cent is urban and 67 per cent rural (India Population n.d.), the latter being distributed across upwards of 600,000 villages.1 An equivalent urban-rural proportionality applies to the Indian sub-continent as a whole,2 as well as other countries in the region including Myanmar and Vietnam. For China, also in December 2018, the overall population reached 1.41 billion, of which 59 per cent is urban and 41 per cent rural (China Population n.d.). Latest predictions are that the population of India will surpass that of China by 2022 (United Nations 2015: 4).

Discrepancies in urbanisation: India compared to China The divergence in urbanisation between India and China is informative, reflecting as it does variables including in the modes of economic production (Nijman 2012: 8). The global urban revolution that advanced through the nineteenth century was intimately tied to industrialisation. Cities became important centres of manufacture demanding large concentrations of labour; urbanisation mushroomed, and the social fabric was reconfigured (Barnes 2012; Nijman 2012: 8). The success of the Chinese economy today is firmly tied to manufacturing industry, providing some 100 million jobs.3 The current urban population bias in China conforms to a continuation of the historical model into the twenty-first century. Today’s variant of the urbanisation model, gathering momentum since the 1980s, is closely tied to the rise of the information economy and the processes of globalisation, including the mobility of capital and fluidity of means of exchange. India’s urbanisation, especially in the southern States, has been driven in substantial measure by fast growth in the software industry. Whereas urbanisation is substantial in numerical terms, the rural-urban share remains static and the rates of growth the same. Labour-intensive industrialisation is low, providing some 10 million jobs4 – a tenth of the figure in China – with ongoing urban growth deriving primarily from natural increase rather than net migration from rural areas (Barnes 2012). The substantial and continuing rural population bias in India manifests the potential for a new twenty-first century model of distributed urbanisation. Support for this thesis is evidenced by a tripling in the number of ‘census towns’ in India in recent decades (villages whose populations have expanded beyond 5,000 with less than a quarter of the male workforce engaged in agriculture) (Nijman 2012: 11), suggesting that rural-urban migration to smaller cities has been especially significant (Nijman 2012: 14). A further phenomenon is the design and development of new towns on the periphery of metropolitan areas, specifically to attract wealthy investors in the advanced information economy, connected to global circuits of capital and removed from the pressures of urbanisation in the megacities (Nijman 2012: 18; Wang, Kundu, and Chen 2010).

Questioning the orthodox urbanisation paradigm India’s larger cities contain a seemingly bewildering spectrum of economically connected activities that embrace pre-industrial-age technologies through today’s post-industrial and computerdriven era (Nijman 2012: 15). This characteristic is allied to a hybrid social structure that, contrary to conventional urban planning theory that presupposes adaptation to nuclear family 408

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lifestyles corresponding to other world regions, sustains strong ancestral traditions, social ties and cultural identities including caste in the urban slums, allows extended families to flourish and remain connected to the myriad villages (Nijman 2012: 16), and supports fluidity in patterns of rural-urban-rural migration. As Jan Nijman suggests: We are only just beginning to understand Indian cities in their entirety, this amalgam of human modes of survival and adaptation, of diverse modes of production, historical continuities and ruptures, disparate urban fabric, complex geographies, and vernacular representations of modernity. India seems to be writing its own script. (Nijman 2012: 18) Slums remain an integral and expanding part of the urban landscape in many parts of the developing world (Davis 2006). Contextualising to this chapter, ‘[t]he prevalence of slums in urban India can be regarded as a consequence of urbanization without industrialization’ (Nijman 2012: 15). Mumbai alone is estimated to have 6.5 million slum dwellers, whose numerous geographically and socio-economically distinct neighbourhoods exist in symbiotic relationship with the modern parts of the city and comprise an integral part of the urban landscape (Borgen Project 2017; Nijman 2010). The inequalities, however, are growing and are greater in cities than in rural areas. Whereas the Indian government has articulated urbanisation as a goal, synonymous as it is with orthodox notions of development, economic growth, modernisation, and consumer access to goods and services, it is not clear that single adherence to this received model is sustainable in the medium let alone long-term (Nijman 2012: 17); the phenomenon of ‘ghost cities’ in China and the concomitant destruction of traditional communities and agrarian societies together with rural as well as urban heritage reinforces this assessment (Shepard 2015). The notion that India’s urban transition could enable more citizens to live better quality, healthier and better-educated lives as well as lead to less resource-intensive development with lower environmental impacts (India Institute for Human Settlements 2012: introduction), needs to be qualified. India faces enormous challenges of housing and basic services, infrastructure including transportation systems, energy generation and distribution. These issues are magnified in the major cities where acute urban pollution and deficiencies in water supply and sanitation pose major risks to human health and ecosystems. That ‘India is very much going its own way and old urban theories may have to be discarded’ (Nijman 2012: 7), concurs with the conclusions of a number of leading authorities: •

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Paul Polak, author of Out of Poverty (Polak 2008): ‘The only effective large-scale answer to extreme poverty is to stimulate rapid scalable growth centered specifically in the villages where most poor people live, not urban-centered growth that generates only a trivial trickle-down impact’ (Polak 2014: 1). Pierre Laconte, Belgian urbanist: ‘With today’s telecommunications, cities are no longer a functional necessity.’5 Peter Head, founder and chief executive of the Ecological Sequestration Trust: ‘The future will be with medium-sized rather than mega cities.’6 India Institute for Human Settlements, Urban India 2011: Evidence: ‘We will need to understand and deepen the linkages that enable small urban centres to become catalysts for rural non-farm employment, sites of opportunities, and a foundation for eliminating rural poverty and exclusion. The spatial patterns of urbanisation will also affect the possibilities for the country to pioneer new, less resource intensive forms of development’ (India Institute for Human Settlements 2012: foreword). 409

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This questioning of the orthodox urbanisation paradigm corresponds with today’s environmental awareness and with rapid advances across multiple supporting sectors including digital communications and renewable energies. Environmental awareness advanced through the 1960s and 1970s (Rodwell 2007: 47–63) and was greatly stimulated by the 1987 Brundtland Report (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987), its popularisation of the term sustainable development, and its conclusion that current patterns of resource consumption and environmental degradation cannot continue, and economic development must adapt to planet Earth’s ecological limits. Cities around the world currently occupy a fortieth of its land surface, house over 50 per cent of its population, and account for 75 per cent of the annual consumption of natural resources and discharge of wastes. Far from supporting the notion that urban development is resource efficient resulting in a reduced ecological footprint, this substantiates the contention that explosive urban growth is accelerating global warming (Doucet 2007). This interrogation of the orthodox paradigm is reinforced by the escalation of challenges that are specific to India’s major cities and pose multiple threats to citizens’ human health and well-being, including infrastructural deficiencies and acute urban pollution (Irfan 2018). Concurrently, this questioning animates a re-evaluation of traditional academic and object-focused definitions of urban heritage pertaining to the Asia-Pacific region, to embrace the broad socio-cultural reality of urban environments at all scales and in concert with the evolving UNESCO Historic Urban Landscape initiative.

Initiatives and technologies that support a de-centrist agenda The challenges facing India’s majority rural population are legion. Much attention is focused on poverty-related issues linked to narratives framed on the premise that rural poverty is inevitable and migration to conurbations is the solution. Today, local initiatives coupled with rapid technological advances in the decades following publication of the Brundtland Report anticipate a potential game-changer.

Basic needs Water The origins of the growing water crisis in India, both in quantity and quality, are complex: failing rivers and irrigation systems; reducing water tables, aquifers and wells; high evaporation rates from open reservoirs; and seasonal monsoons and floods that are not harvested to replenish supplies (Pearce 2018). Forestalling the onset of famine, India’s ‘green revolution’ of the 1960s onwards (Wikipedia n.d. a) came at the expense of the depletion of natural water systems and reserves and has led to calls for a ‘blue revolution’ to guide the management of the natural cycles of the world’s ultimate renewable resource (Pearce 2018). Initiatives at the rural scale across India are numerous and include; • •

The revival of ancient traditions of rainwater harvesting: collecting monsoon rainwater, settling out the silt and mud, and storage without evaporation; villages in Gujarat (Pearce 2018: 192–195); farms in Maharastra (Polak 2008: 68–69). A wide range of low-cost drip-feed, low-pressure sprinkler and piped-water surface microirrigations systems, including those developed by the not-for-profit non-governmental iDE

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(International Development Enterprises n.d.), founded in 1982 by Paul Polak, author of Out of Poverty (Polak 2008: 70–71). Atmospheric water condensation collectors, especially suited to hot humid climates; numerous low-cost designs have been pioneered in recent years. Major programmes of afforestation designed to increase India’s forest cover to 95 million hectares by 2030 will have multiple benefits: supporting land water storage and enriching the soils as well as improving air quality and combating greenhouse gas emissions (Baynes 2017; Nace 2016).

Food The green revolution of half a century ago prevented catastrophe in an India whose population has since more than doubled in size. Whereas efficiency in food production, quality and distribution remain major issues, recent innovations in organic farming and sustainable land management are addressing these and additionally opening up national and global marketing opportunities: • •

•

Vandana Shiva, scholar and environmental activist based in Delhi, is a leading champion of indigenous knowledge and advocate of biodiversity in agriculture to increase productivity, nutrition and farmers’ incomes (Wikipedia n.d. c). Sikkim was pronounced India’s fully organic farming state in January 2016, with 75,000 hectares converted to certified organic land free of chemical pesticides and fertilisers (New Economic Times 2016). Sikkim is additionally the first state to proclaim 100 per cent sanitation coverage (News Swachh 2017). Together, these are boosting the Himalayan state’s tourism industry. Permaculture, the ecosystem-based science and practice of sustainable self-sufficiency that simultaneously addresses environmental degradation (Wikipedia n.d. b), is expanding in India and offers multiple promotional and development opportunities (Cole 2017).

Shelter Reinforced concrete, the principal constructional technique employed in cities today, is responsible for up to 15 per cent of global man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, with rapidly urbanising masspopulation countries accounting for the lion’s share (Page 2018; Shepard 2015). This contradicts successive global climate change mitigation targets and accords. Rural India has access to an abundance of sustainable, climatically adapted building materials whose usage dominates vernacular building across the country including in the older parts of cities (Jain and Jain 2000; Khandekar, Rahate, Gawande, Sirsilla, and Govindani 2017). For example: •

Adobe: load-bearing bricks composed of soil types mixed with water and plant fibres and sun-dried in formwork (generally wooden) (Bayizitlioğlu 2017; Sruthi 2013). Extremely durable, it is the structural material used in some of the oldest buildings in the world. It can be made up on individual construction sites and is mass-produced for an expanding national market (Figure 24.2).

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The digital and energy revolutions Information and communications technologies Digital technologies along with fast internet access provide unlimited opportunities for universal education, skills training and knowledge transfer, global connectivity, exchange and marketing. Smartphones have the potential to empower all sections of communities and traverse gender and caste barriers.

Localised renewable energies Today’s energy revolution removes historical dependence on major power stations (including fossil-fuelled) and large-scale electrical grids, over-coming non-availability and supply shortages especially in physically remote rural areas. Depending on the region, micro-climate and other factors, solar power, wind generation, fast and slow continuous water flows, biomass and other harnessed natural resources, independently or in combination and including with battery backup, can serve both individual sites and micro-grids. Location is not a factor in this twenty-first century.

Figure 24.2 Mudiya Kheda, near Chhola in Madhya Pradesh, India. Commercial adobe manufacture undertaken in a rural context, seasonally. Source: Carsten Hermann

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Local manufacture, global markets The Industrial Revolution in the United Kingdom (Rodwell 2002) together with its equivalents elsewhere across all continents, commenced in small settlements, serving and served by local populations. Expanding industries together with their workforces thereafter concentrated in towns and cities including for enhanced physical connectivity to their markets, whether by water (canals, rivers and ports), land (rail and road), or later by air. Today, manufacturing and service industries in India are significantly less dependent on physical location than historically; also, in comparison to China. The combination of the digital and energy revolutions provides unlimited opportunities for the establishment and development of enterprises across rural India, of all types and at all scales and levels: from the revival and expansion of manufacturing based on eco-friendly crops such as jute and hemp, including as increasingly favoured alternatives to plastics; through specialist fabrics and crafts marketed to high-end outlets in major world cities; to internet marketing of any product or service by anyone, to anyone anywhere throughout India and the world beyond. Such, reversing the sense of the quotation cited earlier, represents industrialisation (together with manifold branches of the service sector) without urbanisation (Nijman 2012: 15), and challenges the mantra of the ‘urban century’ derived from patterns of urbanisation on different continents in different centuries operating under different cultural, economic and technological circumstances. A placespecific, territorially balanced approach based on where populations and natural resources are rather than the prescription that people must migrate to distant urban centres, has relevance beyond India to other parts of the Asia-Pacific region, also, to parts of Africa and South America, and anticipates new and more flexible ways of understanding urbanisation.

Questioning the paradigms of heritage The pretext to reflect on the multiple opportunities that exist for planning and investment in rural development supports a parallel reflection on the parameters that condition established approaches to the definition and safeguarding of urban heritage, and the importance of re-visiting them.

The monumentalisation of heritage Worldwide, orthodox academic, professional and institutional understanding and practices of cultural heritage are circumscribed by delimited definitions and categories of the tangible and the intangible: selected objects and manifestations. The apex of this discourse is signalled by the 1972 UNESCO World Heritage Convention (UNESCO 1972a) and the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (UNESCO 2003). For tangible cultural heritage it is underwritten by the 1964 Venice Charter (ICOMOS 1964), the founding doctrinal text of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), augmented by topic-focused texts including the 1976 UNESCO Nairobi Recommendation (UNESCO 1976), the 1987 ICOMOS Washington Charter (ICOMOS 1987), and the 1994 Nara Document on Authenticity (ICOMOS 1994); additionally, the 2011 ICOMOS Valletta Principles (ICOMOS 2011). The genesis and formulation of the 2011 UNESCO Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape, heralded as a paradigm ‘shift from an emphasis on architectural monuments primarily towards a broader recognition of the importance of the social, cultural and economic processes in the conservation of urban values’ (UNESCO 2011a: 2), did not, however, break away from this mould; crucial, are the meanings attached to conservation and urban values, both of which derive from monumental heritage (Rodwell 2018a). The heritage discourse across Asia is no exception in its origins in the primordially Euro-centric ethos and mores of the international heritage community (Silva and Chapagain 2013). This is

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reinforced across the major part of the Indian sub-continent through norms and practices assimilated from the colonial period and supplemented through ongoing associations in academia and practice with Europe, notably the United Kingdom (Figure 24.3). UNESCO has been described as having a ‘fetishism for making lists’ and is the global leader in the field (Askew 2010: 32). Processes of inclusion into lists of heritage are simultaneously processes of exclusion. The Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS) position paper Socio-Economics of Urban Heritage encapsulates this orthodox position well (India Institute for Human Settlements 2013: 2): The official understanding of heritage in India is largely limited to historical monuments and archaeological artefacts which inevitably have led to a narrow institutional and policy framework that excludes a broad spectrum of urban heritage which exists today such as vernacular architecture, historic landscapes, customs, traditional livelihoods, rituals, belief systems. One of the attendant limitations of the 1972 World Heritage Convention is that whereas nonhuman habitat and species feature in the categories of natural heritage (UNESCO 1972a: article 2), human habitat is not inherent to the tripartite division of cultural heritage into monuments, groups of buildings and sites whose focus is on material objects (UNESCO 1972a: article 1). Urban heritage, comprehended generically as embracing a legion of globally diverse living historic cities and urban districts, in which citizens have and continue to conduct their daily lives in complex and dynamic relationships with a heterogeneity of physical environments, fits uneasily into this prescription. The human factor – the synergy between the miscellany of human activities and the myriad of physical places – is missing.

Figure 24.3 Mumbai, Colaba District, India. Early twentieth-century colonial monumental heritage: the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel and Tower framing the Gateway of India. Source: Carsten Hermann

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For India, the inventory of the 37 properties in India inscribed in the UNESCO World Heritage List, 1983–2018 (UNESCO n.d. b), attests both to the orthodoxy and to the limitations. Of the total, seven are natural sites, one mixed (a national park), and the balance of 29 cultural sites are predominantly inscribed as individual or groups of monuments and archaeological sites. Exceptions first arose in 2017, with the Historic City of Ahmedabad, still the only city in India to be inscribed in the World Heritage List (UNESCO n.d. a). Perforce listed under the category of groups of buildings, the ICOMOS Advisory Evaluation noted that in terms of the UNESCO Operational Guidelines the property is also a historic town which is still inhabited (ICOMOS 2017). The inscription in 2018 of the Victorian Gothic and Art Deco Ensembles of Mumbai is only listed under the category of groups of buildings (ICOMOS 2018). The difficulty of accommodating urban heritage into the categories of the 1972 Convention – and, by extension, the narrative of urban heritage at national level (UNESCO 1972a: article 5a, 1972b) – is compounded by the need to satisfy the conditions set out in the Operational Guidelines of authenticity and integrity (UNESCO 2017: paras 79–89). Notwithstanding the 1994 Nara Document on Authenticity (ICOMOS 1994) and its incorporation into the Operational Guidelines since the revision of 2005 (UNESCO 2005: paras 79–86), the ongoing assumption is that authenticity and integrity are primarily determined by materiality. This is explicit for urban heritage both in the Operational Guidelines themselves (UNESCO 2017: annex 3, para 14(ii)), and in the 2011 UNESCO Recommendation on the Historic Landscape (UNESCO 2011a). As authors including Sharon Zukin and Japonica Brown-Saracino have recognised (Brown-Saracino 2010; Zukin 2010), authenticity, the cardinal term in the lexicon of monumental heritage, is struggling to be considered let alone appraised in relation to continuity in the long-established communities and socio-cultural life of historic cities and neighbourhoods. Anthropologists and sociologists are not incorporated into the urban heritage discourse. The traditional approach to urban conservation is manifested in Urban Heritage in Indian Cities: Compendium of Good Practices (National Institute of Urban Affairs 2015), prepared by the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH). Under definitions, urban heritage (National Institute of Urban Affairs 2015: 68): Refers to the built legacy of the city’s history and includes protected and unprotected monuments, individual and groups of buildings of archaeological, architectural, historic and cultural significance, public spaces including landscapes, parks and gardens, street layout defining identifiable neighbourhoods or precincts, which together identify the visual, spatial and cultural character of the city. The format and presentation of this Compendium is in linear progression from compilations of best practices in urban conservation across Europe from the 1960s onwards. It employs contemporary urban planning terms and precepts such as sense of place and identity, human scale, townscape qualities, and ecologically sustainable urban models (National Institute of Urban Affairs 2015: 1), showcases the institutional, regulatory, and technocratic procedures and outcomes of individual restoration projects to the built and associated environment, but is lacking in any real sense of how the individual projects – all of which are laudable in a conventional sense – relate to the complexity of the individual cities and communities in which they are located. Urban heritage in this usage does not encompass human habitat, generically or specifically.

The distinctiveness and inclusivity of urban heritage Just as natural heritage sites cannot survive as ecosystems without wildlife, historic cities are contingent on human functionality. An integrated approach to the safeguarding of urban heritage is not simply 415

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a question of the restoration of buildings, ensembles and public spaces. It subsumes an understanding of the dynamics of everyday life and timelines of socio-economic continuity in communities that host and animate a quantum and diversity of urban districts and neighbourhoods that extends far beyond prescribed definitions of tangible and intangible cultural heritage. In established settlements and cities across India, urban heritage, holistically understood, is the norm; continuity is at least as important as conservation, especially when the latter is interpreted as preservation; and urban values embrace social values alongside the totality of cultural values (Figure 24.4). In India, the shoots of intellectual independence from the orthodox monumentalist approach to urban heritage are emerging. The IIHS position paper quoted above continues (India Institute for Human Settlements 2013: 2): … urban heritage, as conceptualised today, includes not only these components [historical monuments and archaeological artefacts] but also their inter-linkages with other facets of the city as a whole; as has been articulated in UNESCO’s ‘Historic Urban Landscape’ approach [see above; also, qualified below]. Another important dimension of urban heritage in India is its living character, where the past is very much part of the present lives of the people; as an evolving cultural resource in which continuity and change are deeply embedded. One of the major global threats to urban heritage arises from its commodification as heritage, association with the concept of values and, especially beyond the heritage community, the interpretation of heritage values in monetary terms whether for gentrification, tourism, or other (Rodwell 2018a). In the Indian context, the emphasis in the same IIHS paper on the economic valuation and exploitation of urban heritage is unfortunate – indicative of the ongoing insinuation of Western precepts in the field. Counter-balancing both the object- and economic-focused narratives of urban heritage is the UNESCO/UN-Habitat toolkit Historic Districts for all – India: A Social and Human Approach for Sustainable Revitalisation (UNESCO/UN-Habitat 2010). Adopting the generic term historic districts, signifying the oldest parts of cities, it provides an inclusive definition (UNESCO/UN-Habitat 2010, brochure: 3): [Indian historic districts] are typically characterised by traditional houses, streetscapes, water systems, living communities and their associated traditional livelihoods and social practices and so forth. These existing traditional resources are unique features of the historic districts, clearly differentiating them from the rest of the city. A historic district cannot and should not be defined on the basis of the age of its structures, typology of built form, administrative boundaries, or even the presence of heritage buildings, sites or monuments. Historic districts often act as the symbols of the city’s image despite having undergone numerous social and cultural transformations. They create the identity and the image of the city and are key geographic factors for the local and regional economy. These are the places wherein the ‘culture’ has its greatest expression. The seven key factors for success set out in this toolkit include: improving inhabitants’ living conditions; supporting creativity and cultural diversity; and governance. A longstanding champion of an inclusive approach to India’s urban heritage is Professor A. G. Krishna Menon (who, together with Navin Piplani, prepared the initial draft of the 2004 INTACH Charter for the Conservation of Unprotected Architectural Heritage Sites in India) (INTACH 2004). Writing in 1989 and comparing the Western origins of concepts in conservation with the growing body of knowledge deriving from indigenous experience in India (Menon 1989), Menon characterised the former as defensive, focused on preserving material authenticity in structures selected for survival, with the emphasis in the latter on the creative and dynamic continuity of community traditions and 416

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Figure 24.4 Ahmedabad, inside the historic walled city World Heritage Site, India. Cooking in public open space between the food market and the Rani no Hajiro queens’ tombs; typical of the contradictions, complexity and chaos that are a quintessential characteristic of the living heritage of India’s historic towns and cities. Source: Carsten Hermann

identity dating back millennia allied to improving the quality of life for citizens today. To re-focus from objects to people, Menon stressed the need for a metamorphosis in heritage orthodoxy: Conservation in India … needs to shift its priority to what is becoming of our historic cities rather than on what they were. This shift in values is predicated on an understanding of the

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current Indian reality and future prospects. There is also a need to understand that the true heritage of our country is in the traditional skills of our artisans and craftsmen and less in the objects they created which they knew would deteriorate in time. Thus, the specificity of the Indian situation is in the fact that authenticity can be created. (Menon 1989: 26; emphasis added) Writing again in 2017, Menon notes that big-budget urban renewal initiatives in cities such as New Delhi, influenced by processes of globalisation and with acronyms such as SMART Cities, are not addressing basic civic needs, ignore the concepts of history and meaning that underpin the continuities of urban living in India, and are neither environmentally nor culturally appropriate (Menon 2017). He argues that ‘the nascent field of urban conservation in India offers the potential to review the dominant paradigms of urban planning and develop more context-specific and appropriate strategies for tackling the problems of Indian urbanisation’ (Menon 2017: 34). For this, Menon recommends re-visiting the pioneering approach demonstrated by Patrick Geddes in the reports he produced for Indian cities in the period 1915 to 1919 (Stephen 2015; Tyrwhitt 1947), at a time before the administrative and technocratic conventions of modern town planning, together with what Laurajane Smith has characterised as the elitist ‘authorized heritage discourse’ (Smith 2006), acquired traction and gained dominance. Regarding the city as an organic system, each a unique human artefact in its equally unique local and regional environment rather than simply an example of an abstract typology, Geddes insisted on the need for comprehensive historical, geographic, biological, climatic, sociological, economic, cultural and institutional insight and knowledge, and on nurturing the shoots of innovation and creativity rather than restraining the evolution of a city based on its roots at some historical moment in time (Geddes 1968).

Re-positioning the UNESCO Historic Urban Landscape initiative The UNESCO Historic Urban Landscape initiative is an academic conceptualisation of the roles of tangible and intangible cultural heritage in pursuit of a binary objective ‘to preserve heritage and manage historic cities’ (UNESCO 2011b: 50–55). Notwithstanding its provenance from within the UNESCO World Heritage Centre (and, arguably, an ongoing association that is too close), the intent behind the formulation of the 2011 UNESCO Recommendation is that it should serve as a standard-setting instrument for urban settlements worldwide (Rodwell 2018a). It is however founded on two orthodoxies that severely limit this ambition. The first is unqualified adherence to an urbanisation paradigm that pre-dates the digital age and ignores contemporary innovations across multiple sectors. The second is a heritage discourse that ignores the larger narratives of history and culture and prioritises the survival of selected material objects and manifestations over the manifold complexity and specificity of people in their communities (Wood 2007). Attempts at universality in the heritage field have encountered serious challenges in the past, not least in the matter of authenticity (ICOMOS 1994). Attempts to normalise both the urbanisation paradigm and the heritage discourse in the 2011 Recommendation imply a misunderstanding of the varying timelines and dynamics of urban development across world regions as well as the realities of cultural diversity and foreshadow major challenges in the context of the widely plural religious, temporal, cultural and economic complexity of twenty-first century India. Ingredients that are missing from the UNESCO initiative include:

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•

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A holistic understanding of the past-present-future timelines of established urban districts and their hybrid communities as dynamic systems rather than assemblages of disparate elements and interests, pursuing both parallel and divergent paths and operating in varying degrees of tension (Ripp and Rodwell 2016). These disconnections are manifest in the first two volumes authored to promote the initiative (Bandarin and van Oers 2012, 2015; Rodwell 2015). Commonality in the language. Key words in the 2011 Recommendation include: layering, which is employed primarily in the archaeological sense of over-laying by superimposition (Rodwell 2018a); and development, which takes precedence over evolution and continuity. Both ignore the distinctiveness of non-Western cultures and urban histories.

Additionally, the initiative ignores: •

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The generic, non-selective concept of culture – embracing what any given society has (material possessions and objects), thinks (traditions and beliefs) and does (behavioural patterns including recreations) together with how it relates to and interacts with its natural and man-made environment (Williams 1981, 1988: 87–93) – in favour of the academic, exclusionist abstractions favoured in the West. Basic human and societal needs. These feature strongly in the UNESCO/UN-Habitat toolkit referred to above as well as in the writings of Menon and Geddes. Coherent integration with all seventeen of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (as successor to the 2015 Millennium Development Goals) (Rodwell 2018a, 2018b).

As such, the Historic Urban Landscape initiative’s potential is currently limited to addressing prescribed issues across a circumscribed sector and lacks the strategic vision to position urban heritage mainstream in the geography of urban planning – including to systematise the cross-sectoral tools and hone the inter-disciplinary skills to inspire commonality of purpose in the management of historic cities and guide conflict avoidance (Ripp and Rodwell 2015, 2016). For this, the selfimposed limitations of the 2011 Recommendation need to be lifted, and antecedents including Patrick Geddes re-visited (Figure 24.5).

Conclusion The received urbanisation paradigm together with heritage orthodoxy remain rooted in the perceptions and ethos of the third quarter of the twentieth century. Today, substantially advanced through the first quarter of the twenty-first century, the factors that conditioned the twin orthodoxies are challenged from many directions. These include: a raft of technological advances; maturing articulations of sustainable development subsuming mounting concerns surrounding the causes and impacts of climate change; and, especially in the context of India, a far broader conception of the multiple constituents of urban heritage. Continuing attempts to universalise historical trends in urbanisation alongside mores in the heritage sector impose severe limitations on the propensity to look ‘outside the box’, and to recognise that there is no inevitability in the notion that an evolving region such as the Indian sub-Continent will develop in this twenty-first century as a mirror of Europe and North America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, or indeed China today. As Professor A. G. Krishna Menon has written, new and culturally rooted processes must be developed to deal with the overwhelming urban and spatial challenges of developing countries, ones that do not repeat let alone aggravate the problems manifested in earlier processes of urbanisation.

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Figure 24.5 Mumbai, Lower Parel District near the Currey Road Station, India. Modern tower block dominating the low-rise vernacular. Development conflicts pose a serious threat to India’s urban heritage, and the UNESCO Historic Urban Landscape approach is currently handicapped by a lack of coincidence with the geography of urban planning, including at a strategic level. Source: Carsten Hermann

This chapter argues that questioning key orthodoxies from first principles, both in the matter of rural-urban territorial balance and in the comprehension that urban heritage is first and foremost about life quality and creative continuity in established communities rather than the conservation of individual monuments, provides vital indicators both to alleviate redevelopment pressures on surviving urban heritage in cities across the Asia-Pacific region and to address wider societal and environmental issues coincidental with the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.

Notes 1 Statistic taken from the 2011 census and cited in Verma (2017). A village in India is the basic unit of administration and fiscal planning. 2 The Indian sub-continent is taken here to comprise: Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. 3 Cited from the US Bureau of Labour Statistics, 2011, in Nijman (2012: 14). 4 Cited from the US Bureau of Labour Statistics, 2011, in Nijman (2012: 14). 5 Pierre Laconte, speaking at the Glasgow City Heritage Trust, The Lighthouse, Glasgow, 16 July 2014. 6 Peter Head, speaking at the ‘Vision for Edinburgh Workshop’, University of Edinburgh, George Square, Edinburgh, 31 May 2017; Ecological Sequestration Trust (n.d.), available at https://ecosequestrust.org/our-people/ team (accessed 20 February 2019).

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References Askew, M. (2010) ‘The magic list of global status: UNESCO, World Heritage and the agenda of states’, in S. Labadi and C. Long (eds) Heritage and globalisation, London: Routledge, 19–44. Bandarin, F., and van Oers, R. (2012) The Historic Urban Landscape: Managing heritage in an urban century, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. ———. (2015) Reconnecting the city: The Historic Urban Landscape approach and the future of urban heritage, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Barnes, T. (2012) ‘Comparing industrial development in India and China’, Contemporary South Asia, 20(3): 407–414. Bayizitlioğlu, B. (2017) ‘Conservation and maintenance of earth constructions: Yesterday and today’, The Historic Environment: Policy and Practice, 8(4): 323–354. Baynes, C. (2017, July 3) ‘India plants 66 million trees in 12 hours as part of record-breaking environmental campaign’, Independent. Available at: www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/india-plant-66-million-trees-12-hours-environ ment-campaign-madhya-pradesh-global-warming-climate-a7820416.html (accessed 20 February 2019). Borgen Project. (2017, April 12) ‘10 facts about Mumbai slums’. Available at: https://borgenproject.org/10-factsmumbai-slums/ (accessed 20 February 2019). Brown-Saracino, J. (2010) A neighborhood that never changes: Gentrification, social preservation, and the search for authenticity, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. China population. (n.d./live) Available at: www.worldometers.info/world-population/china-population/ (accessed 18 December 2018). Cole, R. (2017) ‘Permaculture is growing rapidly in India’. Available at: www.downtoearth.org.in/blog/agriculture/ permaculture-is-growing-rapidly in-india-58727 (accessed 20 February 2019). Davis, M. (2006) Planet of slums, London and New York: Verso. Doucet, C. (2007) Urban meltdown: Cities, climate change and politics as usual, Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers. Geddes, P. (1968) Cities in evolution (with an introduction by Percy Johnson-Marshall), London: Ernest Benn. First published 1915, London: Williams and Norgate. ICOMOS. (1964) International charter for the conservation and restoration of monuments and sites (Venice Charter), Paris: ICOMOS. Available at: www.icomos.org/charters/venice_e.pdf (accessed 20 February 2019). ———. (1987) Charter for the conservation of historic towns and urban areas (Washington Charter), Paris: ICOMOS. Available at: www.icomos.org/charters/towns_e.pdf (accessed 20 February 2019). ———. (1994) Nara document on authenticity, Paris: ICOMOS. Available at: www.icomos.org/charters/nara-e.pdf (accessed 20 February 2019). ———. (2011) Valletta principles for the safeguarding and management of historic cities, towns and urban areas, Paris: ICOMOS. Available at: www.icomos.org/Paris2011/GA2011_CIVVIH_text_EN_FR_final_20120110.pdf (accessed 20 February 2019). ———. (2017) Advisory body evaluation: Historic city of Ahmedabad, Paris: ICOMOS. Available at: http://whc.unesco. org/en/list/1551/documents/ (accessed 20 February 2019). ———. (2018) Advisory body evaluation: Victorian gothic and art nouveau ensembles of Mumbai, Paris: ICOMOS. Available at: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1480/documents/ (accessed 20 February 2019). India Institute for Human Settlements (January 2012) Urban India 2011: Evidence, third edition, New Delhi: India Institute for Human Settlements. Available at: http://iihs.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/IUC-Book.pdf (accessed 20 February 2019). ———. (2013) Socio-economics of urban heritage, New Delhi: India Institute for Human Settlements. Available at: http://iihs.co.in/knowledge-gateway/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Position-Paper-on-Socio-Economics-ofUrban-Heritage.pdf (accessed 20 February 2019). India population. (n.d./live) [online]. Available at: www.worldometers.info/world-population/india-population/ (accessed 18 December 2018). INTACH. (2004) Charter for the conservation of unprotected architectural heritage sites in India. New Delhi: INTACH. Available at: https://architexturez.net/doc/az-cf-21208 (accessed 20 February 2019). International Development Enterprises. (n.d.) [online]. Available at: www.ideglobal.org/ (accessed 20 February 2019). Irfan, U. (2018, October 31) ‘Why India’s air pollution is so horrendous: Eleven out of the 12 most polluted cities on a World Health Organization list were in India’. Available at: www.vox.com/2018/5/8/17316978/india-pollu tion-levels-air-delhi-health (accessed 20 February 2019). Jain, K., and Jain, M. (2000) Architecture of the Indian desert, Ahmedabad: Aadi Centre. Khandekar, Y. S., Rahate, O. P., Gawande, A. B., Sirsilla, K. A., and Govindani, S. M. (2017) ‘Vernacular architecture in India’, International Research Journal of Engineering and Technology, 4(5): 2747–2751.

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Dennis Rodwell Menon, A. G. K. (1989) ‘Conservation in India – A search for direction’, Architecture + Design: 22–27. Available at: https://architexturez.net/doc/az-cf-21219 (accessed 20 February 2019). ———. (2017) ‘The rationale for reviewing current concepts of urban planning and developing new ones in India’, Built Heritage, 1(3): 34–43. Available at: www.built-heritage.net/krishna-menon-issue3 (accessed 20 February 2019). Nace, T. (2016, July 18) ‘India just planted 50 million trees in 24 hours’, Forbes. Available at: www.forbes.com/sites/ trevornace/2016/07/18/india-planted-50-million-trees-24-hours/#2e4aa3896f99 (accessed 20 February 2019). National Institute of Urban Affairs. (2015) Urban heritage in Indian cities: Compendium of good practices. Available at: www.academia.edu/15516374/Urban_Heritage_in_Indian_Cities_COMPENDIUM_OF_GOOD_PRAC TICES (accessed 20 February 2019). New Economic Times. (2016, January 14) ‘Sikkim becomes India’s first fully organic state’. Available at: https://eco nomictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/agriculture/sikkim-becomes-indias-first-organic-state/articleshow/ 50572545.cms (accessed 20 February 2019). News Swachh. (2017, May 3) ‘Sikkim adjudged the cleanest state’. Available at: https://swachhindia.ndtv.com/ sikkim-adjudged-cleanest-state-in-india-2568/ (accessed 20 February 2019). Nijman, J. (2010) ‘A study of space in Mumbai’s slums’, Tijdschrift Voor Economische En Sociale Geografie, 101(1): 4–17. ———. (2012) ‘India’s urban challenge’, Eurasian Geography and Economics, 53(1): 7–20. Page, W. (2018, May 3) ‘Concrete is a disaster for our planet: Can the building industry break its addiction?’ CNN Style. Available at: https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/concrete-alternatives-future-building/index.html (accessed 20 February 2019). Pearce, F. (2018; revised and updated edition) When the rivers run dry: Water – The defining crisis of the twenty-first century, Boston: Beacon Press. Polak, P. (2008) Out of poverty: What works when traditional approaches fail, Oakland: Berrett-Koehler Publishers. ———. (2014, January 23) ‘How to solve India’s poverty crisis’, HuffPost. Available at: www.huffingtonpost.com/ paul-polak/how-to-solve-indias-pover_b_4086236.html (accessed 20 February 2019). Ripp, M., and Rodwell, D. (2015) ‘The geography of urban heritage’, The Historic Environment: Policy and Practice, 6(3): 240–276. ———. (2016) ‘The governance of urban heritage’, The Historic Environment: Policy and Practice, 7(1): 81–108. Rodwell, D. (2002) ‘Industrial world heritage sites in the United Kingdom’, World Heritage Review, 28: 4–23. ———. (2007) Conservation and sustainability in historic cities, Oxford: Blackwell. ———. (2015) ‘“Reconnecting the city” (book review)’, Journal of Architectural Conservation, 21(2): 136–138. ———. (2018a) ‘The Historic Urban Landscape and the geography of urban heritage’, The Historic Urban Environment: Policy and Practice, 9(3-4): 180–206. ———. (2018b) ‘“Culture: Urban future” (book review)’, Context, 156: 52–53. Shepard, W. (2015) Ghost cities of China: The story of cities without people in the world’s most populated country, London: Zed Books. Silva, K. D., and Chapagain, N.-K. (eds). (2013) Asian heritage management: Contexts, concerns, and prospects, London: Routledge. Smith, L. (2006) Uses of heritage, London: Routledge. Sruthi, G. S. (2013) ‘Mud architecture’, International Journal of Innovative Research in Science, Engineering and Technology, 2(1): 47–52. Available at: www.rroij.com/open-access/mud-architecture.pdf (accessed 20 February 2019): . Stephen, W. (ed.) (2015; new edition) Think global, act local: The life and legacy of Patrick Geddes, Edinburgh: Luath Press. Tyrwhitt, J. (ed.) (1947) Patrick Geddes in India, London: Lund Humphreys. UNESCO. (1972a) Convention concerning the protection of the world cultural and natural heritage (World Heritage Convention). Available at: http://whc.unesco.org/archive/convention-en.pdf (accessed 20 February 2019). ———. (1972b) Recommendation concerning the protection, at national level, of the cultural and natural heritage. Available at: http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=13087&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html (accessed 20 February 2019). ———. (1976) Recommendation concerning the safeguarding and contemporary role of historic areas (Nairobi recommendation). Available at: http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=13133&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SEC TION=201.html (accessed 20 February 2019). ———. (2003) Convention for the safeguarding of the intangible cultural heritage. Available at: www.unesco.org/culture/ ich/index.php?lg=EN&pg=00022 (accessed 20 February 2019). ———. (2005) Operational guidelines for the implementation of the World Heritage Convention. Available at: https://whc. unesco.org/archive/opguide05-en.pdf (accessed 20 February 2019). ———. (2011a) Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape. Available at: https://whc.unesco.org/uploads/activ ities/documents/activity-638-98.pdf (accessed 20 February 2019).

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Rural development for HUL management ———. (2011b) Records of the General Conference, 36th session Paris, 25 October – 10 November 2011. Volume 1: Resolutions. Available at: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0021/002150/215084e.pdf (accessed 20 February 2019). ———. (2017) Operational guidelines for the implementation of the World Heritage Convention. Paris: UNESCO. Available at: https://whc.unesco.org/en/guidelines/ (accessed 20 February 2019). ———. (n.d. a) World Heritage list: Historic city of Ahmadabad. [online]. Available at: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/ 1551 (accessed 20 February 2019). ———. (n.d. b) World Heritage list: India. [online]. Available at: http://whc.unesco.org/en/statesparties/in (accessed 20 February 2019). UNESCO/UN-Habitat. (2010). Historic districts for all – India. Toolkit [online]. Available at: www.unesco.org/new/ en/newdelhi/areas-of-action/social-and-human-sciences/historic-districts-for-all/; Brochure [online]. Available at: https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000189482; Manual [online]. Available at: www.unesco.org/new/ en/newdelhi/areas-of-action/social-and-human-sciences/historic-districts-for-all/ (all accessed 20 February 2019). United Nations. (2015) World population prospects: Key findings & advance tables. New York: United Nations. Available at: https://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Publications/Files/Key_Findings_WPP_2015.pdf (accessed 20 February 2019). Verma, R. (2017, August 3) ‘India unclear how many villages it has, and why it matters’, India Spend. Available at: www.indiaspend.com/cover-story/india-unclear-how-many-villages-it-has-and-why-that-matters-56076 (accessed 20 February 2019). Wang, L., Kundu, R., and Chen, X. (2010) ‘Building for what and whom? New town development as planned suburbanization in China and India’, Research in Urban Sociology, 10(3): 319–345. Wikipedia. (n.d. a) ‘Green revolution in India’. [online]. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolu tion_in_India (accessed 20 February 2019). ———. (n.d. b) ‘Permaculture: Core tenets and principles of design’. [online]. Available at: https://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Permaculture#Core_tenets_and_principles_of_design (accessed 20 February 2019). ———. (n.d. c) ‘Vandana Shiva’. [online]. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandana_Shiva (accessed 20 February 2019). Williams, R. (1981) Culture, London: Fontana. ———. (1988) Keywords: A vocabulary of culture and society, London: Fontana. Wood, M. (2007) The story of India, London: BBC Books. World Commission on Environment and Development. (1987) Our common future (Brundtland report), Oxford: Oxford University Press. Available at: www.un-documents.net/our-common-future.pdf (accessed 20 February 2019). Zukin, S. (2010) Naked city: The death and life of authentic urban places, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Localizing heritage stewardship

25 COMMUNITY-FOCUSED URBAN REGENERATION Preserving and activating the Historic Urban Landscape in Malaysian cities Richard A. Engelhardt and Neil Khor

Introduction Based upon the public realm improvement programme in three Malaysian cities, this chapter focuses on community involvement in the design, upgrading, and activation of the Historic Urban Landscape undertaken by Think City Malaysia, a wholly owned subsidiary of Khazanah Nasional that is dedicated to community-focused urban regeneration. This work involves an innovative platform whereby local government, community stakeholders, and technical experts all work together to ensure that there is wider public-sector appreciation for the practical application of the provisions of the 2011 UNESCO Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape as well as greater opportunities for participation in planning, interpretation, and activation of this Recommendation. The public realm improvement projects implemented by Think City, anchored in the George Town UNESCO World Heritage Site (WHS), include the development of a Special Area Plan1 based upon the historic city’s Outstanding Universal Value. A Public Realm Improvement Guide was developed through a series of public consultations for use by the Penang Island City Council and other interested investors. The demonstration projects included a pocket park, rehabilitation of neglected back laneways, streetscape improvements, repair of a deteriorated historic sea-wall, and the institution of a public promenade along the restored seawall. The same formula of community consultation, engagement, and involvement in design work used in George Town has been applied to Downtown Kuala Lumpur as well as in Johor Bahru old town. In both these cities, the challenges of integrating heritage conservation within development objectives are greater than they are in George Town, which enjoys the protection afforded by its formal UNESCO World Heritage status. Nonetheless, by involving communities in planning, design, and activation, the HUL approach is given concrete expression, modified to meet the needs of the Malaysian context.

Urban heritage of peninsular Malaysia Peninsular Malaysia continues today in its historical geo-cultural role, at the confluence of global trade routes, with the Straits of Malacca being the world’s busiest shipping lane.2 Up till the nineteenth century, the sea and rivers were the main highways in the carriage of people and goods linking the Malay

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Archipelago with Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, and the Far East. As a place of confluence, port and riverine settlements were the genesis of kingdoms. Multi-ethnic enclaves soon developed as traders sojourned while waiting for changing monsoon winds to sail back to their homelands. Many of these settlements were built near water, with structures often elevated on stilts in adaptation to the tropical ecology. With the coming of Islam in the fifteenth century, the mosque, together with the palace and the port, became the focal points of human settlements, particularly in the nine sultanates which arose in peninsular Malaysia. The arrival of European colonialists, beginning with the Portuguese in 1511, followed by the Dutch (1641), and then the British (1786), added new layers to the morphology of these towns, as well as creating new ones. From towns focused on the harbour, European colonialists, particularly in the early phase of occupation (1511–1824), enjoyed monopolistic policies where local resources were procured and concentrated in trading factories protected by military infrastructure. The Portuguese built the A Famosa in Malacca (1520s), which was a European-style fortification transplanted into the Far East. Dutch Malacca (1641–1824) features the Stadhuys, civic buildings organized around a European-style town square, for the congregation of trading interests in nearby Heeren Street. On Penang Island, the British introduced (1786–1957) its standard colonial formula of fort, esplanade and civic buildings. The British settlement of George Town on Penang Island was a township organized to facilitate trade and commerce. In 1800, on the peninsular mainland, the British secured a strip of land to provide supplies to sustain its Penang Island settlement. Today, most Malaysian cities, especially on the west coast of the peninsular Malaysia, share several fundamental characteristics in town planning, built structural heritage, and living traditions underlying a similar social and spatial organization, occupational distribution, religious diversity, and other cultural practices derived from an amalgam of Malay, Siamese, Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch, and British influences. The colonial imprint is strongest in downtown areas with the ubiquitous shophouse – a hybrid trader’s residence with architectural influences from China and Europe adapted to Malay world conditions. In terms of the urban morphology, these towns are often developed along a formally laid-out grid pattern and organized around administrative buildings. Older settlements like Malacca (est. 1400), George Town (est. 1786) and Singapore (est. 1819) have prominent fortifications with the most intact being Fort Cornwallis in Penang and Fort Canning in Singapore. In the second phase of British intervention (1876–1914) when the entire peninsular Malaysia came under British rule, such military constructions became obsolete and were redeveloped, although the base template that distinguished the European from the Chinese and Malay settlements was retained. In Kuala Lumpur, a tin mining centre, the British colonial security forces were established on higher ground, separated from the native and immigrant communities by the Klang River. In the 1900s, with the advent of modern town planning, public open spaces, laneways and a road system to facilitate the advent of motorized vehicles were built. The resultant townscape, characteristic of the Malaya Peninsula, was the manifestation of an extractive colonial economy where primary resource from mining and commercial agriculture were accumulated, stored, and packed for shipment to Britain’s industrial heartlands. A ready market for these industrial goods saw the British Engineering Corps building facilities, such as metalled track roads, bridges, railways, warehouses, and a rudimentary sanitation infrastructure. A multi-ethnic population began to take root providing much needed labour and services. By the first decade of the twentieth century, as British administration became more widespread and systematic, municipal councils were formed and administrative rules and regulations were introduced, with the result that urban planning became more formalized. Professional architects were hired to design public as well as private buildings that reflected the tastes of the times. It was in the 1930s that modern town planning professionals entered the picture. The Federated Malay States Town Planning Department, established in 1928, began to make its presence felt in Kuala Lumpur, which has a high 428

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concentration of buildings of early twentieth century modern architecture. Today, Kuala Kubu Bahru, a small township about 30 miles from Kuala Lumpur, is the most intact example of the Garden City concept in Malaysia. Up until Malaysian independence in 1957, such downtowns were the administrative, business and social centres linked to the hinterland by road, rail and rivers. At corresponding points in the economic chain were collection centres, minor towns that were mirror images of the larger cities only on a smaller scale, with a corresponding complement of urban features. The only exception to this standard template was to be found in the Malay Sultanate of Johor, which retained its independence right up until 1914, where urban development directed by a modernizing monarchy. Johor Bahru had its own local town planners, architects, and road builders. In fact, in 1870, the first wooden railway linking Johor Bahru and Gemas in Johor was built here. While most of the towns on the west coast of the peninsula were organized around colonial administrative buildings and an agglomeration of commercial establishments, Johor Bahru was also a royal capital with architectural expressions of locally inspired modernity taking form in the sultanate’s public, religious, and palatial buildings. It is these multi-cultural influences, both local and foreign inspired, over the course of several centuries that made Melaka and George Town’s bid for UNESCO World Heritage inscription successful. As the inscription Statement of Outstanding Universal Value reads: Melaka and George Town, historic cities of the Straits of Malacca, have developed over 500 years of trading and cultural exchanges between East and West in the Straits of Malacca. The influences of Asia and Europe have endowed the towns with a specific multicultural heritage that is both tangible and intangible. With its government buildings, churches, squares and fortifications, Melaka demonstrates the early stages of this history originating in the 15th-century Malay sultanate and the Portuguese and Dutch periods beginning in the early 16th century. Featuring residential and commercial buildings, George Town represents the British era from the end of the 18th century. The two towns constitute a unique architectural and cultural townscape without parallel anywhere in East and Southeast Asia.3 The evolution of multi-ethnic and multi-cultural communities in both cities inspired and reinforced a distinctive template of urban development that radiated throughout the Malay Peninsula during the late nineteenth and throughout the twentieth centuries. UNESCO World Heritage status, conferred in 2008, further reinforced the legitimacy of this historic urban planning template which, with inscription on the World Heritage List, became formally codified as the basis for twenty-first century town planning, the main aim of which being to align conservation with development based upon the Outstanding Universal Value (OUVs) defined in the World Heritage inscription. In both Melaka and George Town, Special Area Plans (SAP) were developed and gazetted to protect the historic urban fabric. To activate the SAP, a Strategic Master Plan (SMP) was developed in George Town to demonstrate the alignment of conservation and development. The SMP identified public realm improvements to complement private sector activities, mostly in the hospitality and services sector. As public open spaces are limited within the inscribed boundaries of the George Town World Heritage site, their protection, rehabilitation, and long-term maintenance became an important component of Penang State Government planning strategies for George Town. This planning prioritization has allowed for the efficient use of local government allocations and demonstrates innovative ways of adapting built heritage assets for contemporary uses by the community.

Advocacy and evidence-based approach UNESCO advocates understanding a city’s context as a key feature of the HUL approach to urban regeneration: 429

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This wider context includes notably the site’s topography, geomorphology, hydrology and natural features, its built environment, both historic and contemporary, its infrastructures above and below ground, its open spaces and gardens, its land use patterns and spatial organization, perceptions and visual relationships, as well as all other elements of the urban structure. It also includes social and cultural practices and values, economic processes and the intangible dimensions of heritage as related to diversity and identity.4 When it began its work in George Town, Think City, in partnership with local government and working with local community leaders as well as civil society, carried out a baseline study to understand existing land use and population patterns. This was the first step towards establishing an evidence-based approach to ‘city making’, with additional layers of information added to the Geographic Information System (GIS). Information at lot-boundary level was then verified by onground valuators and cross-checked against local knowledge. The comprehensive baseline data thus generated are very robust in its analytical content and therefore flexible in application to many project situations. At the project design stage, various ‘heat’ maps can be developed where spatial information is indicative of complex economic, social, and cultural realities. The impact of project execution on the affected population can be tracked, using the same baseline data set, through the on-going use of GIS system inputs. The baseline study of George Town identified issues and challenges facing the city in an interrelated, interdependent mosaic. The importance of having a data-base of reliable, real-time information on all aspects of community life – physical, structural, demographic, economic, social, and others – was immediately apparent to the Penang City Council and became the basis for decision making by the Council as it allowed for the integration of socio-cultural information in the urban design process. The success of this knowledge-based, data-driven approach to planning and decision-making has become the hallmark of all Think City interventions, not only in George Town, but everywhere in Malaysia. In almost all cases, historic downtowns have been hollowed out owing to national expansion particularly in the post-independence period (after 1957). As old administrative and economic functions moved away to new purpose-built townships, historic downtowns have had to find new ways to remain relevant. In all of the four cities (George Town, Butterworth, Kuala Lumpur, and Johor Bahru) under Think City’s current mandate there was a high percentage of derelict and abandoned buildings; over-crowding with a high number of low income families; the cities had a predominately male demographic base with a high percentage of male migrant workers; and the dominance of one type of occupation usually associated with low-skilled services. Figure 25.1 provides a sample baseline information across three Malaysian cities where Think City is active. It provides a snapshot of the inner city’s dynamic and key features.

Armenian park pilot project In George Town and the other three cities, to address these issues as well as encourage a deeper appreciation for the Historic Urban Landscape and the specific, local physical fabric of which it is comprised, a programme of incentives in the form of small grants was devised to provide technical support with regards to conservation works, community activation, cultural production, and capacity building for ‘city makers’. A total of US$4 million was disbursed between 2010–2014 through the George Town Grants Programme with some 250 projects implemented. Some 100 heritage buildings were restored, and 90 full time jobs were generated. Advocacy programmes involving research projects, book publications, workshops, cultural productions, festivals and community programmes reached an estimated 750,000 persons over four years.5

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Figure 25.1 Baseline information of the three cities where Think City works with the local government with George Town UNESCO World Heritage Sites having the most human scale indicators. Source: Think City

This community-focused regeneration programme paved the way for public realm improvement projects that adopted a hybrid top-down and bottom-up approach. The regeneration of Armenian Park in George Town reflects this process. Figure 25.2 provides a description of the process of engagement and participation in the design and execution phases of project implementation. Significantly, the diversity of uses reflects the core principle of Think City’s public realm improvement programme whereby no single user or use should dominate. Instead, the rehabilitation of Armenian Park was designed to meet the multiple needs of different segments of the diverse communities nearby the park, who were its principal users. To measure change of use, a pedestrian-shed survey (so called ‘ped-shed’ analysis) involving a radius of 15-minute walking distance was carried out before, during, and after project construction. It also proved important to remain constantly engaged with critics of the project through social media, particularly Facebook, with adequate information provided in situ through info-graphics staffed by a dedicated team of members ready to explain to residents and visitors alike the process, timeline, and principles underlying public realm project engagement and assistance. Ped-shed analysis also made reaching out to the community much easier and the data derived from the survey more reliable as an indicator of project impact (Figures 25.3–25.5). As Armenian Park is in a neighbourhood of high tourist congestion, the park had to provide a counterpoint to alleviate the carrying capacity pressure on the community due to over-tourism. The Armenian Park rehabilitation was designed deliberately as a neighbourhood park with facilities for local community’s multiple use. A community centre located adjacent to the park was upgraded, including a popular basketball court that was re-positioned to provide more green space. As the post-construction survey revealed, the park has a greater diversity of users and a higher proportion of local community uses than it had before the project was undertaken. Efforts to extend and provide even more local community public space, using the park as the anchor point and expanding from the park into the back lanes, was then implemented. In this way, one project links to the next, in an ever-expanding network of small neighbourhood projects creating a mosaic of urban regeneration over an extensive urban area (Figure 25.6).

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Figure 25.2 Engagement and Project Implementation Flow indicating an Iterative Process. Source: Think City

Figure 25.3 Headline Information on Armenian Park, such data collection and sharing of information is a key ingredient of the Think City urban regeneration process. Source: Think City

Figure 25.4 Ped-shed survey data indicating positive change in perception by local citizens and visitors. Source: Think City

Richard A. Engelhardt and Neil Khor

Figure 25.5 Ped-shed survey data indicating use of park before and after upgrading. Source: Think City

Figure 25.6 Armenian Park, fully active with cultural programmes during the George Town Festival, also featuring the upgraded basketball court & mostly used as a neighbourhood park. Source: Think City

Community-focused urban regeneration

Applying HUL approaches beyond George Town At the time of writing, Think City is operating in three major urban conurbations including George Town-Butterworth (in Penang), Kuala Lumpur and Johor Bahru. The HUL as a concept contributes to urban regeneration by widening the perspective beyond merely conservation to include social, cultural and economic perspectives that shape the regeneration agenda. As Bandarin and Van Oers (2015: 131) explain: Public spaces can take the form of public squares or routes, which are tied to people through intangible heritage defined by religious or spiritual associations and belief systems or memories linked to events ranging from a larger community to distinct social groups or families and clans, and even to the individual level. By referencing the link between intangible heritage and the public spaces, the HUL approach is very much aligned with Think City’s ‘community-focused approach’ to urban regeneration method. Historic downtowns provide a good focus and starting point to understand the evolution of the city, linking built heritage to the milestones in a city’s historical development and provides a systematic way of identifying significant aspects important to the citizenry and to particular communities as well. This approach provides an opportunity for dialogue and contestations between majority and minority narratives and legitimizes key points of confluence and divergence – aspects that strengthen place identity. In Downtown Kuala Lumpur, Think City’s focus has been on Market Square, the origins of the tin mining settlement that has evolved to become the core of the capital city of contemporary Malaysia. Originally a thoroughfare linking mining settlements around Kuala Lumpur in a network of dirt roads, Market Square was pedestrianized by Kuala Lumpur City Hall in 2015. It is still characterized by its role as a transit space between two light-rail train stations, the only significant open space in the historic commercial town of Kuala Lumpur south of the Klang River. There are also major migrant settlements living and working in nearby streets. These include people from South Asia and Indonesia. From 2015–2017, Think City, with funding from Citi Foundation, carried out a space activation programme involving place-making activities to advocate for a more inclusive city. Some 28 number of cultural and social activities were organized, attracting a cumulative of 73,000 number of people allowing Malaysian inhabitants of Kuala Lumpur and the guest communities of labourers in their midst to mingle and get to know one another (Think City 2018). Mirroring the process successfully pioneered in George Town, in October 2017, the Think City programme in Kuala Lumpur transitioned to a focus on public realm improvements whereby working with Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL), Think City was able to galvanize community support to upgrade a dilapidated laneway leading to Market Square. Included in the laneway is Kuala Lumpur’s oldest Chinese Temple, the Sin Sze Ya, where a facade upgrading project is now well underway and is well-received by the local Chinese community. Figure 25.2 above describes the process of research, fact-finding, engagement, demonstration, and collective involvement in the design process and project execution. While this laneway upgrading project provides a template for a more holistic approach when upgrading the public realm, it also provides an opportunity to complement the process beyond merely engagement. As in George Town, a small grants programme catalysed the coming together of a network of NGOs providing welfare services to the homeless community of Downtown Kuala Lumpur. In this specific case, Think City was able to provide a small grant to Pitt Stop Cafe, an NGO that operates a soup kitchen and community feeding centre for the homeless. Research work by Think City involving this NGO network has provided a wider data-base and more in-depth information about this neglected community, making it possible for more targeted and need-based assistance to be provided to them. It is estimated that there are up to 1,000 Malaysian citizens who are homeless and sleeping rough in Downtown Kuala Lumpur. The relatively smaller, human scale of the streets and buildings of

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historic Downtown Kuala Lumpur and their location at the confluence of transport systems makes this area a natural place of congregation, including for the homeless. While efforts are underway to provide support and strategies developed to alleviate the plight of this neglected segment of the city’s population, the HUL approach, adapted by Think City and its grantees, has yielded better understanding between all the various communities in the city of both needs and possible solutions. There are nine laneways identified by DBKL and Think City for upgrading in Downtown Kuala Lumpur (Figure 25.7). Each provides an opportunity to go beyond engagement to regeneration. Currently, Think City is working with migrant communities to devise ways to improve waste management, hygiene, and public safety issues in the Yap Ah Loy Laneway while in a third laneway (Hang Lekir), Think City is working with street hawkers to improve food safety. These projects demonstrate that the HUL approach provides wider opportunities, beyond simple building renovation, to involve communities in the dynamic urban regeneration process (Figures 25.7–25.12).

Strengthening the planning process In historic downtowns, particularly in the ones where Think City is operating, the environment is dynamic and never static. These towns had their origins as pioneering settlements based upon an extractive commodity-based economy. They were composed largely of transient male populations of contractual labourers who neither demanded nor expected long-term planning solutions to urban life issues. Therefore, planning was at best rudimentary. As a result, there is always an atmosphere of contestation among old and new residents, particularly in the present day when a wave of overseas migrant labour is fast-displacing the older, longer-settled communities, most of whom have moved away to the suburbs emptying the historic urban core of its traditional inhabitants and taking with them their legacy of traditional occupations and trades. Seizing the opportunity provided by abandoned buildings with devalued property values, developers have moved in to demolish old buildings replacing them with high-rise buildings. These high-risers over the last two decades have themselves been superseded by higher and better quality ones in the increasingly densely populated outer edges of the expanding urban sprawl. This has created a familiar ‘doughnut’ form of urban development where extended access routes prove to be not spatially efficient; where segregation of economic groups exacerbates social tensions and prove counterproductive to aspirations of social equality; and where neglect of historic districts is disrespectful of the city’s historic character and investments in the city made by its founders and forebears. In this dynamic environment, planning has become a major industry with concept plans, urban design guidelines, master plans, and special area plans, all eagerly being developed to complement the national physical plan, state structure plan, and local plans. The plethora of planning documents has gone largely unnoticed or is considered, at best, an irrelevant academic exercise by local politicians and the public at large. This situation is poised for change as the newly elected Pakatan Harapan government has promised to reintroduce local elections. So, it is precisely at this moment that planning and plan-led development is most needed, as the proper organization, conservation, and sustainable utilization of land and natural resources is required to move the Malaysian economy beyond and out of the ‘middle-income trap’. Equitable development is now a major and pressing challenge. Think City’s working partnership with local government using evidence-based, data-driven approaches to decision-making coupled with its grants programme as an incentive to include communities in the regeneration process is a novel way of advocating for a more plan-led approach to development. In George Town, Think City was able to enter into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Penang State Government in 2013 to develop a Strategic Master Plan to develop strategies to align conservation and development within the Penang State Greater Conurbation based on the guidelines developed for the George Town World Heritage Site Special Area Plan. Through 436

Figures 25.7 (a) Location of nine laneways in Downtown KL identified by KL City Hall and Think City for improvement; (b) the Lorong Bandar 13, the pilot project site. Source: Think City

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Figures 25.8 Community Participatory Activities: (a–b) The first community gathering after three months of individual engagement saw key stakeholders joining hands to clean up the laneway; (c–f) A series of workshops were conducted in premises along the laneway firstly to identify issues and develop solutions and then to develop a design brief for the professionals (architect and engineer). Source: Think City

a series of public engagements and briefings, the Public Realm Improvement Plan, a set of public realms upgrading projects, was gazetted together with the Special Area Plan. To date, the Penang State Government has allocated US$7.4 million to carry out these projects, many of which are in various stages of implementation. This is a direct and concrete example of how World Heritage conservation and sustainable management strategies and guidelines can be generalized and expanded to the larger setting of a World Heritage property, and even beyond, to guide territorial planning over an extended area. In the even more dynamic working environment in Kuala Lumpur, advocacy for plan-led approaches have been built upon a series of streetscape improvement projects including the laneways

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Figures 25.9 The ‘pop-up’ demonstration of ideas and solutions was carried out for 6 months to ensure public feedback was taken into account when developing the detailed drawings. Source: Think City

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Figures 25.10 (a) The final presentation to the community of the final design and construction schedule; (b) the ground-breaking ceremony by the local Member of Parliament and City Hall Officials. Source: Think City

projects described above. This was complemented with value-adding facade improvement projects involving some 30 privately owned shophouses. In all cases, whether in Penang or in Kuala Lumpur, it has proven important to include the private sector and demonstrate the economic viability of renovating and adapting historic buildings for new uses. The most successful uses to date have been related to Malaysia’s fast-expanding tourism industry, including cafes, boutique hotels and creative businesses. But Think City is mindful of the limits to the 440

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Figures 25.11 Views of the final design based on the solutions. At the time of writing of this chapter in August 2018, the laneway is under construction and is scheduled to be open to the public in October 2018 in time for Kuala Lumpur Design Month. Source: Think City

number of such tourism-based uses that can be accommodated before a reverse economic and social dynamic is generated, as has been all too well demonstrated in places like Venice, or closer to home in Lijiang, China. For this reason, Think City is now incentivizing with small grants other types of adaptive reuse projects, focusing on the use of historic buildings and spaces to support creative industries and social enterprises. Think City also supports community spaces through its Ruang@Think City

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Figures 25.12 The completed back lane in various uses by the local community. Source: Think City

projects in Kuala Lumpur and Johor Bahru respectively. The latter involves subsidized rental of spaces for community, arts, and cultural programmes in heritage buildings. The results and impact of these new forms of adaptive reuse will be carefully documented and studied by Think City’s in-house team of urban geographers and heritage conservation professionals. These demonstration projects, which showcase novel ways of widening public participation in activating and adapting heritage buildings and public spaces in historic downtowns, provide clear evidence that plan-led development can be economically viable. Perhaps even more importantly, the projects call attention to the opportunity costs of not planning properly. In the case of Downtown Kuala Lumpur, plans are now afoot to jointly develop a Strategic Master Plan for a Creative and Cultural District. While in Johor Bahru, 30 months into the programme, a partnership is now being formulated to gazette the existing Conservation Management Plan as the basis for future investments in urban regeneration with the framework of HUL recommendations and guidelines.

Key observations Three key observations from Think City’s Malaysian experience may be of relevance to other countries. Firstly, understanding the evolution of the city starting from the historic downtown can be a useful way of discovering the past economic and socio-cultural basis for the congregation of people and resources in the first instance and understanding the evolution of that congregation over time. From this point of origin, material forces can be better understood as different communities with 442

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distinct ethnic and religious beliefs find their place, and also their own unique way of contributing to the development of the city. In fact, this might well be the definition of urban ‘heritage’ from a planner’s perspective. In the Malaysian cities under study, these early motivations shaped the morphology of the city, as the pioneering generation adapted to geographical boundaries and made collective use of local resources to construct the rudimentary aspects that make up what would become the city’s HUL of buildings, spaces, and communities. In short, over time, the HUL is but a palimpsest with superimposed and often hidden layers that need to be discovered, understood, documented, and, in many cases, returned to the future with special relevance for planning and design purposes. This multilayered context is what gives the HUL approach its special resonance; it is not so much the past as straightjacket but inspiration for new contributions to the city with the knowledge that future generations will be looking back at contemporary contributions with the same eye for and expectation of a continuing legacy. Secondly, it is important to set up an incentive programme as the HUL approach is counterintuitive to those whose only logic is that of redevelopment and whose only measure of success is the most rapid possible return on investment. This is especially so to a generation of professional architects, engineers, and planners – not to mention governmental officers – who are trained through the narrow pathways of specialized disciplines in the formal educational systems that stress the relevance of economic indicators but ignore the human dimensions of development. Within such a blinkered mindset, the divide between the artistic and the artisanal becomes nearly impossible to bridge – hence, the dramatically dysfunctional state of many of today’s urban areas, most particularly in Asia. The HUL approach requires and reinforces the innate tendency towards multi-disciplinary and lateral thinking, but the efficacy of this way of thinking needs to be demonstrated through pilot projects that demonstrate the approach is both realistically implementable and effective in its impact. The Think City Small Grants Programme is an example of an innovative way to encourage wider participation in project design and execution from different stakeholders who would otherwise might not have an opportunity to be involved directly in the process or benefit directly in its results. In fact, the wide range of projects made available through a scheme such as the Think City Small Grants Programme – all ‘bitesized’ and available to the most diverse selection of projects – gives both momentum and visibility to community support for the wider regeneration process. This is crucial as local governments are especially and invariably sensitive to public criticism. The success of these small-grants projects reverses the negative cycle of criticism and defensiveness so often directed at perhaps well-intentioned, but poorly and insensitively planned government interventions that too often assume a one-size-fits-all model. Instead, the number and variety of small grants available through a scheme such as that underwritten by Think City help to open a middle-ground and neutral platform between city managers and city makers. Finally, the HUL approach to urban regeneration can only work when there is a strong sense of place identity among members of the impacted community. Where this sense of place has been forgotten or where the sense of a common, shared identity is lacking altogether, it is necessary to first undertake a community-based cultural mapping exercise to discover, uncover and define the layers of a community’s heritage palimpsest. A laneway upgrading project may be the humblest place to begin a city-wide regeneration process, but it is also a low-hanging fruit as it will be less contested than a major city square. Following the Malaysian tradition of collective self-help (known locally as Gotong Royong), laneway projects remind Malaysians of our common commitment to improve the public realm for the greater good, regardless of the successive generations who may have inhabited the space. The process also brings about a more collective way of decision-making when individual complaints lead to common solutions. This is particularly so when there is also an interpretation component in a contested space such as the Yap Ah Loy laneway in Kuala Lumpur, a space now dominated by migrant businesses. The HUL approach anticipates the need for collective resolutions as we all begin with the realization that the city is 443

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a dynamic, multi-layered, shared space and we, the current occupiers, its custodians. As such, there is a strong motivation towards social inclusion and a commitment towards making our cities more liveable spaces for all.

Conclusion Historic downtowns are multi-layered with different communities making contributions at different times and in different parts of the city. This dynamic situation of ‘city-making’ requires a nimble approach and an organizational structure that can successfully facilitate the heavy bureaucratic requirements of top-down governmental agencies operating within often cumbersome legal and legislative frameworks, while negotiating the legitimate interests of communities and a wide range of special interest groups, often single-minded in their private pursuits. The HUL perspective, which considers the city’s dynamism, provides a template from which to approach different kinds of urban management challenges. HUL provides a multi-disciplinary perspective for equitable and sustainable urban conservation and, when necessary, regeneration implemented through a comprehensive, evidence-based approach to the issues, providing stakeholders with a city-level perspective wherein they can situate themselves or take up causes to champion to improve the city’s liveability and longterm vitality.

Notes 1 A Special Area Plan (SAP) is part of the Malaysian physical planning system whereby for special reasons an area is provided with special planning and regulatory framework to ensure its protection. The SAP has specific land-use recommendations and guidelines. It is embedded in the larger Local Area Plan, which is part of the state level Structure Plan. 2 See: www.seatrade-maritime.com/news/asia/malacca-and-s-pore-strait-traffic-hits-new-high-in-2016-vlccs-fastestgrowing-segment.html. 3 See the page on Melaka and George Town in the website of UNESCO World Heritage Sites: https://whc. unesco.org/en/list/1223. 4 See item 9 in: http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=48857&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SEC TION=201.html. 5 For a full account of the George Town Grants Programme, see Khor et al. (2017).

References Bandarin, F. and van Oers, R. (eds) (2015) Reconnecting the city: The Historic Urban Landscape approach and the future of urban heritage, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Khor, N., Benson, M., Liew, V., and James, A. (2017) Rejuvenating the city together: The George Town Grants Programme, George Town, Malaysia: Think City Sdn Bhd. Think City. (2018) A city for everyone: The Citi Foundation Think City Partnership for sustainable shared spaces in Kuala Lumpur – Impact report 2015–2017, Kuala Lumpur: Think City Sdn Bhd.

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26 COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT IN HERITAGE CONSERVATION The case of Kotagede, Indonesia Punto Wijayanto Introduction In the period 1990–2010, the Indonesian government’s focus in heritage conservation was primarily on the protection of heritage monuments. Scholars, heritage organizations and local communities questioned the government’s vision for heritage conservation. In 2003, the Network of Indonesia Heritage Organizations (Jaringan Kota Pusaka Indonesia) published the Indonesia Charter for Heritage Conservation. One of the concerns of the charter is on the engagement of local communities in the conservation of their cultural heritage. The charter recognizes the fact that local practices are as important as the authenticity of the urban fabric and form of built heritage, and therefore, the involvement of local communities in heritage conservation is encouraged. Indonesia has a new heritage law called the Law No. 11/2010 on Cultural Heritage (Cagar Budaya) (Government of Indonesia 2010). It aims to protect heritage assets with historical, scientific and cultural values and share the responsibility of heritage conservation between the central government, local government, and community. In a decade after this legislation, the number of listed heritage items in urban areas by local governments increased. Nevertheless, many of such heritage sites are not yet supported with regular maintenance; some of the ‘protected’ heritage was even demolished. In 2006, the community of heritage professionals and enthusiasts in Indonesia introduced an idea of ‘heritage city’ (kota pusaka) management, where the government and community could work together on the conservation of urban heritage. This idea was developed during the post-disaster rehabilitation project in Kotagede in Yogyakarta. During the post-earthquake reconstruction process, the engagement of the community in Kotagede was actively sought out to provide a basis for the rehabilitation programme, to prepare people for future earthquakes, and to offer guidelines for continuous use in recovery. This chapter aims to describe how an understanding of the local community’s association with their heritage became crucial in conservation, development and recovery of this settlement, and the value of community participation in heritage conservation in the Indonesian context.

Heritage conservation and management in Indonesia Heritage regulatory system The first conservation project in Indonesia after the independence was the effort to save the Old Town of Jakarta, which witnessed the long-time colonization of Indonesia.1 The Jakarta Old Town 445

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was established by the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC) in 1619. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, VOC had one of the largest volume of trade in the world. After independence, the area was abandoned. In 1971, focus of the project was to conserve the legacy of trading-age during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, which includes the area of old harbour, old settlement or Kampong of fisherman, fish market and the area of inner fort, and to adaptive re-use of some buildings into museums, including the Museum of History of Jakarta and the Museum of Fine Art and Ceramics. In Indonesia, regulations for heritage management follow local government guidelines and organizational structures, which began with the founding of the Law No. 11/2010 on Cagar Budaya (cultural heritage) to institutionalize the decentralized conservation policy in Indonesia. It contains the spirit of the Law of 2004 No. 32 on Regional Autonomy, which regulates the structural relation between the central government and local governments. The Law No. 11/2010 on Cagar Budaya revised the previous law that centralized the authority on cultural heritage in the hand of the Ministry of Culture of the central government. After the Law is enacted, conservation is considered not only for the protection of heritage, but also for the development and utilization of cultural heritage for the benefit and welfare of people. There are local designations as well as a national register (Registrasi Nasional Cagar Budaya) for heritage properties. According to the Law No. 11/2010, cultural heritage includes objects, buildings, structures, sites and areas, and cultural landscape from various levels of significance. The local government and community are encouraged to register their heritage. The number of categories and the approach were modified to acknowledge a variety of objects and buildings with cultural and historical value as heritage. A building can be listed on the registries when it is 50 years old and has significant value of history, science, education, religion and/or culture. It can be listed at the national level or city level depending on the degree of its cultural significance (Fitri, Ahmed and Ahmed 2014). To qualify for national listing, it should be significant to the history of the country: for example, the Temples of Borobudur and Prambanan have been designated as World Heritage since 1991 for being masterpieces of Indonesian classical culture. When a building is registered, there are standards or guidelines that describe the manner of its conservation. The standards usually focus on the protection and maintenance of original elements. Some of these standards are often not easy to be applied in the context of vernacular architectural heritage in Indonesia. In most of Indonesian cities and towns, vernacular architecture is more numerus than modern buildings, especially since Indonesia is an archipelagic country with thousands of islands and hundreds of ethnic groups. In the conservation of vernacular architecture, building materials need to be replaced regularly due to the nature of materials used and the climatic conditions. In that case, the challenge is to determine what should be conserved and how to conserve it. Furthermore, people’s lifestyles have been changed and such change needs to be accommodated in the conservation of historic buildings.

Community involvement in heritage conservation In the Indonesian context, the introduction of community engagement in heritage conservation is rather new. Officially, the Indonesian Law No. 11/2010 on Cultural Heritage is the first heritage law to mention the role of community in heritage conservation. It mentions that heritage needs to be well protected and be sustainably developed. In an urban context, a specific challenge related to heritage sustainability is how to give new function to its historic buildings, as continuous use of heritage ensures its existence. In achieving a sustainable heritage, however, we cannot only focus on tangible aspects of heritage. It is often forgotten that the local community with its own cultural traditions plays a major role in maintaining the use of heritage. 446

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In Indonesia, conservation activity is conducted not only by governments, but also by individuals and often not-for-profit organizations. According to Article 63 of Law of 2010 No. 11 on Cultural Heritage, community may take part in and carry out the safeguarding the cultural heritage. The Law 2010/ 11 also emphasizes the relation between revitalization and community: revitalization is not only to give a heritage building a new function, but also to increase the quality of the community’s life and maintain cultural characteristics. In metropolitan cities such as Jakarta, Medan, Surabaya and Bandung, heritage cannot be separated from urban context where local community sees heritage as contributing to the quality of their environment. In 1990s, scholars, professionals and other individuals drew the public’s attention to the importance of heritage conservation of both monumental as well as ordinary historic buildings. They formed heritage groups and organizations to address issues of the importance of heritage conservation within the context of development pressures. Heritage groups are also founded in medium and even small-scale cities, such as Yogyakarta. These groups also support community involvement in heritage conservation. The first such organization is the Bandung Society for Heritage Conservation (‘Bandung Heritage’), established in 1986.2 It aims to conserve heritage buildings in Bandung using community participation or what they call ‘people power’ (Affandy 1999: 190). The establishment of Bandung Heritage inspired other cities to found heritage organizations, such as Jogja Heritage Society in Yogyakarta (1991) and Badan Warisan Sumatera in Medan (1998). The number of heritage organizations in Indonesia is continuously increasing, spreading all over the country. There is no exact information about the current number of organizations, but they exist in every big and small city. The heritage organizations have realized that a lot of historic buildings in cities were demolished before being listed as cultural heritage. They thus are struggling to save those buildings they believe as heritage through activities such as making heritage inventories and spreading ‘heritage virus’ via public discussions and exhibitions of heritage inventories (Adishakti 2009b: 4). In 2000, several heritage organizations established a heritage network, namely Jaringan Pelestarian Pusaka Indonesia (JPPI) or Indonesian Network for Heritage Conservation. The network has a good worldwide connection where their interaction with international organizations gives them updated information on conservation discourse and method, such as discourses on the interdependence of tangible and intangible heritages and concepts of cultural landscape and historic urban landscape. JPPI organizations play a vital role in translating, giving understanding and explanation about conservation to the public. After a series of discussion in Yogyakarta, Jakarta, Kaliurang and Ciloto, the JPPI together with several heritage organizations, universities, and local governments launched the Piagam Pelestarian Pusaka Indonesia on 13 December 2003. The charter introduced a vernacular term pusaka to capture the integrated notion of heritage within the Indonesian context. The charter recognizes that heritage conservation in Indonesia should be understood in an integrated manner, combining various notions of heritage: ‘Indonesian heritage includes natural heritage, tangible and intangible cultural heritage, the saujana/cultural landscape heritage – as the combination between natural and cultural activities’ (JPPI 2003: 2). The charter also introduces the importance of community in safeguarding Indonesian heritage.

Community involvement in urban heritage In 2013, Badan Pelestarian Pusaka Indonesia (BPPI) (Indonesian Heritage Trust) declared the charter Piagam Pelestarian Kota Pusaka. This charter introduces the notion of Kota Pusaka as the translation of the notion ‘heritage city’ (or, urban heritage), which means ‘city with invaluable assets in the forms of natural, intangible and tangible, as well as cultural landscape heritages that simultaneously created the characters through out its respective history’ (BPPI 2013: 2). There are three principles of ‘heritage city’ conservation and management that apply to the notion of Kota Pusaka (BPPI 2013: 2–3): 447

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1) Heritage city conservation is not meant to freeze the lives and culture, but is an effort to understand and utilize wisdom, values, and spirit from the past for future development. The heritage city management is a continuous effort to integrate heritage orientation into city development. 2) The heritage conservation is followed by its utilization in accordance to heritage management rules and procedures. The heritage utilization must bring prosperity to the people and enhance the quality of life. The economic empowerment must be in harmony with the social and cultural growth. 3) The heritage city management and conservation is conducted in an holistic and comprehensive manner to ensure the people’s passion in maintaining their heritage cities and to engender vibrant economic as well as cultural development on the basis of local wisdom and heritage cities’ conservation guidelines. A keyword common to the three principles is ‘community’ as the subject of heritage conservation.3 The community is uniquely qualified to identify heritage assets that are significant to their history, culture, and identity, as well as the ways of conserving those assets.4

The case of Kotagede, Yogyakarta A widely acknowledged example of the application of these principles and community involvement in heritage conservation in Indonesia is the post-earthquake rehabilitation of Kotagede in Yogyakarta. This is a small urban settlement characterized by hundreds of Javanese houses with a variety of vernacular architecture, representing primary characteristics of the historic built environment in Yogyakarta. The local community participated in the efforts taken to restore damaged vernacular houses and to safeguard the cultural and place identity of Kotagede after the earthquake in 2006 in Yogyakarta and its surroundings. The earthquake gave an opportunity to reconsider the importance of vernacular buildings in Yogyakarta and the ways of their construction and conservation, and to give the community the appropriate training they need to strengthen their heritage (Englehardt 2012). In general, due to the existence of this rich heritage, the post-disaster rehabilitation programme in Kotagede became different from what happened in other villages. Its community considered their heritage as an asset for the redevelopment. The experience at Kotagede also proved that the consideration of social and cultural aspects is needed for an effective post-disaster rehabilitation.

History of Kotagede Kotagede is a small urban settlement located about 6 km to the south-east of the city centre of Yogyakarta, between Yogyakarata and Bantul Regency. Established in 1755, Yogyakarta is the capital of the Sultanate of Yogyakarta, and was also the capital of Indonesia during the post-independence war. Administratively, Kotagede is in the Province of Special Region of Yogyakarta. The Region consists of five villages: Purbayan, Prenggan and Rejowinangung, which are administratively in the Kotagede District, and Yogyakarta City, Jagalan and Singosaren, which are administratively in the District of Banguntapan, Regency of Bantul. The population of Kotagede is about 32,000 people (in 2014) while the population of Yogyakarta city is about 380,000 people (Figure 26.1). There is no clear date when Kotagede was built. Kotagede was formerly the capital of Mataram Kingdom, established by Panembahan Senopati (1587–1601) in the sixteenth century. The city had a rampart for defence; so, it was also known as ‘the big city’ or Kotagede. The urban structure of Kotagede was like other Javanese cities. It had a palace, a mosque, a public square, and a market. This ensemble of four city elements was known as catur gatra tunggal (Amin 2012: 79). When the capital of the kingdom of Mataram was moved to Plered in southern Yogyakarta by Sultan Agung (1613–1645), the palace and the fort were disassembled and moved to the new city. There is no architectural 448

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Figure 26.1 Map of Kotagede, Yogyakarta. Source: Punto Wijayanto

evidence left in Kotagede that could inform about architecture of the historic palace. The complex of the Great Mosque and the Royal Cemetery located at the heart of Kotagede are associated with Mataram’s royal family and so they are still sites for pilgrimage. In 1755, during the colonial period, Mataram was divided into two kingdoms: Yogyakarta and Surakarta. After the independence of Indonesia, the capitals of both kingdoms received the status of a city. In 1947, Yogyakarta became a city based on Law No. 17/1947 on Establishment of City of Yogyakarta. Kotagede became a part of the administrative area of Yogyakarta city. Kotagede is also known as ‘Silver City’ or ‘Kota Perak’. In the past, the main street of Kotagede was lined with silversmithing, jewellery, and clothing shops. The city was the centre of small-medium enterprise and most of its inhabitants worked in creative industries and handicraft (Inajati 2000). The sounds of people working on metal, arising behind the high walls of the houses, were considered a unique character of Kotagede (Van Mook 1972). There are many literary records of these sights, 449

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such as the writings of Revianto B. Santosa’s Kotagede: Life Between Walls (Santosa 2007), and Darwis Khudori’s Orang-orang Kotagede (Khudori 2000). Unfortunately, since the 1980s the number of silver craftsmen has been decreasing. Only a few are left due to reasons such as the difficulty to find silver. It is even worst after the impact of economic crisis in 1998. Most of the old workshops and houses are abandoned or derelict due to disrepair and lack of upkeep. Some have been converted into antique shops, cafes, or coffee houses.

Heritage houses in Kotagede The Javanese house, which is a type of Javanese vernacular architecture, is the main characteristic of the built environment in Kotagede. According to Prijoutomo (1999), this house form was developed by Javanese communities who lived in the Central Java Island, especially in the region of Yogyakarta and Surakarta. Based on its use, Javanese architecture can be categorized into a set of typical buildings used for basic rural houses and for compound of buildings used in royal palaces or Keraton (Prijoutomo 1999). Dakung (1982) describes the typological variety of Javanese architecture and their characteristics by examining the vernacular architecture in several areas in Yogyakarta, including Kotagede.5 In general, in Yogyakarta, a house is locally called omah. There are four variants of omah, based on its roof forms: joglo, limasan, kampong and tajug. Usually, omah is built in the north-south orientation. A well-known variety of omah is joglo, which is considered the ideal type of omah (Dakung 1982). Mostly omah in Kotagede is of the type of joglo. Omah joglo consists of several buildings whose layout is put along a symmetrical axis and surrounded by enclosure walls. Each layer of arrangement has its own level of privacy following its spatial function. The houses are entered from the south, through a gate, called regol. The notable feature of omah joglo is its roof-shape – a hip roof with two tiers, with a top tier having a steeper pitch than the lower tier. The roof is supported with timber pillars, called saka guru, which are placed on top of stone foundations. There usually are four central pillars, supporting the roof at the centre. Omah joglo is invariably constructed on a raised plinth. The main building of a Javanese house is a family room or dalem. Inside dalem, there are three small rooms, called senthong: left senthong, middle senthong and right senthong. A house could simply be a dalem. The first space located at the front is pendapa, which functions as a room for receiving guests. Buildings annexed to dalem host bedrooms, called gandok. The number of gandoks depends on the number of family members. In Kotagede, there are hundreds of over 200-year-old omah joglos, which are considered as indigenous heritage with cultural and architectural significance. A few of them are already considered as heritage of regional significance. Since the 1980s, the government of Yogyakarta Special Region has taken initiative to preserve them. In 1991, as part of the work to conserve the nation’s cultural heritage, the government published a book, titled Kesadaran Budaya tentang Ruang pada Masyarakat di Daerah Istimewa Yogyakarta: Suatu Studi mengenai Proses Adaptasi, which documented traditional buildings such as omah joglo and their associated intangible cultural heritage. In addition to this large body of official documents on Javanese vernacular architectural heritage, there also is a considerable body of research conducted on the subject that helps to understand the traditional architecture in Kotagede by reputed Indonesian scholars, such as Gunawan Tjahjono (1989) from Jakarta and Rachmat Wonoamiseno and Sigit Sayogyo Basuki (1986), L. Indartoro (1995), and Revianto B. Santosa (2000) from Yogyakarta. In general, appreciation and concern on historic vernacular architecture in areas like Kotagede are rising because of their decreasing number, due to lack of upkeep, abandonment, and natural disasters, as well as for their aesthetic and constructional features, contribution to local identity, and skills needed to construct them that inspires architects, artists, and local populace alike. 450

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Conservation advocacy in Kotagede In Yogyakarta, a building can be designated a heritage building if it is associated with the historical kingdoms of Yogyakarta and Mataram, such as the Palace and the Great Mosque. It can also be expanded to the historic buildings of the colonial period and Indonesian independence. This recognition had not been equally given to the vernacular architectural heritage of Yogyakarta, which represents traditions of cultural life, belief systems, worldviews, and ways of construction of Javanese people (Santosa 2000). However, since the 1980s, the government of Yogyakarta Special Region has taken an initiative to preserve these heritage assets. In 1991, as part of the initiative, the government published a book, Kesadaran Budaya tentang Ruang pada Masyarakat di Daerah Istimewa Yogyakarta: Suatu Studi mengenai Proses Adaptasi, a documentation on traditional buildings and associated intangible aspects of culture. Serious interest in Kotagede as a historic settlement with a unique urban landscape also began in the 1980s. Kotagede had previously not been seen as a home for buildings with monumental value or associated with the kingdom of Mataram. In urban planning activities, the historic character of Kotagede has been identified and protected. The omah joglo and omah jawa are considered typical historical house styles that contribute to the character of Kotagede. The decision of Yogyakarta Mayor No. 88/2009 mentions that the historic character of Kotagede, generated by its old buildings with specific design and architectural form, must be maintained and respected by new development. In terms of organizational structure, Yogyakarta’s heritage conservation governance is often seen as an alternative model within the Indonesian context. A heritage advisory organization – Dewan Pertimbangan Penasehat Warisan Budaya (DP2WB) – was founded to ensure the implementation of conservation codes of Yogyakarta. DP2WB regulates alterations to historic buildings and provide technical assistance to building owners. In 2011, with support from DP2WB, the Province of Special Region of Yogyakarta established some historic settlements as ‘heritage areas’. Along with the areas of Malioboro, Jeron Beteng, Kotabaru, Pakualaman and Imogiri, Kotagede was also declared a heritage area that bears provincial significance. Kotagede is recognized as a historic city with many tangible and intangible cultural assets, such as historic buildings, crafts, performing arts and culinary traditions, that developed over a long time. Conservation of vernacular architecture has received the attention of heritage organizations in Yogyakarta. For the last two decades, Jogja Heritage Society, a not-for-profit organization in Yogyakarta, has organized a project to revitalize vernacular architecture in Kotagede. In 1998 and 1999, Jogja Heritage Society in collaboration with Universitas Gadjah Mada worked with local heritage organization – Pusat Dokumentasi Kotagede (PUSDOK) (Center for Kotagede Heritage Documentation) – on the revitalization programme for traditional houses in Kotagede. The collaboration is called ‘Kotagede-Yogyakarta Cultural District: Conservation of Kampung Performing Arts and Its Environment and Conservation of Traditional Culture’. The project had financial support from The World Bank. There were several discussions with local people to identify the architectural elements and traditional activities that gave character to Kotagede. With the understanding that preserving architecture alone is not enough, this project gave insight about the social aspect of conservation. During the project, the local community was invited to identify possible reuse of vernacular houses that were historically used for jewellery making and crafts. The intention was to combine the conservation of houses with silver craft-making using the opportunity of tourism. A heritage walk, called ‘Rambling Thru Kotagede’, was also introduced. In 1999, a new local organization, Kanthil Foundation, was founded to conduct research into and documentation of Kotagede’s heritage. This project has been successful in creating a framework of heritage conservation for Kotagede that focuses on encouragement of community to participate in heritage conservation to benefit from their local heritage resources.

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Community-based post-disaster rehabilitation and heritage restoration An earthquake of the magnitude of 5.9 on the Richter scale struck Yogyakarta and its surrounding area on 26 May 2006. The earthquake caused several casualties in Kotagede and its surroundings. Hundreds of historic vernacular buildings were damaged or collapsed, mostly due to lack of upkeep, abandonment, and were constructed of organic material such as wood that need proper care in a hot-humid climate (Figure 26.2). The

Figure 26.2 Collapsed houses in Kotagede after the earthquake. Source: Punto Wijayanto

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natural disaster made people aware of the condition of traditional buildings in Kotagede and the need for their proper restoration and maintenance. In the wake of the earthquake, several research groups and heritage organizations agreed to work on the conservation of both tangible and intangible heritage in Kotagede. Their efforts also stressed the need for community to be involved in the rehabilitation process. Rehabilitation of Kotagede was not just a reaction to the earthquake’s impact on the housing stock, but also a recognition of the existence of historic cultural assets in the town. It is also a response to the tepid approaches used by local authorities in heritage conservation (Adishakti 2009b). At that moment, local government’s concern in taking actions for saving Kotagede heritage was limited. Although a heritage site, Kotagede had no site management that was responsible for conservation activity. There also was budgetary limitation for heritage conservation. For rehabilitation, the government provided financial aid to the owners of affected buildings. However, there was no proper supervision or guidance on the restoration of historic houses. Since not all house owners have knowledge in heritage restoration, they used the funding for new construction replacing historic buildings. As what happened in Padang, Indonesia, after the earthquake in 2009 (Khaerunnisa and Sawaki 2014: 285), without facilitation from government or other relevant organizations, the building owners or users made decisions by themselves that made the situation of heritage protection difficult. In 2008, Kotagede was listed in the 2008 World Monuments Fund 100 List of World’s Endangered Sites by the World Monuments Fund (WMF). The report mentioned that: The entire area surrounding Kotadege suffered damage in the May 2006 earthquake, and local residents still await aid to restore their homes. Today repairs are carried out in a haphazard way, resulting in loss of historic fabric. Government assistance provided in the wake of the earthquake has encouraged new construction rather than preservation, but it is hoped that Watch listing will highlight the importance of incorporating the area’s still-living cultural heritage into the rebuilding of this Javanese city. (WMF 2008: 19)

Formation of a collaborative organization The University of Gadjah Mada (UGM) initiated the establishment of a team, namely the team of Pusaka Jogja Bangkit! (Jogja Heritage Revival!), in collaboration with Jogja Heritage Society (JHS), Indonesian Heritage Trust (BPPI) and ICOMOS Indonesia. Based on previous activities in Kotagede, their efforts also stressed the need for community to be involved in the rehabilitation process. The principal trait in the process was the willingness of different stakeholders, including non-profit heritage organizations, universities, scholars and local community, to collaborate. Creating awareness in the community on heritage conservation and craft revitalization was imperative (Ikaputra 2011: 2370). Community must be aware that they are rightful owners of heritage and that awareness could lead them to safeguard what they think culturally significant. Efforts were made to address this issue during the rehabilitation process to enable community’s involvement. As Adishakti (2009b) writes, the role of the university scholars and heritage organizations is not to be experts, but to be facilitators to encourage the initiative action during the process: ‘the mediator is the one that connects together the disaster victims with different groups through systematic steps’ Adishakti (2009b: 11). The Pusaka Jogja Bangkit (PJB) carried out several meetings to start work with local people. The first meeting, for which a group of local leaders was invited, was set up to discuss what their wish for the future of Kotagede was. This group consisted of some heads of the village, community leaders and members of PUSDOK and the Kanthil Foundation. They agreed that Kotagede as a heritage area should be safeguarded and, therefore, the affected old buildings needed rehabilitation or reconstruction. To realize their hope, they agreed to form a heritage organization. On 17 August 2006, the local community founded a new 453

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Figure 26.3 Community participation activities. Source: Punto Wijayanto

organization namely Organisasi Pengelola Kawasan Pusaka (OPKP) or ‘Kotagede Heritage District Management’ that acts as an umbrella for many community organizations and as a place to communicate among each other about the revitalization programme of Kotagede. As a local heritage organization, establishment of OPKP aimed to encourage local community activities, such as rehabilitation of houses, macapatan training (macapatan are Javanese songs full of philosophical learning), and keroncong performance (keroncong is a classical-modern local music tradition) (Figure 26.3).

Assessment and documentation of heritage damage In the meantime, with the help from the local community, the PJB team collected data on the impact of the earthquake to the historic area. The assessment was called ‘Damaged Heritage Rapid Assessment’ (DHRA), which included identifying the number of damaged heritage assets; the type of damage (ruined, collapsed or partly damaged, cracked); action needed; and, cost estimation for restoration. The process was managed by UGM who mobilized university students to do the assessment. The first assessment looking for damaged and non-damaged buildings was self-financed. This work identified

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Numbers

The number of traditional houses with joglo roof type that have been assessed (some houses are not yet assessed) The number of all joglo type houses in Kotagede Among those which are already inspected: houses that are completely ruined houses that are severely damage and cannot be used houses that are partly damage, but can be occupied houses that are cracked

88 150 8 (9%) 47 (54%) 16 (18%) 17 (19%)

Source: Punto Wijayanto

and assessed the level of damage of hundreds of vernacular buildings to make all stakeholders be aware of the earthquake’s impact. As part of the participatory method, record of damage was made with the involvement of members of PUSDOK and Kanthil Foundation. They gave the information about the location of old houses and introduced students to the owners of the heritage buildings. The report, finished in June 2006, shows the result of the assessment (Table 26.1). Eightyeight vernacular buildings with a joglo roof type, which is more than half of 150 such houses in Kotagede, were assessed. More than half of the assessed houses could not be used because of the severity of the damage. The result of rapid assessment was disseminated to the international community through the PJB web-site to raise funding for the emergency situation and recovery. A number of aids were able to be collected. Those financial supports came from individuals, groups, community organizations, heritage institutions, government and private agencies locally, nationally, and internationally. The international community, such as JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency) through the Community Empowerment Program, the Government of the Royal Kingdom of Netherlands and Total Indonesia (French Oil Company), declared its support for the Kotagede people’s efforts. Jogja Heritage Revival, OPKP, and other groups collectively agreed to identify and record how old buildings were still associated with people. OPKP also agreed about the number of houses that could have support for reconstruction. The PJB introduced a method of documentation of damaged historic buildings as the basis of restoration to be implemented. This documentation process borrowed Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) techniques that aim to empower the community in analysing and developing information. This documentation was needed to make a reconstruction of the collapsed buildings by identifying every building element and predicting its location in the building. The process was organized by a team of PJB who worked with members of local community organizations of OPKP. Having experienced the process, OPKP realized the difficulty and complexity to rebuild a collapsed old building. The results of the documentation process became a reference for detailed drawing of the collapsed building and later were used to estimate materials and cost of construction needed. This process also made people more aware about the condition of old buildings, which were mostly not in use and lacked maintenance. Through this extensive activity, community could identify the historic elements, landscape units and cultural activities that give uniqueness to Kotagede. Experts recognized that the historical value of Kotagede and its significance are due to its physical condition associated with the history of Mataram 455

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kingdom. Community in Kotagede also has their list of assets with value coming from their understanding that Kotagede has layers of history. Most of places in Kotagede are historical objects that are associated with local stories and folklore. Some are already perceived as landmarks. An example is an empty building, located near the market, which is an unused electrical box belonged to the former Dutch electrical company. All parties agreed to accept the idea of heritage value and associated features and supported the rehabilitation of Kotagede by revitalizing it. The residents saw that disaster was an opportunity to improve and build back the area better. Kotagede needs to be planned so that it becomes a liveable area based on its cultural resources. These rehabilitation objectives were answered through a planning process that was based on the idea of studying the past and using the present as a perspective for the future. The planning process started by preparing a list of buildings to begin the conservation work, equipped with detailed drawing and estimated cost of reconstruction. The plan was an effective tool to attract support from identified partners in financing the projects. Utilizing the detailed damage assessment and documentation by UGM students, architects and engineers focused on the completion of the records or documentation. Architectural information included historical aspect, technical drawing (plans, sections, and elevations) and the damages of each building. Information found was also reviewed by experts who could give a technical review of the building condition. In addition to the usual means of documentation, other methods were also used. For some buildings that were collapsed to the ground, it was difficult to document the interior spatial configuration. However, in most such cases, the structure of the roof construction was mostly intact and was used to trace and conjecture the form and space of the house destroyed. The roof construction was measured, drawn and analysed to develop detail information of the houses. Students also interviewed the inhabitants of traditional houses about the story of the buildings, the functions of the rooms, and the damage from the earthquake. As mentioned earlier, most efforts to save Kotagede heritage was with funding from international organizations. Due to limited funding, there was a plan to reconstruct six traditional houses. The selection of the houses to be reconstructed was determined by OPKP as the representative of Kotagede community. OPKP selected one old joglo house in each village for this purpose, on the basis of their owners’ enthusiasm and willingness to make their asset available for public view. The reconstruction of six houses were funded by JICA, Total Indonesie and the Netherlands government (Figure 26.4). Total Indonesie also supported the reconstruction of the building of Babon Anim, the unused electrical box mentioned earlier (Figure 26.5a). With OPKP at the helm of rehabilitation work, various partner groups were convinced to implement conservation activities on site. Many parties visited Kotagede and gave blessings. A visit of several guests with the vision or an area that is planned accordingly was often followed-up with input and network recommendations from other parties.

Publications on heritage and conservation guidelines In addition, it became clear that the result of the documentation work could be a reference to the value of historic buildings in Kotagede so it could support the number of buildings to be successfully rehabilitated. Several publications were prepared as reports of documentation work. Two of these are described below. First is the Pedoman Pelestarian Bagi Pemilik Rumah: Kawasan Pusaka Kotagede, Yogyakarta, Indonesia (Homeowner’s Conservation Manual: Kotagede Heritage District, Yogyakarta, Indonesia), a manual prepared by the Jogja Heritage Society on building maintenance for traditional architecture in Kotagede to give owners much needed knowledge on how to maintain historical houses (Jogja Heritage Society 2007). These guidelines were made in cooperation with UNESCO Bangkok Office and Regional Bureau for 456

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Figure 26.4 Restored houses. Source: Punto Wijayanto

Education in Asia and the Pacific with financial support from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Experts in architecture as well as local community members participated in its preparation.6 The manual tells about the importance of conserving houses in Kotagede, the typology of houses, and guidelines for building maintenance and post-earthquake rehabilitation. The first part of the book discusses the importance of identifying the cultural significance, including the architectural, social and economic value of a building (Jogja Heritage Society 2007: 21). This manual provides information on the variety of Javanese houses and on the impact of earthquake on traditional houses. The Javanese house is comprehensively presented, including site arrangement, space arrangement and building elements, shown in systematic drawings, with information on the usage and size of material. Drawings of plans, sections, elevations and three-dimensional images are accompanied with explanation about the logic of structure. Most of the explanations are dedicated to the construction of the roof, with pictures from the collapsed buildings. The book provides guidelines for house design conservation and guidelines for structural rehabilitation. In general, it encourages to preserve every element of a traditional building as it is and use authentic materials that fulfil the minimum standards of structural force. It also allows adaptive reuse if it is in harmony with the surroundings. After a few years since its publication, some traditional buildings were restored based on the guidelines given; they are considered examples for conservation knowledge and from which to derive further lessons. The second manual is the Post-Disaster Conservation Manual for Kotagede Heritage District, Yogyakarta, Indonesia (Rahmi and Handayani 2009) and Documentation of Post-Disaster Traditional Houses Reconstruction Process

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Figure 26.5 (a) Restored Babon Aniem, and (b) restored Pos Malang. Source: Punto Wijayanto

in Kotagede Heritage, Yogyakarta, Indonesia (Adishakti 2009a). With financial support from UN-Habitat and the community of Fukuoka City, Japan, Jogja Heritage Society published two books: one is a documentation, and the other is a manual. They are prepared as a documentation of activities of rehabilitation and reconstruction process of traditional houses. Together, these two books share the idea of integrated heritage conservation. An integrated conservation during the rehabilitation process means to restore buildings and at the same time to give attention to the livelihood of the community. In the books, Javanese house is presented as folk heritage. It is mentioned that folk heritage could be ‘in the form of traditional houses, surrounding environment, performing arts, handicrafts, and others’ (Adishakti 2009a: 7). In the context of conservation of folk heritage, there are two important interrelated aspects. First is the role of community; since community is the primary owner of traditional houses, they should be involved in the

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conservation process. Second is the capacity to manage change in the building that would be restored. Some changes were made possible based on discussion with the owners, which reflected the change in the way of living. The books give some examples of restoration projects that accommodated new function. For example, the house of Mr. Mukidi located at south of the Great Mosque of Mataram has a dalem transformed into an open structure to be used as a public space for community meetings.

Follow-up work of Kotagede heritage rehabilitation This approach to safeguard heritage in Kotagede was adopted by the Indonesian Ministry of Public Work for the REKOMPAK Project (Community-based Settlement Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Project). This project was conducted between 2006 and 2012 to assist community in 265 villages in the Special Region of Yogyakarta, Central Java Province, and West Java Province in rebuilding their homes back and better. Having finished with rebuilding of houses, this project aimed to facilitate socio-cultural activities in Kotagede by engaging community in an effort to conserve their heritage. Involvement of community in planning was not easy. The local people had their own ideas and wishes, often conflicting, and needed consensus building and negotiation. A group of experts and facilitators worked with local community (Rahmi 2017). Compared to the work of PJB, the work of REKOMPAK follows a longer cycle. This approach incorporated community-based planning and post-disaster rehabilitation action through village planning, namely Community Settlement Plan. In preparing village planning for Kotagede, there were some additional tools used to gather useful information. The initial or secondary data on vernacular heritage were obtained from the courses in local government or universities. These data about heritage are the result of research or inventories that are compiled, and usually show the list of heritage buildings. These data need to be enhanced with primary data; so, facilitators from REKOMPAK and community worked together to do social mapping, which intended to collect data on infrastructure and land use from the field. Meetings were organized in which, using a base map of the village, community was facilitated to analyse their area to define the potentials and threats for their village, including threats for heritage. An inseparable part of the village planning was on constructing the history of the village. It was an opportunity to trace the origin of the village and its relationship with artefacts and other elements of the village. Local history was a resource for people to be aware of the condition of their area. When the community worked on the preparation of the village plan, they also discussed and included their ordinary heritage on the list. As the community had to make their own heritage list, they were even eager to include variety forms of heritage, including public facilities such as a small gate, namely ‘Pos Malang’. This gate was built in 1927 to enter a complex of houses inhabited by the former royal family. When the complex was demolished, and the land was subdivided, the gate was kept but lost its original use. People now see it as a local landmark (Figure 26.5b). For local community, even a simple structure is worth being conserved. Programmed-based activities like PJB or REKOMPAK are limited due to time restrictions and are not expected to address all issues in Kotagede. Therefore, there is no guarantee that the awareness and involvement of community in heritage conservation that happened during the programmes could be maintained. It is a challenge when working with community.

Conclusion Heritage conservation approaches have evolved to integrate heritage conservation with socioeconomic development, where participation of local community plays an important role. This approach is triggered by the idea to see heritage as an asset for development and a way to benefit a community. The experiences in Kotagede heritage rehabilitation could offer valuable lessons 459

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about community-based heritage management. The 2006 Javanese earthquake was an opportunity to introduce development of a historic settlement using its heritage assets. It could happen when a community is recognized and encouraged to make use of their assets for a better change of their settlement. Raising the role of the local community in making decisions for conservation and development activities empowers them. Partnership among all stakeholders strengthens the conservation efforts. The Kotagede experience has shared a fruitful story where local community was the centre of conservation effort in collaboration with various experts. During the process, the experts from various backgrounds gave technical advice to the community on a variety of issues related to heritage documentation, assessment, restoration and construction. They played the role of facilitators to connect multiple stakeholders. The programme developed in Kotagede was a participatory cycle consisting of: (1) socialization of the problem; (2) election and establishment of community representatives; (3) formation of monitoring team; (4) identification of beneficiaries’ and local reconstruction’s needs; (5) formulation of vision and preparation of reconstruction plans which includes designs and budgets; and (6) implementation of projects. This cycle has been a long-term process. To understand the problems, as in the case of Kotagede, the issue of heritage conservation was initiated and introduced by a diverse group of people through social and cultural activities. It was not just directly a focus on buildings as heritage, but also was associated with enhancing the social and cultural life of the town and safeguarding the intangible heritage of the community. This focus on the conservation of tangible and intangible heritage as well as the socio-economic development of a community is a way to make heritage conservation sustainable.

Notes 1 The project was conducted by the government of DKI Jakarta under the governorship of Ali Sadikin (1966–1977), under the ordinance Monumenten Ordonantie Stbl. 1931 No. 238. 2 Like the Jakarta Old Town, Bandung Heritage made effort to save an area called Braga Street built during the period of the Dutch government in Indonesia. It has a strategic location in the heart of Bandung and is full of Art Deco style buildings. Both projects stated that the focus is not just to conserve the legacy of colonial architecture, but buildings that are associated with the history of Indonesia. 3 One of the four tools set forth in the Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape, UNESCO’s a new approach for the conservation of urban heritage, is community engagement in the conservation efforts, requiring the collaboration among various stakeholder groups (UNESCO 2011). 4 This focus on local community is gaining acceptance in other Southeast Asian countries as well. For example, Sapu (2018: 65) states that there is a paradigm shift in conservation in Thailand. In the past, the approach used was to focus on national historic monument; while at present, the focus is on local diversity and daily life activities, which is known as ‘ordinary heritage’ or ‘the vernacular city’. 5 Sugiyarto Dakung’s book, titled Arsitektur Traditional Daerah Istimewa Yogyakarta and published in 1982, is one of the most comprehensive works that explores Javanese architecture in Kotagede. It was based on the report of the project ‘Proyek Inventarisasi dan Dokumentasi Kebudayaan Daerah’, which aimed to support conservation of national cultural heritage, by collecting data about traditional architecture in the region. Information collected included architectural form, structure, ornaments, and ways of building. 6 This book is one of several such editions of the Homeowner’s Conservation/Preservation Manual published by UNESCO’s Bangkok Office. The others are for Kathmandu (in 2006 with UNESCO Kathmandu Office), Hoi An (in 2008 with UNESCO Hanoi Office) and Vigan (in 2010 with the Vigan City Government), all of which are World Heritage Sites.

References Adishakti, L. (2009a) Documentation of Post-Disaster Traditional Houses Reconstruction Process in Kotagede Heritage, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, Yogyakarta: Jogja Heritage Society. ———. (2009b) ‘Tantangan Kota Pusaka’, Proceedings of Kongres I Jaringan Kota Pusaka Indonesia, Sawahlunto, 1–12.

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Community involvement in conservation Affandy, F. B. (1999) ‘Bandung Heritage Society for heritage conservation’, in F. B. Affandy and A. R. Soemardi (eds) Monuments and Sites, Indonesia, Bandung: PF Books, 186–191. Amin, J. J. A. (2012) ‘Cultural landscapes of Java’, in K. Taylor and J. L. Lennon (eds) Managing Cultural Landscape, London: Routledge, 73–89. Badan Pelestarian Pusaka Indonesia (BPPI) (2013) Piagam Pelestarian Kota Pusaka Indonesia 2013, Jakarta: BPPI. Available at: www.chc.ft.ugm.ac.id/piagam-pelestarian-kota-pusaka-indonesia-2013-en/ (accessed 15 January 2019). Dakung, S. (1982) Arsitektur Traditional Daerah Istimewa Yogyakarta, Yogyakarta: Dinas Kebudayaan. Englehardt, R. (2012) ‘The Hoi An protocols for best conservation in Asia: Application to the safeguarding of Asian cultural landscape’, in K. Taylor and J. L. Lennon (eds) Managing Cultural Landscape, London: Routledge, 308–324. Fitri, I., Ahmed, F., and Ahmed, Y. (2014) ‘Conservation of tangible cultural heritage in Indonesia: A review of current national criteria for assessing heritage value’, Proceeding of 5th Arte Polis International Conference, Bandung, Indonesia, 71–78. Government of Indonesia. (2010) Law No. 11/2010 Concerning Cultural Heritage, Jakarta: Government of Indonesia. Ikaputra. (2011) ‘Reconstructing heritage post-earthquake: The case of Kotagede, Yogyakarta, Indonesia’, Journal of Basic and Applied Scientific Research, 1(11): 2364–2371. Inajati, A. (2000) Arkeologi Perkotaan Mataram, Yogyakarta: Jendela. Indartoro, L. (1995) Kesinambungan dan Perubahan Peran Jalan Rukunan di Kampung Kota Gede Yogyakarta Masa Tahun 1930–1993, Unpublished Master’s Thesis, Yogyakarta: University of Gadjah Mada. Jaringan Pelestarian Pusaka Indonesia (JPPI). (2003) Piagam Pelestarian Pusaka Indonesia (Indonesian Charter for Heritage Conservation), Jakarta: JPPI. Available at: www.icomos.org/charters/indonesia-charter.pdf (accessed 15 January 2019). Jogja Heritage Society. (2007) Homeowner’s Conservation Manual: Kotagede Heritage District, Yogyakarta, Bangkok: Jogja Heritage Society and UNESCO. Khaerunnisa and Sawaki, M. (2014) ‘The vulnerability of cultural heritage building due to rehabilitation before the earthquake and recovery after West Sumatra earthquake 2009 at Old town district, Padang, Indonesia’, Journal of Architecture and Planning (Transactions of AIJ), 79(695): 285–292. Khudori, D. (2000) Orang-orang Kotagede, Yogyakarta: Yayasan Bentang Budaya. Prijoutomo, J. (1999) ‘Javanese architecture’, in F. B. Affandy and A. R. Soemardi (eds) Monuments and Sites, Indonesia, Bandung: PF Books, 52–57. Rahmi, D. H. (2017) ‘Building resilience in heritage district: Lesson learned from Kotagede, Yogyakarta Indonesia’, in IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science. Rahmi, D. H. and Handayani, T. (2009) Post-Disaster Conservation Manual for Kotagede Heritage District, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, Yogyakarta: Jogja Heritage Society. Santosa, R. B. (2000) Omah: Membaca Makna Rumah Jawa, Yogyakarta: Yayasan Bentang Budaya. ———. (2007) Kotagede: Life between Walls, Jakarta: Gramedia Pustaka Utama. Sapu, S. (2018) ‘The Vernacular city as ordinary cultural heritage’, Journal of Mekong Societies, 14(2): 63–90. Tjahjono, G. (1989) ‘Cosmos, centre, and duality in Javanese architectural tradition: The symbolic dimensions of house shapes in Kotagede and surroundings’, Unpublished doctoral dissertation in Architecture, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA. UNESCO. (2011) Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape, Paris: UNESCO. Van Mook, H. J. (1972) Kuta Gede, Jakarta: Bhatara. Wonoamiseno, R. and Sigit, S. B. (1986) ‘Kotagede between two gates’, Unpublished report, Department of Architecture, University of Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta. World Monument Fund (WMF) (2008) 2008 World Monuments Watch List of 100 Most Endangered Sites. New York: World Monuments Fund. Available at: http://wmf.org/watch2008/watch.php?id=S8579 (accessed 20 November 2018).

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27 TRANSIENT HERITAGE VALUES, CONFLICTING ASPIRATIONS, AND ENDANGERED URBAN HERITAGE IN THE HISTORIC GALLE FORT, SRI LANKA Amanda Rajapakse and Kapila D. Silva

Introduction Historic urban contexts are complex socio-physical ecosystems. They are not static places but constantly transform under the influence of dynamic local and global forces in the economic, social, and cultural spheres. They contain layers of significant memories and past associations embedded in their built fabric. The residents of inhabited Historic Urban Landscapes, or living historic cities, also continue to add layers that represent individually derived and shared values to this evolving storyline. Managing the evanescent nature of the socio-physical fabric of urban heritage is, therefore, a complex enterprise. The historic Galle Fort in Sri Lanka is one such site. Established by European colonial powers in the mid-sixteenth century as a garrison town to control the southern maritime provinces of the island, local Sri Lankans gradually transformed the inhabited landscape into a closely knit community living in quaint houses. The fortified enclosures gave the residents a sense of safety and identity (Figures 27.1 and 27.2). Recognition of Galle Fort as a World Heritage site in 1988 brought international exposure along with domestic and global economic interests that are rapidly altering both its social and physical fabric. Heritage management issues in Galle Fort are symptomatic of many similar places that have received global attention and are also managed by outmoded systems of heritage governance. The combination of multiple global and local stakeholders vying to benefit from the Fort’s heritage assets, amidst efforts to mitigate the rampant commodification of its heritage, have produced contradictory discourses on the fate of this urban heritage. This calls into question the received wisdom of traditional heritage concepts and practices and, specifically in Galle Fort, the role that residents play as agents of change even without any formal engagement in heritage stewardship. Even though they are the primary stakeholders, their claims are unrecognized and their aspiration for the place is undervalued. Yet the residents directly and indirectly, incrementally and discernibly impact the heritage of Galle Fort. This chapter explores the nature and consequences of ongoing heritage discourse within Galle Fort. We focus on the transient nature of heritage values and the need for increased localization of heritage 462

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Figure 27.1 The historic Galle Fort, Sri Lanka. Source: Oleh Slobodeniuk/Getty Images

stewardship to establish a shared vision in order to safeguard its urban heritage. The dynamics at play in Galle Fort in fact urge us to rethink the accepted norms of heritage theories and practices. The chapter is based on a longitudinal qualitative study conducted between 2013–2017 to comprehend

Figure 27.2 Streetscapes of Galle Fort. Source: Kapila D. Silva

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how the residents fathom their life within this place and how their heritage values have evolved drastically over time.

The backdrop to recent socio-spatial transformations of Galle Fort The historic town of Galle and its fortifications, which extend over 52 hectares, were recognized as a World Heritage site in 1988 based on criterion (iv) which recognizes it as an outstanding example of an urban ensemble illustrating the interaction of European architecture and South Asian traditions from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries (ICOMOS 1988). The original sewer system dating from the seventeenth century, the materiality of fortifications, tree-lined streets, street-houses with colonnaded verandas, and the way European models of fortification and buildings were adapted to local climatic, geological, and cultural contexts by native artisans were specifically mentioned as elements of the town’s exceptional value. The statement of Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) of Galle Fort prepared in 2015 for its very first Integrated Management Plan1 continues to focus on the physical, material and technological attributes defined in 1988. The OUV of Galle Fort is defined in terms of the historical value (the best representation of a fortified city displaying European and South Asian interactions), the architectural value (the urban form, street-houses, ramparts, and other monuments within), the scientific value (the underground sewer system), the social value (historic interactions between the Dutch and Sri Lankans), and the use value (a continuously inhabited place) (Government of Sri Lanka 2015).2 Strangely, the socio-cultural values are defined in historical and physical terms, without any discussion about the social values generated through the association of people with the place over time, the current resident community’s heritage values, and their aspirations for the place. The Management Plan refers to a ‘living heritage’ in Galle Fort, but does not describe it. The true socio-cultural values of the Fort thus remain undefined in the characterization of its ascribed heritage values. The recognition of Galle Fort’s physical and material significance privileged a monument-centric approach to conservation and management. The initial focus was on the preservation of the ramparts, key monuments such as churches, and several buildings used for governmental functions. Sufficient attention has not yet been given to the restoration of the sewer system. The vernacular fabric of streethouses, streets and alleys, and open spaces – the major constituents of the town – similarly received peripheral attention in terms of their conservation until recently. The documentation of streetscapes prepared in 1992 includes drawings of street elevations and some information on materiality, use, number of storeys, and the possible construction date of each building (Kuruppu and Wijesuriya 1992). Although not an exhaustive inventory of buildings in the Fort, this document has nonetheless been used as the key reference to guide the preservation, alteration, or new construction of buildings within the Fort. The development regulations also emphasize adhering to some architectural attributes that are assumed to be defining traits of streetscapes of the Fort (Government of Sri Lanka 2009). The intent has been to keep a semblance of historic façades within the Fort, rather than to sustain an authentic physical fabric. Even after its inscription as a World Heritage site and its gradual recognition as a tourist heritage destination, Galle Fort continued primarily as a residential town for a mixed Muslim and Sinhalese population.3 However, gentrification of the town commenced slowly in the late 1990s, and by 2001, gentrification of Galle Fort was clearly visible (Abeynayake et al. 2001). This change gradually accelerated in the early 2000s when the government temporarily lifted the ban on ‘foreign-land tax’ (tax of 100 per cent on the transfer of property to non-Sri Lankans), which had prevented or restricted foreigners from purchasing properties in Sri Lanka.4 International investors bought heritage properties in Galle Fort boosting prices and promoting gentrification by buying out the original owners, in order to secure second homes (for wealthy Europeans) (Dijkgraaf 2003: 35). 464

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The tsunami that hit the coast of Sri Lanka in late-December 2004 further fuelled the real estate market and captured the attention of the international community when a number of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) established their offices in the Fort for post-disaster recovery work. The Dutch government in 2009 funded conservation work on the tsunami-damaged rampart walls. Approximately US$3 million was allocated for conservation efforts, which also renovated over fifty-five houses (Owen-Edmunds 2009) – the first such effort to conserve the Fort’s material heritage. Although the Galle Fort was being gradually gentrified during this stage, it took a more pronounced turn after the end of the three-decade-long civil war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009.5 As a corollary, with greater political stability, a triggered acceleration in the real estate market in Galle Fort encouraged more residents to sell their properties to expatriates, local/foreign tourist agencies, and a few wealthy local celebrities.6 By 2011, of approximately 360 town houses in the Galle Fort, 90 houses were owned by foreigners, which is more than 25% of the total.7 By 2013 it is believed that close to 100 houses were owned (27.7%) by foreigners. With the completion of the Southern Expressway in 2011, the ease of access to the Fort became an added incentive for the increase in prices of heritage properties (Winter 2016). Consequent to the new property law, sale of land to foreigners was prohibited in the 2013 budget.8 By this stage however, gentrification was becoming pronounced with a rapid increase in land prices within the Fort, encouraging investors to buy its properties.9 With many long-time residents moving out, the original town houses were rapidly converted to villas, guesthouses, restaurants, spas, clothing shops and, especially, jewellery shops, mostly owned and run by non-residents. Lacking a management plan for either tourism or conservation, the Fort was left largely unprotected which led to major transformations in its physical and social structures.

The endangered heritage in Galle Fort Gentrification and heritagescaping Gentrification in Galle Fort occurs in its social, economic, and architectural spheres, and socioeconomic gentrification is closely tied to the heritagescaping of its architectural fabric and vice versa. Daher (1999) points out that emphasis placed on a monument-centric conservation approach encourages an attachment to old buildings, which most often leads to commodification of buildings with the priority of accumulating capital over the welfare of host communities. Such an approach indirectly transforms lively meaningful places into staged artefacts through museumification of the built heritage, a process currently underway in Galle Fort. Moreover, along with gentrification, the real estate market of Galle Fort has had discernible effects on the socio-economic, use, and activity patterns of the place, transforming the authentic identity and sense of place of the location. Gentrification has decreased the number in the local community, rapidly commercialized the environment and given rise to uncontrolled cultural tourism in Galle Fort (Rajapakse 2018). It has disrupted the way of life of the host community, which might eventually lead to a total displacement of the local population. As Winter (2016) states, loss of community is a by-product of the World Heritage designation of inhabited cultural landscapes that continues to go undocumented and ignored. This tourist-driven gentrification has geared heritagescaping of the properties in Galle Fort both by the private and state sectors without a systematic regulatory framework for development control or heritage conservation. In addition to continuing the practice of facadism and adaptive re-use of buildings, the form and design of historic buildings are being severely altered and expanded to accommodate new uses with no regard to their historic authenticity, which has yet to be studied (Figure 27.3). These developments have been identified as the primary threat to the OUV of Galle Fort ‘with no obvious immediate solution’ (ICOMOS 2016: 22).10 As Winter (2016) states, there 465

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Figure 27.3 A historic property that had been previously restored to its original status with funding from the government of the Netherlands is now under radical alteration and expansion. Source: Kapila D. Silva

is a new aesthetic that architects are pushing in Galle Fort, which is a form of heritagescaping that focuses on ‘comfort aesthetics’ that cater to tourists. This aesthetic is based on specific high-style design choices, popularized by a particular school of thought in Sri Lankan architecture in the midtwentieth century and celebrated in a multitude of coffee table books depicting a preferred style for contemporary tropical Asian domestic and hospitality spaces. Aesthetics, as a mark of gentrifiers’ distinction is always critical as an embodied disposition of gentrification (Zukin 2016). The townhouse verandah, which is now recognized as a significant element in the typo-morphological identity of Galle Fort, received minimum recognition prior to the early 2000s from the residents and was closed up in many homes, especially belonging to Muslim residents for cultural reasons. The verandah gained recognition as an aesthetic element that strengthened heritage identity around 2009 after over 50 houses were introduced with the verandah through conservation efforts supported by 466

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Figure 27.4 A collapsed and neglected historic property owned by the government. Source: Kapila D. Silva

a grant from the Dutch government.11 This element not only redefined a new aesthetic in heritage identity but was later responsible for some controversial social and economic changes to the place that escalated between 2013 and 2016. The negligence of certain properties, both by the private sector as well as the state, has led to the decay and collapse of historic buildings leading to the question of public safety in their use (Divaina 2017b, 2017c; Figure 27.4). Some residents point to the disrepair of buildings owned by the government to validate the steps they have taken to repair their own properties and to justify the ruthless architectural changes they made during such renovations. This cumulative drastic alteration of the vernacular fabric of the Fort necessitates a review of the authenticity and integrity of its social and physical heritage. These socio-spatial transformations indeed raise the question of the value of the Fort’s urban heritage to its resident stakeholders. The aesthetics of the place have become more important for consumption than the authenticity of the place (Zukin 2009).

Community values vs official/expert values Galle Fort has been an inhabited-living-heritage site with an evolving residential population for the past 400 years. Yet, no community engagement exists in the heritage management of Galle Fort despite the fact that residents are considered the primary stakeholders of the Fort’s heritage and future. 467

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The aspect of a ‘living place’ – how the resident community sees itself within the place and how the residents connect with their heritage – has not been addressed. The heritage value of Galle Fort is believed to be objective, intrinsic to the material fabric of the place, and to have remained constant even before the Fort was ascribed World Heritage status in 1988, despite the flaws of such views being widely discussed (Labadi 2013; Silva 2015). A community-based reading of urban heritage may not necessarily fall within the conventional definition and understanding of heritage values; yet a narrative of community values is an indispensable aspect of heritage, the mechanism by which a community connects to the past, present, and future of the place. Unfortunately, no effort has been made to develop a clear and comprehensive vision for the place based on a shared understanding of both official values and community values.

Rapid transformation of community values Heritage is mostly appreciated by and meaningful to members of small local groups with shared cultural and historical experiences and emotional connections to their heritage (Zimmerman 2013). This applies very much to Galle Fort. The architecture of the fortifications and town houses was not necessarily a part of their recognized heritage. What the community valued most was the intra- and intercommunity relationships that were strong and unique to the place through kinship structures and ethnic harmony among residents.12 This was their heritage (Rajapakse 2013). A tremendous sense of pride and status also emerged through the ownership of heritage properties, especially after Galle Fort received the World Heritage status. Since late 2000s, the pride of being owners of heritage properties gained a new significance in terms of the economic value of the place which was at this point represented in the tremendous rise in the monetary value of heritage properties. For those who had no intention of selling heritage properties, there was the option of improving their financial status by engaging in activities related to heritage tourism. By 2013, many of the verandahs of the town houses were partially or in total given out on rent mainly as gem and jewellery shops. This intrusion not only took away the living layer that was fronting the streets, but further isolated the community connections they had with their neighbours and friends along the street for generations. At this stage, the residents were sensing a deterioration in the physical and residential character of Galle Fort in the transformation of the original use of the street-front verandahs and the street. The major tension and risk around 2012 were over the new community – the foreigners who were buying the properties of Galle Fort. As one resident mentioned: ‘Foreigners are buying all our land, and the normal lives of the residents are being compromised. People are caught up in business activities related to tourism; as if they cannot make a living without foreign tourists.’ The part of the community involved in businesses related to heritage tourism were positive about the tourism boom in the Galle Fort; they were under the impression, that properties owned or rented by foreigners better maintained the heritage characteristics of the location compared to those owned by locals. The full force of commercial gentrification accelerated after 2012, increasing the sense of loss of community and liveability. By 2016, the multiple forces at play among the stakeholders in Galle Fort were complex and contradictory. The social value was most important to the resident community around 2016, which was expressed through overall community links that were sustained and were still strong as before. The affiliation of the residents to the place was still quite pronounced in their expressions in terms of the deep roots they felt for the place which represented their attachment to place. The second most prominent value was represented through a sense of wellbeing they felt which was partially derived by the physical morphological definitions of Galle Fort as a separate walled entity, which gave them a sense of security and individuality as a small confined community. The social aspect of it was the comfort derived by 468

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living among a known community for a considerable period, most for generations (Rajapakse 2018). The economic value was considered the third most important value to the residents in 2016. The verandah and living areas rented out for business purposes contributed to the economic value related to tourism of town houses. Three residents interviewed in 2013 who rejected the use of their properties for commercial purposes were doing just that by 2016. While the lack of community relationships was expressed explicitly by most residents it was viewed as a by-product of the commercial gentrification which was now bringing in a new unknown community to the Fort for business purposes. This ‘temporary’ community (engaged in tourism and commercial activities) resides within the Fort and consists of those managing the guest houses and hotels, administration and minor staff/janitors, cooks, and salesmen working in various rental shops and so-called tuk-tuk drivers. These new workers within the Fort were seen as outsiders by local residents – unfamiliar usurpers with no ties to the Fort – leading to unheard-of thefts as well as the monopoly of limited resources such as parking lots, etc. for their benefit. Residents were beginning to feel like ‘second class citizens’ within their own home community. They felt that their voices and grievances were unheard by the heritage authorities. The residents were vocal about their lack of role in the management of the place. With heritagescaping taking place at a rapid rate, the residents had pressing issues related to the conservation of the town houses,13 to conserving the living heritage or rather the needs of the inhabited community and upkeep and maintenance of the heritage site. By 2017, Galle Fort was referred to as a ‘commercial space’ by a resident who had been living in the Fort since 1960 and had witnessed its transformation. Most residents referred to Galle Fort as a village transformed into a ‘commercial city’ where ‘every bit of space is used to make money.’ Another resident argued that the community now has a commercial interest in the place and put their houses into commercial use. Yet another resident opined that ‘money talks’ in Galle Fort right now. They also lamented that the commercial aspect was out of control with low quality shops and hotels providing services at a high cost and that the commercial element has spread over 36–40 per cent of properties (Ranawaka 2014; Rizwie 2016). The economic opportunity presented by owning a heritage property has reached almost a peak where the verandah of these town houses have been offered exorbitantly high rents in order to convert them for commercial purposes. In an interview conducted in 2013, this offer ranged from US$500–750, while in 2017, a resident was offered US$4,000 for the verandah in her two-storey house for commercial purposes. While residents have resigned to the fact that the ‘social fabric’ was no more and although the harmonious communal relationships continued with the remaining community, the communal contacts are much lesser than what it was and ‘only happy memories remain’, as expressed by a resident. According to our longitudinal-study results, community values transform more rapidly than officially established values, which are assumed to be frozen in time and based on a rather limited understanding that is focused on the significance of the physical attributes of a heritage location. The challenge in promoting community engagement in heritage management is due to this dichotomy where the experts are stuck with the official values established at the onset of the World Heritage designation, whereas the community has no limitation in defining and interpreting what they feel, experience and understand about the place. This notion may not be defined as an identified ‘value’ in heritage discourse but happens freely and partly in response to the rapid economic and political transformation that is taking place in Galle Fort daily. Moreover, officials appear blissfully unaware of the forces at play in transforming the community in the heritage locale. Interviews conducted with residents in 2017, demonstrate that they have accepted the rapid transformation that is taking place. Given that change is too rapid to comprehend, one resident stated that he has simply come to accept that the transformation is inevitable, unstoppable and irreversible. Residents are still nostalgic about the community ties that have been severed through the process of 469

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gentrification, increased tourism, and commercialization of the built fabric. While referring to days gone by as quiet, peaceful, and enjoyable socially, symbolically and spiritually, they agree that it is now impossible to go back in time, but they must keep up with the socio-economic transformations that are going on. They have also acknowledged the fact that owning heritage properties provides financial benefits within the new economic climate of the Fort.

Local community as agents of change Many residents who were previously living a quiet life in their heritage homes have now resolved to rent a room or two in their homes or use them for other commercial activities. They engage in heritagescaping by renovating and re-introducing architectural components like the verandah to the street front, as a means of ‘adding historic value’ to their homes and increasing the economic value and potential of their property. The residents are partially responsible for the uncontrolled commercialization that is taking place in the Fort and mostly responsible for the introduction of an inauthentic aesthetic to the built fabric. They are generally unaware of what is ‘authentic’ about the built fabric they occupy and simply copy their neighbours in superficial architectural details to make their homes appear ‘more historic’. The concept of ‘weekend architecture’ or ‘nocturnal architecture’ is reaching a peak at this point. Heritage managers and residents both used these terms during interviews to refer to the illegal construction and renovation of town houses over the weekend or at night to prevent being discovered by heritage authorities. Residents aspire to achieve financial benefits (prioritizing the economic value) through upgrading heritage properties. This behaviour not only violates heritage regulations but also contributes to the ongoing commercial and tourism gentrification, which drastically alters the historic and architectural values of the place. The residents are thus directly responsible for the very risks that they lament that occur within the Fort. Court cases abound regarding illegal constructions (for example, Divaina 2013); nonetheless, many other residents have been able to bypass existing laws to their benefit through political connections and influence. Meanwhile, residents accuse certain state personnel related to heritage governance of the Fort for violating heritage regulations, by either helping certain property owners or businesses to bypass regulations by designing adaptive re-use and new construction projects that do not adhere to heritage values and attributes (Abeynayake et al. 2001). These accusations and counter-accusations are now a regular part of the politics of heritagescaping at Galle Fort. These claims on both sides are at least partially true, indicating that both residents and heritage officials alike shoulder the responsibility of being agents of hasty change of Galle Fort’s heritage.

Dilemma faced by heritage managers Akin to how residents have slowly acknowledged that the transformation of the Fort’s urban heritage is inevitable and irreversible, heritage managers are also gradually, albeit grudgingly, coming to terms with the drastic changes. The excessive and uncontrolled heritage commodification, social change, and heritagescaping at play in Galle Fort have overwhelmed local heritage managers. Having to pay constant attention to these issues give them little opportunity to either re-evaluate what is going on within the place or to create an overall vision and take necessary action. Their focus is thus on short-term, immediate goals to resolve the pressing issues, rather than having an overarching perspective of heritage management. Heritage managers at both local and national levels agree that authentic form, design, and characteristics of most heritage properties have been altered, and that the integrity of the physical fabric is questionable. Nevertheless, they still hold on to the ‘official’ values of the place by necessity of their work. They are acutely aware of their lack of authority to mitigate the enduring cultural 470

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commodification, gentrification, and heritagescaping as well as the political vision of turning Galle Fort into a tourist enclave. Maintaining some sense of historic ambience in the built fabric is becoming the accepted norm among heritage managers.

Conflicting aspirations for Galle Fort There are paradoxical visions and values related to Galle Fort among officials and the community residing within the Fort. Heritage officials and experts responsible for the sustainable management of the heritage site place priorities on the management of the material heritage of the Fort. Some residents in their personal vision for the Fort assign greater importance to conserving the ‘living’ aspect of heritage. However, as key stakeholders of the place they have not been involved in formulating the heritage management plan for the Fort, and thus their objectives and vision go unnoticed and unrecognized. The others who are directly involved in implementing the special planning and building regulations within Galle Fort focus on the various material aspects related to the renovation and conservation of the physical fabric. Their priority rests predominantly in conserving the physical infrastructure of the place. With the justification that the physical morphological structure withstood the coming and going of various communities for the past 400 years,14 they believe that if the physical infrastructure of the Galle Fort is sustained and consolidated, it will last for another 400 years. They see the built fabric of the Fort as very adaptable and older buildings and their spatial and morphological patterns as resilient to changing socio-economic conditions. Yet, a clear understanding of what is authentic in the physical heritage and identity of the place remains undefined and ambiguous, leaving room for a superficial interpretation of the aesthetics of the place.15 The administration of the heritage management of the Fort is vested in the Galle Heritage Foundation, under the Galle Heritage Foundation Act of 1994, in a board of 14 members who represent different state authorities that deal with urban development, public infrastructure, public safety, archaeology, cultural heritage, and the like. While a few members of the board have greater power and responsibility in the direct management of the heritage site and also in consensus building, others lack the required expertise or vision to do so. Two residents are included in the board to represent the local community. However, residents we interviewed had no information on the selection process, nor on the number, role, and effectiveness of these representatives, and in turn lacked confidence in the board. The staff of the Foundation highlights the lack of resources and legal authority for the Foundation’s difficulties in carrying out their mission. So far, its role has been to coordinate the activities of state authorities with respect to heritage issues of Galle Fort; it cannot police the violation of regulations, conservation activities, tourism, or gentrification. The effectiveness of the Foundation’s activities appears to depend largely on the charisma, political influence, heritage expertise, and commitment of its chairperson, who is appointed by the Minister of Cultural Affairs for a limited term. As governments change, officials assigned to this position could sway the focus of the Foundation in unpredictable and unproductive ways, inferring from the endangered status of Galle Fort’s heritage so far. The Foundation’s role as a body that coordinates different essential services is vital for a successful integrated heritage conservation and socio-economic development of Galle Fort (ICOMOS 2016). Lack of proper authority, resources, and functional mechanisms undermine the Foundation’s viability. The impetus for turning Galle Fort into a tourist enclave also comes from the central government. Although political power has been shifting from one political party to another since 2009, the central administration has slowly but surely been working towards this vague goal that has never been clearly articulated, widely discussed, or fully assessed. Plans to move most of the state functions out of the Fort and convert the vacant properties into tourism-related amenities and to beautify the town are aspects of this agenda (Divaina 2014, 2015). Another effort was to develop the Galle Port to accommodate cruise ships, which had to be re-evaluated due to the impact on the heritage of marine 471

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archaeology and on Galle Fort (ICOMOS 2016). The government has unwittingly become an agent of all ills associated with the endangerment of the Fort’s heritage and social life. There appears to be contradictions in the way different groups of residents value their heritage too. Some influential residents take a leadership role in the community with their own agendas which may relate not so much to the site’s conservation but to achieve financial gain. This partially reflects the complexity of a heritage place with multiple stakeholders and agendas with contested values and needs.

Challenges in managing the urban heritage of Galle Fort At present, stakeholders do not hold a common vision for the sustainable heritage conservation and socio-economic development of Galle Fort. The multitude of stakeholders range from state institutions that have power to implement heritage policies, practices, and regulations to the layers of residents, property owners, business owners, and local and foreign tourists operating within the Galle Fort. A pressing task is to arrive at a consensus on a well-thought out, shared vision for Galle Fort that is beneficial to all parties that will sustain the community that gives life and meaning to the story of the place.16 A mechanism is needed for collaborative heritage governance that brings multiple stakeholders together to actively participate in the processes of decision-making, implementation, and regulation for an integrated heritage conservation and urban development. It also requires a serious rethinking of the current top-down heritage management practice in the country and a commitment to develop mechanisms for localizing heritage stewardship (Silva 2013, 2017). A shared vision for the future of Galle Fort also entails questioning the radical sociophysical transformation and the rapidly changing heritage values of the place. Is the nature, extent, and rate of gentrification acceptable, to be mitigated, or to be continued until it loses all semblances of the local community? Is the nature, extent, and rate of alteration to the physical fabric acceptable as an ‘authentic’ representation of the historic attributes of the place? Are the new architectural aesthetics to be propagated as the new norm? Should everyone collectively redefine a novel set of heritage values to represent the existing reality and change of the place, which will then become the object of protection? What would it do to the World Heritage status of Galle Fort?

Conclusion To successfully manage heritage in an inhabited urban site is first to accept that ‘change’ is inevitable, ever-present, and a fundamental attribute of the place’s heritage, and then to develop mechanisms to manage the nature, direction, rate, and extent of change towards a desired and negotiated outcome. The ongoing heritage discourse at Galle Fort is a product of not having such a view and a plan in place from the very inception of gaining its global heritage status. The lack of a clear collective vision for the place, a finely crafted management strategy for reaching that outcome, and effective instruments to guide heritage conservation and development activities toward that end has led to the present situation. Unfortunately, the 2015 Integrated Management Plan does not present a clear, innovative, and shared vision for the future of Galle Fort that seriously considers the endangered situation of its heritage. The actions prescribed in it would be implemented over five or more years, by which time the entire Fort could be radically transformed, especially when the rate of continuing change is considered.17 Zukin (2016) points out that gentrification is widely known but often unanticipated. This is true in the case of Galle Fort as well; everyone knew it could happen but had no plans to deal with it. Additionally, when visible effects were evident, no mechanism or will existed to mitigate it. Ironically, all stakeholders actively or passively contribute to it for economic gain. The resident community is now 472

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in a precarious place: on the one hand being responsible for much of the change, and on the other, suffering the most from this change, losing long-time residents, a sense of community, cherished memories of the place, and future economic gain due to competitive powerful external forces. Our interviews showed that they are under tremendous stress, having realized this dilemma, yet unable to take control over the situation. Engaging the resident community actively and seriously in the integrated heritage management process is therefore a critical necessity.18 Current discourse acknowledges that heritage values are ambiguous and ephemeral, and their definitions become more complex when the number of stakeholders in a heritage location increases (De la Torre 2005; Silva 2017). This challenges the theoretical approach towards value-based heritage management, especially in places such as Galle Fort, where external and internal dynamics exert influence on the ascribed heritage values of the place. According to our interviews, the stakeholders of the Fort are not explicitly coming together to re-negotiate and re-define the values related to the place. Nonetheless, they are implicitly coming to terms with the enduring rapid transformation and seem to be re-adjusting their definition of the place’s heritage values. If accommodating change is an integral part of urban heritage management, these unspoken renegotiations of heritage values ought to be openly discussed to re-orient the goals and strategies of safeguarding the heritage of Galle Fort. This also requires re-thinking of the values-based approach to heritage management.

Notes 1 There was no statement on the Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) of Galle Fort nor a heritage management plan in place during the time of its inscription as a World Heritage site in 1988. 2 Boxem and Fuhren (2011) developed a list of referenced attributes thought to embody the OUV of Galle Fort. The value categories include social, economic, political, historic, aesthetic, scientific, and ecological, almost all defined in terms of historic factors and tangible attributes. 3 The 2001 census recorded 1,993 people in Galle Fort, of which 50% were Muslim, 47.7% were Sinhalese and 2.3% belonged to other ethnic groups (Paranavitana 2005). The population of Galle Fort in 2011 was 961, of which 49.8% were Sinhalese, 49.11% were Muslims, and 1% belong to other ethnic groups (Liyanage 2012). An informal survey carried out by one of the authors in 2018 found 803 people, with 61% Muslims and 35% Sinhalese. An accurate up-to-date census of Galle Fort in terms of local population, foreign residents, property ownership, etc. ‘has proved to [be] unsuccessful with the Galle Municipal Council, the Census Department, and even electoral register all coming up with conflicting figures’ (Rizwie 2016: 29). 4 The 100% ban on purchase of property by non-citizens was abolished on April 1, 2002 in a proposal in the Budget Speech. The then Minister of Finance said that the tax on the purchase of immovable property by non-citizens was ‘difficult to identify and is unproductive’ (The Sunday Island 2004). 5 The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam was a militant separatist organization of the country’s Tamil minority that was based in North and Eastern Sri Lanka from the mid-1970s to 2009. 6 In 1992 the average price of a home in Galle Fort was US$20,000–25,000. By 2000 this had risen to between US$125,000 to US$200,000 and by 2004 prices had almost doubled to US$250,000 to US$400,000 (OwenEdmunds 2009). 7 This is based on a survey carried out by the Village Coordinating Officer (Grāma Niladhāri) of Galle Fort. In 2003, there were 326 houses in the Fort of which sixty were owned by expatriates (Owen-Edmunds 2009). A document prepared by the Galle Office of the Urban Development Authority of Sri Lanka reports that, in 2015, there were 275 houses in the Fort that had some form of commercial use. The accuracy of this latter data set, however, cannot be verified. 8 Data from www.lankapropertyweb.com/features/property-buying-for-foreigners.php (accessed 29 May 2018) 9 In 2018, a ‘perch’ of land (25m2 or 272.25ft2) in the Galle Fort is believed to cost approximately US$130,000. 10 Another threat to the OUV of Galle Fort is the illegal building of the Galle Cricket Club on the historic open space (the esplanade) directly outside the Fort (ICOMOS 2016). 11 Though some residents considered the verandah a mandated entity, by 2011, it was gradually gaining acceptance from the community, through the recognition and attention it received from tourists passing by and was later exploited for commercial functions by 2013.

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Amanda Rajapakse and Kapila D. Silva 12 Abeywardana, Court, and Thompson (2016) had conducted a survey on community values of heritage in Galle Fort. While their findings are presented within a conventional framework of heritage values (such as, historic, architectural, economic, etc.) with an emphasis on tangible heritage attributes, their findings clearly indicate the sense of community among the longtime residents as a paramount value associated with the Fort. Another study found that residents predominantly ascribe similar social values to the Fort (Sanjeewani 2012). 13 The residents were concerned that the various heritage institutions worked in isolation and no mechanism was in place to monitor ad-hoc constructions and businesses conducted within the Fort. Conservation regulations were strictly enforced on some residents in renovating their town houses while others had a free hand in doing the same. This, in their opinion, was clearly destroying the physical heritage of the Galle Fort (Rajapakse 2018). 14 The chronology of this demographic change include: primarily the Dutch community, to a mixed Dutch Burger community and British until the mid-1800; after which the Muslim community was allowed to live within the Fort and later a local community consisting of primarily the Muslim population and Sinhalese until the early 2000s, when the built fabric again accommodated a more diverse multi-ethnic community ranging from Europeans to the remaining local community at present. 15 An example of this situation is the ensuing debate over the proposed paved promenade on the ramparts of the Fort. Local politicians and residents want it built on the ramparts, and the heritage managers worry about the structural destruction to the ramparts from the expected heavy traffic on the promenade, since the ramparts are in fact built out of clay with rubble cladding (Divaina 2017a). 16 Although the Integrative Management Plan was officially prepared very recently, it is not based on the involvement of all the stakeholders related to the place. In terms of state institutions that form the Galle Heritage Foundation, not even all 14 members have been represented in establishing the Management Plan nor a statement of common agreement and acceptance of the Plan for Galle Fort. 17 A tourism management plan has also been developed for Galle Fort, although when its prescribed action may take effect is currently unclear. These actions could also be too late or slow to address the pressing issues related to tourism. ICOMOS Advisory Mission in 2016 has indicated their concerns over the visitor capacity management in Galle (ICOMOS 2016: 22). 18 Heritage mangers claim that representative samples of all stakeholders were surveyed in the preparation of the Integrated Management Plan and the tourism management plan. They consider this as a fulfilment of ‘community participation’ in heritage management. On the contrary, such a survey is just one aspect of effective stakeholder engagement (Andriof, Waddock, Husted, and Rahman 2017).

References Abeynayake, R., Herath, R., and de Silva, M. (2001) ‘Galle Fort – An absolutely galling attack’, The Sunday Times. Available at: www.sundaytimes.lk/030622/plus/1.html (accessed 22 May 2018). Abeywardana, N., Court, S., and Thompson, J. (2016) ‘Assessing community values in the management of World Heritage: A case study from the Old Town of Galle and its Fortifications, Sri Lanka,’ Journal of Archaeology and Heritage Studies, 5(3): 189–213. Andriof, J., Waddock, S., Husted, B., and Rahman, S. S. (eds) (2017) Unfolding Stakeholder Thinking: Theory, Responsibility and Engagement, New York: Routledge. Boxem, R. and Fuhren, R. (2011) Cultural Heritage and Sustainability: Galle as a Case Study, unpublished Master of Science Thesis, Eindhoven, Netherlands: Eindhoven University of Technology. Daher, R. F. (1999) ‘Gentrification and the politics of power, capital and culture in an emerging Jordanian heritage identity,’ Traditional Dwellings and Settlement Review, X(II): 33–45. De la Torre, M. (2005) ‘Introduction’. In M. de la Torre (ed.), Heritage Values in Site Management: Four Case Studies, Los Angeles, CA: The Getty Center: 3–9. Dijkgraaf, C. (2003) ‘How World Heritage sites disappear: Four case studies’. In W. Logan, M. N. Craith, and K. Ullrich (eds), A Companion to Heritage Studies, Chichester: Wiley Blackwell: 32–34. Divaina (2013) ‘Puravidya niyamayanta patahaniva Galu Kotuve nivasak pilisakara kalata dada’ (Penalties for violating archaeological regulations in renovating a house in the Galle Fort), Divaina Daily, online, 10 September 2013. Available at: www.divaina.com/2013/09/10/news24.html (accessed 10 September 2013). ——— (2014) ‘Galu Landesi rohala supiri velanda sankeernayak vei’ (The historic Dutch hospital at Galle Fort is now a super market), Divaina Daily, online, 28 September 2014. Available at: www.divaina.com/2014/09/28/eco nomic01.html (accessed 28 September 2014).

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Transient heritage values in Galle Fort ———(2015) ‘Galu Kotuve kauthukagara siyallama pitathata: Agamathi upades dei’ (All museums within Galle Fort to be moved out: The Prime Minister advises), Divaina Daily, online, 23 October 2015. Available at: www.divaina. com/2015/10/23/provin01.html (accessed 23 October 2015). ——— (2017a) ‘Anathurudayakai: Galu Kotu pavura kada vatennata peraya … aluth mantheeruva gana matha gatum’(Danger: before the Galle Fort ramparts collapse … debates on the proposed promenade), Divaina Daily, online, 15 January 2017. Available at: www.divaina.com/2017/01/15/feature25.html (accessed 15 January 2017). ——— (2017b) ‘Galu Kotuve rajaye godanagili vinasha mukhaye’ (dereliction of government buildings in the Galle Fort), Divaina Daily, online, 21 April 2017. Available at: www.divaina.com/2017/04/21/provin04.html (accessed 21 April 2017). ——— (2017c) ‘Nisi nadaththuvak nathiva Galu Kotuva garavatime thathvayaka’ (decaying of the Galle Fort without proper maintenance), Divaina Daily, online, 5 October 2017. Available at: www.divaina.com/daily/index.php/pra deshiya-puwath/509-2017-10-05-12-22-23 (accessed 05 October 2017). Government of Sri Lanka (2009) ‘Special regulations for World Heritage City of Galle Fort’. In Gazette Extraordinary of the Republic of Sri Lanka, Part 1/Section 1, 04 June 2009, Colombo, Sri Lanka: The Urban Development Authority of Sri Lanka:109–117. ——— (2015) World Heritage Property of Old Town of Galle and Its Fortifications: Integrated Management System, Colombo, Sri Lanka: The Department of Archaeology of Sri Lanka. ICOMOS (1988) Advisory Board Evaluation on Galle, Paris: UNESCO World Heritage Centre. ——— (2016) Report on the ICOMOS Advisory Mission to Old Town of Galle and its Fortifications (Sri Lanka)- 11 to 15 July 2016, Paris: UNSECO World Heritage Centre. Kuruppu, I., and Wijesuriya, G. (1992) Ancient Ceylon: The Journal of the Department of Archaeology, Sri Lanka – Special Volume: The Conservation of the Galle Fort and Its Environs, Colombo, Sri Lanka: The Department of Archaeology of Sri Lanka. Labadi, S. (2013) UNESCO, Cultural Heritage, and Outstanding Universal Value: Value-based Analysis of the World Heritage and Intangible Cultural Conventions, Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press. Liyanage, M. P. (2012, December 17) ‘Population down in Galle Fort’, Daily News. Available at: www.dailynews.lk/ 2012/12/07/news21.asp (accessed 24 June 2013). Owen-Edmunds, L. (2009) ‘A critical review of the responsible tourism issues in Galle Fort, Sri Lanka using the triple bottom line approach’. Available at: https://adlibconsulting.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/galle-fort-triplebottom-line-responsible-tourism-iisue.pdf (accessed 31 May 2018). Paranavitana, K. D. (2005) Galle Fort, the Heritage City, Galle: The Ruhunu Tourist Bureau. Rajapakse, A. (2013) ‘The “sense of place” and diminishing living heritage in the World Heritage site of Galle Fort, Sri Lanka’. In The Proceedings of the ICOMOS Thailand International Conference: Asian forgotten Heritage – Perception, Preservation and Presentation, The Faculty of Architecture, University of Chiang Mai, Thailand, 205–221. ——— (2018) ‘Exploring the living heritage of Galle Fort: Residents’ views on heritage values and cultural significance,’ Journal of Heritage Management, 2(2): 95–111. Ranawaka, C. (2014) ‘Tourism and gender relations in Galle Fort, Sri Lanka’, St. Paul’s Annals of Tourism Research, 16: 65–67. Rizwie, R. (2016) ‘The gentrification of Galle Fort,’The Sunday Observer, 7 February 2016: 29. Sanjeewani, H. L. G. (2012) The transformation of space in the Galle Fort, Sri Lanka, by its inhabitants, Unpublished Master’s Thesis, Muncie, IN: Ball State University. Silva, K. D. (2013) ‘Epilogue: Prospects for Asian heritage management’. In K. D. Silva and N. K. Chapagain (eds), Asian Heritage Management: Contexts, Concerns, and Prospects, London: Routledge: 345–355. ——— (2015) ‘Paradigm shifts in global heritage discourse,’ Space and Communication, 1(1): 1–15. ——— (2017) ‘Epilogue: Prospects for managing South Asian cultural landscapes’. In K. D. Silva and A. Sinha (eds), Cultural Landscapes of South Asia: Studies in Heritage Conservation and Management, London: Routledge: 258–268. The Sunday Island (2004) ‘Property tax on foreigners: Revisiting the Ilangaratne Budget of 1963’, The Sunday Island, 12 September. Available at: www.island.lk/2004/09/12/business4.html (accessed 12 September 2004). Winter, T. (2016) ‘Heritagescaping and the aesthetics of refuge: Challenges to urban sustainability’. In W. Logan, M. N. Craith, and K. Ullrich (eds), A Companion to Heritage Studies, Chichester: Wiley Blackwell: 189–202. Zimmerman, L. J. (2013) ‘Is ‘the past is a public heritage’ democratizing or alienating?’ Available at: www.academia. edu/16637059/Is_The_Past_is_a_Public_Heritage_Democratizing_or_Alienating (accessed 28 May 2018). Zukin, S. (2009) ‘Changing landscapes of power: Opulence and the urge for authenticity,’ International Journal of Urban and Regional research, 33(2): 543–553. ——— (2016) ‘Gentrification in three paradoxes,’ City and Community, 15(3): 202–207.

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28 CONSERVING THE HISTORIC PORT TOWN OF TOMO, SETO INLAND SEA, JAPAN Repositioning urban heritage in the ‘shrinking society’ Yushi Utaka

Introduction 1

In this chapter, I narrate the story of the historic port town of Tomo in the Seto Inland Sea of Japan, discussing how its residents dealt with urban development and argued for heritage conservation in a time of economic and demographic decline in the town and in the country in general. Located in western Japan, the Seto Inland Sea is 450 km long with a coastline of 7,230 km. The etymology of ‘Seto’ is believed to be a ‘narrow channel or valley’, and the sea is characterized by countless islands and channels. The beauty of Seto has been described as hakusha-seishou – ‘white sand beaches and green pine trees’ – and the region is blessed with a moderate climate and beautiful scenery. Following Japan’s development, the nature and heritage of the region have been lost amid waves of construction, the growth of sophisticated freighter ports, the construction of the world’s longest bridge, and massive land reclamation projects. Like the other small towns of the region, the port town of Tomo has also faced the pressures of development. Tomo is located in the city of Fukuyama, Hiroshima Prefecture, on the northern shore of the central Seto Inland Sea. It is connected with other port towns and maintained maritime transport and fishing industry throughout history. Following the spread of modern industries and transportation modes, Tomo has slipped into decay. However, its historic townscape has survived. Tomo still looks as Chikkyo Ono,2 a renowned Japanese artist, saw it over a century ago (Figure 28.1). In the 1980s, proposals for a cross-bay bridge and a reclamation project were officially submitted after many years of petitioning by the local community for upgrading Tomo’s urban and port functions. Immediately after the official announcement of the project, the response from the public was complex. Conservation groups voiced their disapproval. They claimed that Tomo possesses irreplaceable historical significance and could be a candidate for the inclusion on the World Heritage List. Local authorities and pro-development groups expressed their disappointment with that reaction. The issue grew into a controversial one and resulted in a court case in 2007. Following this long debate in the court and in public, the local authority eventually withdrew the development proposal. Planning

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Figure 28.1 The townscape of Tomo. Source: Yushi Utaka

and conservation experts regarded it as a pioneering example of prioritizing heritage conservation by withdrawing the previously approved development plan. The case of Tomo has been referred to as ‘World Heritage litigation’. The public appears to have concluded that this confrontation is the result of outdated development methodology, old-fashioned administrative systems, and political chaos. In recent years, urban heritage has been subject to great concern: efforts have been made to not to sacrifice it to conventional development. Urban heritage is now accepted as a potential source of encouraging citizens’ cultural identity and as a pragmatic way to salvage local economies through tourism. Satoshi Morihisa (2016: 3) has pointed out that recently the public has shown more caution in accepting mega-scale or conventional development without decent re-examination of the plans. Yet, it is necessary to examine the accuracy of this assessment. More importantly, have Tomo’s residents benefited by retaining their heritage and losing the opportunity for development? Should this pioneering experience be accepted in the future for historic towns and cities in Japan? What could be the impact of such a scenario on the ‘shrinking society’3 of Japan in the times of population decline and aging, when a social restructuring has become an urgent matter?

Seto Inland Sea: natural beauty and development Origins of the region: peace with dynamism Since ancient times, the Seto Inland Sea has been a dynamic place of maritime transport and fisheries. For its coastal settlements, the shallow sea was suitable for setting up saltpans. The soil and climate are good for agriculture. The sea has also been the stage for notable historical events, played a part in establishing religious worship, has been a theatre for piracy and warfare, and for famous literary works. Until the end of the Edo period (1603–1868), maritime transport was dominant in the region. Innovation led to the provision of larger cargo ships and offshore navigation, which required fewer transit ports. Selected ports underwent dramatic growth in population and trade. To succeed in the rivalry among ports to provide attractive services, the harbours were evolved: new piers were built to accommodate larger cargo ships; shorelines were reclaimed to build shipyards and warehouses; new

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roads were built to provide transport links; and hinterlands were cleared to increase agricultural production. It was not only the Japanese who travelled over the Seto Inland Sea: it was also used by diplomatic mission from the Korean peninsula, Christian missionaries, and traders of the Dutch East India Company. Masanori Nishida (2007: 141–144) noted that from the late nineteenth century, western travellers have been fascinated by the beauty of the Seto Inland Sea and their narratives have influenced the Japanese perceptions of the place. Those cultural interactions helped to create new norms about that region of Seto that have continued to the present.

Booming Inland Sea: challenges as national development showcase Beginning in the Meiji period (1868–1912), social modernization took place in Japan and the government promoted the ‘wealth and power of the state’ to boost the country’s competitiveness with its overseas counterparts. As a result, the area around the Seto Inland Sea became the site for strategic military bases, heavy industrial plants, and growth of major cities, which were connected by railway networks. During the Second World War, those cities were identified as prime targets for air-raid by the American forces. Numerous towns and cultural heritages were destroyed. Fortunately, some smaller towns survived; Tomo was among them. Japan’s post-war development from the 1950s to 1970s was characterized by high economic growth and the promotion of industrial development. The area around the Seto Inland Sea again played a key part in Japan’s industrialization and engineering innovation. In 1962, the Japanese government established the Comprehensive National Development Plan. It designated 21 industrial development areas, seven of which were located around the Seto. The region’s industrial growth took place on land formerly used by the military in addition to the land reclaimed for saltpans. Over 450 km2 of the sea were reclaimed from 1898 to 2009. Seventy-eight per cent of such reclamation has taken place since the 1950s (Chugoku Regional Development Bureau 1975). The area has seen rapid construction of petrochemical complexes, steel factories, shipyards, and machinery firms. In the 1960s, its industrial production grew five times greater than the previous decade (Figure 28.2). To improve inter-regional transport, the Japanese government undertook the construction of major bridges, as the Sea is one of the busiest areas in the world for marine traffic. Three bridge systems linking Honshu and Shikoku island were eventually constructed. The first link was completed in 1988. The construction work faced enormous difficulties; however, the result was the world’s longest suspension bridge (3,911 m) over the Akashi Strait. Despite the significant achievement of this development, the total expenditure for constructing the three-bridge links amounted to 2.9 trillion yen, and paying back the associated debt will continue until 2059.4 The maritime sector has faced increased international competition. The flagship ports of the Seto Inland Sea now lag behind those of East Asian counterparts. The Plaza Accord in 1985 had a great influence on Japan’s trade and industrial sectors and led to the reduction of export competitiveness. Japan’s industrial firms moved their factories and markets to other Asian countries. Another factor was environmental damage that had a serious effect on the fishing industry. The natural environment of the sea was under legal protection, having been included among the first batch of the National Parks in 1934. Nonetheless, increased wastewater in the area around the Seto Inland Sea produced the phenomenon of red tides, which occurred over 300 times in 1975. The Seto Inland Sea was referred to as a ‘dying sea’ (Ue 2007: 80–82). In response, the Act on Special Measures Concerning Conservation of the Environment of the Seto Inland Sea was enacted in 1973. That legislation provided controls for trade effluents. In 1987, the Act on Development of Comprehensive Resort Areas was promulgated to provide

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Figure 28.2 Tomo, Fukuyama city, Hiroshima Prefecture, Seto Inland Sea. Source: Yushi Utaka

more recreational space. Those resorts, though, failed to be developed following the collapse of Japan’s ‘bubble economy’ in the early 1990s. The industrialized landscapes around coastal areas are a common sight. The area has closed factory yards, quays and shipyards, landfill sites and solar plants, and unoccupied land – all reflect the region’s economic slowdown. The Seto Inland Sea is another face of Japan’s ‘shrinking society’.

Repositioning the status of the heritages: creating destinations The beauty of the Seto Inland Sea has long been promoted to attract tourism. Shinya Hashizume (2014: 55) points out that tourism was regarded as a necessary means of acquiring foreign currency and gained importance in ‘tourism as state policy’, particularly before the Second World War. The earliest tourist destinations in the area of the Seto Inland Sea were established long before the modern period. For example, one of the most prominent cultural heritage in the region – Itsukushima Shrine – has long been revered for its beauty as it appears to float on the sea during the high tide. It is believed that the construction of Itsukushima Shrine was a result of early ocean civil engineering. Masayuki Miura (2007: 226–228) determined that the apparently floating shrine came about as a result of dredging so as to create its fine aesthetic appearance. To preserve the beauty of the shrine, Japan’s pioneering conservation policy – the Act for the Preservation for Shrines and Temples in 1897 – was implemented. In 1996, Itsukushima Shrine became recognized as a World Heritage Site, which led to greater tourist demand (Utaka 2015: 79–85). In recent years, the government has introduced amendments to legislation for heritage conservation with the aim to promote utilization of heritage sites rather than simply preserving them. The hakushaseishou of the Seto Inland Sea was sacrificed so as to support Japan’s growing economy in the creation

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of industrial landscapes. Now, Japan is refocusing on the conservation of the ‘survived’ cultural and natural heritages, which barely vanished from our visions.

Tomo: development and conservation of a historic port town Legacy of a port town Tomo means ‘archer’s left-wrist protector’, and the port got this name from its semi-circular coastline, which is backed by rows of houses with hills behind. To the west of the harbour and the town are steep mountains; small islands are located offshore to the east; the vast Seto Inland Sea lies to the south. Historically, Tomo’s location offered advantages in the port’s development, providing protection while waiting for tailwinds, offering defence, and allowing trade with hinterland towns. To accommodate larger cargo ships and permit smooth loading and unloading, extensive port facilities, such as a lighthouse, a quay, breakwaters, and an inspection office, were constructed during the Edo period. Those old port facilities remain today. The Japan ICOMOS national committee pointed out that Tomo is one of the few examples in Japan of a port with such a historical heritage (Japan ICOMOS 2007: 1). Historically, Japan’s port towns have had greater economic prosperity than hamlets and towns in the hinterland. That economic activity generated high urban density and a land shortage, which led to the development of unique urban settlements. Traditional townhouses (machiya) are the principal feature of Tomo’s architectural environment. The machiya is a widely observed type of residential buildings in Japan. They are wooden row houses, often incorporating stores that are built close together along streets. The buildings are deep with narrow fronts. The facades are simple, but their construction demands sophisticated craftsmanship. Earthen floor connects the front and rear of the building; rooms laid with tatami mat are set besides that earthen floor. Generally, the front part of the machiya is for business and the rear is for private use. The upper floor is often used for storage or by servants (Figure 28.3). Satoshi Kataoka (2010: 74–89) has described how in Tomo in the Edo period, various types of people undertook their business: traders, priests, wealthy merchants, fishermen, and harlots. By the end of the Edo period, the number of blacksmiths increased; their wealth grew, and they acquired many of Tomo’s larger companies. The diverse trades in Tomo developed their own communities. For example, Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines occupied the land on the foothills of the mountains; maritime traders were dominant along the shore; and red-light enclaves are located close to the harbour. Originally, Tomo developed from seven hamlets. The town of Tomo was established following the merger of adjacent villages in 1889. The original hamlets were located close to one another, but they differed culturally and even in terms of accent. That diversity was the result of social disparity: the folklorist Kazuteru Okiura (1998: 32) was even able to identify social discriminations between the hamlets. Ordinarily, people from the different hamlets enjoy good relations; however, once controversy arises, and rifts appear. The impression Tomo leaves on most visitors is one of a calm, uniform society. But beyond that impression, there is more diverse nature to the place. During the Edo period, Tomo was a successful port town: The population was a sizable 7,756 in 1697 (Kataoka 2010: 87). However, the citizens suffered as a result of fires and plagues, which could easily break out in the densely populated town. To accommodate the high demand for real estate, urbanization spread to areas under the hills and along the coast. Authorities in Tomo made ongoing efforts to reclaim the seashore for residential, trade, and port purposes. An archaeological study by Tsugifumi Fujino found evidence for multiple land reclamations in Tomo as early as in the tenth century. It is possible that another port existed at that time to the north of the present Tomo town (Fujino 480

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Figure 28.3 Row of traditional townhouses in Tomo. Source: Yushi Utaka

2010: 20). The evidence for such past shorelines has disappeared from the present townscape as a result of continuous development. Those historic developments are an invisible part of today’s urban heritage of the town. Hiroshi Hasegawa (2010: 124–133) has pointed out that it is rather difficult to capture the holistic historic perspective of Tomo without a long and thoughtful observation. This particularly relates to the invisible narratives and memories as well as the physical disappearance of artefacts. That impression is shared by other thinkers as well. The folklorist Tsuneichi Miyamoto spent his time wandering around Tomo and reflects: I could contemplate a kind of persistent energy among peoples. It was as though everyone’s vitality was compressed in this small hamlet. Even someone with great power would always feel threatened. If people could escape from this cramped port town, they would do so, such as escaping to the Goto or Tsushima islands. Or, some were sold as harlots, because of their families’ miserable poverty. (Miyamoto 1969: 74–86) The complexities related to the locals’ diverse origins, the vanished shorelines and parts of the port, artefacts that have disappeared, and the fragmented memories of the past all point to a forgotten

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history. It is certain that such factors played a large role in forming the character of the present nature of Tomo.

Decaying port and redevelopment proposal The prosperity of Tomo did not last long. Following the modernizations of the Meiji period, Tomo went into economic decline. The railway linked major coastal cities around the Seto Inland Sea, but it did not run through Tomo. Furthermore, modernization in maritime traffic led to larger cargo ships traveling greater distances. Accordingly, Tomo lost out in competition with other ports. Tomo’s maritime trade and passenger services gradually declined and shifted from the inter-regional to the provincial network. Subsequently, in 1913, Tomo and central Fukuyama became connected by a private narrow-gauge railway; however, that line was discontinued in 1954. Another change for Tomo came in the shape of local government. The town of Tomo became a part of the city of Fukuyama in 1956. Following these transformations, Tomo began to assume more of marginal identities in line with the new administrative hierarchy, transport networks, and trade activities. As a result, Tomo citizens sought to establish new industrial sectors or they moved away from the place. The population in Tomo has been subject to continuous decline and aging over recent decades. From 1960 to 2015, the population decreased by 33 per cent. The elderly population (age 65 and above) has grown to 44.7 per cent, even though the average proportion of elderly people in the whole of Fukuyama City is at around the national level of 26.9 per cent. One elderly lady living in Tomo commented; ‘Young people move to bigger cities, such as Fukuyama. But if they do, they don’t come back to Tomo. We have a beautiful sea and plenty of fresh fish, but there are no fashionable spots or attractive jobs. Is it possible to keep the young people here in Tomo?’ To avert the downward spiral in Tomo, various organizations have undertaken different actions and development proposals have been prepared. Among those proposals, the topics of upgrading the port and urban functions are frequently discussed as prime issues. The development proposals for the place were epitomised in December 1983 that was a revision of the Fukuyama Ports Development Plan (hereafter, ‘1983 Plan’)5 of a prefectural committee, in response to the local authorities’ comprehensive road and port development proposal. Administratively, the harbour of Tomo was placed under the Fukuyama Ports, which has been nationally designated as an ‘important port’ under the Port and Harbour Act. Fukuyama Ports are known as Japan’s prime import hub for iron ore and coal. According to the committee records, upgrading the functions of all Fukuyama Ports were identified as an essential response to the growing demands of regional heavy industry. The 1983 Plan also addressed the issues of waste treatment, land reclamation, and the fishing industry. The plan stated that there should be appropriate adjustments with its environment and creating a suitable port character. The target year for the 1983 Plan was set at 1995. For Tomo port, the 1983 Plan also called for 4.6 ha land reclamation. The project involved three floating jetties with 12 berths in addition to the construction of quays, a recreational park, commercial lots, and the dredging of the bay to accommodate larger vessels. The plan stipulated that the new port functions would offer safe, comfortable passenger services as well as berths for fishing vessels. In addition, a 170m cross-bay bridge construction proposal was included to address traffic problems in Tomo. The downtown area of Tomo had only narrow streets. In particular, Prefectural Route 47, which passed through downtown Tomo, was a major provincial route. However, it was narrow and often congested, and so was unable to handle regular traffic and emergency responses during peak hours. The downtown stretch of Route 47 had in fact been as an urban planning road since the 1950s and been earmarked for future widening. Thus, approval of 1983 Plan was the final decision, the proposed bridge would divert vehicle traffic away from the downtown area. It was expected that it would lead to a better living environment for residents as well. Road reconstruction work had in fact been 482

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conducted long before the implementation of the 1983 Plan. However, if Route 47 had been widened in accordance with the urban planning road proposal, the old townhouses along the route would have had to be demolished to make space for road widening. Alternatively, if the proposed bridge were constructed, widening of Route 47 would not be necessary, which would be in line with heritage conservation aspirations. According to interviews by Satoshi Morihisa with local authorities in 2004, officials explained that building the bridge and designating the downtown area of Tomo as a preservation district were regarded as inseparable (Morihisa 2016: 106). Following the official approval of the 1983 Plan, various objections to the proposed development came to light. The earliest objection against the development proposal was recorded in October 1987. Following objections, the plan was suspended. These opinions were the result of various interest groups, who presented a petition with residents’ signatures by way of expressing their opinions to the authorities. In 1990, the Prefectural Cultural Heritage Preservation Committee submitted a report that requested the scaling down of the 1983 Plan and proposed that a tunnel should be built instead of the bridge. As a result, the 1983 Plan was revised in 1995 and the area of land reclamation was reduced to 2.3 ha; and was further reduced to 2.0 ha in 2000. However, the plans for the bridge construction remained, though minor adjustments were made to the design to conform to the surrounding landscape (Figure 28.4). Regardless of their positions with respect to the revised 1983 Plan, official committees and interest groups made strong calls to take the public support into account. In 1996, official research reports were prepared, such as a master plan for Tomo, townscape and road network. Kazuo Mouri (2008: 164) pointed out that these official reports were not well respected by local conservation groups because these reports tended to follow the development proposals of the local authorities. Throughout the period described above, steady efforts on cultural heritage preservation were conducted by residents and local authorities. Until the late 1980s, historic properties did not receive proper care; even historic quays were occupied and used without official permission. Since that time, cultural heritage authorities have been active. That department undertook restoration of the historic quays using traditional conservation methods. For example, a prominent Ohta’s Residence was officially designated as an Important Cultural Property and underwent 6 years of careful restoration, starting in 1996. Official studies of Tomo’s cultural heritage began in the late 1970s (Board of Education 1976). One significant study made in 1980 was called Redevelopment of Historic Memorial Area in Tomo: Research Report on Town Scape of Tomo (Board of Education 1980). This comprehensive study was carried out under the direction of Professor Mitsuru Suzuki of Hiroshima University. The report included a landscape analysis and recognized three ‘landscape units’ in Tomo. Additional official studies were conducted by leading researchers in the late 1990s. The result of these efforts was the founding of the city’s ordinance for a preservation district in Tomo covering an area of 8.6 ha in September 2000. Later, historic properties within the designated areas received restoration funds from the city government; however, this was discontinued in 2003. Despite those moves, conservation groups were not entirely happy with the situation. They maintained that the proposed preservation district was still small, especially since it did not include the water surfaces in the harbour. Satoshi Morihisa (2016: 160–161) states that conservation groups were not concerned only with protecting the port heritage in terms of physical objects; they were also keen on the preservation of the place as a ‘living port’. Official development plans for Tomo showed that port development and heritage conservation goals were compatible; it was even believed that the two could have synergistic merits. This observation was shared by influential individuals, and it was seen as reflecting the favour of the public in general. For example, according to an article in the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, three influential individuals held an informal ‘talk’ for four hours in December 1995. The then-mayor of Fukuyama met with them to consult their advice about the future of Tomo. A summary of this talk was partially revealed 483

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Figure 28.4 The Preservation District of Tomo and the revised port development proposal in 2000. Source: Yushi Utaka

on a separate occasion for the city’s master planning committee.6 A member recalled that the three individuals ‘agreed’ that the reclamation project would be ‘a chance to enhance Tomo’s world acclaimed beauty’. Another member stated; ‘Historically, Tomo repeatedly underwent reclamation in the Muromachi and Edo periods. Even if we face agreement or objections, the fruits obtained by reclamation will be beneficial towards the future progress of the town’. A sequel, another member recalled; ‘Personally, I am against the bridge construction. But it represents a way of negotiating

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conditions with those in power. If we fight with the authorities, we will lose our entire cultural heritage’. During the ‘talk’, the then-mayor kept silent and let the other three people do the talking.

Rising concerns and persuading tactics As indicated above, the initial 1983 Plan underwent revisions by the authorities. Eventually, it was accepted by the fishermen’s cooperative association, the necessary feasibility studies were undertaken, and an ordinance for the preservation district was ready. Thus, the project was able to proceed. The authorities commenced the legal procedure to execute the project, and government approval was obtained in 2000. By law, a reclamation project needs the consent of stakeholders who would be affected from drainage in their land during the reclamation process (these are called ‘drainage rights’). The authorities initially expected to obtain full consent from all drainage rights holders; however, as confrontations over the project began to escalate, the authorities failed to do so. The authorities also sought consultation with the national government. The drainage rights issue continued as a persistent problem. Conservation groups continued to make efforts to halt the project. As the debate continued, one leader played a key role in establishing, organizing, and networking with the interest groups. The leader also made efforts to connect with the media, international experts, and influential individuals. For any social studies about the case of Tomo, analysis of the leader’s presence is indispensable. Researchers noted that the leader’s forthright manner was not entirely accepted by the relatively conservative, male-dominated, and elderly society of Tomo (Fujii 2013: 42–43). That reaction is widely observed in traditional communities in Japan. In 2001, a public session was held by the authorities to discuss the development proposal. During the session, conservation and pro-development groups mounted a vehement protest. In the community, memories of that session were miserable (Fujii 2013: 150; Morihisa 2016: 100). Additionally, the legitimacy of that session was questioned: people were asking why they had been selected to be representatives. The issue was of course too sensitive. Locals in general tended not to voice their opinions so as to maintain peace of mind and to be away from any confrontation with others. In addition, representatives from various historical and architectural academic institutions raised their objections on the development proposals. International experts began to visit Tomo with frequency. Those visits were initiated by local conservation groups and experts. Their visits also made successful bids for media publicity. One major outcome was Tomo’s listing on World Monuments Watch by the World Monuments Fund in 2002 and 2004. Subsequently in 2005, five ICOMOS members made short visits to Tomo, and they praised the significance of its heritage. Members stated to the mayor that Tomo had sufficient potential to be a part of World Heritage Site. They believed that such nomination would be possible if the historical role of the Seto’s transit ports of Korean envoys to Japan (Chosen Tsushinshi/Joseon Tongsinsa) is considered. Also, most importantly, such nomination will be subjected to terminate the entire port development proposal.7 Lately, more conservation groups and experts considered that the Seto Inland Sea in its entirety should be considered a World Heritage Site.8 The first batch of World Heritage Sites in Japan was the Himeji Castle and the monuments in Nara in 1993. The Hiroshima Peace Memorial and the Itsukushima Shrine were listed in 1996. Many local areas feel the need to elevate the status of their beloved heritage and attempt to attain World Heritage status to also boost tourism. Sometimes, this phenomenon is called the ‘World Heritage Rush’.9 Some observers have expressed an anxiety over seeking World Heritage status: For example, Shunsuke Nakamura has questioned future sustainability and management malfunctions under the rapidly growing list of World Heritage Sites.10 The desires for Tomo to achieve World Heritage status and the praise from international experts and be promoted by the mass media have had a social impact on the place. Yet, the Fukuyama city 485

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government maintained a relatively calm response (Morihisa 2016: 206). The then-mayor who was born in Tomo, welcomed the praise received but said that the ‘living environment in Tomo depends on further development, to grow as a city’.11 His opinion was supported by a prominent member of the national parliament of Japan when he made a visit to Tomo.12 In the meantime, various media releases, opinion letters, and study findings have emerged from many interest groups, including the fieldwork of university students. Researchers had to take care not to be a nuisance to the locals. Seiichirou Fujii (2013: 7) observed that pro-development locals felt uncomfortable with the involvement of outside experts and influential figures who opposed their position. Public opinion was also influenced by the narratives of prominent individuals. For example, the renowned movie director and animator Hayao Miyazaki stayed in Tomo and worked there on his enthusiastically received film Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea. He has not revealed that it was directly based on Tomo, but it is generally known that Tomo is the hometown of this story. Affection for the place had a large effect on public sentiment beyond generations and borders. From 2010 to 2012, the prefectural government invited interest group leaders to hold community meetings. Official mediators were appointed to lead the meetings, which were held over 19 times. During the meetings, the existence of different opinions was confirmed. Kazuo Mouri (2008: 162) found that confrontations took place between the authorities plus pro-development groups versus conservation groups. The complicated administrative system in Tomo, involving the vast range of policy foci such as infrastructure, tourism, and heritage conservation, and the hierarchy of national, prefectural, and municipal administration, also became a prime issue. Politics does of course have an influence on development policy. Since the presentation of the 1983 Plan to 2018, four mayors and three prefectural governors served office. During elections, successive mayors made campaign promises to support the revised 1983 Plan. The region’s relatively conservative social atmosphere and local politics exerted a substantial effect. At the national level, the Liberal Democratic Party, which had long dominated Japanese politics, lost its hold on parliament from 2009 to 2012. Those events had an effect on national and regional development policies. The situation in Tomo’s development thus became more complex owing to the administrative system, changing politics, time-lag of decisions, the social atmosphere of the community, the voices of interest groups, World Heritage aspirations, and the public sentiment.

‘World heritage litigation’: re-examining benefits of landscape On 24 April 2007, conservation groups filed a lawsuit in the Hiroshima District Court against the port reclamation proposal of the prefectural governor. The case received great interest among heritage conservation and jurisprudence experts. The court battle and subsequent debate continued for 9 years until the prefectural government finally withdrew the project. The attorney for the plaintiff criticized the prefectural government: ‘It is unbelievable to destroy a precious heritage that could become a World Heritage Site. This case critically questions Japan’s cultural standards’.13 These phrases appeared repeatedly in the narratives of media and experts.14 This case has come to be known as ‘World Heritage Litigation’. The case soon drew the attention of the media and the public. Tomo attracted greater tourism demand than ever before. There was a sharp increase in the number of tourists. Before the litigation, Tomo had around one million visitors annually from outside the city and that figure showed an increase of 80 per cent in 2010.15 According to a study of the jurisprudence by Masako Usui (2010: 39–49), the court’s decision was a remarkable one, particularly regarding the benefits to the landscape legally. Previously, landscape was not commonly accepted as a legal right of and benefit for the public in Japan. In 2006, one notable decision emerged following a litigation against a high-rise apartment proposal in Kunitachi city, Tokyo, which stated the protection of the legal right of landscape setting. 486

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The case with Tomo is understood as a similar example to that case. For Tomo, the court’s decision described the value and right of the historic landscape: The landscape of Tomo is not just beautiful scenery; it also includes historic and cultural values. The people who live in proximity to the landscape of Tomo are those who receive the benefit of its value daily. Their legal interests and rights have to be secured.16 In the Tomo case, the most important issue is related to the assessing of the value of the holistic landscape. The court decision acknowledged Tomo’s historic significance as future heritage properties. The decision also stated that if the reclamation project were to be executed, the historic environment and the natural landscape would be unrecoverable. From the perspective of jurisprudence, the Tomo case has provided a significant example for future debates on heritage conservation. Eventually, on 15 February 2016, the prefectural government decided to withdraw the application for the reclamation project. Instead of building the cross-bay bridge and undertaking the port reclamation, the prefectural government promised to construct a tunnel through a mountain. The then-mayor left from office the same year.

In the fog: remaining issues and future challenges Following the withdrawal of the port development proposal, Tomo has returned to its usual quietude. However, the decline of the town has continued. On my field visit, one elderly lady said to me sorrowfully; ‘Our town is slowly dying’. Visitor numbers from outside of the city have decreased to the level before the litigation period. Media coverage and visiting foreign experts, interest groups, and fieldwork students have also subsided. Tomo has been losing attention from outside of the town. The population decrease continues. The most recent statics indicate that in 2018 the population was 3,972, which represents a decrease of 125 people over the previous year. The proportion of elderly population has risen to 47.18 per cent over the same period, an increase of 0.80 percentage points. Recently the city government has presented its future estimates: the population will decline to almost 40 per cent of its level within 40 years (period between 2010 to 2050) (Fukuyama City Government 2018). Against this backdrop, on 28 November 2017, the preservation district (8.6 ha) was selected as the 117th of Japan’s Important Preservation Districts for Groups of Traditional Buildings by the Agency for Cultural Affairs. It is an achievement of many years of ongoing efforts of locals, authorities and experts. Governmental restoration funds will be provided to preserve designated heritages and promote Tomo’s history based on the official conservation plan. This move presents new challenges: since there are now over 117 preservation districts nationwide, the status of Tomo is not as rare as it was in previous decades. Recently, the so-called ‘inbound tourism’ (international tourism) has been used to support local economies. Promoting heritage and historic sites will be important in that regard. Various sites will have to deal with issues such as visitor capacity management, fluctuations of demand, provision of visitor amenities, and impacts for artefacts. Even with World Heritage Sites in Japan, it is often difficult to deal with the fluctuations in tourism demands (Utaka 2018). The Tomo case drew attention owing to the ‘World Heritage Litigation’. Since the official development proposal was withdrawn in 2016, however, no official announcement has been made about the preparations for nomination for the World Heritage status. The local authorities and community have held continuous discussions about the future of Tomo. Official feasibility studies for constructing the tunnel were commenced just recently. The project will take longer and cost substantially more. How this project will help to address various social, economic, and cultural issues in Tomo is unknown. The 8.6 ha historic port town of Tomo is assured for the next generation. Yet, local residents still face challenges in living in a historic town. A number of issues are yet to be addressed to secure 487

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residents’ everyday life, which includes: mitigating traffic congestion; maintaining sustainable tourism demands; disaster prevention measures for earthquakes, tsunami, and fires; increased aging population; depopulation; and appropriate community engagements. While the physical appearance of the historic port town of Tomo is assured for the next generation, residents still face challenges in their ‘living’ urban heritages.

Conclusion As we learned from the legacy and recent debate about Tomo, these changes are not happening only to this small port town. Tomo is an indication of changing public expectations for conventional development with respect to Japan’s progress over recent decades. In fact, Tomo’s case will encourage people living in small towns towards future heritage conservation. Conventional development methodology is no longer always an acceptable step. Greater attention and concern are paid on the conservation of nature and culture. However, the question remains, in pragmatic terms, whether such aspirations mobilize or sacrifice again for another form of development such as tourism-led development. The experience in Tomo illustrates the complexity of locals’ perception of urban conservation and development in the contemporary Japanese society. It is difficult to find unanimous consensus among the entire community either for conservation or for development, and people’s opinion also changes at different times. The proponents of conservation were also influenced by people from outside of Tomo, with some local members of the community participating with their efforts. Without clear insights, awareness and motivation within the community, it is difficult to achieve a strong consensus of local community towards heritage conservation. In a time of decline in the local economy and population, the resident community seem to look for a way to revitalize their town through means such as heritage tourism rather than industrial development. There is a greater awareness on the nation’s decades-long economic stagnation that has also led to less appetite for the conventional way of developments. Whether the contemporary Japanese population has a specific sentiment to save their familiar places and would benefit from heritage conservation are questions yet to be answered. Japan has experience in dealing with balancing heritage conservation and urban development in the management of Historic Urban Landscapes, and thus Tomo could certainly benefit from this accumulated wisdom. One major social implication that came out of Tomo, however, is the court decision that confirmed the value of Historic Urban Landscapes and the community’s right to protect such places.

Notes 1 This chapter is based on the author’s own research and observations, and it should not be attributed in any manner to any organizations or projects with which the author was previously involved. 2 Chikkyo Ono (1889–1979), a renowned Japanese artist, frequently depicted his beloved landscape around the Seto Inland Sea in his paintings. The region’s moderate climate and beautiful scenery were well captured in Ono’s calm tonality. One of Chikkyo’s works was a colour painting titled Minato (Port), which he completed in 1911. It features carefully captured shining scenery of Tomo’s tall lighthouse, white warehouses, a busy quay, and sailing boats. 3 The phenomenon of the ‘shrinking society’ is widely discussed in Japan since 2000s with respect to demography, housing, finance, and administrative system. Since 2010, the country has undergone population decline. 4 Asahi Shimbun newspaper, 10 April 2018. 5 Committee Records, Fukuyama Ports Development Plan (revision), December 1983, Committee Resource 2, 104th Planning Section, Fukuyama Ports Administrative and Management Body. 6 Asahi Shimbun newspaper, 13 March 1996. 7 Asahi Shimbun newspaper, 28 December 2005. 8 Asahi Shimbun newspaper, 3 July 2004; Chugoku Shimbun newspaper, 20 January 2006. 9 Asahi Shimbun newspaper, 4 December 2004.

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10 11 12 13 14

References (References marked * in this list are in Japanese. The titles given below are translations by the author.). Board of Education (1976) Townscape of Tomo: Research Report on the Townscape of Tomo, Fukuyama City, Hiroshima, Japan: Fukuyama City.*. ——— (1980) Redevelopment of Historic Memorial Area in Tomo: Research Report on Townscape of Tomo, Fukuyama City, Hiroshima, Japan: Fukuyama City.*. Chugoku Regional Development Bureau (1975) Handbook of Seto Inland Sea, Hiroshima, Japan: Ministry of Construction.*. Fujii, S. (2013) Reality and Theory of Public Participation: Tomo-no-ura and Its Future Landscape, Tokyo, Japan: Kojin-sha.*. Fujino, T. (2010) ‘Archaeological research on tomo-no-ura’, in Geibi Regional History (Hiroshima, Japan: Research Association for Geibi Regional History), 268/269: 2–25.*. Fukuyama City Government (2018) A Study Report for Fukuyama City Location Normalization Plan, Hiroshima, Japan: Fukuyama City Government.*. Hasegawa, H. (2010) ‘Reclamation and bridge construction proposal in tomo-no-ura’, in Geibi Regional History (Hiroshima, Japan: Research Association for Geibi Regional History), 268/269: 124–133.*. Hashizume, S. (2014) Modernism Travel around Seto Inland Sea, Tokyo, Japan: Geijutsu Shinbunsha.*. Japan ICOMOS (2007) ‘Section 1 – Port civil engineering heritage’, Cultural Heritage Conservation for Historic Port Town Tomo-no-ura (The First Phase Report), Tokyo, Japan: The 6th Committee of Japan ICOMOS National Committee, 1–14.*. Kataoka, S. (2010) ‘Social structure and provincial society on early-modern period in tomo’, in Geibi Regional History (Hiroshima, Japan: Research Association for Geibi Regional History), 268/269: 74–89.*. Miura, M. (2007) ‘Ocean civil engineering: Itsukushima shrine constructed by taira-no-kiyomori’, in Kitagawa, K., Seki, T., Takahashi, M., Innami, T., Satake, A., Machi, H. and Miura, M. (eds) Setonaikai Encyclopedia, Hiroshima, Japan: Nannan-sha, 226–228.*. Miyamoto, T. (1969) My memoir map of Japan 6: Seto Inland Sea 2, Sea of Geiyo, Tokyo, Japan: Doyu-kan.*. Morihisa, S. (2016) Conservation of History and Matizukuri in Tomo-No-Ura: Local Politics on Environment and Memory, Tokyo, Japan: Shinyo-sha.*. Mouri, K. (2008) The World Heritage and Regional Revitalization, Tokyo, Japan: Shinsen-sha.*. Nishida, M. (2007) ‘Invention of modern concept of landscape’, in Kitagawa, K., Seki, T., Takahashi, M., Innami, T., Satake, A., Machi, H. and Miura, M. (eds) Setonaikai Encyclopedia, Hiroshima, Japan: Nannan-sha, 141–144.*. Okiura, K. (1998) Folklore of Setouchi: Visiting in-depth History of People Living on Sea, Tokyo, Japan: Iwanami.*. Ue, S. (2007) ‘Environmental pollution and measurement in seto inland sea’, in Kitagawa, K., Seki, T., Takahashi, M., Innami, T., Satake, A., Machi, H. and Miura, M. (eds.) Setonaikai Encyclopedia, Hiroshima, Japan: Nannan-sha, 80–82.*. Usui, M. (2010) ‘Tomo-no-ura landscape preservation case’, The Chuo-Gakuin University Review of Faculty of Law, Chiba, Japan: The Faculty of Law, Chuo-Gakuin University, 23(2): 39–49.*. Utaka, Y. (2015) ‘Managing “Buffer”: A special focus on the Itsukushima Shinto shrine world heritage site, Kanazawa, Japan’, International Review for Spatial Planning and Sustainable Development, 3-2: 79–85. ——— (2018) ‘Dealing with fluctuations in tourism demand at world heritage sites: Special focus on the Himeji castle world heritage site, Japan’, paper presented at the International Conference on Managing Urban Cultural Heritage, Penang, Malaysia: George Town World Heritage Incorporated, Penang, Malaysia.

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29 UNDERSTANDING COMMUNITY-BASED HERITAGE VALUES The case of the Tamil Brahmin settlement in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India Vaisali Krishna Kumar

Introduction India is one of the oldest civilizations of the world. Its unique geographic territory and rich history has given rise to a variety of different cultures, making it a melting pot of different heritage, religions and other cultural aspects. This makes Indian heritage one of the most complicated to comprehend and decipher. In addition, heritage laws and practices in India obscure the understanding of the complexity of heritage even further. Because of centuries of colonization, they are rooted in the nineteenth century western paradigm which followed a monument-centric, top-down, and expert-driven approach (Thakur 2017). Heritage policies and practices in India are, therefore, largely devoid of the perspective of the ordinary people and their places. The local community represents key stakeholders of a heritage environment and can be a driving force in conserving the living heritage. However, communities protect only what is valuable to them (Spennemann 2006); therefore, it is critical to understand and assess the values that a community ascribes to its heritage. The meaning a place has for people is integral to the production of value with respect to a historic environment and its generation takes a variety of different complex and interrelated forms which is often overlooked in heritage management context (Jones 2017). Meanings are born out of the numerous networks of associations and relationships among people, place and objects (Silva 2011) which is ever changing and evolving, calling for a constant redefinition from time to time (Thakur 2011). Established, expert-driven modes of significance assessment fail to capture the dynamics of this network of values and decipher them to provide the adequate heritage management solutions. Researchers agree upon the subject of the process of identifying and measuring heritage values to be difficult and complex to understand (Jones 2017; Mason 2002). Some strongly advocate that it is crucial to understand and recognize the diverse and layered values in complex historic places accepting that values are contested and may be in conflict (Lipe 1984; Russell and Johnston 2005) The heritage discourse has come a long way in handling historic places from the material-based approach to the value-based approach (Avrami et al. 2000). Debates continue whether value-based

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assessment is the most appropriate model for this task, owing to it quality to objectify and categorize values (Jones 2017; Poulios 2014a; Silva 2015). The community-based value assessment conducted on stakeholder groups by experts is critiqued for being too ambitious, prone to manipulation and ignoring the practical impossibility of satisfying all stakeholders or protect all values at the same time (Lipe 1984; Poulios 2014b). How can we attempt to understand the underlying values that the community associates with their heritage? Every heritage site is unique and therefore should be dealt with case by case, keeping in mind their social, cultural, economic, geographic and administrative factors (Mason 2002). The ways in which a local community makes sense of their heritage places and value them depends on a variety of factors embedded in their culture such as oral traditions, genealogies, folklore and spiritual associations (Edroma 2003; Jones 2017; TysaSusanti 2015). A heritage site that continues its original function to the present, does so due to its connection to a certain community for whom the site caters, also called the ‘core community’ (Wijesuriya n.d.). Changes and development in the contemporary life of the core community also influences the heritage. Consulting core community for their views on identifying the heritage places not only benefits the heritage management but also provides psychological benefits to the community and improve their sense of pride and ownership in their heritage. This chapter explores how community-based heritage values could be understood and assessed effectively to form a collective understanding of the values that could then feed into heritage policies and practices. The study is focused on the Padmanābhaswāmy Temple and the associated TamilBrahmin settlement in East Fort Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala, India.

Tamil Brahmin settlement in Thiruvananthapuram The city of Thiruvananthapuram was set up as the capital of the Travancore kingdom in the eighteenth century by King Marthanda Varma. The etymology of the city is derived from, Thiru-anantha-puram, meaning ‘the town of Lord Anantha’, the abode of the sacred Serpent Anantha on which Lord Vishnu, the preserver of the Hindu trinity reclines (Aiya 1906). Currently the capital of the state of Kerala, Thiruvananthapuram has emerged as the political and technological hub of Kerala. The area selected for study is in the heart of the city, a Brahmin settlement surrounding the famous Padmanābhaswāmy Temple (Figures 29.1 and 29.2), which is a part of the East Fort ward of Thiruvananthapuram Municipal Corporation. The temple and the Brahmin settlement are an integral part of the unique cultural and social fabric of the historic city of Thiruvananthapuram, which is now slowly giving way to urbanization. Hence, this is a particularly suitable site to assess the values associated with heritage and its surrounding from the point of view of the local ‘core community’ – the Tamil-Brahmins. Padmanābhaswāmy Temple had reaped the attention of world media in 2011 following the discovery of its treasure worth over 1 trillion dollars hidden in the six vaults within the temple for centuries. According to reports from world-wide media (Dobson 2015; Padanna 2011a, 2011b), and the released inventory, the treasure discovered includes pure gold coins, chains, pots and jars from the Roman Empire among other precious items, making it the richest temple in the world. This global attention has inevitably brought in more tourists to the temple in the last few years and has also led to increased security measures in and around the temple premises. The Tamil-Brahmins, a priestly community, have been serving the Padmanābhaswāmy Temple for centuries and are a close-knit community that maintained their identity through strict enforcement of the caste system which set them apart from others as an elite group.1 The Tamil-Brahmin community migrated to Thiruvananthapuram from Thanjavur, Tirunelveli and other parts of the present state of Tamil Nadu about 100–200 years ago. Even though these migrant Brahmins held high positions and power in the caste-ridden society, they were a minority when compared to the local native population of Kerala. The Brahmins are generally strict vegetarians and follow a patriarchal system of succession. The community depended on the temple activities and the royal 491

Figure 29.1 Padmanābhaswāmy Temple lined by the Kuthiramalika Palace towards its right and the entrance to the Padmatheertha Pond to its left. Source: Vaisali Krishna Kumar

Figure 29.2 Location of existing Agrahārams with respect to the Padmanābhaswāmy Temple and the Kuthiramalika Palace. The inset image shows a closer view of the narrow layout of Agrahārams. Source: Vaisali Krishna Kumar

Examining community-based heritage values

family patronage for livelihood until the Independence of India in 1947 and the dissolution of the rule of the monarchy. During the rule of the Travancore Royal family from 1550 to 1949, Brahmins exercised profound influence upon the rulers and eventually became the superior citizens of the Travancore kingdom, entitled to special privileges and powerful administrative positions. Despite these incentives, the community led an austere and simple lifestyle with all their requirements taken care of by the palace and the temple. An agrahāram, literally means ‘a garland of houses’, represents a typical Tamil Brahmin settlement. Essentially a cluster of simple homesteads built in a row, the agrahāram represented the values of community living and shared space (Figure 29.3). The planning of an agrahāram is dictated by the temple which forms the focal point of the settlement, following a grid iron pattern or concentric ring pattern (Rajeev 2011). The streets are mostly aligned east-west with the row houses clustered along either side with the backyards of the houses linked by narrow lanes. The exact reason for the row arrangement of the houses is debated among the community, but the most common reasoning is that this design enhanced security. The streets in front of the houses form an active community space serving as a commercial space for vendors, a play area for children, a meeting place for elders, and venues for religious processions and meetings.

Figure 29.3 Agrahārams lining the street; the grills were a later addition as a security measure when the gated community became public post-Independence from the British rule. The white and red bands painted along the plinth are a common feature seen in Brahmin houses as well as temples in Tamil Nadu, signifying the connection of the community with God. Source: Vaisali Krishna Kumar

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Method of study To obtain a nuanced and comprehensive understanding of the heritage values from the local community of Thiruvananthapuram, two categories of sample groups were identified – Brahmin and NonBrahmin community. The Non-Brahmin community comprises of residents of Thiruvananthapuram who have resided in the city for a minimum of 20 years with a sample size of 10. The Brahmin community participant group were residents from the settlement under study with a sample size 15. Indepth interviews were conducted with both groups of the local community, including 12 females and 13 male members in total, ranging in age from 21 to 84 years old. The participants from both groups were from different educational and occupational backgrounds including a student, engineer, a professor, a writer, retired government employees, and a priest from the temple among others. The interviews were conducted in the native language of Malayalam which were later translated and transcribed. A thematic analysis was carried out on each transcript to identify cross-cultural interpretations of significant values and concerns as described by the local community. The main research questions investigated are as follows: • •

How does the local community (the Brahmins and the non-Brahmin) value the cultural heritage of the Brahmin agrahārams in Thiruvananthapuram? What are the various threats according to the local communities that is detrimental to the heritage values of the settlement?

The main themes identified from the transcripts of the interviews are categorized as Core Values and Threats. These core values and threats are a result of the articulation of the participants’ views based on their background, experience, genealogies, spiritual associations and world-view (Jones 2017). Core values refer to the key values the Brahmin community ascribe to the settlement and the threats refer to the risks and perils the settlement is currently subjected to according to the participants. The values are demonstrated differently from the conventional framework of grouping them as ‘spiritual’, ‘social’, ‘aesthetic’, and ‘historic’ to understand the underlying nuances. This would in turn cater to addressing the real needs of stakeholders including the local community (Duval et al. 2019) and thereby aid in management of the heritage.

Core values of the settlement by the Brahmin community In this section, findings from the interviews with the Brahmin community is discussed in detail, as they have a stronger connection to the settlement and the temple that span over generations and for centuries.

Sense of community One of the key values that the participants attribute to the settlement is its sense of community or ‘oneness’. The participants clearly exhibit a sense of pride in their settlement for its social cohesion and the capacity to stand out from other places in Thiruvananthapuram. They describe their settlement to be ‘one family’, with one of the participants stating: The houses are not separated … it’s all together … like a family … a typical street is like a family … especially, we are separated only by a wall and sometimes we can hear the conversations taking place in the neighbouring house … for example, if we want to talk to someone in the other house we could just do that from the kitchen and they would reply … suppose when my mother is going out she could just shout out to the neighbours and tell them to keep an eye on our place in case of emergency. 494

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Privacy is not a major concern for the residents of the agrahārams and its layout does not give them any room for it. The close-knit nature of the community encourages compact arrangement of their dwellings which for the contemporary living standards of the nuclear family is unconceivable. A participant describes a typical Brahmin residence as: The main entry area is called thiņa, and when you enter inside, that area is called Rezhi, which is the main hall; and after that thalam where we wash our hands after meals and adjacent to the kitchen … and then the toilet is situated outside … never attached to the house; it will always be separated. Adjacent to the kitchen, there is a small room for the ladies to stay during periods … they should remain in that room for those 4 days, they are given food over there, and not allowed inside for those 4 days … and toilet is right outside … we could probably compare it to a railway compartment. The settlement bursts with group activities scaling through all generations and gender. Activities as simple as temple visits and evening chit-chats are performed in a group, engaging the community in a union. In the event of functions related to birth, marriage and death, or religious festivals, the whole community comes together engaging themselves in different responsibilities. The Women’s Wing organizes a ‘Food Mela’ every February, displaying signature Brahmin snacks to the public, an initiative to revive the Tamil Brahmin culinary traditions. The Tamil Brahmin community prefers homogeneity in their living environment. Their pristine, deep-rooted lifestyle and vegetarianism perhaps make it difficult to acclimatize with non-Brahmin community or non-Hindus. For example, a participant states: In my street 99 per cent of the residents are Brahmins and we prefer it that way … even if it is for rent, we prefer the occupants to be Brahmins … This homogeneity contributes to the distinctiveness and identity of the settlement. This sense of cohesion contributes to two main benefits to its people: security and place attachment. The sense of security would be the most important of the two, especially amidst the perils of contemporary society. Parents are comfortable living in a settlement where they know their children are safe at all times. One mother mentions: I know most of the people living near us since childhood; so, there is a feeling of attachment and ‘freeness’ and that feeling has never changed over the year. I have a daughter who goes to school … If at all I am not able to be at home when she arrives from school, I have no fear because I know I can ask my neighbours for help and they will do the needed. The same goes when we are alone at home. In case of an emergency, such as if one of the older members of the community living alone falls seriously ill and is in need of immediate medical attention, the neighbours come together to help at any time of the day. It is this sense safety that attracts and to some extend prevents the older members of the community from moving out of the settlement. When asked about a hypothetical scenario in which the government offers a luxurious apartment in another part of the city away from the settlement, 74 per cent of the participants respond that they would refuse the offer no matter how massive the incentive. This shows a significant sense of attachment to the place, which can also be attributed to the presence of the Padmanābhaswāmy Temple.

Sacrality of cultural practices The Brahmin community have been consistent in passing on traditions and customs through generations, irrespective of social and economic changes. The Tamil Brahmins in the settlement were historically linked to the patronage of the royal family of Travancore, working in the Padmanābhaswāmy Temple and holding important positions within the bureaucracy. Interestingly, this stature of the community still prevails in the society. Quoting one of the participants: 495

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We are involved in all religious activities that takes place in Padmanabhaswamy Temple … even anything taking place in the palace. A group called Mullamottu Bhagavathar which was recognized by the monarchy exists, and the members are selected from our community. The members change every year I think. It is an honour to be a part of that title given by the king. … Normally only Brahmin community is considered to do poojas and not anyone from the other community. Even cooking the feast for these poojas is prepared by people from the community. Unique sacred traditions play an important role in the identity of the community, like the rice-flour drawings called ‘kolam’ made (Figure 29.4) in front of homes religiously every morning, the annual temple festivals, the alternating red and white vertical stripes painted on the plinth of the agrahārams – all linking them to their Tamil heritage. Even though only 67 per cent of the interviewees are aware of the significance and logic behind these traditions, all of them strongly believe that these traditions contributed to the prosperity and wealth of the family. Their attachment to their cultural identity is also influenced by their heritage setting. The Tamil Brahmin residents have developed a deep and profound emotional attachment to the Padmanābhaswāmy Temple over the years. Ancestors of the current residents served as temple employees and, because of their high social hierarchy, were given incentives such as receiving meals three times a day from the temple kitchen. This has translated into a sense of gratitude and loyalty towards the temple among the community, which is apparent even today. One of the participants described how it felt ‘safe and secure’ in the vicinity of the deity of Padmanābha (Lord Vishnu), firmly believing that the deity protects the settlement and everyone around it from any natural calamities. The in-depth knowledge of the Vedas (ancient scriptures of Hindu religion) is one defining characteristic of the Brahmin caste, and therefore the presence of Veda school for younger generations in the settlement even today strengthens its relevance in the present. This postulates that the network of the agrahārams, temples, Veda school and other community spaces along with the rituals and customs in the

Figure 29.4 Kolam is a form of drawing made using rice flour thought to bring prosperity to homes (left), Women of Tamil-Brahmin households draw kolams every morning on the ground outside their homes, the picture on the right shows the array of kolams in front of Agrahārams. Source: Vaisali Krishna Kumar

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settlement demonstrates the interwoven spatial, temporal and spiritual dimensions of heritage values, reinforcing the sacred quality of the settlement into the psyche of the community.

Value through convenience of location When questioned about the various advantages experienced by living in the settlement, 60 per cent of the respondents quote convenience and easy access to the city centre as the major benefit of the location. The Brahmin settlement, according to one of the participants, is in the ‘heart of the city’, which made the person’s commute to work and elsewhere convenient, diminishing the requirement of owning a vehicle. The location of the Brahmin settlement is within the East Fort complex which is 1.5 km from the central railway station, 2 km to the bus terminal, 3 km to the international airport and within walking distance to hospitals, schools, religious centres and shopping areas. Having the goods and services at walkable distances makes the settlement desirable to live and promotes a sustainable living.

Architecture of the settlement Agrahārams are row houses, having no side clearance forming a continuous row on either side of the road. Since the sidewalls of the adjacent houses are shared, the only ventilation available to the interior is through the front and rear walls. The placement of the doors within these houses is in line with each other, which implies that anyone standing in front of the house can probably see through all the rooms into the kitchen situated in the rear end. When inquired with the participants about the possible logic behind this sort of an arrangement of the houses, participants attempt to bring some reasoning of their own. A few attributes the layout to enhance the ‘sense of togetherness’ within the settlement, some associate it with driving out ‘evil spirits’, and majority claim they were just built that way. About 54 per cent of the participants are content with their living conditions, which to any outsider could feel cramped and poorly lit. Many of the houses in the settlement have been altered in the interior to accommodate modern electric appliances which were not compatible with the original layout. Modifications are also done to increase security after the settlement was open to the public. One of the participants describing one such change to the form of the houses: My house had timber grills … crossed pattern. It deteriorated after some time so we replaced it with metal grill mainly for security … Normally, what used to happen was that the thinna was kept open … and in the evenings everyone sits there or during some functions we sit around and tell our mantras or anything related to that … but now closes it up because … non-community people come and sit there to play cards or consume alcohol … so now we close it. This was not the case before. The shared common wall separating two houses also poses problems in the contemporary lifestyle, as any changes or alterations to the common wall needs to be done with the permission of the neighbours. A recent trend among the residents is to perform structural modifications without disturbing the common wall with concrete and modern materials. However, these structural changes do come with its share of problems, like the following stated by one participant: compared to new concrete structures, the old walls and roofs had very nice cooling effect which changed after alterations … we can really know the difference … Carpenter’s children do not become carpenters these days … they become software engineers … there is a shortage of skilled labourers … the available are very pricy to hire … they

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charge about 1,200 rupees a day! … it becomes a costly affair to do the maintenance of the timber interiors … timber is also very expensive these days … so thinking about the material and labour cost, most decide to switch to concrete roofing, even after knowing that it would be detrimental to the cooling effect of the structure … concrete requires less maintenance so it becomes more practical … It was interesting to observe that out of the nine households visited, six still maintain timber roofs and clay tiles with only minor modifications made to the flooring. The residents have developed a conscious effort to maintain the original form in the best possible manner, understanding all the benefits of the materials used for construction. This clearly indicates that the community respects and appreciates the technological value of their houses even though they are not completely aware of logic and reasoning behind the way it is. However, the dearth of skilled labour competent to work with timber structures and the cost of maintenance are serious concerns for the residents and owners of the agrahārams.

Threats to the settlement as viewed by the Brahmin community Shift in attitude towards the temple The life of the Brahmin community in the Fort area is centred around the Padmanābhaswāmy Temple, and this religious centre is a part of their day-to-day activities, a playground for the children, meeting place for the elderly and a venue for group praying and other social activities. However, the social fabric of the settlement has been undergoing a drastic change over the last few decades. The Padmanābhaswāmy Temple magnetizing the spotlight of world news for its recently discovered hidden treasures resulted in increased security measures. Though this development in 2011 brought Padmanābhaswāmy Temple and Thiruvananthapuram into the global map, it has deteriorated the relationship between the temple and the Tamil Brahmin community. Multiple daily visits to the temple is a part and parcel of their lives which has now been hindered by the mandatory and scrutinizing security checks. According to the participants, all devotees are required to pass through a metal detector and subjected to strict body checks. These checks have been a mentally traumatic experience for the elderly members of the community who have been accustomed to freely walking in and out of the temple since the time they can remember. This is a concern expressed by 80 per cent of the participants. the police security checking can get very annoying at times … it is difficult to accept … I visit the temple every day and before the ‘discovery’ I would just freely go and come … but now it includes standing in long queues to pass the security … it is just uncomfortable because it is a temple … The temple visit for some is a form of physical activity. Two prathikshinas or circumambulations of the sanctum sanctorum is equivalent to walking 1.5 km. Two of the participants describe how they feel relaxed within the temple complex and circumambulating the temple. The tremendous emotional attachment that the community has towards the temple is one of the key factors keeping them within the settlement. However, the recent developments have severely impacted the equation, to the extent that about 33 per cent of the participants have reduced their frequency of visits to the temple. I go to the temple whenever possible … but can’t accept the restrictions and control that they have placed as a part of security … the whole purpose of visiting a temple is being compromised …

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The migration of the members of the community to other places for better employment and secure financial status has led to the abandonment of many agrahārams (Figure 29.5). This has led to an influx of people from other communities into the settlement leading to an increase in the number of nonBrahmin people occupying traditional Brahmin houses in the recent past. This raises some concerns for the original residents, as one interviewee says: there are some issues like they cook non-vegetarian food. But now people have started accepting these unavoidable changes and adjusting because there is very little we can do. We cannot remain stubborn, right? In our street, the fish vendors do not enter the street out of respect and do their business standing at the end of the street. So, people would have to go there to buy the fish. The non-community people respect the sanctity of the street … Even though the number of non-Brahmin residents is significantly low, the fact that most of the owners do not sell their agrahārams but only rent it out, shows their deep attachment to their ancestral home and the location. Even while renting out their residences, they make sure it is only to people who belong to the Hindu religion. From the interviews it was evident that the idea of letting someone outside their religious beliefs reside in their living environment is unacceptable to them. The noncommunity members, who now live in the settlement are people working in the temple premises and in the nearby stores, mostly for easy commute to work.

Figure 29.5 Abandoned residences in the settlement in Thiruvananthapuram. Source: Vaisali Krishna Kumar

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From a heritage conservation perspective, it is a positive sign that these empty agrahārams are being occupied by renters and not left abandoned, which aids in keeping up with the maintenance and maximizes the usage of space. Unlike artefacts, buildings need to be kept in continued use for it to survive and to be preserved. On the other hand, such a trend could impair the intangible cultural fabric of the settlement which is as important as the tangible one. The Brahmin community and their way of living contributes to the ‘wholeness’ of the settlement. The presence of non-Brahmin residents in the settlement gradually wears off these vital cultural elements of the historic settlement as the new occupants may not appreciate or value the settlement as much.

Bureaucratic incompetency The status of the settlement and its architecture is dismal according to the participants, owing to the mismanagement of heritage by the local and state government. Lack of recognition and negligence of significant historic districts, non-involvement of the community, and complicated procedures to obtain financial and professional assistance to the owners of historic properties in the past have all contributed to the current situation of the settlement. Another impacting factor is the lack of awareness among the community of the significance of preservation and its best practices. The settlement is situated within the government-protected Fort complex and had been declared a Heritage Zone in 2007, and therefore falls under the restricted development zone. Any change or modifications to the agrahārams currently needs to be approved by the local office of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) and the Art and Heritage Commission. However, the efforts by the local government in conservation activities in and around the settlement do not attract any praise from the participants. One of the most recent controversies that gained media attention was the demolition of one of the nine stone pavilions known as Kalmandapam situated at the south end of the Padmatheertham pond. In February 2016, government officials decided to demolish a mandapam, which led to a protest staged by the devotees and Hindu organizations on the site. According to a news report, the protesters claimed that the Archaeology Department was not consulted prior to the demolition (Express News Service 2016). The officials, however, stated that the controversy was sparked by a misunderstanding and that the structure was dismantled as a part of restoration work. Although the structure was reconstructed within the following month, the end results were not satisfactory to a majority of the participants, with one of them stating: They are not even concerned. I hope you have heard about what happened in Padmanabhaswamy Temple … they tried to demolish a stone structure, Kalmandapam … it was the people from the locality that finally intervened … but the District Collector had already given orders to proceed with it. There are many other heritage structures that are being neglected or demolished … Another participant, who is also one of the main priests of the temple, shared his experience with the ‘non-operational’ Operation Anantha, a government-initiated flood control programme in Thiruvananthapuram, which included the revitalization of the ponds in the temple: Kalmandapam which had only 4 pillars … was reconstructed to 6 pillars … the ponds in and around the temple have degraded to the lowest level possible … drainage wastes and sewage water come into these ponds and it is this water that we use for all the ritual activities … a recent test has discovered that the sample water from the temple ponds contains 99 per cent of bacteria … The above-mentioned are just a few of the many scenarios narrated by the participants where the local government has failed. One of the participants accuses the government officials of just playing politics and ignoring the more critical issues such as waste management: 500

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the government and the corporation do nothing for us … we segregate our waste as per the rules but the disposal is not done effectively … waste accumulated in piles is a common sight in the area … the sad part is that we pay 200 rupees to the workers for the disposal but this is the result … The above examples clearly show the dissatisfaction of the community towards the authorities and how inefficient actions from the government’s part can become a threat for the settlement and its heritage.

Lifestyle changes Heritage structures have often been a casualty of the drastic socio-economic changes in the recent years, especially in South Asian countries like India with uncontrolled population and economic growth coupled with lack of legal framework and enforcing mechanisms (Kiruthika and Thirumaran 2019). The Brahmin community has also experienced some significant changes in their socio-economic status and lifestyle after 1947. Prior to the Independence of India, the Brahmin community were largely employed at the Padmanābhaswāmy Temple. The agrahārams and their unique longitudinal planning exhibit an efficient solution to the problem of mass housing within a limited space. Even though the settlement has catered to some extent the growing demands of its inhabitants, it has not been immune to the demands of contemporary lifestyles. Before being declared a Heritage Zone in 2007, the settlement witnessed many of its old structures being remodelled and demolished to construct houses with more space and a modern architectural vocabulary (Figure 29.6). Although restrictions have been placed now for such construction activities, major transformation had already occurred. As per one of the participants, understanding the potential and benefits offered by the location of the settlement, many business giants in the past have successfully erased streets of agrahārams to establish their commercial centres offering up to Rs. 900,000 per 0.25 cent to the residents.

Figure 29.6 Inappropriate remodelling of old Agrahārams, prior to it being declared a Heritage Zone. Residents are currently permitted to modify the interiors keeping the historic façade intact. Source: Vaisali Krishna Kumar

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An argument made by another participant reveals that the change in the architectural quality and physical layout can be attributed or connected to the change in social networks within the community. As discussed early, the sense of community is one of the core values that is significant to conserving the essence of the settlement. However, the interviews reveal that this value has been undergoing changes in the last few decades. the feeling of oneness has changed a lot now … people have become more selfish … and I feel more than the structure, it is the intimacy and sense of community among the people that have changed … which in turn has reflected in their respective houses … Reasons like technological advancements, empowerment of Brahmin women, non-dependency of the community on the temple for livelihood and other changes that comes with modernization in the twentieth century could have played a role in the present situation. Privacy, which was not a concern for the Brahmin community living in agrahārams in the past, has become an essential component in the new standard of living especially among the younger residents, resulting in division and alterations to existing spaces within these structures.

Pressure of tourism The global spotlight on Padmanābhaswāmy Temple after 2011 and its impact on the Brahmin community have already been discussed briefly. Another growing concern that has developed as a part of the temple’s popularity is a steep growth in the inflow of tourists from all over the country. About 74 per cent of the participants expressed strong displeasure over the tourist inflow, some describing their presence in the temple and around the settlement as a ‘nuisance’. Ninety-nine per cent of the tourist come here to see the treasure … only when they are here do they realize that it is not open to the public for viewing … I have had a few of them ask me inside the temple ‘Where are the vaults and the treasure located?’ and I reply … ‘It is the God Vishnu in front of you’ … for us the deity is the treasure and that is invaluable to us … Lack of infrastructure to support the large influx of tourist is another concern for the residents of the settlement. Although only five of the participants interviewed raised this concern, it is clearly a growing threat that needs to be addressed before it becomes unmanageable. Improving tourist infrastructure will not only prevent tourists from polluting and littering the streets and residence frontages, but also help foster a better relationship between the Brahmin community and the visitors.

Ageing settlement The Tamil Brahmin settlement is slowly turning into a settlement for retired members of the Tamil Brahmins. Eighty per cent of the participants interviewed fall into the category of age group 50 years and above, 58 per cent of whom have retired from service. These are the last generation of residents who have been directly or indirectly affected by the post-Independence social changes. The newer generation chose to move out of the settlement to seek better socio-economic opportunities and a more spacious living space, leaving behind the parents or taking them along with them. One such participant mentions: Let’s take my situation, we have a house in the agrahāram, my mother lives in Bangalore, so does my sister, my brother lives in Delhi. Our house therefore is locked and unoccupied. What can we do? Either we should renovate it or just leave it as it is …

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The characteristics of the settlement as described by the participants and discussed previously, such as security and closeness, proximity to goods and services, location at the heart of the city, are conducive for residing aged members to lead an independent life in a familiar setting. The concern would be whether it would continue serving this value to the future generations or perish with the current residents.

Heritage values and threats from the perspective of non-Brahmin community Views of the core-community of Tamil-Brahmins on heritage values and potential threats are central for the settlement’s conservation. It is also important to understand the perspective of people living outside the settlement, essentially non-Brahmin community, in order to obtain a community-wide inclusive assessment. The non-Brahmin interviewees consider the Brahmin community as the most spiritual of all communities and ‘closest to the Gods’. When asked to describe a typical Brahmin residence visited by the participants, nearly 60 per cent mentioned observing the large number of pictures of Hindu Gods and Goddesses hung on the walls of their living room, which, according to them, indicate the Brahmins’ deep-rooted spiritual connection. There was a sense of respect apparent for the Brahmin community among the participants for their deep knowledge in ancient Vedic scriptures and sense of ‘purity’ and ‘holiness’. The perspective of the non-Brahmin community about the social life of the Tamil Brahmin community is very peripheral because of the limited interaction they have with the community. One elderly participant who regularly visits the settlement and the temple observes the below: they spend most of their time in temple … and the people living in the agrahāram, they are very mingling and social type … they lead a simple and joyful life … because their houses are so close to each other they just have to come out of the verandah to talk to each other … I sometimes wish I was born as one of them … life would have been so interesting … Participants also believe that the Tamil Brahmin community have stayed immune to the social illeffects of modernization that drifts families further apart from each other leading to a disconnected society. While the residents of Thiruvananthapuram are evolving into a society with limited or nonexistent interaction with neighbours, the Tamil Brahmin community in Thiruvananthapuram continue to foster their social interactions and social cohesiveness. The Brahmins have translated their exquisite culinary traditions into a revenue model. The increased number of bakery shops and eateries around the settlement owned and run by the Brahmin community endorses this point. As observed by one of the non-Brahmin participants, a professor of economics and business administration, says: Agrahārams have become a hub for manufactures … one can observe a number of cycles in the streets early morning to collect the homemade snacks prepared in various houses within the settlement and sell it in bakery shops around … every household is a factory … there always is a demand for cheap labour … Many of these businesses take up large catering orders for wedding snacks, and is slowly but steadily transforming the settlement into a hub of traditional vegetarian Brahmin cuisine. The income generated through this is an added bonus to the women, especially to the aged members of the settlement with limited or no sources of income. Another observation made by one of the participants, a historian: after the decline of the Royal regime, the status of Brahmin community was also stripped off … but that hasn’t affected them and they continue their life adapting to new

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circumstances … in many houses snacks are made and sold to vendors … and the admirable fact is that there would be no competition on jealousy between the houses … if one house run out of ingredients, they borrow from the other … The sense of attachment is a critical attribute that leads to protection and retention of an object irrespective of its value. This equally applies to buildings and heritage environments. A dominant threat that was suggested mostly (80 per cent) by the non-Brahmin group of interviewees is the absence of sense of ownership towards heritage properties, lack of awareness of its significance and indifferent attitude by the locals towards heritage. About 50 per cent of the interviewed have suggested that the sense of ownership in the community should be sewn into the mind from an early age, and that school education can play a key role in this aspect. One of the participants mentions: people have no cultural consciousness to maintain buildings for the future generations, which is an inherent attitude that needs to change … basic awareness and knowledge about once own place of residence is minimal let alone history and significance … I have observed that our people have no permanent retention of knowledge about their place … it is of low importance … Thiruvananthapuram has been mostly described by the participants as a ‘charming’, ‘homely’, ‘culturally rich’, and ‘conservative’ place with ‘gentle and well-educated residents’. The city, which previously had no ‘big city feel’, according to one of the participants, is rapidly adapting itself to become a metropolitan city and hub of technology and industries. With this change in the physical landscape also comes increased danger to its heritage properties. Another common threat echoed was the bureaucratic inefficiency, with 90 per cent of the non-Brahmin community predicting a very bleak future for the settlement. One of the government officials responsible for the protection the Fort complex and structures within it confessed while interviewing that in many instances political pressure, driven by development and urbanization, overpowers that of heritage protection. This poses an impending threat to the Brahmin settlement and its associated structures. The heritage values and the threats to heritage that the non-Brahmin community associates with the Brahmin settlement is quite similar to those the Brahmin community ascribes to their neighbourhood. When both communities are considered as stakeholders of the urban heritage of Thiruvananthapuram, their shared understanding of the place, in terms of heritage values and risks, likely form a consensus on the direction of the conservation of urban heritage of the city should take. The non-Brahmin community also recognizes the right of the Brahmin community to be the primary stakeholder group in making decisions about the conservation of their own settlement.

How community values guide urban heritage conservation The literature on value assessment suggests different categorizations of heritage values (Avrami et al. 2000; Lipe 1984). All values are interrelated and interwoven, and no value can be given precedence over the other. Measurement of community values for heritage conservation is a complicated process (Spennemann 2006). Firstly, heritage conservation is often viewed as a hindrance to the process of change or progress by many members of the society including state authorities. Secondly, people conceive heritage values with varying degrees of strengths and such values are subject to continual reevaluation and prioritization. What a heritage value is today may change tomorrow. Therefore, this fluidity of values both at the individual and collective level should be emphasized in heritage value assessment. Periodic assessment of the way heritage values of a historic place may have transformed over time should be a key component of heritage conservation projects to devise better strategies for both heritage interpretation and conservation (Silva 2017).

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For the Tamil Brahmin community in Thiruvananthapuram, the dominant core values are the sense of community (80 per cent) and the scared quality of the settlement (76 per cent). These were also resonated by the non-Brahmin participants. To use the conventional parlance of heritage studies, these represent the ‘social value’ and ‘spiritual value’ of the place (Mason 2002). These values point out that, in addition to the conservation of the physical fabric of their settlement, efforts should be taken to safeguard the intangible cultural heritage of the community as it inevitably influences the community’s idea of their heritage, identity, and future life in the settlement. The core values represent the current values the community ascribes to the settlement and are subject to change in the future. These core values are already under threat and require immediate attention. Each threat identified by the Brahmin community influences the core values directly or indirectly. Some of these relationships and plausible implications are elaborated below. The shift in attitude of the Brahmin community towards the temple owing to the recent events associated with the temple treasure impacts and could deteriorate the relationship between the temple and the Brahmin residents of the settlement. The increase in restrictions and security measures placed on the people visiting the temple and the recent influx of tourists have caused a sense of resentment among the community, which could lead to a feeling of detachment in the future. This detachment could culminate into the core community (Brahmins) moving out of the settlement and degrading their spiritual connection to the temple. Bureaucratic incompetency could deeply impact the settlement, its heritage and its people. Some of the instances narrated by the participants – such as the polluted temple pond, overcomplicated procedure for obtaining building or renovation permits, encroachment of state-protected monuments within the settlement – validate the concerns over the inefficiency of the local government. The façadecentric approach adopted by the heritage authorities, which permits agrahāram owners to modify the interior as they like without changing the historic façade, could diminish the architectural quality in the coming years. Also, the complicated procedures the residents are put through to obtain permits could drive away potential buyers or future residents, leading to a settlement of abandoned agrahārams. Tourism is always encouraged in historic sites by governments for economic benefit and exposure it gives them, but it can have damaging effects to the site if not handled efficiently and sustainably. The number of tourists visiting the temple and the settlement has increased drastically over the last five years and the local government is ill-prepared to handle the influx. The impact this has on the social life of the Tamil Brahmins is two-fold. Firstly, the lack of infrastructure and poor waste management have made the presence of tourists a nuisance for the residents. Secondly, this phenomenon has developed a sense of hostility in the minds of the local community towards the tourists, resulting in the decrease in the residents’ visits to the temple, impacting their spiritual connection to the settlement. Encouraging public education is the first step towards community involvement in heritage assessment (Soubeh et al. 2014; Spennemann 2006). Many participants believe that this threat should be dealt with at the early stages of education. Encouraging children to appreciate their heritage environment and spreading awareness among all age groups of the society could build a strong sense of attachment, which is essential for future sustenance of the settlement. Heritage Walk Trivandrum is a recent initiative conducted by few local heritage enthusiasts, where historians and experts walk with interested residents of Thiruvananthapuram in and around the Fort complex where the Tamil-Brahmin settlement is located, narrating different stories and histories associated with many unprotected and lesser known historic structures of the settlement. This step towards engaging local community could be very effective towards building awareness and appreciation. Though not conclusive by itself, these findings and methodology could be useful to develop a sustainable framework for heritage management with a community-based strategy. It first involves a comprehensive mapping of the community-based heritage values, using a number of methods like interviews, focus groups and questionnaire surveys. Participation of a community in heritage 505

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conservation should not be limited to this initial value assessment; strategies could be developed to actively engage a community throughout the process of conservation, monitoring, and management of their cultural heritage. Having identified the core heritage values and threats to heritage from the community perspective, the aim of conservation should be to foster those values and mitigate the threats through both the preservation and development activities (Silva 2011). Defining this primary goal of both conservation and socio-economic development in the way the community understands it should be immensely encouraging to a community to fully participate in the endeavour.

Conclusion When a community is involved in assessing the value of their heritage environment, we could uncover deeper understandings, meanings and associations of the places which may not be possible through an expert-driven approach. This chapter described a study on heritage value assessment solely from a community’s perspective to understand the underlying negative and positive impacts experienced by the community presently living in a historic environment. The core values that needs to be conserved and the threats that diminish these values have been identified, which could aid in devising a management approach unique to the settlement and its context. Though value-based assessment is important to understand the heritage values that need to be conserved, it is impossible to satisfy the likes of all the members of the community and stakeholders and to protect all the values at the same time. The settlement under study becomes more complicated to handle because of its religious character that involves different stakeholders like religious authorities, temple workers and the local community (Soubeh et al. 2014). Other factors that complicate the management of this site include an association with a Hindu temple of local, national and international significance, a core community which is undergoing change in its social and spiritual dynamics and the inappropriate measures taken by the governmental agencies. The findings of this study reflect the viewpoints of 15 individuals of Brahmin community and 10 from the non-Brahmin community interviewed and therefore cannot be generalized to the entire population of Thiruvananthapuram.2 Though the samples were selected on the basis of age, education and gender, the impact of these variables on the study has not been examined in detail. The methodology highlights the significance of involving community perspective in the heritage valuation process and rethinking the existing framework to develop a ‘new’ culture that demonstrates inclusiveness for every member of the society. The study also reflects that, by involving the community in the process a set of new, dynamic, contesting and conflicting values would emerge.

Notes 1 Census of India 2011 indicates a total population of the ward in which the settlement is located as 11,302. Less than 1.1 percent is represented by people scheduled caste/Scheduled tribe castes which indicates, but not concludes, the relative homogeneity of the Brahmin/upper caste in the locality. The gender ratio of the ward representing the settlement is 1046 females per 1,000 males which is among the highest in the country. 2 Research by Guest et al. (2006) claims that in a homogenous group, 12 interviews are enough to reach data saturation.

References Aiya, V. N. (1906) The travancore state manual, Vol. 1. Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India: Gazetteers Department. Available at: https://ia902702.us.archive.org/32/items/travancorestate00aiyagoog/travancorestate00aiyagoog.pdf (accessed 1 June 2017). Avrami, E. C., Mason, R., and de la Torre, M. (2000) Values and heritage conservation: Research report. Los Angeles, CA: Getty Conservation Institute.

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Examining community-based heritage values Dijkgraaf, C. (2004) ‘How world heritage sites disappear: Four cases, four threats.’ in Linking universal and local values: Managing a sustainable future for World Heritage, Paris: UNESCO World Heritage Centre, 32–35. Dobson, J. (2015) ‘A one trillion-dollar hidden treasure chamber is discovered at India’s Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple’, Forbs. [online]. Available at: www.forbes.com/sites/jimdobson/2015/11/13/a-one-trillion-dollar-hidden-treasure-cham ber-is-discovered-at-indias-sree-padmanabhaswam-temple/#3fe7b8b821eb (accessed 28 November 2016). Duval, M., Smith, B., Hoerle, S., Bovet, L., Khumalo, N. and Bhengu, L. (2019) ‘Towards a holistic approach to heritage values: A multidisciplinary and cosmopolitan approach’, International Journal of Heritage Studies. [online]. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2019.1590449 (accessed 01 April 2019). Edroma, E. C. (2003) ‘Linking universal and local values for sustainable management of world heritage sites.’ in Linking universal and local values: Managing a sustainable future for world heritage, Paris: UNESCO World Heritage Centre, 36–42. Express News Service. (2016) ‘Stone “Mandapam” next to Padmatheertham demolished’. [online]. Available at: www.newindianexpress.com/cities/thiruvananthapuram/2016/feb/20/Stone-Mandapam-Next-to-Padmatheer tham-Demolished-894718.html (accessed 28 November 2016). Guest, G., Bunce, A. and Johnson, L. (2006) ‘How many interviews are enough? An experiment with data saturation and variability’, Field Methods, 18(1): 59–82. Jones, S. (2017) ‘Wrestling with the social value of heritage: Problems, dilemmas and opportunities’, Journal of Community Archaeology and Heritage, 4(1): 21–37. Kiruthika, K. and Thirumaran, K. (2019) ‘Effects of urbanization on historical heritage buildings in Kumbakonam, Tamilnadu, India’, Frontiers of Architectural Research, 5, 94–105. Lipe, W. D. (1984) ‘Value and meaning in cultural resources.’ in H. Cleere (ed.) Approaches to the archaeological heritage: A comparative study of world cultural resource management system, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1–11. Mason, R. (2002) ‘Assessing values in conservation planning: Methodological issues and choices.’ in M. de la Torre (ed.) Assessing values of cultural heritage, Los Angeles, CA: The Getty Conservation Institute, 5–30. Padanna, A. (2011a, July 1) ‘India: Treasure unearthed in Kerala temple’, BBC News. [online]. Available at: www. bbc.com/news/world-south-asia-13994351 (accessed 1 July 2011). ———. (2011b, August 1) ‘Indian panel resumes priceless treasure inspection’, BBC News. [online]. Available at: www.bbc.com/news/world-south-asia-14364914 (accessed I August 2011). Poulios, I. (2014a) ‘Discussing strategy in heritage conservation: Living heritage approach as an example of strategic innovation’, Journal of Cultural Heritage Management and Sustainable Development, 4(1): 16–34. ———. (2014b) The past in the present: A living heritage approach – Meteora, Greece. London: Ubiquity Press. Rajeev, S. S. (2011) Agraharams: The origin and evolution of a unique housing pattern in Kerala, Unpublished Master of Architecture thesis, School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi, India. Russell, J. and Johnston, C. (2005) ‘Community and cultural values: The upper mersey valley and the Tasmanian Wilderness world heritage area’, Historic Environment: Mountains of Meaning, 18(2): 39–45. Silva, K. D. (2011) ‘Mapping meaning in the city image: A case study of Kandy, Sri Lanka’, Journal of Architectural and Planning Research, 28(3): 229–251. ———. (2015) ‘The spirit of place of Bhaktapur, Nepal’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 21(8): 820–841. ———. (2017) ‘Epilogue: Prospects for managing South Asian cultural landscapes.’ in K. D. Silva and A. Sinha (eds) Cultural landscapes in South Asia: Studies in heritage conservation and management, London: Routledge, 258–268. Soubeh, M., Al-Omari, K. and Al-Khreasat, A. (2014) ‘Developing a comprehensive conserving and preserving framework to meet the particularity of religious heritage and sacred places’, International Journal of Engineering and Innovative Technology, 4(4): 205–207. Spennemann, D. H. (2006) ‘Gauging community values in historic preservation’, CRM: The Journal of Heritage Stewardship, 3(2): 6–20. Thakur, N. (2011) ‘Indian cultural landscapes: Religious pluralism, tolerance and ground reality’, Journal of SPA: New Dimensions in Research of Environments for Living “The Sacred”, (3, Monsoon). Available at: https://architexturez. net/doc/az-cf-21175 (accessed 20 February 2019). ———. (2017) ‘India.’ in U. Carughi and M. Visone (eds) Time frames: Conservation for the twentieth-century architectural heritage, London: Routledge, 132–134. TysaSusanti, D. B. (2015) ‘Participation model for the conservation of religious heritage buildings: Case study of Chinese temple along the North Coastal Area of Java’, International Journal of Chemical, Environment and Biological Sciences, 3(4): 262–267. Wijesuriya, G. (n.d.) Living heritage: A summary. Rome: ICCROM, 1–13. Available at: www.iccrom.org/wp-con tent/uploads/PCA_Annexe-1.pdf (accessed 10 March 2019).

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30 WURUNDJERI-AL NARRM-U (WURUNDJERI’S MELBOURNE) Aboriginal living heritage in Australia’s urban landscapes Mandy Nicholson and David Jones

Acknowledgement of Country We would like to acknowledge the Wurundjeri people who are the Traditional Custodians of this Country of Narrm (Melbourne). We would also like to pay our respects to the Elders of yesterday, today and tomorrow. Marramb-ik Wurundjeri-wilam baggarrook, Wurundjeri-baluk-ut, Dja Dja wurrung, Ngurai illum wurrung, German and Irish, dhumba-njan Woiwurrung. Wurundjeri mundagat Narrm-djak. Mundani-njan murrup galada Birrarung, ba Liwik-bulok-nugel-ik, Lalal ba Gugung nugel-ik. Mundanai-njan bubup narrkwarren-ik, ba kirrip-ik. Mundani-njan Biik-ut, Biik-dui, Baanj Biik, Murnmut Biik, Wurru wurru Biik ba Tharangalk Biik-Bunjil-al Wilam-u. Ngoon godgin Gulinj-marram ngada. Ngoon godgin meymet nugel-ik ba kirrip-ik David. I am Mandy Nicholson, a Wurundjeri-wilam woman within the Wurundjeri-baluk patriline, Dja Dja wurrung, Ngurai illum wurrung, German and Irish, and I speak Woiwurrung. Wurundjeri are the Traditional Custodians of greater Melbourne. I embrace the Spirit River, Birrarung, and my many grandfathers and grandmothers (Elders). I embrace my family and friends. I embrace the Below Country, On Country, Water Country, Wind Country, Sky Country and Bunjil’s home, the Forest Country above the clouds. I thank my people of the Gulinj (Kulin). I thank my non-Kulin friends and my friend, David.

Introduction This chapter discusses, from a Wurundjeri perspective, the definition of and how our connection to Country has changed (if at all) through time, with a focus on the urban heritage and landscape of Narrm (meaning ‘scrub’), the area of metropolitan Melbourne. Throughout this chapter, we will refer to Narrm and Melbourne as two separate entities in time and context. Past Ngurungaeta (Leader) William Barak (c.1824–1903) is also referred to by his traditional name of Berak, unless noted by other authors as Barak. Australia as an Aboriginal landscape will be defined and how language, land, water, Country and multiple voices work together to define Wurundjeri people. The comparative differences

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between the conventional definition of landscape and a Wurundjeri perspective of Country are considered and how these work both separately and together. Wurundjeri history and how its culture and language have survived after nearly being erased because of European invasion are described. Wurundjeri Country and urban heritage management are reflected upon through two case studies, towards respectfully positioning Wurundjeri peoples into urban planning and urban heritage management processes and outcomes, much of which has overlooked Wurundjeri perspectives for too long (Jones et al. 2018; Kitson et al. 2018). As context for this chapter, the Wurundjeri people are the Traditional Custodians of much of the metropolitan Melbourne region extending out in all directions, with the Birrarung (‘River of mists’ = Yarra River) flowing through its heart. Wurundjeri’s language is Woiwurrung, with the five Woiwurrung speaking clans (extended family groups) holding custodial responsibilities for separate parcels of land handed down by bloodline. Of the five clans, Nicholson is of the Wurundjeri-wilam, Wurundjeri-baluk patriline.

Australia as an aboriginal landscape Australia contains many different types of landscapes, from arid deserts, to oceans, temperate rainforests and snow-capped mountains. Victoria, the state of Australia where Narrm is the capital, contains all these physical landscapes. However, the Aboriginal definition of this geography is very different. According to Pascoe (Pascoe 2014: 137), ‘One of the greatest differences between the culture of Aboriginal Australia and that of mainstream Australia is the concept of land’. Aboriginal ‘Country’ (Biik), as distinct from a Western ‘landscape’, contains all its physical tangible and intangible elements, but is dominated by overarching spiritual elements, a living ‘cultural landscape’. Country is determined on an individual level by descent, your Creation Narratives and Law. A Wurundjeri individual’s physical body, and what keeps it alive, can be likened to the physical elements of a landscape like a river, a tree, or a mountain. The ‘spiritual body’ and what keeps you alive can be compared to the elements that lie within the physical, such as a river’s water, a leaf’s veins, or a tree’s sap, that keeps our body alive. The health of self and Country are intrinsically linked through your individual cultural landscape; if Country is ill, so will you be and vice versa. Early Europeans had a different concept of landscape seeing a strong need to ‘discover’, control, and name a place and in turn ‘taming’ it. This made it recognisable and definable as a ‘landscape’. Thus, ‘taming the untamed’ has changed little over time resulting in ‘pro-development[; the] domestication of an uncivilized landscape[;] the imposition of meaning onto the environment through the application of scientific knowledge and naming practices; and male agency acting upon a potentially fertile natural world’ (Trigger 1997: 175). In contrast, ‘Aboriginal Australian law insisted that the land was held in common and that people were the mere temporal custodians. Individuals were responsible for particular trees, rivers, lakes … but they worked it in a co-operation with the surrounding clans’ (Pascoe 2014: 138). Western colonialisation has drastically affected the Australian landscape in all its tangible and intangible manifestations. In particular, this has occurred in the interpretation of information that has been ‘fabricated’ through Western ideology and science. There is need to de-fabricate this lens and history, and thereby decolonise the narratives that express Australia today to ones that speak of individual Aboriginal Country’s (Jones et al. 2018: 24; Smith 2012); thus, to recognise the Wurundjeri people and their language and Country as a valid, equal and legal layer and contributor to the Australian ‘story’. Thus, the Australian ‘landscape’ is defined by assumptions depending upon your cultural lens. For example, labelling Aboriginal people (e.g. Aboriginal, Indigenous, lower case, upper case, First Peoples, First Nations, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, Traditional Owner/Custodian) results in various nomenclature. Which one of these is correct? These are all Western linguistic constructs, and definitions from cultures other than our own. Our culture is also defined in generic terms (e.g.: ‘Aboriginal’ 509

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as distinct from Wurundjeri) and does not refer to our regional variances. By making yourself aware and therefore accepting these variances, will help break down any misunderstandings about the diversity of Australia’s first cultures. To understand a cultural landscape is to understand its language. In terms of post-invasion Australia, it reveals sleeping knowledge of places and spaces, both positive and negative. There are 38 recognised languages in Victoria, known as revival languages, with boundaries defined by natural landscape features. These boundaries typically occupy unique physical landscape types such as mountainous regions, flatlands, wetlands, and coastal strips that are linked to their regional Creation Narratives. In Wurundjeri’s case, the cultural responsibility of certain parcels of land is formed through an apical ancestor. A snapshot can be gleamed from the clan names themselves, as seen in Table 30.1. As demonstrated in Table 30.1, physical features of the environment are found in their Woiwurrung names. The names also describe something unique or plentiful, such as Marin-baluk being the place of possums. However, some places describe a gender-specific place, such as Balitgurrk, meaning ‘strong woman’. Such can either mean that it’s a special women’s only place – for example a birthing site – or it may mean that it is a women’s ceremony site.

Table 30.1 Woiwurrung-speaking clan distribution. Wurundjeri Clan name

Location

Woiwurrung Word and English Meaning

Wurundjeri-baluk

Mt Baw Baw, Healesville, northern tributaries of the Birrarung (Yarra), to the eastern side of the Mirrangbamurn (Maribyrnong), up to Gisborne.

Baluk = swamp Birrarung = river of mist/shadows Mirrang = eye Barmurn = ringtail possum

Wurundjeri-wilam

Site of Narrm (Melbourne), up to the east side of the Maribyrnong and its western branch to Geboor (Mt Macedon), western half of country from the Kurrum (Plenty River) to the Maribyrnong.

Wilam = ‘camp/shelter’ Narrm = scrub Geboor = unknown Kurrum = unknown

Marin-baluk

Western side of Maribyrnong centred around Koorakoorakup (Sunbury) and the watersheds of Geboor (Mt Macedon).

Marin-baluk = Maribyrnong River Koorakoorakup = unknown

Gunang-wilam-baluk

Adjoining Wurundjeri Country on the west side of Geboor (Mt Macedon) through to Balitgurrk (Bullengarook) and Munal (Daylesford).

Gunung-wilam-balu k = river shelter swamp Balitgurrk = balit:strong + gurrk:blood/female Munal = Dja Dja wurrung word, unknown

Baluk-wilam

South of ‘Yering’ to Koo-wee-rup, Cranbourne and Dandenong areas which was once under a vast swamp until it was drained for farming in the 1800s.

Baluk-wilam = swamp shelter

Kurung-jang-baluk

Melton area

Kurung jang = red ground Baluk = swamp

Source: Mandy Nicholson; the author adapted, and re-linguistically revised the information cited in Barwick (1984: 120–125) and in Clark and Heydon (2002)

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Therefore, it is an integral part of any planning project to investigate the original names for places before the project begins. Planning without this foundation research often results in Woiwurrung language names being used after project completion to name a building, park, street or meeting room, but the context of that language is not understood. Language is like an artwork or an original song; it has intellectual property rights over it. So, too with revival languages, such cannot be used without written permission. As Woiwurrung is a revival language, Wurundjeri people need to reclaim it first before it is taught and used in the public domain. Language is often used as a tokenistic gesture, where a ‘pronounceable and nice meaning’ is preferred, which is a form of cultural disempowerment. Another example of disempowerment is the debate about reversion of colonial names to traditional Woiwurrung names or after Aboriginal people. For example, in the northern suburbs of Melbourne, the Commonwealth electorate of (John) Batman, named after a ‘grazier’ who was also a murderer of Aboriginal people in Tasmania in the 1800s, was proposed to be changed to honour Simon Wonga, a Wurundjeri Ngurungaeta (Leader) of the same era. Wonga was not only highly respected by his people, but also the Europeans who knew him. Eventually this proposal fell through due to lack of support by the wider community, but resulted in the electorate being renaming after another well-respected Yorta Yorta leader William Cooper (Pearson 2017). Similarly, local municipality Darebin Council failed to change the name of a park from Batman to Gumbri (dove). This was due to a lack of support from both the public and some Wurundjeri people who felt they were not consulted appropriately as the name was attached to a specific Elder. The history of naming Narrm first came from Wurundjeri physical and spiritual observations, informed by both tangible and intangible aspects of place. Often these names were misheard by early colonists as Woiwurrung has phonetic sounds that are not found in English. For example, colonial surveyor John Helder Wedge sourced the name ‘Yarra’ from ‘a Wathawurrung [Wadawurrung] speaker from the [neighbouring] Geelong area [when asking] what the cascading waters on a lower section of the river were called, exclaimed “Yanna Yanna”, meaning “it flows”’, thus resulting in a Wadawurrung Country name incorrectly being labelled upon a feature inside Wurundjeri Country (Gibson et al. 2018). Using names without context risks misinterpretations and misunderstandings, and ‘limited appreciation of their nuance and complexity’ (Gibson et al. 2018: 1). A chief example being the use of the name ‘Moomba’ for an annual street parade. According to the Collins Dictionary online (2018), it means ‘Let’s get together and have some fun’, but not until recently its true origins have been documented via the same dictionary, meaning ‘buttocks, anus’. Wurundjeri’s long-standing connection to Narrm includes many and complex variances that cannot be encapsulated in a simple word or phrase. At risk of being tokenistic, and overlooking cultural contexts, full local knowledge sets should be applied to prevent further misrepresentations. Demonstrating this, Narrm has always been home to major language groups gatherings, all with a specific name and purpose. For example, Wurundjeri’s celebratory gathering, Gayip, would be a more befitting name for Moomba, as it is loosely translated means ‘celebration’. This raises the question of who controls how cultural knowledge in language is portrayed, as the true meaning of Moomba has been ignored and manipulated into fallacy.

Wurundjeri Country yesterday and today Wurundjeri Country includes Narrm and most of its surrounding districts, forming part of the Central Kulin Nation that consists of five language groups: Boon wurrung to the south; Taungurung to the north-east; Dja Dja wurrung to the north-west; and Wadawurrung to the west (Powell and Jones 2019), taking up most of southcentral Victoria. According to Wurundjeri Elder, Bill Nicholson Jr., Wurundjeri Country:

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extends east to the Werribee River, north-west to Mount Macedon, east to Mount Baw Baw, north to the Great Dividing Range behind Healesville [including the Yarra Valley], south to Mordialloc Creek and resides on the northern boundaries of the great swamp lands of Koo Wee Rup. (Nicholson and Nicholson 2016: n.p.) Wurundjeri originally consisted of five clan groups that were regionally based, as seen in Table 30.1. Today, however, all Woiwurrung speaking clan groups identify under an umbrella name of either Woiwurrung or Wurundjeri, with Wurundjeri being the only clan to survive the effects of the European invasion. Today there are four main family groups, all descending from Berak’s sister Annie Borate (Boorat), bringing the total population of Wurundjeri descendants into the low 1000s. Wurundjeri community has always consisted of senior Elders, Elders, community leaders and children, each having a role to play in their community. This system allows for the traditional practice of gender roles and responsibilities. For example, all females raise female children; not only their birth mothers. Similarly, all males raise the boys. This is seen with the differing roles in ceremony. Mothers and fathers play a part, but Aunties and Uncles play a key role in the conduction of ceremony. Acknowledging that these kinship structures remain in Wurundjeri culture today helps enlighten views of Aboriginal culture in a city like Melbourne. Acknowledgment alone, however, is not enough; such as verbal or written acknowledgments embedded in buildings, planning documents, and places and spaces. These Wurundjeri community roles and responsibilities remain today to keep community connected to culture. Since 1788, Australia and its Traditional Custodians have been defined by others. Land was seen as a commodity needed to be snapped up and civilised. Australia was declared a land owned by no one, ‘terra nullius’. In early Melbourne, however, Wurundjeri people were asked to sign the infamous Batman Treaty to purchase Wurundjeri and Wadawurrung lands and waters in exchange for blankets, knives, etc. This ‘signing’ or ‘treaty’ was overturned by the British government upholding the concept of terra nullius, declaring that Aboriginal people did not own the land so could not sell it. Swiftly after invasion, most of Wurundjeri lands, waters, and resources, were divided up and destroyed by tree-felling and foreign hard-hooved animals and effectively making Wurundjeri people ‘dispossessed of their lands, economic base, ceremonial grounds and [they] were utterly marginalized’ (Porter and Barry 2016: 69). However, the Wurundjeri did not give in; they still maintained the ideal of self-determination. After Ngurungaeta Simon Wonga’s death, Berak became Ngurungaeta and helped create one of the most successful Aboriginal reserves in Victoria’s history, Coranderrk. The language group alliances that were formed over millennia were disbanded and separated while families, friend and foe, were forcibly rounded up and placed onto missions and reserves, changing the trajectory of Wurundjeri culture forever. Once at Coranderrk, the Wurundjeri (and the other Aboriginal residents) were told that they could no longer be ‘Aboriginal’. Despite this, the Wurundjeri still attempted to live in both worlds. Berak’s words mirror the position of Wurundjeri today: give us this ground and let us manage here ourselves … and no one over us … we will show the country we can work it and make it pay and I know it will … (Marcard 1969: 1) Traditional Custodians today, just like in the time of Berak, ‘are demanding not the right to be included in someone else’s order, but the authority to co-determine that very order’ (Porter and Barry 2016: 31). For Wurundjeri, lands and waters are both Country. The great Birrarung that flows through the centre of Narrm, and Wurundjeri Country, has many narratives. Wurundjeri oral narratives of the creation of Country, told by Berak and Bebejin (Berak’s father), both record the flooding of Narrm Narrm (‘much scrub’) creating today’s Port Phillip Bay. In Bebejin’s version, large bodies of water pooled around Kew, echoing the geological history of a lava flow blocking the river at Dights Falls. A second

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narrative explains how the Birrarung provided fresh drinking water to her people; the natural cascading waterfalls preventing salt water travelling too far upstream while still allowing for fish and eel migrations. A third narrative talks of the natural flooding cycle of Birrarung and the physical control it had over the ‘new’ Melbourne. A fourth narrative talks of colonial attempts to control its ‘nature’ by damming, straightening, destroying its waterfalls, diverting and poisoning it with gold mining tailings and wool scourings containing arsenic, and constantly polluting it with run off. Wurundjeri people’s connection to the Birrarung is not simply a historical one. All these narratives do not change how Wurundjeri people connect to the river. Similarly, connection to Country is not a relic from a past culture. Also, one’s spiritual connection to Country does not diminish when you hit the edges of a city. Figure 30.1 expresses on a Walert-gurn – common brushtail possum (Trichosurus vulpecula) skin cloak – how a Traditional Custodian sees Narrm. The buildings, and streets are not perceived, but its geographical cultural features are etched into generational memory. Memory of landscape can be defined as a lived memory of not only yours, but that of generations before you, that form your knowledge set. Country is the same continuum. One way this is handed down to you is through songlines that ‘read’ Country. Thus, Country is your body. Country is our individual and collective body, with emotions that can be triggered. Rose (1996: 7) observes that Country is not only a common noun but also a proper noun:

Figure 30.1 Cultural map of Narrm on a Walert-gurn: Possum Skin Cloak. The outlines of Port Phillip Bay (to the south in repeated circles, the watercourses of the Maribyrnong and Yarra (as bold jagged lines), and various icons that locate camp sites, ceremonial sites, plant food gathering places, billabongs, quarries etc. that are expressed with reference to Wurundjeri linear symbology. Source: Mandy Nicholson

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People talk about country in the same way that they would talk about a person: they speak to …, sing to …, visit …, worry about …, feel sorry …, and long for country. People say that country knows, hears, smells, takes notice, takes care, is sorry or happy. If you do not care for your body physically, you become physically ill, but if you do not care for your body culturally and spiritually, the connection between Self and Country is weakened and both become culturally ill. This can include ‘forgetting’ Country and, therefore, yourself. Apache man, Wilson Lavender (in Basso 1984: 21), describes the effects of being off Country and forgetting the names and stories of his homeland, stating, ‘I don’t hear them in my mind anymore. I forget how to live right, forget how to live strong’. Country is your lifeforce, just like blood carries oxygen throughout your body to keep you alive, so to waterways are the lifeblood for Country. So how do we keep Country alive today? Today, the way we protect Country has had to adapt as new barriers and obstacles have been created due to invasion, population explosions, urbanisation sprawl, demand for resources and the creation of overcrowded built environments. Country cannot speak for itself, and with so many now relying on it, so we must speak on its behalf.

The elements of Wurundjeri Country Country is not just one entity. The scope of it is represented in Figure 30.2. It is a multi-layered, as expressed in Table 30.2 that includes: •

Biik-ut (Below Country): Country is where life began. Bunjil the eagle (Aquila audax), Wurundjeri’s Creator, made men from clay and Balayang the Bat (Bunjil’s Brother) (species unknown) created women from the muddy banks of the Goulburn River in Taungurung Country, north of Wurundjeri Country. Werrook (roots) bind the Biik-ut (Below Country) and Biik-dui (On Country). Through the

Figure 30.2 Winha biik? (What is Country?). Source: Mandy Nicholson

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Wurundjeri-al Narrm-u Table 30.2 The fundamental elements of Wurundjeri Country. THARANGALK BIIK (Forest Country above the clouds, Bunjil’s Home) •

Karalk (Sun rays at sunset); how spirits traverse to Ngamat

WURRU WURUU BIIK (Sky Country) •

Ngamat (Bad Country), where the spirits of the dead go between the clouds and Tharangalk Biik

MURNMUT BIIK (Wind Country) • • •

Binbeal (Bunjil’s son, the rainbow) connects Wurru Wurru Biik and Biik-Dui Baanjmin (Rain) connects all Countries below the clouds; cycle of rain Burt (Smoke) from ceremony transcends to Bunjil’s home

BAANJ BIIK (Water Country) • •

Water in all its forms (rivers, creeks, dams, ocean, rain, mist, dew) Used as part of a Welcome ceremony

BIIK-DUI (On Country) • •

Physical and Spiritual Country Where we walk, dance, and conduct ceremony

BIIK-UT (Below Country) • •

Werrook (The roots of plants binding together Biik-ut and Biik-dui) Body application of Ochre taken from Biik-ut and Biik-dui during dance and ceremony

Source: Mandy Nicholson

•

•

collection and application of ochre, connection of Self and Country is further strengthened. Ochre is painted on your body for dance and ceremony. Biik-dui (On Country): Country is your soul. Country creates your soul and gives you your murrup (spirit), your spirituality. Pascoe (2014: 127) writes that ‘there is no separation between the sacred and non-sacred as all actions are steeped in religious purpose’. It teaches you about your Creation Spirits and how Country was created by them and how they intervened when necessary when the Central/Eastern Kulin were not doing the right thing. It teaches us how to live and guides us on the right cultural path. Senior Wurundjeri Elder Aunty Joy Murphy-Wandin (2014) describes, ‘when you’re not quite sure which way to go, or what you should do, most times an eagle will feature, just fly, just be visible, and that way that gives me a sense of saying I’m doing the right thing’. Caring for Country can physically and spiritually be practiced through dance and ceremony. The smoke from Welcoming Ceremonies transcends all layers of Country to Tharangalk Biik (Bunjil’s home). Men and boys stomp proudly to kick up the biik (earth). The women and girls glide though the dust, burying their toes and flicking it up as they move, giving back to the Liwik (Ancestors) through the strength of dance moves. The dust of the biik dances with them. Baanj Biik (Water Country): Country is language. Just like water is present in most elements of Country. It is under and on the ground, it evaporates into the clouds and returns to the ground through rain and dew. It touches everything, just like language does. Language is written in Country, creating its narrative. The Water Ceremony is a traditional Wurundjeri practice where a visitor

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•

•

•

is offered a sip of water from a tarnuk (wooden bowl) through a reed to symbolise that all the resources on Country are safe and they are welcome to use them. This is termed ‘cultural safety’. Murnmut Biik (Wind Country): Country touches and is everything. Just like we feel the wind on our body, even though we cannot see it, we can see its effect. We sing and speak in language and our voices are carried through the wind to all layers of Country, up to Bunjil. Language absorbs into the trees, plants, animals and biik. Today when people hear Woiwurrung, they are hearing a language that has been sleeping for generations and now re-awakened. Our Old People can still hear us, and we can still feel them as an overwhelming warmth that overcomes your body. Wurru wurru Biik (Sky Country): Country warns. It guides and warns us of danger. We study the sky, the clouds, stars and wind, and by reading its signs, we see if there will be warm, cold, stormy or windy weather (Nicholson and Jones 2018). It also tells us the time for ceremony, animal breeding seasons and the time to burn, all of which are still read today. Wurru wurru Biik also houses the physical forms of our Creation Beings, of which are usually something that flies. These Creation Beings traverse not only the Wurru wurru Biik, but also into Tharangalk Biik. Tharangalk Biik (Forest Country above the clouds – Bunjil’s home): Country governs emotions and heals. Country has good and bad emotions just as we do. Tharangalk Biik reflects all Countries, just as the sun, moon, stars and clouds are reflected in the waterways. If Aboriginal people are away for too long, they have cultural responsibilities that need to be fulfilled. Their spirit is renewed when they go back to home and pay their respects to Country, Ancestors and loved ones. Elders have many responsibilities and are in high demand for their cultural knowledge. Senior Wurundjeri Elder Aunty Diane Kerr (2015) explains that her responsibility as an Elder is not only to care for Country, and her direct community, but also the wider Indigenous and non-Indigenous community as well: ‘my responsibility as an Elder is to care for people on my Country; doesn’t matter if they’re Aboriginal or non-Aboriginal, coz they’re on my Country, and they’ll always be looked after’ [sic.].

Wurundjeri Country and urban planning and heritage management Western urban planning rests on statutory, strategic, and small-scale planning as well as landscape-scale planning relationships that are not spatially and narrative consistent. One major difference between Wurundjeri and Western physical landscapes understandings is that Narrm has flowing, undulating lines relating to Country boundaries, while Melbourne has straight regimented lines evidenced in its gridlike streets and tall buildings. They however are the same place. Lines can be likened to a figurative ‘fence’, maintaining, containing and controlling the landscape by restricting movement in and out. Gammage (2011: 321) describes that ‘fences on the ground make fences in the mind’. There are many human-made places in an urban sense that we connect to – for either a quiet place, for a picnic, to play or get married. But in a Wurundjeri context, they are more than simply places or spaces placed in a square frame; places are not human-made. They encapsulate all Country; for all Country is a sacred site and has always been there, no matter what has happened in and around to manipulate it. From an urban planning perspective, the question should be asked: what is the ‘story’ wanting to be told about Melbourne’s landscape? Is it a natural landscape devoid of human influence that must be maintained or controlled? Or is it one that should incorporate all perspectives so that Narrm and Melbourne can work together to keep re-telling the whole story of Narrm and Melbourne? The story of landscape should embrace all of these. Unfortunately, this is not the case. For example, mining and an urban landscape are very similar; mining takes up from the earth, while urban planning lays upon it. Either way, Country is muffled and cannot breathe. The problem according to Trigger (1997: 170) is that ‘development ideology assumes that the landscape is there for human use’ and nothing else. 516

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However, from a Wurundjeri perspective, the opposite is the case. The relationship with the cultural landscape is mutually inclusive. To enable the inclusion of aspects of this relationship, many planners travel down the road of consultation. ‘Consultation’ is a weighted word, as Aboriginal people are the most ‘consulted’ on the planet. Their knowledge is highly sought after, but the acknowledgment of their scientific and economic values is often misread and avoided in terms of a ‘modern cityscape’ planning, including recognition of their cultural knowledge. Another misinterpretation of Wurundjeri today is that all members are ‘experts’ on all aspects of the wider Aboriginal culture. This is not the case, and it highlights the need for appropriate consultative processes. By ‘consultative’, we mean not simply asking a couple of Elders for their opinion on a project, but gaining their trust first, by creating long-lasting professional and personal relationships with the body of Elders and community leaders. The roles of everyone within Wurundjeri community have different knowledge sets and can be difficult to navigate. This can be compared to ‘identity analysis’ by Hockey and Dawson (1997: 208) who describe it, on an individual level, as being ‘extremely difficult to represent individual identity fully and accurately, because it is fluid, situational and fundamentally political’. Similarly, to the limited number of Wurundjeri Elders, community leaders also have much pressure on them for their knowledge. They must wear many hats; those of cultural educators, mentors, and advisors to not only their own community but also to the wider community. This makes the Wurundjeri community over-extended in fulfilling expectations for engagement. Therefore, patience is a virtue with any planning project, as community values and knowledge do not fit comfortably within the structured world of urban planning deadlines and is often undervalued. These are seen as tokenistic gestures, such as Elders being offered a bottle of wine to guest lecture at major universities, while a university professor is regarded as an expert and is afforded much more respect. An example of tokenism in planning is the ‘inclusion’ of Traditional Custodial perspectives, but to no real avail. Porter and Barry (2016: 31) conclude that ‘modes of recognition that simply identify an Othered Indigenous group to bring to the planning table are clearly monological, and thus very shallow, contact zones’. These ‘contact zones’ between planners’ knowledge and Traditional Custodial knowledge, or yarning/discussion experiences, are highly under-valued and under-utilised. The opportunities for mutually beneficial outcomes are immense. On a larger scale, even though the Aboriginal Heritage Act (Vic) (2006) (AHA) (Victoria State Government 2006) amended the Planning and Environment Act (1987) (Victoria State Government 1987), enabling relevant Traditional Custodian corporations to have statutory rights over future planning applications, it still does not recognise customary law and access to lands and waters. It is all still controlled by government legislation: While there was high level Aboriginal representation leading up to the writing and implementation of the AHA, Wurundjeri themselves felt largely left out of the process. (Porter and Barry 2016: 72–73) What is recognition? In Melbourne, Aboriginal and Wurundjeri culture are only visible in prefabricated spaces utilising art or language. For example, there are numerous Wurundjeri artworks dotted throughout the city; and Woiwurrung language is also used to name numerous meeting rooms, department programmes and buildings. However, they all lack cultural context. This is all aesthetic. To be truly recognised is to take the lead in Melbourne planning policy by having a Traditional Custodian helping to author it. There are many examples of projects that have good intentions but fall short of appropriate recognition and cultural respect by lacking the core values of why the project was started in the first place. Examples of this are the Barak Building and Birrarung Marr, discussed in the following section of this chapter.

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When working with Traditional Custodians, the first step of engagement is to understand the difference between local Aboriginal people and Traditional Custodians (Owners) of the local area. It is important to note that the Aboriginal person must be a Traditional Custodian of the Country coming under that planning policy or project. An Aboriginal person from another part of Australia do not speak for local Country, including customs and beliefs. These distinguishing factors are noted in the Coastal Planning and Management Manual (2003: 4.2) published by the Western Australia State Government: Indigenous people … identify as belonging to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander groups and who are recognised by their communities as belonging to these groups. A Traditional Owner is an Indigenous person with cultural connections to a specific area or tract of land or waters (regardless of historical or current land tenure), arising from Indigenous law and customs observed by the relevant land-owning group. Notable highlights include the terms, ‘belonging to these groups’ and ‘cultural connections’. If overlooked, these factors can prove a destructive vice for future planning projects as the law of Country governs the people who belong to it, its stories are connected through millennia, so only you have the birthright to speak for Country. This law ‘is “written” in the Country’ (Western Australia State Government 2003: 4.2). Aboriginal Australia is a multifaceted, multicultural continent. Each of the over 250 recognised language groups (which also consists of many more regional dialects), care and speak for their respective Country. Each group has distinct cultural beliefs and practices with many differing spiritual creation narratives and with creators unique to them. For example, I could not tell the Country narrative of Queensland or Tasmania as it is not my story. This can be compared to the diversity of Aboriginal art styles and the fact that this is not widely recognised in Melbourne. Examples include the many high-end galleries only stocking ‘exclusive’ and ‘authentic’ art from central and northern Australia, often by appointment only (Sims 2017). The only exclusively Victorian art-based exhibition space/gallery in Melbourne is the Koorie Heritage Trust, which is Indigenous owned and operated. So, as a Traditional Custodian with regards to recognition in both the art and planning space, the struggle with the legacy of invasion still exists. Pascoe (2014: 156) describes this as the ‘shackles of colonialism’ and, to break them, Aboriginal people must be included in the future of the country. He explains even though, The country will still be colonised … the dispossessed will be included … in the general Australian psyche. To deny Aboriginal agricultural and spiritual achievement is the single greatest impediment to inter-cultural understanding and, perhaps, Australian moral and economic prosperity. This ‘shackle’ can be seen in the Planning for all Melbourne: The Victorian Government response to the Melbourne 2030 Audit (Victoria State Government 2018), as it denies any mention of Indigenous perspectives in terms of planning management of water, flora, fauna, ‘all’ of Melbourne indeed (Victoria State Government 2018). The document claims ‘engagement’ will include both community and industry through ‘informing; consulting; involving; collaborating; and empowering’ (Victoria State Government 2018: 10). A great opportunity would have been to include Indigenous perspectives in its ‘integrated land-use and transport planning … sustaining biodiversity across our metropolitan area, managing waste and water resources …’ (Victoria State Government 2018: 21). Still remaining are small native vegetation corridors in an urban environment, approximately ‘7% of the area within Melbourne’s Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) in which new development is occurring is covered by retained native vegetation’ (Victoria State Government 2018: 29). Indigenous perspectives would benefit their protection. This shows that interpretations of culture or cultural knowledge in an urban setting come with predetermined ideals of how a culture should be and in turn how it is valued. Hockey and Dawson 518

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(1997: 9) describes this as ‘the individual, situated in time and space, nonetheless interacts with broader cultural representations, transforming them into their own mental representations’. The assumptions of how Aboriginal people should live, look like, feel, or be are constantly dictated by others. Observations are simply a ‘snapshot’ in time; it does not tell the whole story. By simply relying on the past, fails the present and future of Melbourne and Wurundjeri identity. The key to change this situation again is Aboriginal authorship and collaboration. Quitian and Rodríguez (2016: 832) explains that a good/collaborative process involves steps to ‘engage’, ‘recognise’, ‘address’ and ‘provide’, including that, periodic assessments should be undertaken to continuously improve … mechanisms and … effectiveness to: Engage Indigenous peoples in the different stages of the water planning process; Recognise Indigenous cultural, social, spiritual, commercial and economic interests, uses and values in water; Address Indigenous peoples’ requirements with respect to water allocations; and to Provide strategies to achieve Indigenous objectives in water management.

Case studies: Birrarung Marr and the Barak building The following two short case studies provide an insight into two topical and recent debates about the respectful engagement of Wurundjeri heritage – knowledge, nomenclature and imagery and their claim upon the Narrm or Melbourne’s urban landscape. Birrarung Marr, located on the northern banks of the Yarra River in downtown Melbourne, means ‘river’s edge’ in Woiwurrung. It was and still is the site of the largest gatherings of Central/Eastern Kulin. This large gathering, named Tanderrum, is for settling politics, sharing Creation Narratives, reinforcing affiliations, trade, feasting, singing and dancing. Sadly, Tanderrum has not occurred at Birrarung Marr for over 185 years, due to transgenerational trauma caused by invasion, where language, culture and families have been broken up by the European invaders since the 1800s. Our language was not heard for generations. Thankfully, this changed in 2012, when the Central/Eastern Kulin reclaimed Tanderrum, which included the languages of the Woiwurrung (Wurundjeri people), Boon wurrung, Wadawurrung, Taungurung and Dja Dja wurrung (Djaara people) were once again heard in Narrm. Before the buildings were ‘placed’ on Country, Birrarung Marr stretched up to the current location of (the Australian) Federation Square, its name in itself being quite ironic. Federation, or self-governance, was declared in 1901, the latter of which Aboriginal people are still fighting for today. Federation Square now overlays Country, but Country still lives, just like Wurundjeri people themselves. Originally many places along the Birrarung were utilised by Wurundjeri for gatherings and ceremony, including the confluence of the Merri Creek and Bolin Swamp, both further upstream, one of the most significant being around Birrarung Marr. Figure 30.3 illustrates a segment of the original area (marked with a large black circle) utilised for large gatherings and occupation sites (pre- and postinvasion) of both the Wurundjeri (north side of Birrarung) and the Boon wurrung (south side of the Birrarung). Incorporated also is Yarra Park (labelled 7) or the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), which has links to Marngrook, the precursor to Australian Rules Football, where a possum ball was used in marking competitions (Judd 2005). The now Royal Botanic Gardens’ Melbourne site is also included on the southern banks of the river (labelled 6, circled with a dotted-line). In 2002, Batman Avenue was diverted and Birrarung Marr was created (labelled 2, circled with a dash-line) and in 2006 an art commission creating a ceremony/dance circle was created at Birrarung Marr (marked with a star within a circle). Sadly, a grave omission to the beautiful artworks around the ceremony/dance circle is that they are placed with no context by having no interpretive signage, both on site or online. Hence the rich cultural story about the creation of the Birrarung, the importance of eels, possum skin cloaks, and Bunjil and his helpers are lost in ‘translation’. 519

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Figure 30.3 Birrarung Marr through time. Source: Mandy Nicholson

Notably, the site of Birrarung Marr also incorporates other important shared places. In the east towards Batman Avenue is ‘Speakers Corner’, (marked with a star) which is listed on the Victorian Heritage Database and is where public political protests and orations occurred between the 1890s and 1960s around ‘conscription, women’s suffrage, socialism and industrial matters’ (Heritage Council Victoria 2000). The location is shrouded by ‘old’ European oaks (Quercus robur) and close to Tanderrum and Barak bridges (labelled 3 and 4 respectively). The narrative of there first being Country; then John Batman attempting to ‘purchase’ Country; then Australian Federation having rules of self-governance, excluding the same right to Aboriginal people; then modern shared places emerging, to these shared places being ‘reclaimed’ by Country through the metaphor of Tanderrum and Barak bridges physically over-riding ‘Batman’ Avenue (labelled 5). This forms the image of Berak overseeing Narrm when he was alive, and Melbourne still today. Thus, Berak truly is the builder of bridges between cultures. Berak has also been ‘utilised’ in large-scale architectural projects. In 2015, he was immortalised in ‘Portrait’ on the façade of the residential Barak Building at 551 Swanston Street, Melbourne (Figure 30.4). His face is portrayed over the entirety of the multi-storey building to honour him as a respected Wurundjeri Ngurungaeta (Leader). From the Barak Building project, the public would find references to him as Barak, while Wurundjeri people know him by his traditional name Berak. The cultural integrity of his name is omitted and can be compared to his placement in the centre of a bustling cityscape. Hence, Berak’s ‘Portrait’ is another metaphor for the cultural vs contemporary tokenisms. Berak was one of Australia’s first freedom fighters and can be likened to Bennelong (c.1764–1813) or Martin Luther King Junior (1929–1968), as they all fought the oppressor for the rights of their people and land. Berak realised that his culture and people were dying. He led up to seven deputations to Melbourne for better conditions and treatment of dwindling numbers still living at Coranderrk. He was highly respected by his people, other language groups, and select European people he met, such as his close friend Anne Bon (1838–1936). Berak also serves as an inspiration to Wurundjeri people today, as for without his numerous artworks, language resources, knowledge sharing, ceremony and dance attire descriptions, creation narratives, and songs, all would remain hidden from us today. 520

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Figure 30.4 The Berak Building. Source: David Jones

Similarly, in the planning arena, Wurundjeri people’s shared history of Narrm has not been made ‘visible’. Wurundjeri have not been recognised through time as entrepreneurs, scientists, animal husbandry specialists, land managers, economists, politicians, etc. The colonial language is firmly embedded in the city, demonstrated by the colonial whitewash of buildings, street names and grandiose statues honouring its ‘founders’. The Barak Building, however, was an attempt to make Wurundjeri more visible in the cityscape. Developers Grollo and ARM Architecture worked with some Wurundjeri Elders on Berak’s visual representation. Even though full of artistic merit, the placement/view line of the Building itself was not thought through from a Wurundjeri perspective. By placing it at the end of Elizabeth Street, looking down the spine of Melbourne and towards the Shrine of Remembrance, places Berak in an ironically malevolent position. The Shrine is ‘holy ground’ as it honours those who have fought and died in all the major World Wars and recognises their struggle and sacrifice for Australia. Many Indigenous soldiers also fought in the same Wars, but until recently were not honoured for their bravery and sacrifice. Furthermore, the Shrine’s trustees were ‘briefed’ and had ‘no objection to the building’ in regard to its placement facing towards the Shrine (National Nine News 2010). What if they did? This would indicate that the depiction of Wurundjeri culture through Berak is in the hands of others, and not Wurundjeri. There is yet to be a significant shrine or monument to ‘remember’ this nation’s biggest and longest wars, the Frontier Wars. Frontier Wars occurred in all districts of Australia in different forms to prevent land being stolen by European squatters. One notable example being the violent Eumeralla Wars in Western Victoria, where the Gunditjmara people evaded capture by police for years during the squatter land-grab of the mid-1800s (Gerritsen 2011: 5).

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A perfect opportunity to ‘remember’ Berak would be the gallery space on the first floor of the Barak Building. However, this is not the case as the Gallery is not focused on Berak himself or Wurundjeri, but upon the European history of the old brewery site it is built on. This is a missed opportunity to include Wurundjeri perspectives in its entrance space. It could also highlight the shared history of Narrm; the bricks that were used in the old brewery were made at Coranderrk, where Berak lived out his years. This would have been the perfect launch pad to delve into the story of Coranderrk, and Wurundjeri. There are many shared and lived histories of the modern city. When you Google, ‘culture of Melbourne’, the Roman and European inspired architecture and graffiti-laden laneways flood the computer screen. So how does Melbourne display the original culture of the city in an honourable way? It raises the question of what is the culture of Melbourne today and who owns it? Melbourne is one of the most multicultural and fastest growing cities in Australia and estimated to become the largest in Australia by 2030 (Salt 2017), and is growing at a rate of ‘around 1,200 people per week’ much faster than expected ‘a decade earlier than previously forecast’ (Victorian Government 2018: 8).

Wurundjeri today The Wurundjeri community today mainly live in the outer and peri-urban suburbs of Melbourne, with populations concentrated around the northern, south-eastern and far outer eastern suburbs. There are also some Wurundjeri who live in Gippsland in far east Victoria, settling there as an outcome of the ‘Mission Era’ dispersion of people in the 1800s. For those Wurundjeri who live in Melbourne, there are few places available to conduct private ceremonies away from the public eye. The Welcoming Ceremony, for example, is well known for being conducted at public events or openings. However, there is little or no spaces to do this privately for our community. Demonstrating this, one ceremony that can no longer take place in its full form in metropolitan Melbourne is the Murrum Turrukurruk (Coming of Age) ceremony. Those who live further out have more opportunities to secure places for ceremonial activity. The difference between urban, peri-urban and rural access to cultural support shows that the closer to the city, the harder it is to have private gatherings. To overcome this problem, the centre of the city is therefore utilised for public ceremony and performance only, while private ceremony is reserved to semi-rural settings. However, in some semi-rural areas there are further obstacles to overcome, particularly one significant place east of Melbourne that is connected to a Wurundjeri Creation Narrative. It is within a water catchment reserve and has restricted access and fire permit requirements. Fire is an integral part of any ceremony, the smoke is for welcoming, with its healing properties; the ash is used for a fixative for wooden implements; it is also used alongside ochre to adorn your body during dance and ceremony. Strategies must be developed within the community and relevant organisations to gain access to places like these, so as not to hinder the cultural development of all the Wurundjeri community. An example where a strategy has proven successful is the partnership between Wurundjeri’s Narrap team (Narrap, another word for Country), in which Elders, partners and environmental organisations worked together, sharing knowledge and sourcing of materials for the Koorong Project (meaning ‘canoe’). Greenstone was sourced from Wilam-ee-moor-ing (Mount William) stone quarry and used to create a bark koorong in a traditional way from an old redgum (Eucalyptus camaldulensis) tree (McBryde 1978, 1984). Wurundjeri were in control of the seasonal time, site, material extraction and fabrication of the koorong. This project again however was overshadowed by the persistent need for ‘necessary’ permits to conduct this cultural activity (Griffin et al. 2013: 62). The location of the Koorong Project is included in the Victorian Aboriginal Heritage Register (VAHR), which is a database that lists significant cultural heritage sites throughout Victoria. The public has restricted access to the VAHR-listed places to safeguard protected areas, but it should not have such restrictions for Wurundjeri cultural use. Most Aboriginal Places on the VAHR are historic ones. The Koorong Project, however, has been 522

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recognised and registered as an Aboriginal Place, which includes the tree itself and the space around it, as it has now ‘become a ceremonial space’ (Griffin et al. 2013). This is enabling Wurundjeri people today to maintain a cultural presence in both the physical and cultural landscapes.

Conclusion There are many definitions of ‘landscape’; one focuses on a single entity, while the other a multifaceted entity with several identities, all depending on your standing. These include the competition between land vs landscape vs cultural landscape vs spiritual landscape. This can be seen with the Western definitions of landscape being something ‘wild’, and in need of ‘taming’, and only there to be available ‘for’ us. In contrast, Wurundjeri standing defines landscape as both multi-faceted and singular with body and spirituality, there ‘with’ us. Country being the term used to encapsulate all the integral cultural values within Wurundjeri landscape(s). In terms of urban planning, the understanding of Country starts with finding out its language and story of which can only be gleaned from understanding the Wurundjeri story, those who form the ‘body’ of Country, its Traditional Custodians. Wurundjeri people still suffer from transgenerational trauma caused by invasion, such as language degradation and gaps in cultural and ceremonial knowledge. This is emphasised by further cultural disempowerment through the Western use of revival language, cultural representations and art without its cultural contexts. Examples including the constant use of ‘pronounceable’ terms, to the Barak Building and Birrarung Marr art installation as a form of ‘acknowledgement’. However, helping to reinforce recognition are positive examples of appropriate acknowledgments, such as the Aboriginal Heritage Register (ABHR) accepting the ‘current’ use of sites as a traditional practise, through the Koorong Project. This avoids a sustained concept of terra nullius through continued ignorance, enabling the wider community to understand culture as ‘present’. Recognising that tradition is something that can be ‘created now’ for the future, not simply derived from the ancient past, helps create a mutuality of continued ‘shared’ knowledge exchange. The key to mutuality is also recognising the diversity of Aboriginal cultures (plural) generally as well as within the same community. Research is required to distinguish these variances between communities, through ongoing face-to-face exchange with Elders and community leaders from each culture. Individuality is not a term applied with and used by Wurundjeri people. Similarly, the layers of Wurundjeri Country cannot survive without the all layers creating a foundation for cultural support. Thus, in planning and heritage management, collaborating equally would create a solid foundation to work from into the future. Unfortunately, currently this is not the case as the level of power held by the Wurundjeri within the planning sector is restricted, even though they, as Porter and Barry (2016: 31) state, are ‘included’, the ‘power to co-determine’ is still lacking. We must all repay Country and work together to protect her by pulling down what Gammage (2011: 321) describes as ‘fences on the ground are in the mind’.

References Barwick, D. E. (1984) ‘Mapping the past: An Atlas of Victorian clans 1835–1904’, Aboriginal History, 8: 100–131. Basso, K. H. (1984) ‘“Stalking with stories”: Names, places and moral narratives among the western apache’, in E. Bruner (ed.) Text, play and story: The construction and reconstruction of self and society, Washington, DC: American Ethnological Society/Waveland Press, 19–54. Clark, I. and Heydon, T. (2002) Dictionary of Aboriginal placenames of Victoria, Melbourne: Victorian Aboriginal Corporation for Languages. Collins Dictionary. (2018) ‘Collins English dictionary’, Harper Collins Publishers. [online]. Available at: www.collinsdic tionary.com/us/dictionary/english/moomba (accessed 1 September 2018). Gammage, B. (2011) The biggest estate on earth: How Aborigines made Australia, Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin.

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Mandy Nicholson and David Jones Gerritsen, R. (2011) The traditional settlement pattern in South West Victoria reconsidered, Canberra: Australian National University. [online]. Available at: http://rupertgerritsen.tripod.com/pdf/published/Traditional_Settlemen t_in_SW_Vic.pdf (accessed 1 September 2018). Gibson, J., Gardner, H., and Morey, S. (2018) ‘Rediscovered: The Aboriginal names for ten Melbourne suburbs’, The Conversation, [online]. Available at: https://theconversation.com/rediscovered-the-aboriginal-names-for-tenmelbourne-suburbs-99139 (accessed 30 August 2018). Griffin, D., Freedman, D. L., Nicholson, B. Jnr [Uncle], McConchie, F., and Parmington, A. (2013) ‘The Koorong Project: Experimental archaeology and Wurundjeri continuation of cultural practices’, Excavations, Surveys and Heritage Management in Victoria, 2: 59–65. [online]. Available at: www.wurundjeri.com.au/wp-content/uploads/ 2016/12/Kooyong-Project-for-Narrap-Projects.pdf (accessed 1 September 2018). Heritage Council Victoria. (2000) ‘Yarra Bank (Speakers Corner)’, Victorian Heritage Register, [online]. Available at: http://vhd.heritagecouncil.vic.gov.au/places/5231 (accessed 1 September 2018). Hockey, J. L. and Dawson, A. (1997) After writing culture: Epistemology and praxis in contemporary anthropology, ASA monographs 34, New York: Routledge. Jones, D. S., Low Choy, D., Tucker, R., Heyes, S., Revell, G., and Bird, S. (2018) Indigenous knowledge in the built environment: A guide for Tertiary educators, Canberra, ACT: Office for Learning and Teaching/Commonwealth Department of Education and Training. [online]. Available at: https://ltr.edu.au/resources/ID12-2418_Deakin_ Jones_2018_Guide.pdf (accessed 1 September 2018). Judd, B. (2005) ‘Australian rules as Aboriginal cultural artifact’, The Canadian Journal of Native Studies, 25 (1): 215–237. Kerr, D. [Aunty] (2015) Ngangu Biik (Hear, understand country), City of Melbourne: Audio Visual. [online]. Available at: https://vimeo.com/140149932 and https://vimeo.com/137571358 (accessed 1 September 2018). Kitson, G., Nicholson, D., Low Choy, D., Jones, D. S., Serrao-Neumann, S., and Schuch, G. (2018) ‘Being “inthere” not “out-there”: Aboriginals in urban Australia’, in Proceedings of the State of Australian Cities National Conference in Adelaide, 28–30 November 2017. [online]. Available at: http://soac2017.com.au/ and http://apo.org.au/ node/178746 (accessed 18 June 2018). Marcard, P. (1969) ‘Barak, William (1824–1903)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Melbourne: Melbourne University. [online]. Available at: http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/barak-william-2930/text4239 (accessed 13 October 2018). McBryde, I. (1978) ‘Wilam-ee-moor-ing. Or, where do Axes Come From?’, Mankind, 11: 354–382. ———. (1984) ‘Kulin greenstone quarries: The social contexts of production and distribution for Mt William Site’, World Archaeology, 16 (2): 267–285. Murphy-Wandin, J. [Aunty] (2014) ‘Joy Murphy-Wandin talks about identity’, Yarra Healing, Melbourne: Catholic Education Office. [online]. Available at: www.yarrahealing.catholic.edu.au/stories-voices/index.cfm?loadref=135 (accessed 1 September 2018). National Nine News. (2010) ‘Tall Tribute: There’s been mixed reaction to a proposed building which would have been the image of an aboriginal elder William Barak, embedded in its façade’, [online]. Available at: www.9news.com.au/, 15 September 2010 (accessed 1 September 2018). Nicholson, B. [Uncle] and Nicholson, M. (2016) Wurundjeri’s cultural heritage of the Melton Area, [unpublished], Melton: Melton Shire Council. ———. (2018) ‘Urban Aboriginal identity: “I can’t see the durt (stars) in the city”’, in I. McShane, E. Taylor, L. Porter and I. Woodcock (eds) Proceedings of Remaking Cities: 14th Australasian Urban History Planning History Conference 2018, RMIT University, Melbourne, 31 January–2 February 2018, 378–387. [online]. Available at: www.remakingcities-uhph2018.com/andcloudstor.aarnet.edu.au/plus/s/g0FtJzRx3H5vSTb#pdfviewer (accessed 1 September 2018). Pascoe, B. (2014) Dark Emu: Black seeds agriculture or accident? Broome, Western Australia: Magabala Books. Pearson, L. (2017) ‘Comment: Batman vs Wonga: What our placenames say about who we are’, SBS, [online]. Available at: www.sbs.com.au/nitv/article/2017/02/17/comment-batman-vs-wonga-what-our-place-names-say-about-whowe-are (accessed 1 September 2018). Porter, L. and Barry, J. (2016) Planning for coexistence? Recognizing Indigenous rights through land-use planning in Canada and Australia, London: Routledge. Powell, G. and Jones, D. S. (2019) ‘Kim-barne Wadawurrung Tabayl: You are in Wadawurrung Country’, Kerb: Journal of Landscape Architecture, 26: 1–9. Quitian, A. S. and Rodríguez, G. A. (2016) ‘Guidelines for inclusion: Ensuring Indigenous peoples’ involvement in water planning processes across South Eastern Australia’, Journal of Hydrology, 542: 828–835.

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Wurundjeri-al Narrm-u Rose, D. B. (1996) Nourishing terrains: Australian Aboriginal views of landscape and wilderness, Canberra: Australian Heritage Commission. [online]. Available at: http://155.187.2.69/heritage/ahc/publications/commission/books/ pubs/nourishing-terrains.pdf (accessed 1 September 2018). Salt, B. (2017) ‘Better cities: Melbourne set to overtake Sydney’, The Australian, [online]. Available at: www.theaustralian. com.au/business/bettercities/melbourne-set-to-become-nations-most-populous-city-by-2030s/news-story/ 59ab02029829655b7be9e894a0133cbc (accessed 20 July 2017). Sims, M. (2017) ‘10 Aboriginal art galleries and centres in Melbourne’, Culture Trip, [online]. Available at: https://thecul turetrip.com/pacific/australia/articles/10-aboriginal-art-galleries-and-centres-in-melbourne/ (accessed 1 September 2018). Smith, L. T. (2012) Decolonising methodologies: Research and Indigenous peoples, 2nd ed., London, UK: Zed Books. Trigger, D. S. (1997) ‘Mining, landscape and the culture of development ideology in Australia’, Cultural Geographies, 4 (2): 161–180. Victoria State Government. (1987) ‘Planning and Environment Act (1987)’, [online]. Available at: www5.austlii.edu. au/au/legis/vic/consol_act/paea1987254/ (accessed 1 September 2018). ———. (2006) ‘Aboriginal Heritage Act (Vic) (2006)’, [online] Available at: www8.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdb/au/ legis/vic/consol_act/aha2006164/ (accessed 1 September 2018). ———. (2018) ‘Planning for all of Melbourne: The Victorian government response to the Melbourne 2030 Audit’, [online]. Available at: www.planning.vic.gov.au/policy-and-strategy/planning-for-melbourne (accessed 1 September 2018). Western Australia State Government. (2003) Coastal planning and management manual, Perth: Western Australian Planning Commission.

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PART VI

Assessing urban heritage policies

31 THE HISTORIC URBAN LANDSCAPE APPROACH IN THE AUSTRALIAN CONTEXT Evolving heritage practice and city management frameworks Susan Fayad and Kristal Buckley

Introduction Participation in UNESCO’s most recent standard-setting instrument for heritage and city planning – the Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) (UNESCO 2011) – has been slow to develop in Australia. The adoption of the Recommendation requests UNESCO Member States – including Australia – to disseminate its ideas within their countries. Knowledge of and implementation of the HUL approach in Australia has so far mostly been limited to individual experts and researchers and a handful of individual cities, demonstrating a predominantly bottom-up process. In 2013, the regional City of Ballarat in the Australian State of Victoria became the first municipal government in the world to join the global pilot for the implementation of the ‘HUL’ approach.1 Ballarat remains the only Australian city to have fully embraced the HUL approach, and has been propelled onto the world stage as a leader of HUL implementation globally (Buckley et al. 2016; Fayad 2018; WHITRAP and City of Ballarat 2016). There have been many lessons learned by the city’s operationalisation of the HUL in the Australian context that have been shared through a growing global network and within Australia. Despite some assumptions that Australian practice might have little to gain or learn from implementing the HUL approach, Ballarat’s experiences have demonstrated the benefits of localising the toolkit, building on the existing strengths of the existing heritage conservation system and focusing efforts on specific vulnerabilities. Ballarat’s journey also highlights issues in the evolution of Australian heritage practices and foreshadows possibilities for its future. The city’s HUL programme is slowly becoming influential, with a small but growing number of other Australian communities and municipalities wishing to learn from its experiences. At the same time, there is heightened interest by the Australian Government in furthering application of the HUL approach in Australia. Examples from Australian cities and towns demonstrate application of the HUL approach at different scales – from urban policy, city strategy, area planning, and at the project or programme level. The Australian examples that are outlined in this

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chapter demonstrate the value of government support in adopting and driving innovation. In thinking about next steps, there is a need to demonstrate the ‘tangible’ results, and chart ways to get started across the diversity of the world’s urban systems. The HUL approach represents a fundamental shift for city planning and management, providing a framework for integrating and prioritising urban conservation in whole-of-city management practice and policy (WHITRAP and City of Ballarat 2016). Using a cultural landscape lens, the approach crosses the divide of city management disciplines, engages local citizens in shaping the future of their city and focuses efforts proactively on vulnerability and the key drivers of change. This is a shift from typical heritage practices, which are generally focused on regulatory frameworks. In Australia, application of the HUL responds to issues in present-day urban conservation practices – most significantly, by shifting the duality of the protection versus development narrative. It offers an alternative where heritage, culture and identity are viewed as social, cultural and economic assets for the city, positioning urban conservation practice as proactive, participative and interdisciplinary rather than siloed and defensive. The HUL approach offers the potential for Australian heritage practice to work more effectively in urban contexts, moving beyond business as usual, repurposing practice in response to new challenges.

Australian urban conservation practice Despite low population densities across the expanse of the Australian continent, the nation is highly urbanised. Forty per cent of Australia’s population live in just two cities – Sydney and Melbourne – and over 60 per cent live in the seven capital cities (Coleman 2016). Demographic trends suggest a continued drift from rural to urban life, some movement between capital cities toward regional centres, and rapid growth for urban settlements on the eastern seaboard and south-eastern corner of the continent. All of Australia’s cities and towns occur within the lands of Indigenous Traditional Owners, who trace their ancestry and responsibility to care for their ‘Country’ for over 50,000 years and into the present and future. Australia’s capital cities trace the progression of British colonisation from the late eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries. Its rural and regional settlements illustrate the subsequent histories of agriculture, pastoralism, mining, forestry and transportation forays into the vast continental interior and along rivers and coastlines. The national capital, Canberra, is a planned modernist national capital of the twentieth century. The Australian approach to urban conservation practice is embedded in land use decision making and is based on a values-based management model of heritage conservation, anchored in the wide application of the Australia ICOMOS Burra Charter (Australia ICOMOS 2013). Heritage places are identified (often through local studies that list, assess and rank an area’s historic buildings); mapped (aligned to the cadastre and spatial planning system); and designated/listed according to state and local legal frameworks. There are provisions for area-based designations and some nineteenth century city centres, and inner areas of the capital cities and regional centres are more or less covered entirely by heritage protection controls. Heritage listing occurs at local, state and national levels. Once listed, statutory approval processes are triggered when various kinds of changes are contemplated. At the local level, these controls form one element of the considerations that must be taken into account when assessing development proposals. The system is most well-established for historic buildings that are notable for their architectural and/or aesthetic values, reflecting the western heritage orientation around monuments and sites and the ideals of the Venice Charter (ICOMOS 1964). However, the longer-term influences of the Burra Charter, and its introduction of the need to consider the social and/or spiritual values of place (rather than ‘monuments and sites’), and the centrality of associations, meanings and uses to the significance of 530

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a place have added new dimensions to the dominant Eurocentric modes of urban heritage conservation (Byrne et al. 2003; Walker 2014). For example, it is increasingly common for the heritage values of urban areas to include recognition of the continuing Indigenous cultures, places of memory, historic trees, and historical archaeological potential. Consequently, the heritage registers, schedules and lists held by government and non-government organisations contain an array of sites and precincts, trees, landscapes and other places. However, most are incomplete for at least some of these dimensions, and the picture across the nation’s several hundred urban municipalities is variable, defying an easy national portrait. In Australia, laws for heritage protection were introduced from the 1960s (Boer and Wiffen 2006; Veale and Freestone 2012). A values-based approach was developed from the 1970s, due to the coevolution of the Australia ICOMOS Burra Charter alongside national and State legal frameworks for heritage and influenced by models in place in the USA and Britain (Australia ICOMOS 2016; Hanna 2015). The current national heritage system began in 2004, which established a National Heritage List of places of ‘outstanding value to the nation’. There are just over 100 National Heritage List places, and the number of new places added each year has slowed since 2006 (Mackay 2016). The role of the national government in urban heritage conservation has been small, and there are few policy frameworks that apply across the nation. The planning and development approvals systems allow wide opportunities for community input and appeal. This is a strength of Australian heritage decision making, together with the integration of the values-based approach to heritage into the regulation of land use. We argue that this has also had the effect of strongly codifying and formalising Australian heritage practice, reducing its capacity to be agile in the face of increasing complexity. Urban heritage decision-making processes are frequently and heatedly contested, creating the need for an extensive apparatus for lodging and responding to appeals. Urban communities increasingly express a lack of confidence in the system to guide development in ways that meet their needs, including the protection of locally significant heritage places and elements. The system is often accused of a separation between the fabric of such places and their multiple meanings, associations, uses and narratives. Communities have become highly adept in their engagement in these adversarial processes, where ‘heritage’ is seen as either ‘saved’ or ‘lost’ to development. There are many consequences to this current reality including delays and added costs for development, a highly adversarial environment which commonly pits heritage conservation in opposition to development and change, and heavy workloads for city planners, communities and heritage advocates alike. These pressures are particularly evident in urban contexts where continuous and potentially rapid transformations routinely clash with urban heritage conservation. Most of the day-to-day administration of heritage protection occurs at the State and local government levels. As the locus of most development planning, local government is also where the widest diversity of potentially useful regulatory tools are found. In Australia, local planning is established by laws and regulations that differ between the States. In Victoria, each municipality has a planning scheme that regulates land use and development, prepared according to standardised provisions. Heritage protection at the local level is achieved through a combination of over-arching policies and a spatially based Heritage Overlay control (see DELWP 2015). However, without an overarching national policy framework – and a variable set of approaches at the State/Territory levels of government – recent innovation, including the implementation of the HUL, has been patchy and locally driven. Yet, 2018 could emerge as a turning point in this ‘bottom up’ engagement with the HUL, stimulated in part by the request by UNESCO for Member States to report on national implementation and use of the HUL. There are signs of growing national interest; and Australia ICOMOS has recently established a reference group, following a recent meeting in Shanghai to review the implementation of the HUL (Elizabeth Vines, pers. comm.). 531

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The HUL approach and Ballarat The regional city of Ballarat is Australia’s only city formally operationalising the HUL approach. The city’s eagerness to work with the HUL was based on concerns about challenges to existing urban conservation mechanisms and processes and their effectiveness. There was a pressing need to deal with the conservation of the city’s heritage in a context of significant future transformations (City of Ballarat 2018: 3). Ballarat is in the state of Victoria’s western district, within territory that has been inhabited for at least 50,000 years by the ancestors of the present-day Wadawurrung and Dja Dja Wurrung peoples who are culturally connected to their ‘Country’ today. Ballarat is a regional centre of over 100,000 people, providing health, education, transport and retail services, manufacturing and agricultural support to a region of over 400,000 people (City of Ballarat 2017d: 17; Figure 31.1). It is well-known as an intact historic city (particularly its nineteenth century Central Business District), with a valued and living history. The city area is described as a ‘food bowl’ by the Traditional Owners, due to the rich resources for hunting, fishing and harvesting for food, as well as the materials for implements, medicines and fibres. Colonisation of the area began in the early nineteenth century, and the population

Figure 31.1 Australian cities mentioned in this chapter. Source: Susan Fayad and Kristal Buckley

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grew rapidly following the discovery of gold in 1851, triggering a wave of migration, globalisation and modernisation (Mountford and Tufnell 2018). At one time, Ballarat was recognised as the richest alluvial goldfield in the world, and a grand city was established to demonstrate permanence and attract international investment. Much of the city’s spatial layout, grand boulevards, gardens and built heritage remains highly intact from this boom period, most notably in the city centre and inner suburbs. The city is predicted to experience rapid change, with a 60 percent population growth forecasted between 2015–2040, mostly driven by inward migration from the surrounding regions and the state’s capital, Melbourne. This sharp demographic shift is accompanied by challenges associated with climate change and shifting economic and cultural futures for the city (City of Ballarat 2017a: 15). These forecasts occur against a backdrop of myriad existing difficulties in relation to managing change, particularly in the city’s historic core. The City of Ballarat has put extensive heritage protection in place through available regulatory frameworks, but the outcomes have not been consistently successful. There are increasingly complex pressures being placed on existing frameworks, exposing their shortcomings.2 Consideration of heritage protection within development processes is reactive, typically occurring in relation to specific proposals, and alongside a wide range of other regulatory considerations, including requirements for land use, height and density; residential building codes; Design and Development, Vegetation Protection and Significant Landscapes Overlays. Heritage considerations therefore occur within a complex mix of issues and responsibilities established by local and state government regulations (City of Ballarat 2017d). The local government was therefore ready to try new approaches, and was drawn to the HUL approach which at the time was promoted by UNESCO as: an innovative way to include various aspects of conservation in an integrated framework. It acknowledges the link between natural and cultural factors in the conservation of the built environment; the new challenges brought about by rapid social and economic changes and the need to ensure a sustainable future to heritage conservation. (Bandarin 2012: 2) Through the networks established by the World Heritage Institute of Training and Research for the Asia and the Pacific Region (WHITR-AP), Ballarat joined UNESCO’s newly created international HUL pilot programme in 2013, using the HUL approach to reframe urban conservation to take centre stage in the city’s future. In a sweeping and long-term strategy, the HUL is being integrated into the City’s strategies, policies, regulatory tools and city management practices. The HUL’s cultural landscape conceptual frame and citywide practice-focused framework has been crucial for shifting heritage and city management practice in Ballarat beyond the status-quo (City of Ballarat 2018). Critically, the city has committed to operationalising the HUL over the long-term in whole-of-organisation strategies (City of Ballarat 2015, 2017a, 2017c) and regulatory policy (City of Ballarat 2016). The HUL’s emphasis on a definition of heritage that encompasses all the cultural, social, economic, environmental and physical layers that have and continue to shape the identity of the city and its people has been critically important (City of Ballarat 2018) (Figure 31.2). This has allowed urban conservation to involve a wider range of disciplines and actors and has facilitated the integration of ‘heritage’ in crossdisciplinary local regulatory frameworks, strategies and policies, involving citywide delivery. The HUL has shifted the framing of the city’s identity, heritage and culture as assets, rather than constraints, and as key departure points for inspiring the city’s future (City of Ballarat 2018: 4). This requires the city to work towards creating a virtuous cycle where social and economic development and urban conservation become mutually beneficial and reinforcing (City of Ballarat 2017d; UNESCO 2013). For example, the Imagining Main Road project has worked with local traders to apply new heritage interpretation and regeneration models that were developed through participatory engagement with local citizens, artists, businesses, practitioners and special interest 533

Figure 31.2 The HUL’s layers as applied to Ballarat. Source: City of Ballarat (2017a)

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groups. The pilot targeted regeneration of an area of Main Road near the central business district by combining heritage interpretation, placemaking, traffic changes and promotion of historic building conservation to increase use and visitation to the area (City of Ballarat 2017b). Interpretative elements include an audio unit where listeners can hear the sounds of the area over time, viewing posts that provide windows to the past and the landscape today, and artworks such as an interactive mural combining the physical with virtual reality, inspired by the area’s people and stories. The project developed the Ballarat Storytellers Network Toolkit (SHP 2018) to help the city’s traders and local organisations to use heritage to increase their business, attraction and reach (Figure 31.3). The HUL approach outlines six steps: knowledge building; community participation and consensus; assessing vulnerability; developing city strategies; prioritising actions; and partnerships and networks (UNESCO 2011). Globally, these have underpinned the development of an increasingly creative tool kit, including new and reimagined community engagement tools, knowledge and planning tools, regulatory tools and financial tools. For Ballarat, this framework has been central to operationalising the HUL (Fayad and Buckley 2019) – with major impacts across key areas of the city’s planning and engagement functions, including:

Figure 31.3 The Imagining Main Road project demonstrates the HUL’s virtuous cycle, cultural landscape lens and participatory approach in action. Source: City of Ballarat. Image credit: Chippy Rivera, ChipShots Photography

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• • • • •

New participatory methods, applied across a wide variety of programmes and processes. On-line platforms that capture and share dynamic and diverse knowledge about the city and provide support for decision-making. A community engagement tool called ‘Ballarat Imagine’,3 which has been the basis for whole-ofcity strategies and projects. Framed in the context of change, it begins by asking what people love, imagine and want to retain in their city and neighbourhoods. New local area plans that are guided by local citizens and their values and visions for the future of their neighbourhoods. A new suite of assessment and evaluation indicators and targets to assess the vulnerability of urban conservation to socio-economic and climate stresses, through the United Nations Global Compact Cities Programme (UNGCCP n.d.).

Enacting participatory processes has been an especially notable shift, moving from the usual processes of consulting and informing, to those of collaborating and empowering (see International Association for Public Participation 2016). (Figure 31.4) The HUL has energised the city to take a risk and innovate and its delivery by passionate local leaders and practitioners has been significant (Fayad and Buckley 2019). The HUL is not a means to an end but is seen as an evolving framework for solving problems (Context 2013). It requires continual participation, testing and consensus-building in response to the dynamic nature of the city and its challenges.

Figure 31.4 City-wide participatory workshops, focus groups, engagement programmes and symposiums were held to develop, localise and test methods for HUL delivery. Source: City of Ballarat. Image credit: Jeremy Dillon

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Current initiatives are diverse and include outreach activities. The City of Ballarat provides support for other cities in Australia and internationally, mentors emerging professionals, is leading the application of the HUL across 13 local government areas as part of a World Heritage bid for the Central Victorian Goldfields Region and is part of wider discussions with the Australian Government about options for setting a national direction for HUL in Australia. In 2018, the city joined the pilot phase for implementing the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, integrating HUL through the United Nations Global Compact Cities Programme (UNGCCP) – Australian city partnerships. Alongside the many achievements, there are also setbacks due to factors such as: the time and resources needed to reframe regulatory tools and processes; change and pressures that are outside of the local government’s direct area of responsibility and/or sphere of influence; gaps in needed data and research; and the slow, albeit increasing, interest in the HUL approach in Australia that is crucial for providing broad support for changing practice. In our discussions with heritage practitioners and planners from other cities, people seem interested to implement the HUL, but are uncertain about how to begin and how to build the political and public support that is needed. This aspect is also identified by Pérez and Martínez (2018: 112), who conclude that while there is growing interest in the HUL, its implementation has ‘lost steam’, particularly in Western countries. Building on Ballarat’s involvement in the publication of the HUL Guidebook (WHITRAP and City of Ballarat 2016), work is now underway on a HUL Toolkit,4 providing tools and tips for other cities wanting to operationalise the HUL approach. The toolkit includes a short documentary featuring Ballarat’s planning and heritage officers reflecting on their experiences with the HUL, on-line tip sheets, the city’s methodologies and HUL tools. The project includes a Global Leaders Lab, designed to test and refine the toolkit so that it is adaptable and suitable for broader Australian and international application.

Expanding the implementation of the HUL in Australia Although Ballarat remains the only city in Australia formally committed to implementation of the HUL, there has been considerable interest from many others. Exchange of experience and opportunities for innovation have been shared through several international symposia hosted by the City of Ballarat and its partners, through discussions with local and state governments in Tasmania and researchers in Victoria and Western Australia and engagement with Ballarat’s HUL practitioners for more than a dozen other city governments. To provide a sense of the diversity of these emerging responses, several brief case studies are provided in the remainder of this chapter. These demonstrate the expanded use of the existing heritage legislation apparatus to ‘list’ an entire historic town, use of the HUL framework as an advocacy tool by professional and community-based organisations, and experimentation with HUL methods for specific project/area planning. Together, these examples suggest that Australia is nearing a tipping point for utilising the HUL at a variety of scales (see Figure 31.1).

Expanding the capacity of existing heritage listing regimes – City of Broken Hill, New South Wales Located in the north-west of the state of New South Wales, Broken Hill is the first city in Australia to be entered in the National Heritage List (Broken Hill City Council 2018a). Australia’s Silver City, Broken Hill, is of outstanding heritage value to the nation for the significant role the city and its mining operations have played in Australia’s development towards

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a modern and prosperous nation… Set against a dramatic desert landscape with mountainous mullock dumps and turn of the century mining infrastructure dominating the business district, Broken Hill’s industrial heritage is central to its appeal. (Minister for the Environment 2015) Broken Hill is the first and only city to be designated in this manner, following years of documentation and consultation about the implications with local government, communities and the mining industry. Broken Hill therefore demonstrates a broadened application of the listing approach used by all levels of government in Australia to encompass a whole town. The management planning requirements for National Heritage Listing have been met through the provisions of the Local Environment Plan (LEP), which provides the planning scheme for local governments in the state of New South Wales. This means that the protection of ‘national’ heritage values will be achieved – at least in the first instance – through the same mechanisms used for local heritage and other matters managed by the local government. In proudly announcing the National Heritage Listing, the Broken Hill City Council was nevertheless quick to reassure residents that there would be ‘business as usual in terms of planning provisions across the city. The announcement will not impact on investment, nor will it impact on homeowners who want to renovate their homes’ (City of Broken Hill 2018a). Much of the rhetoric accompanying this long-awaited announcement embraces key aspects of the HUL – such as the need to consider local and national values in a more integrated way, the recognition of symbolic and identity associations for citizens (see also Reeves et al. 2011). There is a stated ambition to establish a quality ‘brand’ for Broken Hill which enhances its social and economic viability, attracts investment and ‘talent’, ‘differentiating Broken Hill as a place to live, visit and invest’ (Broken Hill City Council 2018b). Broken Hill has established a new template for urban conservation in Australia, and it will be interesting to see if other cities follow. This offers a highly visible profile for historic towns and urban areas that might wish to centre their futures on their history, culture and identity. However, National Heritage Listing is not a fast or ‘light’ process, and the national heritage significance threshold is, by its definition, an exclusive test which will not permit many others to replicate. Applying HUL ideas to the existing management principles and tools used in the national heritage system could be of benefit, since there are numerous nationally listed sites located within urban contexts. At this stage, it is too early to assess Broken Hill’s experience of applying the conventional heritage listing approach to a whole town/urban area, and whether it will assist the city and its citizens to reach for the gamechanging shifts implied by the HUL.

HUL as a tool for advocacy and professional development – Canberra, Australian Capital Territory The potential application of the HUL to Australia’s capital city – Canberra – has been recognised from its beginning by scholars, heritage practitioners and activists.5,6,7 Taylor (2015: 65) laments the impact of ‘urban densification, urban consolidation and high-rise buildings’ on Canberra’s carefully planned natural and cultural landscape, one that he believes ‘may be seen to [have been planned in such a way as to] forecast the HUL paradigm’ itself. Disquiet over change in Canberra has been steadily increasing, particularly since the 1980s. Canberra’s heritage and planning professionals are looking for sources of advocacy that will provide a different trajectory, drawing attention to the HUL approach and its possibilities. In contrast to the other examples in this chapter, these are not government initiatives, but reflect conversations between the professional community and urban activists looking for new and more effective models. The need to align development with the designed character and ethos of the city is motivating for many citizens,

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and there is a desire to reimagine values-based planning for the ‘city in the landscape’ (Taylor 2015: 63). These efforts seek to ensure that outcomes for Canberra are considered in terms of the city as a place to live, work, socialise and experience life within a garden city, natural setting and national capital. There is interest by the Australian Government to engage with the HUL on a national level, and this could be of benefit to Canberra in particular. However, what this example aims to show is that the HUL can be a tool for the activists and thinkers within the city – an essential component of imagining and advocating for change (see also Khalaf 2018).

Applying a spatial lens to redesign local area studies – City of Melbourne’s Hoddle Grid project The State Government’s Minister for Planning and City of Melbourne are the responsible authorities for Victoria’s capital city, Melbourne (City of Melbourne, n.d.). The City of Melbourne and other metropolitan councils are currently experiencing significant development pressure due to population growth. Melbourne’s greater metropolitan region covers 9,992.5 km2 and has a population of around 4.5 million, while the City of Melbourne covers 37.7 km2, has a residential population of over 148,000 (City of Melbourne 2018a) and an average daily population of just over 900,000, which is set to increase to 1.4 million by 2036, presenting challenges for policy and planning frameworks and service provision (City of Melbourne 2017). This population growth is placing increasing pressure on Melbourne’s historic urban fabric. In 2017, the City of Melbourne commenced a review of heritage within the ‘Hoddle Grid’ heritage review study area, the enduring historical template which defines the form and extent of the Central Business District, a move strongly welcomed by heritage advocates (see Melbourne Heritage Action 2016). Activists had long campaigned for a more comprehensive assessment of the city’s built heritage, pointing to gaps in the inventories, and saw this as an important step for improving heritage protection in the face of large-scale changes to the city. The City of Melbourne’s Urban Strategy Branch initiated the review in order to understand the city’s heritage in a holistic way, considering Aboriginal and built heritage, social values and land uses over time. This work is representative of the City of Melbourne’s history of innovation in planning

Figure 31.5 The City of Melbourne’s Hoddle Grid Project includes extensive participatory engagement with local citizens. Source: Participate Melbourne. City of Melbourne

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and aligns well with the HUL, as it is landscape inspired, spatially oriented and invited public participation (Figure 31.5). The project seeks to understand the Hoddle Grid’s ‘cultural landscape transformation over time’ and resulting heritage significance. Significantly, the project aims to be accessible and meaningful for practitioners and communities, providing a platform for advocacy ‘regarding the value of heritage in a living, growing city’ (City of Melbourne 2018b), a conscious effort by the City of Melbourne to conceive an improved means of conducting local heritage studies in the future.

Conclusion There is increasing interest in the HUL approach in Australia at present, although the early response was limited to the involvement by the City of Ballarat in UNESCO’s pilot programme. There are no formal Australian networks for HUL, but many signs of interest, particularly among local government heritage practitioners and advocates (including Australia ICOMOS). In light of UNESCO’s 2018 HUL Survey of Member States, the Australian Government is exploring options for HUL guidance nationally. Globally, the linkages between the HUL and the heritage and culture provisions in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Habitat III New Urban Agenda are also significant in building momentum. There is an identified need to engage more directly with nature and nature-based solutions in the further elaboration of the HUL, and organisations such as IUCN acknowledge that they have yet to deeply engage with its contents and possibilities (Caballero 2016; Tim Badman, IUCN, pers. comm.). We have aimed to show that the take-up of the HUL has been left to actors at the local level and has been spread through professional urban conservation/planning networks. The degree to which Australian practices will change and adapt will be more apparent once more examples emerge, applying the HUL in varying contexts and scales. Past changes to Australia’s heritage systems have often been led by practice, with formal regulation and policy following. Although Australian heritage practitioners have an interest in participating in and learning from global experience, the reactions to the HUL from practitioners has been mixed. There have been many conference sessions, presentations and symposia centred around the HUL in the Australian context; yet there is a sense that many people feel that the content of the HUL is ‘nothing new’, and that urban conservation can continue to rely on the values-based approach outlined by the Burra Charter. In the Australian states with standardised planning systems, there is a confidence that, for the most part, the strong heritage and planning professions, coupled with a high degree of democratic participation, can address future challenges. In some quarters, there is also complacency about the inevitability of the frequent ‘heritage versus development’ tensions. Anecdotally, we often hear sentiments that suggest that the HUL is primarily suitable for regimes in developing countries which do not already have well-developed institutional and regulatory structures for heritage and planning in place. However, these same exchanges and discussions frequently express concern that the ‘conventional’ approaches to urban conservation are not working as well as they should. Governments at all levels are stretched to resource heritage conservation amid the needs to rapidly increase urban infrastructure and services, build local economies and jobs, respond to climate change impacts, and advance the breadth of the Sustainable Development Goals. We have previously speculated on the strengths and weaknesses of the Australia ICOMOS Burra Charter and its associated practices, finding that while it has been honed through extensive practice to work well when applied to discrete places, its effectiveness wanes when oriented toward large and complex urban areas (or whole cities). We assert that there is a demonstrated need for a framework that is ‘bigger than Burra’ (Buckley and Fayad 2017: 55): 540

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Possibly it is [its] amorphous character that has made the HUL useful, permitting practitioners to step out of (and beyond) the usual conflicts and compromises to experiment with new tools. In many ways, this foreshadows the more flexible and localised responses that are required to achieve adaptable, resilient and sustainable cities… For heritage practices to move from the edges and into the centre of political and social conversations about the ‘big issues’ facing Australia and the world, we will all need some additional perspectives and tools. This brief overview of the state of play in Australia demonstrates that the HUL approach can be applied to different scales, different urban contexts, and different priorities – in a wide spectrum that includes a twentieth century designed capital, a nineteenth century state capital city, and a rapidly growing regional city. The HUL toolkit is not linear and can be ‘entered’ at any point to be used to directly address pressing needs. The HUL enables the ‘whole city’ to be part of the conversation about heritage and the future, not just a subset of individually designated items; and the cases outlined in this chapter show that experimenting via the HUL can enable a shift in the conversations that typically position heritage as opposed to change. Particularly without more national support, broad commitment and city adoption, whether the HUL can achieve what it promises remains to be seen.

Acknowledgements The authors wish to acknowledge the many passionate people who are helping to build the reach of the HUL approach in Australia, the City of Ballarat and partners for their ongoing commitment to sharing their lessons of operationalising the HUL approach and Ros Rymer and Tanya Wolkenberg from the City of Melbourne for their support and advice.

Notes 1 This did not occur through dissemination by the Australian Government, but through Ballarat’s participation in the 2012 World Conference of the League of Historical Cities in Vietnam, where the HUL recommendation was discussed. 2 Ballarat has over 10,000 formally listed heritage properties (including individual places and those in precincts). One place is included in the National Heritage List; and around 70 are afforded protection through their inclusion in the Victorian Heritage Register. Protection and management of the vast number remaining are the responsibility of the City of Ballarat. Aboriginal cultural heritage is protected through laws which allocate decision making responsibilities to the two Registered Aboriginal Parties and there is a high level of integration between Aboriginal heritage protection and local planning regulations. Victoria has recently introduced legislation for Aboriginal intangible cultural heritage, although the system remains heavily weighted toward the tangible evidence of the long and continuing histories of Aboriginal peoples. Some forms of natural heritage are protected in Ballarat through the Australian Government’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 and policies in the Ballarat Planning Scheme. 3 Ballarat Imagine has been adapted by other cities in Australia and internationally, and forms part of a global research program implementing participatory planning in cities around the world. 4 This is being developed by the City of Ballarat in partnership with Leadership Ballarat and Western Region, Wind and Sky Productions and Federation University Australia, with funds received from the Australian Government’s Building Better Regions Fund. 5 For example, Dr Ron van Oers, Former Director at WHITR-AP, spent a period of time in Canberra developing these networks in 2015 as a guest of the Australian National University. 6 Twenty years ago, the City of Melbourne was faced with the opposite problem of population decline. Council sought to arrest this decline and reassert the central city as a principal destination through two notable strategies to attract residents back to the city and improve the quality of public places for people. In 1992, the City of Melbourne launched Postcode 3000 to ‘generate resident demand for inner city living’ by taking ‘advantage of the current high level of vacancies of commercial floorspace and the relatively low land values in Melbourne’s’ Central Activities District (City of Melbourne 1992–1995: preface). The program sought to retain and recycle Melbourne’s historic buildings to assist in preserving local urban character (City of Melbourne and Gehl

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Susan Fayad and Kristal Buckley Architects 2005: 12). Postcode 3000 proved highly successful in promoting central city living. In addition, the City of Melbourne designed and implemented an urban design programme to improve the street environment for pedestrians with widened footpaths, weather protection, street furniture and lighting, open space and landscape planting (City of Melbourne 2013). To monitor the impact of its urban strategies, the City of Melbourne undertook a longitudinal study called Places for People. This study combined data for urban conditions with spatial analysis and in-the-field surveys, to provide a baseline for monitoring the quality of the public environment and degree of public life. It made recommendations for urban design improvements, including protection of sunlight in public space. In 2004 and 2013, the research was repeated to continue the longitudinal study and monitor change, but for an extended study area (including Southbank and Docklands) and additional urban conditions to enable analysis of new issues that were emerging. 7 We acknowledge Ana Pereira Roders for frequently underscoring this point in the global HUL dialogue.

References Australia ICOMOS (2013) The Australia ICOMOS Charter for places of cultural significance (The Burra Charter), Burwood: Australia ICOMOS. Available at: https://australia.icomos.org/publications/charters/ (accessed 20 May 2018). ——— (2016) Collaboration for conservation: A brief history of Australia ICOMOS and the Burra Charter, Burwood: Australia ICOMOS. Bandarin, F. (2012) ‘Message from Francesco Bandarin, UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Culture’, on the occasion of the 13th World Conference of Historical Cities, Hue (Viet Nam), 16 April 2012. Available at: http:// unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0022/002248/224878E.pdf (accessed 20 May 2018). Boer, B. and Wiffen, G. (2006) Heritage law in Australia, South Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Broken Hill City Council (2018a) Heritage City. Available at: www.brokenhill.nsw.gov.au/Community/Aboutthe-city/National-Heritage-Listing (accessed 20 May 2018). ——— (2018b) Heritage City: What does it mean for residents? Available at: www.brokenhill.nsw.gov.au/learn/heri tage-city/learn/heritage/heritage-city-what-does-it-mean-residents (accessed 20 May 2018). Buckley, K., Cooke, S. and Fayad, S. (2016) ‘Using the Historic Urban Landscape to re-imagine Ballarat: The local context’, In S. Labadi and W. Logan (eds) Urban heritage, development and sustainability. International frameworks, national and local governance, London: Routledge, 93–113. Buckley, K. and Fayad, S. (2017) ‘The HUL and the Australian Burra Charter – some implications for local heritage practices’, Historic Environment, 29 (2): 46–57. Byrne, D., Brayshaw, H. and Ireland, T. (2003) Social Significance: A discussion paper, 2nd edition, Sydney: NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service. Caballero, G. (2016) ‘The role of natural resources in the historic urban landscape approach’, Journal of Cultural Heritage Management and Sustainable Development, 6 (1): 2–13. City of Ballarat (2015) Today, tomorrow, together: The Ballarat Strategy 2015-2040, Ballarat: City of Ballarat. ——— (2016) Ballarat planning scheme: Municipal overview. Available at: http://planning-schemes.delwp.vic.gov.au/ schemes/ballarat/ordinance/21_mss01_ball.pdf (accessed 29 June 2018). ——— (2017a) Our people, culture & place. A plan to sustain Ballarat’s heritage 2017–2030, Ballarat: City of Ballarat. Available at: www.hulballarat.org.au/cb_pages/ballarat_heritage_plan.php (accessed 20 May 2018). ——— (2017b) Main Road draft plan, Ballarat: City of Ballarat. Available at: www.ballarat.vic.gov.au/media/ 4325997/main_rd_project_draft_plan.pdf (accessed 14 July 2018). ——— (2017c) Making Ballarat central: The CBD Strategy – 2017–2021 Action Plan, Ballarat. City of Ballarat. Available at: www.ballarat.vic.gov.au/media/4390674/cbd_action_plan_2017_-_2021.pdf (accessed 14 July 2018). ——— (2017d) Our people, culture & place: A manual for implementing the heritage plan 2017–2030, Ballarat: City of Ballarat. Available at: www.hulballarat.org.au/cb_pages/ballarat_heritage_plan.php (accessed 20 May 2018). ——— (2018) UNESCO Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) Pilot Programme: Ballarat, Report to Heritage Branch, Australian Government Department of the Environment and Energy. City of Melbourne (n.d.) Ministerial planning applications. Available at: www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/building-anddevelopment/planning-and-building-services/planning-applications/Pages/ministerial-applications.aspx (accessed 14 July 2018). ——— (December 1993) Postcode 3000 Program: Action Plan for City Living, 1992-1995. Melbourne: City of Melbourne. ——— (2013) Postcode 3000: A City Transformed?, Melbourne: City of Melbourne. ——— (2017) Daily Population Estimates and Forecasts, Melbourne: City of Melbourne.

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The HUL approach in the Australian context ——— (2018a) Melbourne facts and figures. Available at: www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/about-melbourne/mel bourne-profile/pages/facts-about-melbourne.aspx (accessed 20 May 2018). ——— (2018b) Hoddle Grid heritage review: Extract from project brief, Melbourne: City of Melbourne. City of Melbourne and Gehl Architects (2005) Places for People: Melbourne 2004, Melbourne: City of Melbourne. Coleman, S. (2016) ‘Built environment: Introduction’, Australia State of the Environment 2016, Canberra: Australian Government Department of the Environment and Energy. Available at: https://soe.environment.gov.au/theme/ built-environment/framework/introduction (accessed 15 July 2018). Context Pty Ltd (2013) Mapping Ballarat’s Historic Urban Landscape – Stage 1 Final Report, Brunswick: Australia. Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (Victoria) [DELWP] (2015) Practice Note: Applying the Heritage Overlay, Melbourne: DELWP. Available at: www.heritage.vic.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0018/55530/ Applying-the-Heritage-Overlay-Practice-Note.pdf (accessed 20 July 2018). Fayad, S. (2018) ‘The Historic Urban Landscape Approach: Finding a better way to manage change in the dynamic historic city of Ballarat’, in J. Zhou and R. van Oers (eds) Operationalising the Historic Urban Landscape – A practitioner’s view, Shanghai: WHITRAP, 39–63. Fayad, S. and Buckley, K. (2019) ‘The transformational power of the HUL approach: Lessons from Ballarat, Australia 2012–2017’, in A. P. Roders and F. Bandarin (eds) Reshaping urban conservation: The Historic Urban Landscape Approach in action, Singapore: Springer, 123–148. Hanna, B. (2015) ‘Foundations of an oral history project: The writing of the Burra Charter’, Historic Environment, 27 (2): 84–95. ICOMOS (1964) International Charter for the conservation and restoration of monuments and sites (The Venice Charter), Paris: ICOMOS. International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) (2016) IAP2’s Public Participation Spectrum. Available at: www.iap2.org.au/Tenant/C0000004/00000001/files/IAP2_Public_Participation_Spectrum.pdf (accessed 14 July 2017). Khalaf, R. W. (2018) ‘A proposal to apply the Historic Urban Landscape Approach to reconstruction in the World Heritage context’, The Historic Environment: Policy & Practice, 9 (1): 1–14. Mackay, R. (2016) ‘Heritage: Introduction’, Australia: State of the Environment 2016, Canberra: Australian Government Department of the Environment and Energy. Available at: https://soe.environment.gov.au/theme/heri tage/framework/introduction (accessed 15 July 2018). Melbourne Heritage Action (2016) ‘Heritage Coup: Council approves Hoddle Grid heritage review’, Available at: https://melbourneheritage.org.au/2016/04/20/heritage-win-city-of-melbourne-approves-hoddle-grid-heritagereview/ (accessed 20 May 2018). Minister for the Environment (the Hon. Greg Hunt, MP) and the Minister for Health, Minister for Sport Federal Member for Farrer (The Hon. Sussan Ley MP) (2015) Joint Media Release: National Heritage listing for Australia’s Silver City, 20 January 2015, Canberra. Available at: www.environment.gov.au/minister/hunt/2015/pubs/ mr20150120.pdf (accessed 20 May 2018). Mountford, B. and Tufnell, S. (2018) ‘How gold rushes helped make the modern world’, The Conversation. Available at: http://theconversation.com/how-gold-rushes-helped-make-the-modern-world-91746 (accessed 29 June 2018). Pérez, J. R. and Martínez, P.G. (2018) ‘Lights and shadows over the recommendation on the historic urban landscape: ‘managing change’ in Ballarat and Cuenca through a radical approach focused on values and authenticity’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 24 (1): 1–16. Reeves, K., Eklund, E., Reeves, A., Scates, B. and Peel, V. (2011) ‘Broken Hill: Rethinking the significance of material culture and intangible heritage of the Australian labour movement’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 17 (4): 301–317. SHP (2018) Ballarat Storytellers Network Toolkit, Melbourne: City of Ballarat. Taylor, K. (2015) ‘The HUL concept and cities as cultural landscapes: Canberra – a missed opportunity’, Historic Environment, 27 (1): 58–67. UNESCO (2011) Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape, Paris: UNESCO. ——— (2013) New life for historic cities: The Historic Urban Landscape approach explained, Paris: UNESCO. United Nations Global Compact Cities Programme (n.d.) City Partnerships. Available at: https://citiesprogramme. org/get-involved/city-partnerships-challenge/ (accessed 14 July 2018). Veale, S. and Freestone, R. (2012) ‘The things we wanted to keep: The Commonwealth and the National Estate 1969-1974’, Historic Environment, 24 (3): 12–18. Walker, M. (2014) ‘The development of the Australia ICOMOS Burra Charter’, APT Bulletin, 45 (2/3): 9–16. World Heritage Institute of Training and Research for the Asia and the Pacific Region [WHITRAP] and City of Ballarat (2016) The HUL guidebook: Managing heritage in dynamic and constantly changing urban environments. A practical guide to UNESCO’s Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape, Shanghai and Ballarat: WHITRAP.

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32 THE MONUMENT AND THE CITY Examining India’s legacy of monument-centric conservation in the context of the Historic Urban Landscape approach Jyoti Pandey Sharma

Introduction The contemporary global discourse on cultural heritage conservation has underscored subscription to UNESCO’s Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape (UNESCO 2011). This entails that the notion of heritage be expanded beyond the monument to encompass the larger urban environs that provide the former a setting and go beyond materiality to include sentiments and processes that produced the monument. Further, with culture in all its manifestations being regarded as a bastion of sustainable urban development, its preservation is no longer the exclusive prerogative of the specialist. Indeed, the contemporary heritage conservation discourse urges all urban actors to participate in the conservation and management of heritage. In the Indian context, with the state via the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) being the prime custodian of the most dominant form of our collective cultural expression, i.e. the monument, it is pertinent to revisit India’s colonial legacy of monument centric conservation approach. This chapter examines the heritage conservation scenario in India, particularly how the ASI in its post-independence avatar continued to subscribe to the colonial monument-as-object approach. Further, in light of the HUL Recommendation, it positions the Indian city’s historic urban area, with its inherent duality represented by tradition and change, as a candidate for adopting the HUL Approach to meet sustainable urban development goals. It is argued that the implementation of the HUL Recommendation will require negotiating many challenges and opportunities that the historic Indian city offers. The contribution of the principal urban actors – the state, professionals and citizenry – in this regard is discussed. The chapter concludes by examining a case of heritage based urban development in the historic city of Ahmadabad in the state of Gujarat in western India and argues that despite the seemingly insurmountable dichotomies that characterize the Indian HUL, it is possible to realize the HUL Recommendation via conservation driven urban development initiatives.

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Heritage conservation in India: monument centric approach as colonial legacy The notion of the monument and the concomitant need for its conservation as a phenomenon came to the Indian Subcontinent following the British colonial rule. The colony, with its ancient past represented most dominantly by the monument, was a repository of a large corpus of ancient buildings. The colonial state established the ASI in 1862 as the official custodian of the country’s past. Since its inception till India’s independence from the colonial rule, the care of monuments was vested with the ASI that adopted a monument centric approach in keeping with the prevailing European notions of conservation (Roy 2011). This legacy inherited by the ASI in its post-independence avatar continued to dominate its conservation approach and plays a significant role in its conservation framework to this day.

Monument conservation in the colonial Indian Subcontinent The ASI’s mandate was to make available ‘an accurate description … of such remains as most deserve notice, with the history of them so far as it may be traceable, and a record of the traditions that are retained regarding them’ (Cunningham 1871: iii). The ‘remains’ included artefacts, manuscripts and monuments. The upkeep of monuments was entrusted to the Public Works Department’s (PWD) military engineers who in the absence of any guidelines, referred to manuals meant for new construction and relied on their own judgement for conservation. The ASI and monument conservation were resuscitated under Viceroy Curzon (1899–1905) who along with his protégé, John Marshall, appointed as the ASI Director-General, initiated monument conservation with vigour (Lahiri 1998, 2000). The first step was the enactment of the Ancient Monuments Preservation Act (VII of 1904) in 1904 that provided statutory protection to the Subcontinent’s monuments defined as ‘any structure, erection or monument, or any tumulus or place of interment, or any cave, rock-sculpture, inscription or monolith, which is of historical, archaeological or artistic interest’ (ASI 1904: 3). The Act made the state the legal custodian of several monuments with provision for their acquisition, protection and repair. The ASI’s conservation endeavours were guided by the Act and subsequent policies like the Indian Archaeological Policy 1915 that stated that owing to its persistent neglect in years gone by, conservation is, and must for long remain, the paramount duty of the department. In the discharge of this duty the first essential is to take stock of the existing materials and to decide which of them are worthy of preservation. (ASI 1915: 10) In 1923 Marshall published the Conservation Manual: A Handbook for the Use of Archaeological Officers and Others Entrusted with the Care of Ancient Monuments, which contained ‘detailed instructions and specifications on all questions likely to arise in connection with the conservation of ancient monuments in India’ (Marshall 2006: v). Archaeological officers were expected to undertake preparation of an inventory of monuments under their jurisdiction; inspection; identification of unprotected monuments to be brought under the ambit of the Act; and coordination with PWD engineers who implemented conservation works. The Manual emphasized that the imperial conservation enterprise was focused solely on the monument as defined by the Act, while its environs, including gardens that formed an integral part of the spatial ensemble of some monuments, were not regarded as historic and were amenable to alteration as the archaeological officers deemed fit. It stated that ‘it is not necessary to reproduce with pedantic accuracy the original appearance of the garden in all its particulars’ and urged its officers to make concessions ‘to modern taste and the wishes of the community who frequent the garden. An officer should endeavour to observe the happy mean between antiquarian accuracy on the one hand and aesthetic beauty on the other’ (Marshall 2006: 36–37). This monument-centred conservation approach was inherited by independent India as a legacy to be perpetuated in the post-independence years.

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Heritage conservation in independent India ASI continued as independent India’s premier institution for the care of monuments operating under a post-independence legislative framework.1 Many Indian states also came up with legislation for safeguarding monuments that were not under the ASI’s jurisdiction.2 In 1951, ASI’s The Ancient and Historical Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains (Declaration of National Importance) Act 1951 (no. LXXI of 1951) declared all monuments, sites and archaeological remains protected by the 1904 Act as ‘Monuments of National importance’. In 1958 The Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act 1958 (AMASR) was enacted that included an improved framework for monument conservation but retained the colonial definition of the monument as per the 1904 Act. In 1992, two new sections were added to the AMASR Act aimed at safeguarding the area around the monument. The first section defined a ‘Prohibited Area’ of 100 metres from the monument’s notified physical boundary that stipulated that no construction activity except by the authorized ASI official be permitted. The second section defined a ‘Regulated Area’ of another 200 metres beyond the ‘Prohibited Area’ that did not permit any incompatible activity like construction activity or mining in this area (ASI 2010: 2–3). The perpetuation of the colonial legacy ensured that the monument remained the centre of attention with its larger environs including its immediate setting disregarded as being historic. Further, the environs were altered through ASI’s horticultural intervention (i.e., lawn-planting combine, a colonial inheritance). This approach more often than not provided all monuments with a landscaped setting regardless of the original design intent (Figure 32.1). This intervention tended to isolate a monument from its original setting, thus detracting from the way it was originally meant to be experienced.

Figure 32.1 Tomb of Muhammad Sayyid, Lodhi Garden, Delhi: ASI’s horticultural intervention in the form of a lawn and planting. Source: Janhwij Sharma

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Private and non-government organizations, notably the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) established in 1984, emerged on the country’s heritage conservation scene as late as the last decades of the twentieth century and addressed issues related to the country’s vast body of unprotected heritage.3 Global conservation conventions and charters framed by international institutions like the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), which work in an advisory capacity to UNESCO on matters pertaining to the conservation of monuments and sites across the world, also found their way to India due to monuments inscribed as World Heritage sites.4 Based on Western canons of conservation, the earliest charters underscored the materiality of the monument. As the definition of culture and its conservation was expanded internationally to accommodate nonEuropean cultures, it marked a shift from the notion of heritage from fabric to process (i.e. from the physical monument to encompassing concepts of living and intangible heritage as reflected in subsequent charters and conventions). This shift in the global conservation discourse offered an opportunity to recalibrate the Indian monument-centred conservation approach.

UNESCO’S HUL Recommendation and the historic city UNESCO adopted the Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape in a resolution passed on 10 November 2011. The recommendation was centred on the historic city that on the one hand is a cultural repository of humankind and on the other a palimpsest of dynamic urban processes. The HUL approach extends the definition of heritage beyond the monument (i.e. the ‘historic centre or ensemble’) to encompass the larger urban setting in which it is located (UNESCO 2011: 3). From a cultural heritage standpoint, it can be argued that a HUL is composed of what Throsby has defined as a ‘Cultural Ecosystem’ that sustains human life through tangible and intangible constituents (Throsby 2005: 4). Dominating the former is the monument, whose sheer physicality makes it a pivot of the Throsby-ian construct supported by innumerable unprotected buildings and structures scattered across the urban landscape. Further, the vast repertoire of beliefs, rituals, myths and folklore that underpin humankind are its intangible constituents. Traditionally, the monument-as-object approach has tended to dominate both the cultural heritage discourse as well as conservation practice; however, it is now being argued that there is more to the HUL than the monument. Mehrotra has made a case, in the context of the Indian city, for what he calls the urban ‘kinetics’ manifested as the ‘movement and the place-making of its residents in the form of festivals, rituals, impromptu bazaars, and events’ that have taken over ‘the static city (its physical architecture) as the primary and most dynamic aspect of urban India’ (Mehrotra 2007: 342). Indeed, the HUL is characterized by a duality that draws on its past that goes beyond the monument and the present manifested as rapidly transforming urbanization processes (i.e. Mehrotra’s ‘kinetics’). The HUL Approach aiming to bring together the past represented by tradition and the present represented by change calls for ‘the integration of historic urban area conservation, management and planning strategies into local development processes and urban planning, such as, contemporary architecture and infrastructure development’ (UNESCO 2011: 1). Why, one might ask, should heritage and development, traditionally perceived as incompatible entities, be reconciled? The HUL approach has been positioned as being in consonance with the goals of sustainable development stating that ‘[a]s the future of humanity hinges on the effective planning and management of resources, conservation has become a strategy to achieve a balance between urban growth and quality of life on a sustainable basis’ (UNESCO 2011: 2). The United Nations General Assembly in its resolution of 2010 also underscored the significance of culture as ‘a source of enrichment and an important contributor to the sustainable development of local communities, peoples and nations, empowering them to play an active and unique role in development initiatives’ (United Nations 2010: 1). Thus, the perception of culture has extended beyond its conventional role as a museum-ized entity meant for tourist 547

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consumption to a more participatory one: where, all urban actors, the state, professionals and the community, have a stake in how it can be conserved, interpreted and managed.

Examining the Indian city as a Historic Urban Landscape The historic urban area of an Indian city typifies the HUL as defined in the Recommendation with its inherent duality where seemingly opposite entities like ‘modernity and tradition, prosperity and acute poverty, communality and communalism, medieval society and cutting-edge information technology coalesce’ to produce an urban landscape of layered complexity (Mehrotra 2004: 25). When examined from the HUL perspective, the city is a cultural cauldron of tangible and intangible heritage. While the presence of a monument imparts a city an imageability that is sustained by its presence – for example, the city of Agra in the state of Uttar Pradesh in north India being popularly known as ‘Taj Nagari’ (city of the Taj Mahal) – all cities do not necessarily have monuments to give them an identity. Indeed, the Indian city epitomizes the Throsby-ian ‘Cultural Ecosystem’ with its ordinary, everyday buildings and its open spaces that become a receptacle for the performance of innumerable, tangible and intangible processes that give meaning to human existence (Figure 32.2). With its focus on the not-so-architecturally spectacular built environment, the HUL paradigm shifts the attention from the monument to the larger urban landscape that provides the former a setting and acknowledges that the city is a dynamic entity that is impacted by urban transformative processes. While the city is a rich cultural palimpsest, the actions of its many urban actors seem to compromise this very cultural

Figure 32.2 A Dharamshala (guest house) built in the early twentieth century in Old Delhi: Built heritage transformed to sustain twenty-first century urban living. Source: Janhwij Sharma

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foundation in the pursuit of urban living. It must be conceded that the historic city quarter has to grapple with issues like population growth, migration, urban poverty, social inequity, inadequate infrastructure, and environmental degradation that in turn foster an attitude of apathy, neglect, abuse and destruction of cultural heritage. In these circumstances, it is the tangible built heritage – both the monument, its protection by the state notwithstanding, and the large corpus of unprotected historic buildings – that becomes a prime casualty on the altar of development. In the overwhelming presence of urban processes that seemingly have little regard for culture, the latter will have to make its presence felt as a meaningful contributor to contemporary urbanism that scholars have called ‘Now Urbanism’, that advocates drawing on the city’s existing complexities, traditionally regarded as an urban planning nightmare, not as an obstacle but as a source for a new form of urban living.5 This calls for an approach that moves beyond ‘documenting and preserving’ culture to ‘catalyzing and propelling placeembedded cultural traditions and knowledges into the future, constructing the scaffolding for pluralist cultural sustainability’ (Longley and Duxbury 2016: 2). Today, the discourse on urban sustainability has moved beyond the conventional ecology-centric approach to encompass other domains of human existence including culture, as articulated in the United Nation’s 2010 resolution. Further impetus has come from ICOMOS’s resolution on ‘Heritage as a driver of development’ (ICOMOS 2011) and UNESCO’s articulation for the inclusion of culture in the Sustainable Development Goals to secure a place for heritage in international policy frameworks (Giovanni 2012). Indeed, for development to be sustainable it must be a ‘continuing process of mediation among social, economic, and environmental needs which results in positive socio-economic change that does not undermine the ecological and social systems upon which communities and society are dependent’ (Carley and Christie 1993: 48). From an urban development perspective, it is worth underscoring that while the ‘contemporary South Asian historic city is not a candidate for a visionary urbanist’s renewal plan … its historic quarters that, as repositories of urban culture, have the potential to contribute to a new form of urbanity’ (Pandey Sharma 2017: 61). A culture based development approach for the Indian city will one, emphasize safeguarding not just the monument, but the city’s ‘Cultural Ecosystem’ in its entirety with the same spirit with which ecosystems have been conserved while also being accepting of change that underpins development and two, it will entail redevelopment of the existing urban heritage as opposed to new development (Pandey Sharma 2013). Redevelopment of the HUL must be directed at assessing the existing heritage corpus, not in terms of a fossilized relic from the past but in the here and the now to make it relevant for the present and the future (Pandey Sharma 2017).6 This demands adopting what the HUL calls a ‘landscape approach’ that involves all stakeholders’ participation in ‘identifying, conserving and managing historic areas within their broader urban contexts, by considering the interrelationships of their physical forms, their spatial organization and connection, their natural features and settings, and their social, cultural and economic values’ (UNESCO 2011: 2). Hosagrahar (2014) has argued that this requires ‘a fundamental training in integrative thinking and urban preservation planning … so that development activities, tourism, growth and change can be as effectively managed as the material restoration of the heritage structures’ (p. 24). This will require negotiating the many challenges and opportunities that the Indian city offers.

The HUL approach: challenges and opportunities in the Indian context The current state of affairs in the Indian historic city compels its urban actors to choose between heritage and development, with a majority choosing the latter. For the city to sustain its past with the present in a seamless manner, it is vital to take stock of the challenges and opportunities that exist in the development and conservation scenario of Indian cities from the standpoint of three principal urban actors – the state, the professional and the citizenry – besides the global conservation paradigm.

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While urban planning and development is taken care of by state bodies like the Town and Country Planning Departments and other development authorities, heritage conservation vests either with the ASI, state government departments and non-government organizations like INTACH that has no statutory authority. In the absence of a participatory approach, each organization addresses its own individual mandate with no holistic perspective to guide the planning and conservation strategies. There is also lack of coordination between the decision makers, namely the political leadership and administrators, and professionals, like planners and culture specialists, with the former’s decision making often influenced by considerations extraneous to the historic urban area’s reality. This was demonstrated in the case of Agra’s Taj Heritage Corridor Project, initiated by the political leadership of Uttar Pradesh, to develop tourist infrastructure including a luxury hotel, shopping mall and entertainment centre on the riverfront opposite the Taj Mahal, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, that was eventually struck down by judicial intervention (Yadav 2003). Indeed, urban planning policies and heritage conservation have not been collated into a unified development framework for a historic urban area. Planning instruments like master plans, development plans and local area regulations at best either mention the built heritage of an area or identify areas with heritage as heritage precincts only in passing. For instance, the 2025 Lucknow Master Plan for the historic city of Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh only makes a brief mention of ‘Heritage Zones’ and does not include the city’s colonial era commercial urban district, Hazratganj (Krishna 2016: 206). This exclusionary approach is detrimental both in heritage and in planning terms. Furthermore, the legislative framework for heritage conservation perceives heritage only in terms of a monument, unmindful of the contemporary reality. While the AMASR Act 1958 was amended in 2010 as The Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains (Amendment and Validation) Act 2010, it continues to adhere to the 1958 definition of a monument with the stipulation that a historic building must be at least one hundred years old to qualify as a monument (ASI 2010). This definition excludes a large built heritage corpus less than one hundred years old from the state’s protection fold. There is also a tendency to allow tourism to take precedence over other concerns. While there is no denying that heritage and tourism share a symbiotic relationship, regarding heritage only as a commodity for tourist consumption often tends to falsify or museum-ize the cultural resource, thereby diminishing its worth. It has been argued that tourism that is ‘inadequately planned and managed can add to the pressures of development in and around historic towns and cities. When excessive in number and insensitively designed, tourists and tourism facilities can destroy the character and identity of an area’ (Hosagrahar 2014: 22). The recently completed ‘Heritage Street’ project in the historic city of Amritsar in the state of Punjab in north India is a case in point (Indian Perspectives 2017). The Heritage Street is a nearly 1km long stretch of urban space that links three significant landmarks of the city – the colonial era Town Hall that has been re-adapted into a museum commemorating the Indian Partition of 1947; the Jallianwalla Bagh, a national memorial that honours the victims of the 1919 British era massacre; and the Harmandir Sahib (popularly called the Golden Temple), the epicentre of the Sikh faith. It demonstrates how an overenthusiastic intervention to improve a historic street through inappropriate measures can undermine its historic essence. The interventions include ‘plaza-fication’ of Harmandir Sahib’s foreground to create a large public plaza that detracts from the older design, where the site was approached from a maze of narrow streets that concealed its view to add an element of surprise. They also entail provision of urban furniture and a superficial façade renewal of more than 150 shops that line the street with both the furniture and the façade design seeming to belong elsewhere (Figure 32.3). The examples presented above indicate the operational shortcomings of urban institutions that need addressing so that heritage issues can be mainstreamed into the overall urban planning framework. The citizenry’s perceptions and attitudes also contribute to the deterioration of the historic urban area. Even as Article 51 A(f) of The Constitution of India, directs every Indian citizen ‘to value and 550

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Figure 32.3 Heritage Street, Amritsar: interventions in the historic area catering to religious tourism. Source: Janhwij Sharma

preserve the rich heritage of our composite culture’, as a ‘Fundamental Duty’, the reality is at odds with the constitutional stipulation (Government of India 2007: 25). The residents of the historic urban area are typically the urban poor who have no heritage awareness, no civic pride or sense of belonging to the city where most have migrated to from the countryside in the hope of a better life. This group indulges in a ‘sort of a Jugaad (loosely meaning “need-based innovation”) urbanism’ to ‘manipulate city space, often furtively, to meet their spatial needs’ resulting in degeneration of the built heritage through encroachments, incompatible use, vandalism and complete destruction ‘in the perpetual quest for space’ (Pandey Sharma 2017: 67). Furthermore, economic activity that sustains the historic area is often incompatible with its heritage as can be observed in a number of instances where old building stock with historic, aesthetic, and architectural merit such as Havelis (elite mansions, notably from the Mughal and post-Mughal period) and Serais (Mughal era guest houses) have been overwhelmed with commercial and industrial uses (see Figure 32.2). In addition, entire neighbourhoods like the city’s Ahatas and Katras (traditional residential neighbourhood sub-types) that are an integral part of the larger neighbourhood (the Muhalla) have been taken over by innumerable small sector informal businesses.7 This puts unprotected heritage at great risk often from the owners themselves on account of high maintenance cost, lack of maintenance incentives, multiple ownership and real estate speculation and profiteering. On the other hand, active participation by its citizens has resulted in Mumbai’s Victorian and Art Deco building ensemble that does not comprise any monument but only highly used public buildings, being inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2018. It would not be an exaggeration to assert that the instruments devised to safeguard heritage may also be limiting in nature and falling short of meeting their own mandates. Beginning with the 551

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Recommendation itself, the HUL Approach has a limited impact as it is only recommendatory in nature and the absence of a statutory enforcing mechanism coupled with contemporary development pressure results in marginalizing heritage particularly unprotected buildings. Additionally, global conservation frameworks such as UNESCO’s Charters notwithstanding, there are country specific heritage issues that lie outside of the global domain and need addressing. In fact, Taylor (2004: 419, citing Logan 2001) questions the globalising tendency of the practices of international organisations such as UNESCO, ICOMOS, ICOM, and ICCROM … that ‘lay down international standards for professional practice’ … But they also stand accused of ‘imposing a common stamp on culture across the world and their policies creating a logic of global cultural uniformity’. Winter (2014) has examined the appropriateness of European notions of heritage conservation to non-European, specifically the Asian context stating that ‘[a] discourse of difference has emerged, where Asia is claimed to be materially, culturally and historically different to the west’ leading to the formulation of ‘[a] number of charters, declarations and publications … to recalibrate the international field of heritage governance in ways that address the perceived inadequacies of documents underpinning today’s global conservation movement, such as the 1964 Venice Charter’ (p. 123). Bloch (2016), examining the case of Hampi, a World Heritage Site in the state of Karnataka in south India, from an anthropological framework, has described the ‘eviction of people and the demolition of their homes and businesses’ as ‘spatial cleansing’, an outcome of adopting a ‘hegemonic approach to material heritage’ that is in consonance with the UNESCO principles. She has argued that this ‘archaeological paradigm of material preservation … has excluded the residents of Hampi by framing them as “illegal encroachers” who pose a threat to the monuments by squatting and exploiting them economically’ (pp. 556–557). Chakravarty and Irazábal (2011) have examined Agra, home to three UNESCO World Heritage Sites – the Taj Mahal Complex, Agra Fort and Fatehpur Sikri – to assess the impact of their World Heritage Status on community development from the ‘Golden geese or white elephants’ perspective. They have concluded that the ‘restructuring of the tourist industry induced by the designation of WHS does not lead to proportionate advances in local community development’ (p. 359), thus questioning the whole premise of World Heritage as a facilitator of community development. There is a need to revisit the Indian heritage conservation scenario not only to link it to urban development but also to take stock of the reality of the scenario itself. Winter (2014) has asserted that the conservation framework in Asia is driven by ‘the combined manifestations of post-colonial subjectivities, a desire for prestige on the global stage of cultural heritage governance and the practical challenges of actually doing conservation in the region’ (p. 123). Taylor (2004: 419) has argued that international organizations like UNESCO impose ‘standards of “good behaviour”’ on State Parties. The current conservation practice in India is predominantly governed by the ASI-mandated framework and the international discourse advocated by UNESCO, with the country currently having the sixth largest number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The universalizing tendency of the global discourse that in the not-so-distant past was regarded as the only relevant mechanism to safeguard culture is increasingly being questioned in academia and in practice. A conservation approach drawing on the notion that one-size-fits-all is no longer relevant as each country has its own set of circumstances that impact its cultural corpus. In India, the major heritage conservation issues pertain to the traditional conservation philosophy of Jeernodharan (regeneration of what has decayed) that is not in sync with western conservation dogmas, living and composite nature of heritage, existence of traditional knowledge systems, crafts and skills, and existence of a large corpus of intangible heritage that the community cherishes and practices.8 To address these issues, INTACH formulated the Charter for the Conservation of Unprotected Architectural Heritage and Sites in India (INTACH Charter) in 2004 that is reflective of the cautionary attitude towards Eurocentric conservation practices: The Charter’s Article 2.5 states that 552

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Conservation in India is heir not only to Western conservation theories and principles introduced through colonialism and, later, by the adoption of guidelines formulated by UNESCO, ICOMOS and international funding agencies, but also to pre-existing, indigenous knowledge systems and skills of building. These indigenous practices vary regionally and cannot be considered as a single system operating all over India. This necessitates viewing conservation practices as a multi-cultural activity. (INTACH 2004) The Charter takes cognizance of the empirical reality of heritage conservation in India by addressing issues like conservation versus development, living heritage versus the monument, western tenets versus traditional knowledge systems, among others. However, it has no legal mandate making it unenforceable and thus curtailing its impact on heritage conservation practices in the country. The first decade of the twenty-first century witnessed a gradually rising interest in historic urban areas as places that needed revitalization so that they could be integrated with the rest of the city. The Government of India launched two missions in 2005 to address issues of urban heritage management. The Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JnNURM) addressed issues of urban renewal, infrastructure upgradation and urban heritage via a tool kit with heritage management guidelines for the preparation of City Development Plans (CDP). The National Mission on Monuments and Antiquities (NMMA) had the mandate to take stock of not just monuments but unprotected heritage as well to create a national database and to foster better cooperation among urban local bodies, nongovernment organization and other stakeholders for heritage conservation.9 Furthermore, the Indian Heritage Cities Network (IHCN) was established in 2006 to foster a heritage based development of member cities by adopting the best practices in urban heritage management through a peer learning and review process. Moreover, in 2014–2015, the Heritage City Development and Augmentation Yōjanā (HRIDAY) and National Mission on Pilgrimage Rejuvenation and Spiritual Augmentation Drive (PRASAD) were launched for an inclusive, heritage based urban development of cities selected under the schemes.10 UNESCO-India’s tool-kit to raise urban heritage awareness among urban professionals and local bodies underscored the need for ‘[s]trong political will as prime vector for change’ and ‘[e]nhancing public spaces and the urban environment’ and ‘[s]upporting creativity and cultural diversity and Developing tourism, but not only tourism’ (Faetanini 2010: 1). The National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA) published a manual for ‘Good Practices’ for ‘Urban Heritage in Indian Cities’ that identified five urban heritage conservation determinants: ‘Development of Institutional Infrastructure for Urban Heritage, Integration of Heritage in Urban Planning Framework, Revitalization of Heritage through Urban Renewal, Community/Stakeholder Participation Approach and Generating Awareness of Heritage’ each demonstrated through case studies of ‘successful urban heritage projects’ (NIUA 2015: 1). These initiatives indicate a shift in the state’s position from heritage-as-monument to extending its scope to the larger historic landscape. Given their relative newness in terms of initiation, it is too early to make an assessment of most of these schemes; however, their inclusive heritage conservation approach is likely to benefit India’s historic cities. Monument conservation also witnessed a shift in the ASI’s approach towards issues pertaining to the larger urban environment. A beginning was made in the historic city of Ahmadabad in 1997, as discussed in detail later in the chapter. New clauses were inserted in the AMASR (Amendment and Validation) 2010 that addressed issues of urbanization in the vicinity of monuments. Construction activity in the ‘Regulated Area’ (200 metres beyond the ‘Prohibited Area’) was permitted with the permission of the ‘Competent Authority’ – the newly constituted ‘National Monument Authority’ (NMA) that was entrusted with the task of grading and classification of monuments, framing heritage bye-laws specific to the monument and its protected area, and issuing No Objection Certificates for construction in ‘Regulated Area’, among others (ASI 2010). Community participation initiatives in

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heritage preservation and promotion via a public-private partnership with individuals and institutions, like financial institutions and public-sector companies, were launched: the 1996 National Culture Fund (NCF) under which several projects have been successfully completed and the 2017 Adopt a Heritage Scheme: Apni Dharohar, Apni Pehchaan (Our Heritage: Our Identity).11 The ASI notified the National Policy for the Conservation of the Ancient Monuments, Archaeological Sites and Remains (NPC-AMASR) in 2014, almost nine decades after Marshall’s Manual. The Policy applicable to ASI-protected monuments envisioned that The process of conservation [of monuments] is being aimed to manifest itself as a dynamic enterprise intertwining concerns for the sustenance of their physical fabric with their overall effective management … the duty of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) will be to conserve these monuments [along with their setting]. (ASI 2014: 2) It acknowledged that with the changing times the Functions of an archaeological officer are no longer limited to the safeguarding of a monument but now also include maintaining and sustaining its setting and environment as well as to continuously engage with communities that either reside within the proximity of a monument or those that are inextricably associated with the monument itself. (ASI 2014: 3) Even as the Policy did not explicitly link its conservation approach to the HUL Recommendation, provisions such as the regard for traditional building knowledge systems, skills and craftsmanship; site management; visitor management; stakeholder capacity building; public outreach; and fostering meaningful partnerships with multi-disciplinary professional organizations were in consonance with the HUL Approach. Further, the ASI in partnership with other government and non-government agencies undertook a conservation and urban renewal project in a historic area in Delhi that had more than seven hundred years of living culture. The Humayun’s Tomb, Sundar Nursery and Nizamuddin Basti Urban Renewal Initiative was a conservation based urban development project initiated in 2007 as a not-for-profit, public-private partnership enterprise.12 Subscribing to the HUL Approach even before the notification of either the HUL Recommendation or the ASI’s 2014 NPC-AMASR, the project entailed a multidisciplinary approach, drawing in all stakeholders including the resident community, public outreach and use of traditional craftsmanship, to realize the initiative (Pandey Sharma 2017). Used as a case study in NIUA’s Manual under the category ‘Community Participation Approach’, its success lies in the adoption of a holistic approach to the development of a historic area (NIUA 2015).

Heritage tales from a historic Indian city: Ahmadabad Despite the many contradictions that characterize the HUL, it is possible to realize the HUL Recommendation via conservation-led urban development initiatives. This can be demonstrated in the case of the historic city of Ahmadabad in Gujarat that has over six hundred years of history. The city’s historic urban area comprises a walled core with several ASI protected monuments and a large corpus of unprotected buildings, including residences in traditional neighbourhoods called Pols as well as intangible heritage besides innumerable additions over time (Figure 32.4). Embodying the dichotomy of heritage versus change, like any other Indian historic city, Ahmadabad’s historic core also faced urban development pressures. The state came to the forefront to initiate an approach that took cognizance of heritage conservation as well as management of change. A beginning was made in 1997 where the intense density of ASI monuments resulted in over 65–70 per cent of the historic city coming under the purview of AMASR Act’s 1992 Rule of ‘Prohibited 554

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Figure 32.4 Historic city of Ahmadabad: the old and new cohabit the same urban space. Source: Janhwij Sharma

Area’ and ‘Regulated Area’, leaving property owners with no choice of property development. An expert committee took cognizance of both the heritage and the practical urban reality and brought out recommendations that permitted construction activity after approval by competent authority with imposition of height restriction: a maximum building height of 15 metres permitted for the first 100 metres after the ‘Prohibited Area’ and a maximum height of 30 metres was stipulated for the next 100 metres of the ‘Regulated Area’ (ASI 1997). These recommendations a first for any city in the country and popularly called the Ahmadabad Guidelines, demonstrated that the old and the new could be reconciled. Further, the city’s urban local body – the Ahmadabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) – initiated measures to spearhead a heritage based urban development strategy that relied on bolstering the institutional framework and making it amenable to heritage issues that went beyond ASI’s protected monuments (NIUA 2015: 9–14). This entailed establishing a ‘Heritage Cell’ in 1996 that undertook programmes in the area, including inventorizing of the heritage, designing and conducting heritage walks, and repair of historic buildings and structures (Figure 32.5). Subsequently, the Heritage Cell incorporated a heritage clause in the urban development guidelines that required prior permission of the Heritage Cell before demolition of a historic property in the walled city. Further, legislative provisions via Heritage Regulations laid down the norms for repair, addition and alterations to be made to heritage properties. Apart from bolstering the institutional framework, the local community was drawn into the initiative with public outreach and advocacy programmes that underscored the significance of the area’s cultural assets (Nayak 2017). Under a community enabling programme, loans at subsidized rates were offered by financial institutions for the repair of old, unprotected private properties primarily residences.

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Figure 32.5 Historic city of Ahmadabad: a conserved Haveli (mansion); Mangaldas-ni-Haveli, in a Pol (neighbourhood). Source: Janhwij Sharma

The project, deemed successful, is serving as a prototype for other historic cities across the country. It formed part of NIUA’s ‘Good Practices’ Manual under the category ‘Institutional Infrastructure for Urban Heritage’. In 2017 the Historic City of Ahmadabad was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage City, a first for India, as the global community also took cognizance of the historic city and its endeavours to mainstream heritage with urban development.13

Conclusion The shift from a monument centric to a more holistic heritage conservation approach is welcome even as challenges remain in realizing the HUL Recommendation. While the urban heritage conservation framework has been reinforced through state schemes, its implementation requires change in thinking and practice. It is imperative that all urban actors, notably the citizenry, value heritage as 556

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a development catalyst for historic urban areas and take pride in it and not regard it as an obstacle in realizing their urban dreams. The professionals managing it, while not being fixated on an image of the past that is unfeasible to retain/recreate in the present, must draw equally on global practices and on national/regional/local contexts for its conservation. The Ahmadabad model of heritage-based urban development has shown that it is possible for culture to play a meaningful role in historic cities of India, provided all urban actors participate in the redevelopment process that does not compel them to choose between heritage and development.

Notes 1 For a detailed account of the ASI’s post-independence legislative framework for monument protection, see http://asi.nic.in/legislations. 2 The following State Acts may be referred to: Assam Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act 1959; Punjab Ancient and Historical Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act 1964; Gujarat Ancient Monuments & Archaeological Sites and Remains Act 1965; and, Madras Ancient and Historical Monuments and Archaeological Sites & Remains Act 1966. 3 For a detailed account, see: www.intach.org. 4 India became a signatory to the UNESCO Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (Convention ratified in 1972) in 1977. Ajanta Caves, Ellora Caves, Agra Fort and Taj Mahal were inscribed as UNESCO’s World Heritage Properties in 1983. India currently has thirty-eight World Heritage Sites. See: www.asi.nic.in. 5 For a discussion see Hou, Spencer, Way, and Yocom (2015). 6 For a general discussion on cultural heritage and sustainable development, see: Bandarin, Hosagrahar, and Albernaz (2011) and for an Indian perspective, see Celio and Sarkar (2010). 7 Typically since the onset of industrialization in the Indian Subcontinent, the Katras and Ahatas in the historic city have been encroached in the constant pursuit of open space in the rapidly transforming city. 8 For a discussion on the notion of Jeernodharan, see: Tom (2013). 9 See http://jnnurm.nic.in/wpcontent/uploads/2011/01/JNNURM_heritage_toolkit.pdf and http://asi.nic.in/ mandate-of-the-nmma for JnNURM and NMMA, respectively. 10 See www.ihcn.in, http://hridayindia.in and http://tourism.gov.in/sites/default/files/News/PRASAD%20Low %20Res%20-17_3_205_compressed.pdf for IHCN, HRIDAY, and PRASAD Schemes, respectively. 11 See www.ncf.nic.in and www.adoptaheritage.in for details of NCF and Adopt a Heritage Scheme, respectively. 12 For a detailed description of the project, see www.nizamuddinrenewal.org. 13 For a complete description, see www.whc.unesco.org.

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33 HISTORIC URBAN LANDSCAPES OF CHINA Issues of conservation and management Zhe Geng and David Jones

Introduction This chapter focuses on the contemporary Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) context in China, providing a discussion of the development of urban heritage conservation thinking in China, with a critique of current conservation praxis and governance, before reflecting upon the urban heritage challenges that confront China. To aid this review, the reader will find extensive referencing in the first part of the chapter before eight variables of registration of historic districts, governments and related departments, policy aims of conservation, specific conservation regulations, public involvement, research on historic districts, the review system, and tourism development are discussed in the context of historic district case studies. The latter seven factors appear to be having a key influence upon the successful conservation and management of China’s HULs.

China’s transformation Since Deng Xiaoping’s announcement of the Chinese Economic Reform and Open Policy in 1978, many Chinese cities have experienced an extensive urban sprawl (Wan 2014). China has become one of the world’s most rapidly urbanising countries (Zhu and Goethert 2010). The national urban population accounted for about only 19.96% of the total national population in 1979, but it increased dramatically up to 43.9% in 2006, rising to 577 million (Wan 2014). Until 2006, the number of designated cities in China was 661. The urbanisation rate on Chinese mainland rose over 50% for the first time, reaching up to 51.3% by the end of 2011 (Yaolan 2012). The key reason, from 1979 to 2011, was because 31.34% of China’s rural population migrated to urban areas, thereby abandoning rural villages or towns. A large number of cities have therefore started to adopt master plans to guide their city growth, reformation and urban construction (Buck 1984; Zhai 2008). In 1998, China’s State Council issued a policy of ‘housing reform’, which had been tested during the 1980s and implemented in most cities during the 1990s (Wan 2014). This policy terminated the old system of the welfare housing distribution, replaced by monetary distribution, resulting in all houses being commercialised assets (Yu 1999). Consequently, since the end of the 1980s, many real estate developers have sought to develop the inner urban spaces of Chinese cities. This policy prompted a new housing market of building and selling new apartments to develop rapidly and become a significant source of the Chinese economy. In

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this context of accelerated urbanisation, with improved living conditions of urban residents, many historic urban districts were destroyed. Many historic sites were also demolished and rebuilt under the pretext of tourism development. This urban development process holds a significant risk for the ‘soul and memory’ of urban heritage in China (Taylor 2017, 2018).

Evolution of historic district conservation in China The development of historic urban district conservation instruments in China can be divided chronologically and evolutionarily into three phases (Table 33.1). Before the founding of New China in 1949, historic conservation in China was focused upon individual ancient buildings. From 1949 to 1979, the conservation of area-based cultural relics and sites received more attention. After 1979, historic conservation in China developed gradually, especially in the recent 30 years. The scope of historic conservation progressively expanded from cultural relics to historic cities, villages and towns and then upon historic districts. With this history, Chinese governments of different levels have played an important role in Chinese heritage conservation and have influenced the evolution of historic district conservation in China. An issue that has arisen is that there is no national level law or regulation(s) to guide the conservation of HULs in China. However, conservation work is becoming more professional with public participation, local government and expert efforts, and improvements in current management systems. Now that the importance of historic district conservation in China is nationally accepted, it needs to be comprehended whether these historic districts are being successfully conserved and the existing conservation models for historic districts have been effective. The development of historic district conservation in China parallels international development history, which evolved from single monuments and archaeological sites to historic cities and cultural landscapes, including notions of intangible and ‘living’ heritage, and finally to HUL in dynamic changing cities, in which the conservation of historic districts was included. Historically, much of the expertise in Chinese heritage management, and many of its valuable frameworks on heritage conservation, have been acquired from developed Western countries (Du Cros and Lee 2007; Rössler and Lin 2018). Table 33.2 provides a comparison of development histories between international and Chinese documents. Internationally, the protection of historic towns, villages or urban quarters was first addressed in the protection of historic areas in the Nairobi Recommendation in 1976 (UNESCO 1976). However, the State Council of China started to protect historic districts, small villages or towns in the Approval Document the Second List of National Famous Historic and Cultural Cities in 1986. In 1996, the Huangshan Conference on the Historic District Conservation (Ruan and Sun 2001) conclusions publicly advocated the conservation of historic districts in China. In the early 1990s, a set of international-level detailed and professional protection goals and methods of historic districts were narrated in the Suzhou Declaration (UNESCO 1998), the Hoi An Protocols (UNESCO 2005) and the Hoi An Declaration (ICOMOS 2003). A new paradigm of HUL (UNESCO 2011) was also put forward internationally in the 2000s to shift the definition of urban heritage beyond the traditional notions of historic urban districts. Therefore, there is now an opportunity for China to develop an effective set of national policies for the conservation and management of its HULs.

Heritage governance and legislation in China The national-level heritage governance and policies In China, the conservation of historic districts involves government sectors and relevant departments from national, provincial, city and local levels. Different organisations take different responsibilities and functions in the process of historic district conservation. The State Council is the highest legislative 561

Table 33.1 The evolution of historic district conservation in China. Year

Events

1929

The establishment of the Society for the Study of Chinese Architecture 1930 The adoption of The Code of Antiques Preservation 1933 The additional 19 Implementation Details to The Code of Antiques Preservation 1949 The adoption of National Short List of Monuments 1960 The adoption of the Provisional Regulation of Cultural Relics Protection and Management 1961 The announcement of the first list of National Key Cultural Relics for Protection 1966–1976 The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution 1982 The adoption of the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Protection of Cultural Relics The announcement of the first list of National Famous Historic and Cultural Cities 1985 Signed the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage 1986 The Approval Document of the Second List of National Famous Historic and Cultural Cities 1996 The adoption of the Provisional Administrative Act for the Protection of Tun Xi Old Historic and Cultural District of Huangshan City 2008 The adoption of Protection Regulations on Famous Historic and Cultural Cities, Towns and Villages 2009 The announcement of the first list of Chinese Famous Historical and Cultural Districts 2010 The announcement of the second list of Chinese Famous Historic and Cultural Districts Source: Zhe Geng

Objectives

Evolutions

The conservation of individual historic buildings The first conservation legislation of historic relics Supplementary detailed protection principles for historic buildings

Before 1949 Individual historic buildings and historic relics

Architectural monuments 1949–1976 From hisconservation toric monuments to The first comprehensive and formal historic sites and units administrative regulations for the conservation of cultural monuments The registration of national historic sites Many historic monuments were destroyed The first law of cultural heritage conservation The registration of nation-level historic cities Required China’s historic conservation to meet International standards and regulations The word ‘historic districts’ was mentioned by the State Council The first local regulations for a historic district

Legally regulate the conservation of historic cities, towns and villages The selection of nation-level historic districts for protection The selection of nation-level historic districts for protection

After 1976 From historic cities to historic towns, villages, and districts

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and administrative department in China that oversees publishing laws, regulations on historic conservation and announcing the registered list of national level heritage including historic cities, towns and villages. The Central Government’s conservation work of cultural heritage originated under the Chinese National Government years before the founding of new China in 1949, when the Chinese National Government adopted its first legislation for historic conservation – The Code of Antiques Preservation in 1930 (Huang 2012). This legislation was initially drafted for the conservation of historic sites clearly defining the management requirements of conservation that historic relics (except for private relics) by the National Government and that private relics should be designated by related official authorities and could be transferred to other parties (Huang 2012). These requirements provide evidence that the Central Government holds the highest administrative jurisdiction over historic conservation since the Chinese National Government years in China. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, a series of Regulations and Laws were passed to prohibit the exportation of Chinese cultural relics and to protect historic remains. The conservation of historic districts has been paid attention by national-level government sectors since the 1980s. In China, the concept of area-based monuments was formally written into the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Protection of Cultural Relics (UNESCO 2007) in 1982. In 2002, when the Law was revised for the third time, the significance of conserving provincial or municipal level historic and cultural districts (historic streets) was added (Lee and Du Cros 2013). Although this Law focused on the protection of national key cultural relic sites, it did provide some important principles for conservation that could be employed in the conservation of historic districts. A significant moment in the conservation of historic districts in China was when the State Council first mentioned the words ‘historic districts’ within in the concept of ‘historic and cultural protection areas’ in the Approval Document of the Second List of National Famous Historic and Cultural Cities in 1986 (Wang 1994). The Document defined ‘historic districts’ as ‘the districts, architectural complex, small villages or towns which possess large number of cultural relics and historic sites and could reflect traditional characters and local features of a certain history period should be designated as “historic and cultural protection areas”’ (State Council 1986: 1077). The establishment of buffer zones or construction control areas was also agreed to as a method to protect cultural relic sites, which applied also to the conservation of historic areas. Included was that new buildings and constructions in buffer zones should not destroy the environmental features of the cultural relic sites, and that all design plans for new buildings and constructions in buffer zones needed to obtain approvals from the relevant administrative departments of culture and urban-rural construction. Further, in the Approval Document of 1986 (State Council 1986), the governments at provincial, municipal, city or county levels could designate their ‘Historic and Cultural Protection Areas’ at their local levels according to different historic, scientific and artistic values (State Council 1986). Under this definition, historic districts, villages and towns were three parallel concepts forming parts of ‘Historic and Cultural Protection Areas’. Although historic districts were articulated as important as historic villages and towns to be protected in the Approval Document, the conservation of historic districts has not been paid equal attention in contrast to historic villages and towns by the Chinese Central Government. Wang (1998) has pointed out the differences between ‘historic areas’ and ‘historic districts’ in China: historic areas possess high historic values that are protected by legalised regulations; however, historic districts can be equal to historic streets or assembles of architectures that need to be protected. The State Council (2008) passed Protection Regulations on Famous Historic and Cultural Cities, Towns and Villages in 2008, which provided national requirements for historic villages and towns but not for historic districts. Both the Approval Document of 1986 and the Protection Regulations of 2008 concluded that the conservation policies of historic districts should be confirmed by 563

Table 33.2 A Comparison of International and Chinese Histories of the Development of Historic District Conservation Approaches 1930s–1950s International Surrounding areas of historic sites should be given attention (Athens Charter 1931)

China

Focusing on the protection and registration of National-level single historic monuments

1960s–1970s

1980s–1990s

Culture and context representativeness of historic sites should be conserved (Venice Charter 1964)

The natural and manmade environments of historic cities, towns, city centres and quarters were added to be conserved (Washington Charter 1987) Historic towns, villages Detailed protective aims and city quarters were of historic districts were put into the scope of his- adopted (Suzhou Declartoric areas (Nairobi Recation 1998) ommendation 1976) Focusing on the protec- A certain protective area tion and registration of should be designed National-level cultural around a historic site relics (sites) (Protection Law of Cultural Relics 1982) Historic districts, small villages or towns were mentioned to be protected (Approval Document 1986)

2000s–2010s Detailed and professional methods for conserving historic districts in Asian region were adopted. (Hoi An Declaration 2003)

Chinese principles for cultural heritage protection in China were adopted. (Chinese Principles 2002) The concept of ‘Historic and Cultural Districts’ was defined. (Protection Regulations on Chinese Famous Historic and Cultural Cities, Towns and Villages 2008) Selection of Chinese Famous Top 10 Historic and Cultural Districts from 2009

Source: Zhe Geng

the Central Government of the People’s Republic of China. Therefore, the Central Government holds the highest jurisdiction for the conservation of historic districts at the Chinese national level, including the registration of national historic districts and the stipulation of related legislation. The conservation of urban heritage in China should, therefore, be understood and discussed within the definition of ‘historic districts. In China, after the phrase ‘historic districts’ was first mentioned by the Approval Document (State Council 1986), several attempts have been taken to define the concept of historic districts. The Protection Regulations (State Council 2008: 13) define historic districts as ‘[h]istoric and cultural districts are the districts with a certain scale announced by provincial, autonomous regions’ or municipal (directly under the Central Government) People’s Governments which retains abundant ancient monuments and intensive areas of historic buildings and can reflect relatively integrated and authentic traditional structures and historical features. The Protection Regulations (State Council 2008) provided detailed conservation principles and methods for historic village conservation and offered some preliminary conservation principles for

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historic districts, including the classification of core heritage areas and buffer zones for protection. Such activities have enabled the conservation of historic districts to be legalised at provincial and city levels and provided local governments with initial regulations for the conservation of historic districts. With the adoption of these Protection Regulations, historic district conservation in China entered a new phase. In 2008, a nation-wide selection contest for ‘Chinese Famous Historic and Cultural Districts’ was held to select national-level famous historic districts. This was the initial stage of the establishment of a registration system for national historic districts. The contest, held over consecutive years, selected the top 10 Chinese Historic and Cultural Districts every year. The aim of this process was to strengthen the conservation of Chinese historic districts and to promote the harmonious and sustainable development of the urban social culture and economy. The selection criteria included not only historic and cultural elements, but conservation status, economic and cultural vitality, and social popularity together with the protection and management of the places. Although this selection criteria were not issued by the State Council, the contests have served as a landmark of early efforts towards legislation and initial social-importance assessments. This was especially so for historic district conservation because the range of stakeholders expanded from governments, to experts, to the public. In these selection contests, an interesting and important change was the involvement of the public in deliberating on what they deemed a socially important historic district. The application for a historic district could be proposed by the city to the Committee of the Selection Contest of Chinese Historic and Cultural Districts or could be directly recommended by the Management Committee of the Selection Contest. The contest evolved into a public vote first, and after that experts determined 15 possible districts each round. People could then vote through the mail, text messages or via the Internet to choose their favourite 10 districts. This consultative process contributes much to the growing Chinese public awareness of the need to protect their historic districts (Frank and Petersen 2002). In terms of institutes for heritage governance at the national level, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage (SACH) is administratively answerable to the State Council and is directly under the administration of the Ministry of Culture. This structure can be traced back to the establishment of New China in 1949, when the Central Government established the Cultural Relics Administrative Bureau. The Bureau’s name was changed to the State Administration of Cultural Heritage (SACH) in 1988 and was repositioned under the State Council and the Ministry of Culture (State Council 1982). SACH is in charge of historic conservation and management nationwide, including: 1) assessing National Key Cultural Relics (Sites), National Famous Historic and Cultural Cities and taking charge of declaring, conserving and managing World Heritage properties; 2) drawing up nation-wide guidelines, policies, regulations and plans for historic conservation and formulating related conservation systems and mechanisms and further supervising implementation; and 3) guiding and coordinating the management, conservation, rescue, investigation, research, publicity and other cooperation work of nation-wide historic conservation (SACH 2005). After the Protection Regulations on Famous Historic and Cultural Cities, Towns and Villages was passed in 2008, related work for National Famous Historical and Cultural Towns and Villages were added to the responsibilities of SACH. A variable absent in this discussion about ‘historic districts’ is that all these policy and legislative instruments focus upon the tangible built fabric of these places (Taylor 2017, 2018). Such gives no recognition to the nature and cultural of the humanity that occupies these places, including their 565

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different ethnic characteristics (Yi 2013), and vernacular wisdom that underpins the occupancy of each village (Shao and Zhang 2018).

The provincial/municipal level heritage governance In China, provincial governments are directly managed under the Central Government. There are also four municipalities directly under the Central Government, being Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Chongqing, and these municipal governments are at the same administrative level as provincial governments. The Law on Protection of Cultural Relics 1982 required governments from provincial to county levels to manage and conserve cultural relic sites in their administrative regions. It also required provincial, municipal, and autonomous regions’ city and local governments to establish relevant conservation and management institutions and to pass relevant regulations for their registered historic cities (State Council 1982). The Provincial Administration of Cultural Heritage (PACH) is directly responsible to SACH and is mainly responsible for coordinating the protection work initiated and established by the SACH and to guide the conservation work at the provinciallevel. After 1982, several provincial governments passed provincial-level laws to implement the Law on Protection of Cultural Relics of 1982 as provincial universal guidelines. An example is the Implementation Act of Anhui Province on the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Protection of Cultural Relics issued by the Government of Anhui Province in 1989. In 2008, the Government of Yunnan Province announced its legislation for historic districts – the Protection Regulations of Yunnan Province on Famous Historic and Cultural Cities, Towns, Villages and Districts – which was based upon the Law on Protection of Cultural Relics (1982) and issued before the national Protection Regulations of 2008. The Yunnan Province has the largest population of ethnic minorities in China and possesses unique geographical features and ethnic and cultural characteristics (Chen and Guo 2012). The Protection Regulations of Yunnan Province (Government of Yunnan Province 2007) regulated that a historic district should be defined into three-level protection areas: (1) core protection area; (2) construction control area; and (3) styles and features co-ordination area. The boundaries of these three areas should be defined in protection plans and through signage by county and higher-level governments (Government of Yunnan Province 2007). Additionally, related regulations for provincial declarations, planning contents, protection measures and construction management and legal liability were detailed in these Protection Regulations. These Regulations ensure that the conservation of historic districts in Yunnan Province are treated as important as the protection of historic cities, towns and villages at provincial-level. After the Protection Regulations on Famous Historic and Cultural Cities, Towns and Villages 2008 were issued, provincial governments were deemed responsible for their provincial towns and villages and required to pass relevant regulations in accordance with the national Protection Regulations 2008. Some provincial governments started to enforce provincial regulations on registered national historic cities, towns and villages in their administration regions, such as the Protection Regulations on Famous Historic and Cultural Cities and Towns of Jiangsu Province were issued in 2010. However, not all provincial governments have issued relevant conservation regulations to date. Provincial governments also have the right to announce provincial-level historic cities, towns and villages. The list of national registration promoted a wave of registration of provincial historic sites. By March 2005, there were 157 provincial level Famous Historic and Cultural Cities and 725 provinciallevel Famous Historic and Cultural Towns and Villages in China (Xinhua News 2013). However, most of these registered provincial-level historic cities, towns and villages still do not have corresponding protection regulations.

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The city and local level heritage governance City governments are directly responsible for conservation work in historic cities. After the registration of National Famous Historical and Cultural Cities, most such cities adopted protection legislation, and some of these governments articulated the conservation of historic city into their legal urban plans. Some 99 National Famous Historical and Cultural Cities were approved in three batches in 1982, 1986 and 1994, and between 2001 and 2016 a further 32 cities were added resulting in a current total of 131 places. While these places are scattered across China in 25 provinces and autonomous regions and in 4 municipalities, the majority are concentrated in Jiangsu (13), Henan (9) and Shandong (9), and Zhejiang (8) provinces. There were however, in 2013, only 27 National Historical and Cultural Cities that possessed protective regulations (Xinhua News 2013). Huangshan Tunxi Old Street, Huangshan City in Anhui Province, is an example of historic district conservation in China at the local level. The Government of Huangshan City started protection work of Tunxi Old Street in 1979, developed protection, repair and renovation plans in 1985, and issued a Provisional Administrative Act for the Protection of Tun Xi Old Historic and Cultural District in 1996 (Zhu 1996). This landmark determination served as an example for other Chinese local governments to formulate similar relevant regulations to protect their historic districts. These include: the People’s Government of Nanning’s Administrative Regulations on Protection of Historic Traditional Districts in 2000; the Government of Harbin’s Protection Regulations on Harbin Buildings and Districts in 2001; the Government of Shanghai’s Protection Regulations on Shanghai Historic and Cultural Districts and Historic Buildings in 2002 (Qian 2005); and, the Government of Hangzhou’s Protection Regulations on Hangzhou Historic and Cultural Districts and Historic Buildings in 2004.

The China Principles for heritage conservation praxis Since China became a signatory of the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (UNESCO 1972) in 1985, China’s conservation work on cultural heritage has been required to meet international standards, especially the conservation of World Heritage properties in China. International organisations, such as ICOMOS and UNESCO, have had positive and instructional influences on heritage conservation practice in China. China’s first formal venture into the ICOMOS arena occurred in 1998 with their hosting of the International Conference for the Preservation and Development of Historic Cities in Suzhou (UNESCO 1998). The conference involved participation by numerous mayors of historic cities in China and the European Union. Although the main idea of this conference was focused on historic cities, the importance of historic districts was extensively discussed, recognising them as ‘the identity of the city itself and of its inhabitants remain enshrined in its historic districts and their culture’ (UNESCO 1998: 16). As a result, the Suzhou Declaration on International Cooperation for the Safeguarding and Development of Historic Cities was adopted in 1998. The Suzhou Declaration provided instruments for historic cities to ensure that historic districts ‘retain the collective memory of cultures’ and ‘provide the inhabitants with a sense of continuity of civilisation from the past into the future’ (UNESCO 1998: 16). In the process of the conservation of historic sites, conserving the inseparable history and meanings were deemed of paramount importance. The intangible cultural heritage of historic districts was also expressed as ‘an inseparable component of the physical environment’ (Article 10, the Suzhou Declaration), that should be conserved and promoted (UNESCO 1998: 17). In other words, to conserve historic sites or districts, the architectural features should be protected but also that the culture, history and memory of sites and districts must be retained without distortion (UNESCO 1998).

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In 1993, the Chinese Commission for the International Council on Monuments and Sites (China ICOMOS) was founded, supervised by the Ministry of Culture of the People’s Republic of China. Nine years after its establishment, China ICOMOS began a review about the feasibility of the Athens Charter, the Venice Charter, the Washington Charter and other international Charters being expressed and applied in the context of China. The Principles for the Conservation of Heritage Sites in China (China Principles) (China ICOMOS 2002) were adopted in 2002 with the guidance and support of the Getty Conservation Institution, Australia ICOMOS and China ICOMOS. In China, the China Principles is the Chinese equivalent of Australia ICOMOS’s (2013) Burra Charter as it seeks to basically guide cultural heritage conservation activities and theory in China (Qian 2003). The China Principles are national guidelines in conservation practice for heritage sites that address the safeguard of historical, artistic and scientific values of heritage sites. The Principles emphasise not just individual architecture, such as buildings, cave temples, stone carvings, sculpture, and tombs, but also places together with historic components including historic precincts (villages and towns) (Article 1) (China ICOMOS 2002). Therefore, it is another guideline providing general principles for historic district conservation in China. In the China Principles, the aim of ‘conservation’ is clarified as conserving ‘the authenticity of all the elements of the entire heritage site and to retain for the future its historic information and all its values’ (Article 2). As Qian (2003) states, the China Principles emphasise material authenticity and minimal intervention in Chinese heritage practice, which is aligned with the Burra Charter. The China Principles also provide a feasible and detailed conservation process for Chinese historic places, including historic precincts (villages and towns). The conservation process is defined as a day-to -day management system, and includes six steps: investigation, research and assessment, implementation of the four legal prerequisites, determination of objectives and drawing up the conservation master plan, implementation of master plan and periodic review of the master plan and action plans (China ICOMOS 2002: 77). Under this process, four legal prerequisites are stipulated particularly for accommodating the Chinese situation. They are: demarcation of site boundaries and buffer zone, erection of an official plaque, creation of an archive for records, and establishment of a management organisation (China ICOMOS 2002: 77), which are in practice conducted in many Chinese conservation plans for historic areas (streets, villages and towns). In addition, the last step requires related conservation and management organisations to conduct periodic reviews of conservation outcomes, conservation policies and plans, which are very important in the conservation of a historic place including a historic district. While ‘historic districts’ or ‘historic precincts’ are not specifically mentioned in the China Principles, Article 44 about ‘Retaining historic function’ states that ‘sites that retain their historic function, particularly those where the traditional way of life has become an integral part of the site’s values should be encouraged to continue that function’. Thus, sites such as historic districts, historic precincts or ‘historically and culturally famous cities, towns and villages … should continue its historic function while conserving traditional activities and ways of life’ (China ICOMOS 2002: 103). Despite the China Principles, China policy-makers are still struggling to translate and apply international concepts and definitions of cultural heritage into practice, policy and management (Geng 2014; Han 2006, 2018; Jones et al. 2018; Rössler and Lin 2018; Shao and Zhang 2018; Taylor 2017, 2018; Yi 2013).

Towards an effective urban heritage conservation system for China There are eight factors that play significant roles and functions in the conservation of historic districts in China. They include: the registration of historic districts, governments and related departments, policy aims of conservation, specific conservation regulations, public involvement, research into historic districts, a review system, and tourism development. Below is a discussion of how these factors could 568

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be improved for an effective management of historic urban districts in China. Figure 33.1 establishes the relationships amongst these seven contributing factors, providing a possible conservation management structure for policy makers in China.

The role of the recognition of historic districts The registration of a historic district plays an important role in the conservation management structure of historic districts in China. The registration of a historic district is beneficial for heightening the publicity of a historic district, the improvement of public awareness and the promotion of the issue of related conservation regulations. In addition, a historic district with a higher registration level is given more attention and protection by governments. Nevertheless, the registration of historic districts in China is in its formative stage. The registration regime of historic cities, towns and villages was successfully established at national and local levels in China. In terms of the registration of Chinese historic districts, a national-level list of historic districts has not been announced but the Central Government has encouraged local governments (provincial, city and town levels) to register their local-level historic districts. As a result, many local governments have announced local-level lists of historic districts. The Selection Contests of Chinese Top 10 Famous Historic and Cultural Districts every year since 2009 have been instrumental in garnering publicity and the protection of valuable historic districts in China. Because these Contests have involved public voting in the process of selection, they have contributed to the improvement of public participation and historic district awareness across China. The Contests were conducted relatively successfully by testing whether residents and visitors knew about the case studies, and the research studies show that all participating residents and a small portion of participating visitors had increased their knowledge about the Selection Contest and their knowledge about the conservation of the selected historic districts (Geng 2014). A historic district with a higher registration level can receive more publicity, attention and protection from governments. For example, Xidi and Hongcun villages, as World Heritage level properties, inscribed in 2000, were conserved under a much more comprehensive conservation structure than Zhouzhuang Town presently on the World Heritage Tentative level (application submitted 2008), and Beijing’s Guozijian and Yandaixiejie Districts as Chinese national level (Geng 2014). This situation is especially evident in Chinese historic districts at national and local levels, when comparing the conservation results between Beijing Guozijian and Yandaixiejie Districts and the Dalian Fengming Street, which are local-level sites. Beijing Guozijian and Yandaixiejie Districts were conserved successfully by the Beijing Municipal Government and were selected as two of the Chinese Famous Historic and Cultural Districts (Geng 2014). While protection assumes conservation, it should not be assumed that the latter has been occurring. For example, the historic buildings on Dalian’s Fengming Street, that had been registered as Dalian city-level historic relics, were demolished by a local government in 2011 (Geng 2014; Shang 2011; Zeng 2011). The demolition of historic Fengming Street is not an isolated event because Zheng (2004: 2) has recorded a list of 21 demolished historic buildings and districts from 1992 to 2000. The registration of historic districts can promote the issue of related conservation regulations in China. The registrations of national-level historic cities, towns and villages were announced before the adoption of related national-level conservation regulations and legislation. Therefore, the successful development of the Selection Contest of Chinese Famous Historic and Cultural Districts was beneficial for the promotion of the announcement of a national-level registration list of Chinese historic districts and heightening the need to have conservation laws. Therefore, the registration of a historic district is beneficial for its conservation.

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Figure 33.1 A possible conservation management structure for historic district conservation in China Source: Zhe Geng

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The role of research on historic district conservation in China Research into historic district conservation in China commenced during the 1980s. Quality research is needed to better understand the consequence of historic district designations, policies thereto, their relationship to authenticity and tourism, and the nature and success of their conservation. Many papers have been published in Chinese (Mandarin) rather than in English. A major focus of these studies was on how to renovate or revive historic districts based upon an analysis of individual successful renovation projects (Bian and Jing 2005; Ruan and Yuan 2008; Song 2000; Wu 1994; Yang and Lu 2008; Zhou 1986). Some articles have highlighted the importance and significant values of the conservation of historic districts (Gu 1998; Wang 1994), or tourism values (Han 2006). Some research has focused upon the renovation of historic districts from economic and urban planning perspectives (Zhai 2008), while other studies have inquired into definitions and conservation principles and models of historic districts in China (Dai, Wang and Wang 2007; Ruan, Wang and Wang 1999; Shan 1998; Wang 1998). Ruan has offered significant theoretical and practical insights into saving and conserving several historic towns along the Yangtze River (Ruan, Huang and Cheng 1996; Ruan and Shao 1999; Ruan and Yuan 2008), and in developing and comparing different practical models of the protection of historic districts through case studies in China (Ruan and Gu 2004). However, research into historic district administrative and organisational conservation management structures and approaches to assessing the conservation results of historic districts are limited (Dai, Zhu and Xu 2012; Geng 2014).

The role of the governance structure Governments at multi-levels and their relevant departments play dominant roles in the conservation of historic districts in China. They are also responsible for establishing relevant governance systems, making related conservation policies and allocating major conservation funding. The current top-down governance system in China enables the conservation policy and requirements addressed by upper-level governments to be imposed upon local-level governments. The bottom-up reporting system presents challenges and difficulties in the process of conducting conservation work that needs to be reported to upper-level governments in order to obtain more scientific guidance and assistance. Any change, repair or reconstruction in a historic district necessitates the need to report to its relevant government to be thereupon evaluated and given approval. Such a government-dominated conservation system can manage conservation work efficiently and negate unnecessary damage. While this government-dominated conservation system appears to have been successful, it is important to clarify the responsibilities of each government and relevant department in the conservation management structure to ensure that conservation work can be implemented successfully and effectively. In addition, because Chinese governments are also responsible for making conservation regulations and policies for historic districts in China, it is important to train government staff about scientific practices for the conservation of historic districts.

The role of the intent of conservation policy The aims of conservation policies can determine the future of a historic district. For example, the ancient town of Zhouzhuang prioritised local tourism development to boost the local economy and this led to extensive tourism development that had changed the local community’s lifestyle and Zhouzhuang’s authentic historic features (Bradshaw 2013; Chao 2009; Jiang and Su

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2013; Ruan 2005; Ruan and Shao 1999; Zhang et al., 2008). Similarly, Beijing’s Yandaixiejie District prioritised itself as a commercial district targeting international visitors and Chinese highincome white-collar workers which has led to the extensive establishment of modern cafés and bars (Li 2011; Li and Ding 2008; Wang and Zhou 1988). In contrast, Xidi and Hongcun villages and Beijing’s Guozijian District prioritised the conservation of their traditional architectural features and original culture (Shan 1998; Zhang 1996). As a result, the traditional Hui-style buildings and Hui culture of Xidi and Hongcun villages have been successfully conserved (Li 2001, 2010; Liang 2005; Liang and Wang 2005) and the ancient Confucian and Imperial culture of Beijing’s Guozijian District is well maintained (Geng 2014). Therefore, a scientifically-informed conservation aim is very important for the successful conservation and renovation of a historic district in China. Moreover, because government staff and policy-makers define the conservation aims in China, these policy makers must consider the conservation of historic resources as their priority rather than it being subservient to boosting the local economy when developing conservation plans for historic districts in China.

The role of conservation regulations The conservation regulations specific for historic districts can guide related conservation work more scientifically. The lack of national-level conservation regulations for historic districts is a major issue that needs to be improved. Since the 1980s, the Chinese Central Government has issued a series of laws and regulations for historic cities, towns and villages but not for historic districts. The Central Government recognised this absence and added some initial regulations for historic districts into the Protection Regulations on Famous Historic and Cultural Cities, Towns and Villages (State Council 2008). These amendments required the conservation of historic districts by adapting conservation methods used for historic towns and villages, including classifications of core protection areas and buffer zones. However, this approach was not sufficiently scientific to use some conservation methods for historic towns or villages as being valid and appropriate conservation methods for historic urban districts (Geng 2014). In China, historic urban districts have some specific issues that need improvement, including addressing the high population densities and poor living facilities. There are many historic districts in China that are not conserved under any conservation law, because they are in a small city or are managed by a lower-level government where the local government staff have an inadequate level of conservation training. Therefore, it is necessary to develop national-level conservation regulations specific for historic districts across China, especially for historic urban districts, to guide conservation work of historic districts generally and to prevent such areas experiencing inappropriate uses, illegal damage and demolition.

The role of the agency of the public and non-governmental organisations The conservation management structure of historic districts should involve greater levels of public participation and non-government organisations. Geng (2014) found that more resident and social participation results in better conservation outcomes. For example, Xidi and Hongcun villages were conserved under a comprehensive governance structure but also by the ready acceptance of such aims by their residents, non-government organisations and social participants. The residents of Xidi and Hongcun villages signed Villagers’ Agreements and Regulations to protect their hometown and regulate illegal behaviour. These two villages established village-level Protection Associations as vehicles responsible for communicating with government staff about conservation work. Also, the local government established ‘Claim Mechanism’, a new online method to collect social donations, which has enabled some endangered historic buildings to receive timely protection and repair. As a result, Xidi and 572

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Hongcun villages received much better conservation outcomes based upon resident and visitor perceptions (Geng 2014; Geng and Jones 2011, 2012). In contrast, conservation work in many historic districts receives limited involvement from non-government organisations and local community. Such a situation is a common phenomenon in China. Governments undertake major works towards the conservation of historic sites in China, but the public has little interest or sense of historic conservation. Therefore, governments at multi-levels in China should improve social interest involvement and encourage the public to participate more in the conservation of historic districts based upon improvements to the governance systems. Apart from government sectors and relevant departments, non-governmental organisations were invaluable in the conservation system of historic districts in China. These organisations play an important role in historic conservation promotion overall but have little weight in the actual conservation of historic districts in China. The Ruan Yisan Heritage Foundation (n.d.) in Shanghai, established in 2006, is a good example that has provided a significant contribution in the conservation of historic districts, villages and towns in China. With the efforts of governments and scholars, social interests and public awareness of historic district conservation have increased over the last 10 years, in part because of the role and presence of this Foundation.

The role of an effective review system for historic districts An effective review system should be developed for the conservation of historic districts in China. Historic conservation in China requires more recognition and acceptance of registration than conservation. Some historic sites were registered as national-level historic cities, towns or villages, but the lack of ‘looking back’ upon the conservation results of registered historic sites has resulted in the loss of authentic features to some extent. By June 2013, China hosted 169 National Famous Historic and Cultural Villages, 181 National Famous Historic and Cultural Towns and 40 Chinese Famous Historic and Cultural Districts, but there is uncertainty as to the consequences of these designations (Geng 2014). The selection of historic districts is likely to be held constantly in future years. As a result, the number of Chinese historic districts is increasing. However, after registration and selection, the conservation of historic districts requires more attention. In addition, a review system can evaluate whether governments undertake effective and successful conservation work and whether previous conservation plans are scientifically valid and appropriate. A periodic review, as in the case of World Heritage properties conducted by UNESCO, is beneficial for conserving the authenticity of historic features of urban heritage and preventing non-compliant change or damage. City-level architectural review boards, as practiced in the USA, could be established for evaluating historic values before registration and reviewing conservation results after registration. Therefore, apart from the adoption of relevant regulations, it is necessary to establish specific review departments and scientific review methods to inspect conservation results and evaluate conservation work in each registered historic village and town and in each selected historic district.

The role of tourism development Finally, tourism development can significantly affect the conservation outcomes of a historic district. It is accepted that heritage-based tourism is a double-edged sword. Appropriate tourism development can bring considerable income to potentially improve local community’s living facilities and the protection of historic buildings. In contrast, extensive tourism development can also destroy the authenticity of traditional lifestyles and historic features.

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In recent years, there has been attempts to build fake-historic structures and transforming original resident houses into tourism and entertainment facilities. Because of inappropriate development and incorrect recognition of cultural heritage, the original cultural heritage has been destroyed in pursuing this strategy. The phenomenon of establishing ‘pseudo-history’ commercial streets for tourism interests has nonetheless, increased generally across China. This has resulted in historic districts becoming ‘fakeantique’ in their character and spirit, and in conflict with the internationally accepted principle of heritage authenticity. This has made the condition and quality of conserving historic districts worse (Taylor 2017). While business owners in historic areas may enjoy the increased income and increased visitors, many visitors are usually unhappy with extensive commodification of cultural heritage in historic districts. Irrespective of whether tourism activities organised by local governments are colourful or not, visitors want to enjoy what they perceive as authentic heritage and traditional life in historic areas. Therefore, controlling and monitoring tourism development in a historic district is very important for the conservation of its authentic features. How to develop tourism sustainably and how to balance tourism development and historic conservation are global and long-term foci of practitioner and academic discourse. Although it is complex, local governments should consider this topic seriously and place historic conservation as their priority.

Conclusion Over the past several decades, China has witnessed the rapid loss of cultural heritage because of redevelopment of its urban fabric due to its immense urbanisation and economic development. When economic interests and conservation work have contradicted each other, the latter has often been sacrificed (Taylor 2017). Additionally, many historic districts were used as real estate development projects through forcing up land values, with the aim to benefit from the historic areas rather than protect them (Taylor 2018). Ruan and Sun (2001: 25) conclude: the contradiction between protection and development was not solved. The current living conditions in historic districts are quite lower than modern requirements. Under the impact of large-scale urban renewal and associated economic and tourism development, abundant historic districts have been undertaken constructive destruction. The Chinese government and social interests in China have shifted during the last three decades from historic cities, villages and towns downwards to historic streets and areas. There are clear hierarchical relationships and responsibilities of Chinese governments and relevant departments for historic districts amongst national, provincial, city and local levels. Such top-down conservation system enables conservation requirements formulated by a national-level government to be effectively implemented by lowerlevel governments. The bottom-up reporting system from local-level authorities to national and provincial level governments enables conservation work to obtain timely assistance and scientific guidance. Some provincial and local governments have produced and achieved robust conservation outcomes in their historic districts. Therefore, governments determine the future of historic districts in China. However, there are weaknesses in the current conservation management system. These include the lack of a national-level registration system for Chinese historic districts, the lack of national-level legislation or regulations for the conservation of historic districts in China, the lack of a review system to monitor and evaluate conservation results in a historic district in China, and the limited public participation and non-government organisations in the practice of conservation. Another related issue is the need for funding for urban conservation. The conservation of historic districts embraces not only the conservation and repair of buildings in an area, but also the need to improve living conditions and infrastructure without compromising the authenticity and 574

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integrity of the building fabric. This requires substantial capital investments, but local governments often cannot afford this cost that makes the practice of historic district conservation difficult in China. These issues point towards the need of the development of a broader urban conservation approach for China that integrates heritage conservation with socio-economic development within the existing heritage governance structure. The HUL approach may provide the necessary impetus for the development of such a conservation policy and method of practice that could be uniquely responsive to Chinese historical, socio-cultural, economic, and political conditions.

Acknowledgements This chapter draws from research undertaken by Geng (2014) that involved contributions of many people that guided the process of data collection. Thanks are expressed to all the interviewed Chinese government staff, academics and surveyed residents and visitors for their contributions, and assistance from Yan Cui.

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34 CONSERVING HISTORIC URBAN CORES IN IRAN An overview Rana Amirtahmasebi and Mohammadsaeid Izadi Introduction This chapter provides an overview of the management of historic urban cores in Iran, including the evolution of institutional settings and legislative framework. The chapter provides a history of different approaches to urban heritage management over time and analyses the relationship between different agencies involved in urban cultural heritage management on central and local levels. Iran has a strong centralized and top-down public sector approach to managing its urban cultural heritage, which has started to evolve only in the last decade to include more participatory approaches. Specifically, the management of historic urban cores falls under various specialized agencies with full operational and budgetary autonomy. The aim of the chapter is to understand the efficiency of the inter relationships among these agencies and councils. The chapter then lays out the problems faced by the historic urban cores in Iran, which include informality, unclear land and building ownership patterns, high poverty rate among the residents, and low quality of buildings. Additionally, the chapter outlines current institutions managing urban heritage and historic cores and their inter-relationships. The current legal framework for managing historic urban cores is also analysed. These discussions are then grounded in the case of the World Heritage site of the Historic City of Yazd.

Cultural heritage management system in Iran The institutions for heritage management The responsibility of conservation of historic urban cores in Iran falls under three distinct institutions. On the Central Government level, the Ministry of Roads and Urban Development (MRUD) and the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Tourism, and Handicrafts (MCHTH) (Until recently Iranian Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts, and Tourism Organization (ICHHTO)) are in charge of managing and protecting the historic cores. MRUD works on planning framework for the whole historic urban areas while MCHTH keeps track of the inventory of historic structures and is the main body to safeguard urban heritage. Lastly, on the local level, municipalities oversee the implementation of policies and plans directed from the central government. Under MRUD, the Department of Urban Planning and Architecture is the main responsible body for ‘directing and high-level supervision of the implementation of specialized architecture and urban planning programmes and plans specific to historic cities’ (MRUD n.d.). Under this department, the Bureau of Architecture and Urban Design formulates policies related to culturally significant urban areas and prepares action plans for conservation of ‘the cultural, historical and natural identities of historic cities’ (MRUD n.d.). 579

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Furthermore, the Bureau is also responsible for commissioning and supervising master plans and specialized plans for historic urban areas within the cities. Under the ministry, a secretariat is also involved in planning for historic urban cores. The Supreme Council of Urban Planning and Architecture consists of several high-level members from various government agencies and is in charge of coordinating urban plans for all cities throughout the country. The Council oversees general policy making for urban development and architecture in the country, but its policies specially impact the planning system in historic urban cores. The members include the Minister of Roads and Urban Development (MRUD), some of their deputies, a high-level representative from MCHTH and some other national agencies and ministries (MRUD n.d.). Another effective institution under the MRUD is the Urban Development and Revitalization Corporation (UDRC), which was first established as the Office for Betterment of Urban Fabric over 30 years ago. Its role has evolved throughout the decades. It is now focused on i) policy development and research on urban regeneration and development; ii) management and coordination of all stakeholders and their actions; and iii) development of urban regeneration plans and taking on large scale adaptive reuse projects and economic and social development. MCHTH1 is in charge of protecting the historic urban cores in cities and in general all cultural heritage of the country in rural or urban areas. Its mandate includes tangible and intangible heritage and is the main counterpart of UNESCO in Iran. MCHTH’s mandate is more on the building level and it ensures that the urban plans developed for historic cities are cognizant of protecting the architecturally, historically, and culturally significant buildings. MCHTH also actively designates and monitors the boundaries of historic urban cores and the buffer zones around them. Because of these responsibilities, all urban plans developed jointly by the municipalities and the ministry must be analysed by the MCHTH. Municipalities manage historic areas within cities on the local level. They oversee monitoring and enforcing the plans and building codes.

The planning process for urban conservation The process of planning for historic urban cores usually starts with MRUD. The ministry first prepares comprehensive plans for the cities outlining general strategies for growth dynamics of the respective city. Based on this comprehensive plan, the ministry then commissions detailed land use plans for different areas of the city to private planning and engineering firms. These plans include detailed land use, transportation, building height and bulk, urban density, and general urban design guidelines. The ministry is responsible for evaluating and approving these plans. Then, the plans are sent to the municipalities for implementation. The process is different in the case of Tehran, the capital city of Iran, as its municipality is very involved in the process of developing the plans. One major improvement in planning for historic urban cores in Iranian cities in the 1990s was redrawing the boundaries of historic districts and cores in almost all historic cities. Before that, the historic centres were usually divided between different administrative districts and that made the management and coordination of activities in historic district challenging. In the new system, the whole historic district is within one administrative district called ‘the historic district’, which is managed by a district mayor (Izadi 2008).

Evolution of national policies for managing historic urban cores in Iranian cities On par with other developing nations, Iranian cities have gone through a major population increase in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Just in the past two decades, the country’s population has increased from 49.4 million people in 1986 to 75.2 million in 2012 (UDRC n.d.). 580

Conserving historic urban cores in Iran

Most of this population growth has been in cities, where jobs and economic opportunities are located. This section provides a brief review of the evolution of urban policies related to the historic cores in Iran.

Pre-1979 revolution Iran was not governed by a strong central government until the beginning of the twentieth century. At that point, the government started developing cities, building infrastructure, and providing services. These activities were mostly respectful of the historic context and were carried out in accordance and with minimal disturbance to the historic fabric. Before the 1979 revolution,2 two distinct periods of government interventions in urban development in general can be identified. The first period started in 1920s during the reign of Reza Shah of Pahlavi Dynasty (1925–1941). During this period, the first wave of modernization and transformation of historic urban centres started in Iranian cities. The monarch (Reza Shah) was a fan of western style development and his administration overlaid western urban elements and street patterns on the Iranian historic urban cores, while breaking down the city walls and expanding urban areas. This top-down urban planning system also built many modern governmental buildings around city centres. Some of these structures are still the best examples of the new wave of Iranian modernism. This architectural style embodies the notions of secularism, nationalism, and modernism and, therefore, many of them carry symbols and elements of the pre-Islamic Iranian architecture. It was during this time that cities started to expand beyond their traditional boundaries and the newly shaped modern and wealthy areas came at the expense of abandonment of the historic urban cores, leaving them for the poor to move in. The second period of government intervention pre-1979 revolution started in 1960, when Iranian cities were modernized, and western urban elements started to shape up the urban environment. The trend from the previous period continued and major cities expanded and sprawled even further. Based on western planning models and western experts’ advice, cities started to develop master plans to project and prepare for future growth. Many of these master plans simply proposed overlaying a western street grid over the historic core. On the country level, this coincided with decline in agricultural production, which moved many rural workers to cities, who took residence in the fringe areas and sprawling quarters. Iranian cities started to develop masterplans when the planning system started to adopt western ideas. The Third Development Plan (1963–1968) obliged all major cities to develop master plans. These plans were mostly developed in partnership with western consulting companies to adopt the same regulations as the European and American cities. Some argue that while these master plans were created to respond to the problem of rapid growth of the cities, they intensified the sprawl and the isolation of historic centres (Izadi 2008). One specific incentive that resulted in the demolition of many structures in the historic urban cores was a special tax exemption for rebuilding in the place of a historic structure. This incentive, which was also used for slum clearance, provided a motivation to tear down historic structures and build multi-storey and mixed-use structures. In terms of institutions, Iran’s Ministry of Housing and Urban Development (currently the Ministry of Roads and Urban Development) was established in 1964. It became the central hub for decision making for cities and their historic urban cores. Historically, most decisions about the fate of the historic cores were made at the Central Government level and with little or no consultation with the stakeholders and the community. The 1960s and 1970s coincide with a boom in oil prices, which brought wealth and prosperity to the country. This newly available wealth translated into large and ambitious development plans and urban renewal type projects. Housing developments, airports, roads, and infrastructure were built. Revitalization of the historic centre of Mashhad (1973–1976), Hamedan (1973–1978), and new commercial development in Shiraz were among such projects. It was in this period when cities were gradually shaped to accommodate more automobile traffic. Wider roads were built which cut through the 581

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historic fabric of cities. The central and local governments were empowered to use eminent domain to purchase land needed for these large-scale developments at prices determined by themselves. In this period, the first official list of national heritage was developed. However, the list was heavily influenced by the politics of the time, which favoured pre-Islamic monuments to Islamic era heritage.3 In the historic core of Tehran, two thirds of the urban fabric built in the Qajar era (1794–1925)4 were demolished, because no historic or cultural significance was assigned to them (Grigor 2004). The Ministry of Culture and Art was the main body responsible for heritage protection and the first set of adaptive reuse projects started in different historic cities. Around the same time UNESCO started developing a series of recommendations and strategies on regeneration of historic urban areas in Iran and developing heritagebased tourism. The approach to heritage management in this era was more focused on protecting individual buildings and the entirety of the urban fabric as historic urban cores was not considered.

Post-1979 revolution In the post-revolutionary Iran, historic urban centres changed dramatically. In the immediate postrevolution period (1979–1988), the country struggled with war, isolation and economic sanctions. Additionally, the further decline in agricultural production led to urban population boom. The informal settlements grew further around the cities and social and economic problems started to emerge. Starting in 1985, several urban development laws and regulations were enacted, which resulted in direct role of the government in building housing within cities and on the urban fringe to accommodate the large rural population moving to cities. These undertakings exacerbated the process of decaying historic centres. Much of the problems faced by the historic cores came from the process of master planning, which diverted the growth from historic centres to different poles around cities, causing sprawl and misguided growth while averting investment from historic centres. The historic cores became a very small section of the land cover of the cities; as an example, the historic cores include 2.83 per cent of the urban footprint in Tehran, 1.82 per cent in Tabriz, and 6.05 per cent in Isfahan (Izadi 2008). Another challenge of this period was the fragmentation of the decision-making institutions on urban development and plurality of ideas on how cities should be shaped. Many of the urban development and regeneration efforts were led by religious entities and foundations, which worked in parallel to the government, providing housing and assistance to the low-income. At the same time, several of these foundations and religious endowments embarked on large scale urban renewal programmes around the religious centres of holly cities, resulting in raising many of the historic structures and damaging the Historic Urban Landscapes for the sake of modernization and development. After the Iran–Iraq War ended in 1988, a new era of urban development started in the country. This era coincided with an oil price boom, which provided the government with ample resources to embark on post-war reconstruction in cities. Major activities in the urban development sector in this timeframe included large-scale housing projects, annexation of small towns to major cities, and development of new towns. These efforts were made to address the shortage of housing that was caused by ever increasing urban population, which reached 37 million in 1996. Relevant to redevelopment of historic urban cores in this period is the initiation of a programme to build housing within historic centres to respond to the shortage of housing. This programme to address the ‘obsolescence of urban fabric’ was planned for 1000 hectares of derelict historic urban cores in 40 cities across the country. It was intended for all underused urban land within cities and not just historic centres. But it did impact many obsolete historic urban cores in the country. The programme’s goal was to increase the density of historic urban cores by purchasing land (sometimes by compulsory acquisition) and develop it through governmental construction companies. These efforts peaked from 1994 to 1996 and were suspended when the revenue from oil decreased. Serious damage was caused to historic urban cores through this programme in many Iranian cities. 582

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The institutions involved in redevelopment of historic urban cores at this stage were the central government, the municipalities, and the governmental foundations and companies. The municipalities were mandated to be financially independent and so they embarked on entrepreneurial attempts to raise funds by up-zoning and charging a development fee. Many logical zoning practices were undermined as municipalities up-zoned as many neighbourhoods as they could to earn more funds. A new era in the development of historic urban cores started in 1997 by the establishment of UDRC under the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development in 1997. UDRC was established to coordinate urban regeneration efforts, develop policies, and facilitate private sector investment in distressed urban areas. The company is structured as an autonomous organization under the ministry. Its budget is allocated through the parliament and it can manage its relationships with other agencies and institutions independently. Later, the company was able to decentralize some of its activities through regional companies and provincial coordination offices (UDRC n.d.). In 2004, the devastating earthquake in the ancient city of Bam triggered new efforts to identify risky and obsolete areas in Iranian cities. The UDRC started to identify such areas as ‘Obsolete Urban Fabrics’ based on three indicators of instability, granularity (of land lots), and inaccessibility. Currently, there are over 140,000 hectares of obsolete urban fabric identified of which about 24,140 hectares are categorized as historic urban cores. These are located in 168 neighborhoods in 600 cities across the country (Izadi 2018). Starting a decade ago, the role of residents and property owners has become more important in the process of urban revitalization. The government is now more focused on leveraging private sector participation in revitalization efforts by offering different policy and financing incentives. These efforts were solidified by passing supportive legislation in the parliament and by establishing local offices of urban revitalization in different cities.

Terminology used in heritage regulations It is important to know that, in Iranian urban policy terminology, historic urban cores are always classified as one of the four categories of ‘Obsolete Urban Fabrics’. While the MCHTH has always been involved in the decision-making process for these historic cores, the general policy making for historic cores has been the purview of the MRUD and its affiliate agencies. The term ‘Obsolete Urban Fabrics’ was changed to ‘Target Areas and Neighbourhoods for Restoration and Renewal’ in official documents published after 2014. The MRUD’s goal was to change the negative image associated with the term ‘obsolete’ as it refers to historic areas along with slums and derelict inner cities. Together, they cover almost 30 per cent of the country’s classified urban area and about 20 per cent of the country’s population, close to 19 million people (Izadi 2018). According to the national policy document, these ‘Target Areas and Neighbourhoods’ while different in nature, share some common characteristics. On the socio-economic front, their residents usually have lower income per capita than the city average and a higher rate of unemployment and crime. The population density per unit is higher and environmental problems prevail. In general, the residents experience inter-generational poverty and lack of social mobility. On the building quality front, the structures in the target areas are mostly not durable. On the access front, the residents do not have access to infrastructure and services as other parts of the city (UDRC 2014). The Target Areas and Neighbourhoods are categorized in four groups: historic urban areas, lowquality urban fabric within the city boundaries, peri-urban areas, and informal settlements.5 Historic urban areas are defined as areas within cities with significant cultural and historical significance and value or the closest to the UNESCO’s definition of Historic Urban Landscapes (HUL). The national document emphasizes the importance of existence of ‘interaction between people and their environment throughout the history’ (UDRC n.d.: 26) and that these areas can be easily distinguished from 583

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Figure 34.1 Target areas identified for the city of Yazd, Iran. Source: Rana Amirtahmasebi and Mohammadsaeid Izadi

other parts of the urban fabric because of the value of the structures and cultural and natural elements. These areas are ‘targeted’ because they usually have lost their original function and experience some kind of obsolescence. Furthermore, ‘poverty, identity crisis and low resilience against natural disasters’ are also common traits among these areas (UDRC n.d.: 26). Low-quality urban fabrics include areas and neighbourhoods usually around the historic core that suffer from infrastructure shortages, social anomalies, low-quality structures, and functional disorders. Peri-urban areas are defined as areas that were previously rural and have joined the urban fabric because of rapid expansion of urban areas. They face challenges such as spatial disorganization, infrastructure and services deficits and unsound structures. Lastly, informal settlements are defined as areas and neighbourhoods that are developed on the boundaries of cities. These areas are home to ruralurban migrants and are built without authorization. Their residents are usually poor and working in the informal economy and are deprived of urban services or proper infrastructure, electricity, and sanitation (UDRC 2014). Figure 34.1 shows these identified target areas for the city of Yazd.

Current legal framework for managing historic urban cores in Iran Currently, the legal framework that guides the regeneration of historic urban cores in Iran is a document called ‘National Strategy Document on Revitalising, Upgrading, Renovating, and 584

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Enabling Deteriorated and Underutilised Urban Fabrics’. This document was prepared by the MRUD in coordination with the Ministry of Interior and MCHTH based on the Article 16 of the Law on Supporting Revitalization, Upgrading, and Renovation of Deteriorated and Underutilized Urban Fabrics. The national strategy was approved by the Cabinet in 2014 and aims at creating a mechanism for converging the actions of all relevant agencies at local and national levels working on urban revitalization plans. This document is advanced and has several attractive qualities. Firstly, the document stands out because of a clearly stated national vision statement. The strategy is aligned with the vision statement of the Iranian Government for 2025, which is alleviating poverty and improving social inclusion. Secondly, it is cognizant of the fact that most residents in the historic urban areas are low-income and its goal is to improve socioeconomic and environmental conditions for the residents of such neighbourhoods so that housing standards and per capita public space, urban service and infrastructure will have been realized on a par with city averages. Physical and functional transformations will move toward improvement, upgrading and sustainable development. Households’ sense of hope and comfort will become evident, so that they can mobilise themselves, in material and spiritual terms, and advance toward a better future. (UDRC 2014: 61) Lastly, the strategy sets the goals to prevent the expansion of urban informal and low-quality areas, enhancing construction quality, improving community participation and social conditions for residents by creating income-generating and capacity development activities. There are several guiding principles to achieve these goals. The document emphasizes on participatory decision-making, involvement of the community and building housing that is sustainable and accessible. Furthermore, the importance of profit-sharing and cross-subsidizing the gains between the community and the investors/private sector is highlighted. The community is the centre of the project and safeguarding its existing values and identities and their development is emphasized and the importance of preventing large-scale displacement highlighted. On the operational front, the document highlights the importance of multi-lateral cooperation between the central government agencies and the municipalities and the role of councils and rural administrations. On the financing front, removing investment obstacles and establishing incentive structures, along with providing technical and financial assistance and promoting best practices is directed. Lastly, on the cultural front, ‘preserving and nurturing cultural identities and social capitals of target areas and neighbourhoods through an approach that instils a sense of belonging to the place, enhances community solidarity’ (UDRC 2014: 58) is outlined as a guiding principle. The government has developed eight strategies based on these principles. A summary of these strategies is given in the Table 34.1. Most recently, the government has taken steps to further conserve and revitalize historic urban fabric of Iranian cities. To this end, two documents were released. The first document was published in spring of 2017 and is called “Main Approaches of Conservation and Revitalization of Historic-Cultural Areas.” It lays out an urban revitalization approach that is more comprehensive and overarching compared to previous efforts and approaches. Namely, it calls for a “holistic approach towards the entire city on territorial scale” because it identifies historic areas as a segment of the urban structure as a whole and integrated in the spatial organization of the contemporary city. To revitalize the historic cores, the document argues that the process of change should be gradual and should consider the socio-economic actions and improving quality of life in addition to physical improvements. Furthermore, revitalization efforts should include all stakeholders including the municipalities, city councils, civil society, private sector, and the academia (UDRC 2019).

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Development of a coordinated urban development policy framework

Addressing real estate and capital market failures in response to demand by low-income urban strata

Create demand-driven revitalization programmes in order to improve quality of life and strengthen and nurture the identity of target urban areas

1

2

3

Strategy

9

5 6 7 8

2 3 4

1

5

2 3 4

1

9

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Avoid large-scale interventions that lead to the disintegration of physical, social and economic fabrics and extensive displacement of residents Make neighbourhood policies through a city-wide lens Identify the demands of the residents through participatory planning approaches Develop planning measures for merging or subdividing lots as necessary in order to address problems faced with smallgrained urban fabric Address inaccessibility problems in old/historic urban areas through upgrading the street networks Develop measures to ensure the least amount of disturbance to the community in major reconstruction projects Produce new housing for the community in need prior to implementation of urban revitalization initiatives Use new technologies, methods and equipment as well as mixed or dynamic land-uses with to avoid unwarranted street widening in target urban areas Protect urban landscape by making use of local and indigenous elements

Implement land development plans within city boundaries in order to supply urban land according to demand and affordability Prepare low-cost, quality housing plans by MRUD Use modern construction technologies in order to build low cost and high-quality housing units for low-income groups Create appropriate mechanisms to provide technical and consulting services to residents of target urban areas for quality construction during the process of renovation of housing units Encourage and support large-scale builders to construct homes in target urban areas

Create an appropriate institutional and legal framework Emphasize ‘endogenous development’ Identify revitalize under-utilized land Prioritize poverty reduction and creating linkages between physical and socioeconomic development initiatives Build affordable housing and take into account settlement patterns Improve the capacity of mayoral administrations and City Councils Simplify construction regulations and construction permits Enforce building codes with the purpose of strengthening construction and retrofitting existing buildings against earthquakes in target urban areas Develop incentives for the involvement of the private sector

Description of actions

Table 34.1 Strategies for managing historic urban cores in Iran.

Facilitating investment and leverage private sector investment through an appropriate incentive system

Improving economic, 1 social, and environmen- 2 tal conditions for residents of target areas 3 4

Identifying, preserving, 1 strengthening, and leveraging the physical, social, economic and 2 environmental capacities of historic-cultural 3 places and areas 4

5

6

7

5

3 4

2

1

4 5

1 2 3

Promote the participation of residents in urban revitalization across target urban areas

4

(Continued)

Prepare guidelines for physical, economic, social, environmental intervention through MCHTH to ensure the protection of cultural and historic heritage and enhancement of quality of life for area residents with the collaboration of MRUD and the mayoral administrations Combining urban design with urban revitalization efforts in historic and cultural sites through an approach that aims to preserve their identities Promote tourist attractions through a socioeconomic revitalization approach. Improve public spaces by attracting investment and designating appropriate land-uses in compliance with relevant guidelines and regulations Avoid large-scale physical interventions. Aim at preserving the historic areas by boosting community identities through shared social memories, maintaining and optimizing population densities, and protecting neighbourhood centres

Provide public education, health, medical services, and recreational facilities Expand technical-vocational and basic skills training and facilitate the development small and sustainable enterprises in order to enhance the economic wellbeing of resident households Prepare integrated databanks by relevant agencies for job-seekers in target urban areas Support collaboration and pooling of small capital contributions among residents through legal financial institutions with the aim to generate employment and reconstruct, upgrade and renovate homes in target urban areas

Facilitate the allocation of state-owned land for public use in target urban areas through a variety of methods – such as sale through instalments or rent-to-own Provide necessary low-cost banking facilities and discounts on construction permits to residents and builders as well as to buyers Facilitate of new titling by county real estate registry departments Provide up-to-date information to the public on construction guidelines and recent changes in urban master plans and revitalization plans across target urban areas If an active private sector exists, avoid construction in target urban areas by mayoral administrations and executive agencies

utilize City Councils, community-based institutions, local renovation offices, cooperatives, and other renovation actors develop educational programmes to encourage community participation with the support of mayoral administrations prioritize target urban areas in the allocation of government resources for financing urban infrastructure and basic services as catalytic initiatives Supporting the establishment of cooperatives in target areas that need land assembly and readjustment Give priority to projects by the local community-based organizations (especially cooperatives)

Formulating an appropriate financial system for urban revitalization projects and plans 3 4 5

2

1

6

5

Create a specific line for development of target urban areas in the capital budget of mayoral administrations to be financed through municipal taxes Create an independent budget line in annual budget laws – based on ‘Article 13 of the Law on Supporting Revitalisation, Upgrading, and Renovation of Deteriorated and Under-utilised Urban Fabrics (approved in 2010)’ (UDRC 2014: 48) Use tax revenues and propose revisions to guidelines and regulations Issue bonds and make use of other legal financial instruments Utilize existing capacities of legal financial institutions

Revitalize historic-cultural sites in target urban areas through redefining their roles and functions and by taking into consideration urban economic needs Plan for the conservation and revitalization of historic landmarks – individual, complex, area or site – located in target urban zones, with a focus on integrating their economic structures with those of their respective cities

Description of actions

Source: Rana Amirtahmasebi and Mohammadsaeid Izadi, based on UDRC (2014)

8

Strategy

Table 34.1 (Cont).

Conserving historic urban cores in Iran

The second document is a recent legislation approved by the Parliament of Iran in Summer of 2019. This legislation is the most progressive one to date and involves several governmental institutions including the then ICHHTO, MRUD, Ministries of Education and Science Research and Technology, banks and financial institutions, the budget agency, and state planning development councils. The ICHHTO is obliged to work with other responsible organizations within the government to develop a new framework for revitalization of historic urban cores. In undertaking revitalization the priority is to engage the private sector in economic development and adaptive reuse projects. Banks and financial institutions are encouraged to provide financing strategies and products to facilitate urban revitalization. The Ministries of Education and Science are tasked to develop educational curriculum for training additional labor force on urban conservation and revitalization topics. The Central Bank is mandated to use some of the funds ear marked for revitalization of the obsolete urban fabric to specifically target historic urban cores. Lastly, the government is mandated to provide insurance for the historic and architecturally significant structures (The Islamic Parliament of Iran 2019).

Case study: the historic city of Yazd, a World Heritage city Yazd is an ancient city on the historic Silk Road, which manifests the finest elements of the Iranian traditional architecture and urban design in cities located in hot and arid climates. Its historic core is a collection of earthen architecture, which has held up to the pressures of the nature throughout centuries. Buildings are clustered around a common public space and many include a courtyard and wind-catchers. Different land uses are designed in a tight relationship to one another. Like most Iranian desert cities, the city’s civic structure is built upon a series of qanats6 that distribute water to different areas in the city. Yazd has universal significance and value in many ways. On the social front, it is a manifestation of coexistence of different religions; Jews, Muslims, and Zoroastrians have lived side by side in the city of Yazd for centuries. In terms of environment, Yazd is designed and developed in a unique way. The qanat system brought water to the city from nearby mountains. Narrow and sometimes partially covered alleys connect different clusters to protect against direct sunlight in the summer and harsh desert breezes in the winter. To tackle the environmental hardships, buildings are built with thick walls and below ground level to provide a cool micro-climate in terms of urban morphology, Yazd has 19 districts in the historic core. Each neighbourhood is self-sufficient because it has its own bazaars, religious institutions, bath houses (hammam), water cisterns, mosques, and qanat water. Different district centres are connected by a main road. Yazd is the largest surviving earthen city, built on four distinctive layers: qanats, ground floors, rooftops, and wind-catchers. Yazd is a medium-size city in central Iran, which has experienced very rapid growth. Among the Iranian cities with a population bigger than 100,000 inhabitants, Yazd has experienced the largest growth in urban land, meaning the city is sprawling. The built-up urban area in Yazd has increased by 294.3 per cent (from 1843 hectares in 1975 to 13,802 hectares in 2009), while the population has increased by 153.4 per cent, showing that the per capita consumption of land has increased significantly over the last three decades (Shahraki et al. 2011). Different master plans of Yazd have repeatedly failed to predict urban growth and therefore planning has been inaccurate. The first master plan of Yazd (1966) predicted the population growth rate of 2.5 per cent and the population density of 100 persons per hectares by 1992. It also predicted that the built-up area will cover 1750 hectares. In 1987, the built-up area in Yazd was about 3079 hectares. The second master plan of Yazd was issued in 1993 and advised that the city should focus on infill development and prevent sprawl. In 2005, the master plan of Yazd estimated the built-up urban area to be around 13,415 hectares in 2020, a figure that was already surpassed in 2009 (Shahraki et al. 2011). The historic urban core of Yazd is well preserved. But it is experiencing an exodus of its residents to the sprawling areas. While the civic structure of the city is built up on its historic core, the outgrowth of the city is weakening the connection between the historic core and the rest of the urban agglomeration. 589

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In July 2017, the city of Yazd was inscribed as World Heritage by the World Heritage Committee of UNESCO in its 41st session. As the first Iranian city to be inscribed as World Heritage, Yazd has many lessons to offer to other cities in Iran and in the region. This section is a review and evaluation of the policies for conserving the Historic Urban Landscape in Yazd.

Reasons for the inscription of Yazd as World Heritage Yazd was inscribed as World Heritage based on two criteria. First criterion is about bearing ‘a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to a civilization which is living, or which has disappeared’ (UNESCO 2017). The sophisticated construction system of the earthen architecture is an essential reason for its inscription (Figure 34.2). Additionally, the continuity of social organizations such as waqf (Islamic endowment) that benefit public facilities (hammams, educational/religious institutions, water cisterns, qanats, and so on) is also a contributing factor. The second criterion is that the city is ‘an outstanding example of a traditional human settlement, land-use, or sea-use which is representative of a culture (or cultures), or human interaction with the environment especially when it has become vulnerable under the impact of irreversible change’ (UNESCO 2017). Based on this category, Yazd stands out because it best manifests the interaction of humans and nature in a hostile environmental setting and showcases the optimum use of the limited available resources.

Figure 34.2 Earthen architecture and domed roofs of Yazd. Source: Rana Amirtahmasebi

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Unlike many other historic cities in Iran, Yazd has been able to keep its integrity. Yazd started to modernize around the same time as other historic cities in Iran (1930s), but unlike many other cities, most of the changes (street widening, new housing, and so on) were implemented outside the historic core. It seems that the city officials and central government policy-makers were able to keep the majority of historic core intact. Surprisingly, even the skyline of the city is well-preserved, showcasing many wind catchers, minarets, and domes (ICOMOS 2017; Figure 34.3). The authenticity of the city of Yazd is also well-preserved. The use and function of many institutions such as the bazaar and religious establishments is intact. About 80 per cent of the historic core is still inhabited, of which 80 per cent of residents own their property. The private ownership includes residential and commercial buildings (the majority of the building stock in the historic core). While some of the structures and functions are naturally obsolete, there are good examples of adaptive reuse in the historic core. For example, the University of Yazd is within the boundaries of the historic core and uses some of the historic buildings for its functions. In all renovations and repairs, the traditional masonry techniques were used where possible (ICOMOS 2017). A short review of conservation practices in Yazd shows similar trends compared to other historic cities in Iran. In the pre-1979 revolution period, individual monuments and culturally significant buildings were registered and conserved. Post-1979 revolution (up to 1991) included a change in the vision to include the whole urban fabric in conservation plans. During this period, the first set of

Figure 34.3 Skyline of Yazd showing the overall urban fabric, minarets, skyline, and wind catchers. Source: Rana Amirtahmasebi

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comprehensive plans was developed. From 1991 to 2001, Central Government coordinated most of the work regarding urban conservation and adaptive reuse. In 2005 (and until 2011), Yazd was registered on the national heritage list and the city started to think about tourism development more strategically. In recent years, the role of local communities has been highlighted and participatory approaches in conservation projects and consideration for intangible heritage have been encouraged.

Boundaries of the heritage site The area inscribed as World Heritage includes three separate sections: The main historic core of Yazd in the centre of the city, the Zoroastrian quarter which is a smaller section in the south of the historic core, and a Persian garden (Dolat-Abad), which is in the northwest of the central historic core (Figure 34.4).

Figure 34.4 Boundaries of inscribed Yazd World Heritage core area and the buffer zone. Source: Rana Amirtahmasebi and Mohammadsaeid Izadi

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There is a buffer zone, which covers an area famous as the historic area as it had developed until the midtwentieth century. The three sections of the World Heritage boundary cover an area about 195 hectares and the buffer zone covers an area of 665 hectares.

The institutional structure of heritage management in Yazd There are several different entities involved in conservation of Yazd. The main responsible body for managing the World Heritage status on the national level is MCHTH, which is also responsible for being the liaison and partner with UNESCO World Heritage Committee. The local office of the MCHTH in Yazd is responsible for monitoring and conservation of landmarks and historic monuments. In addition, it monitors the status of privately owned buildings and historic structures in the World Heritage area and the buffer zone and controls the construction and building materials in new buildings and in buildings going through repairs. Moreover, the local office of MCHTH is responsible for strategic planning to leverage private sector investment in conservation and adaptive reuse projects Yazd (CHHTO n.d.). MCHTH has also established a World Heritage Base in Yazd to coordinate the activities of these two committees and regularly monitor the status of the structures in the historic core and the buffer zone (UNESCO 2017). In order to prepare the submission for the World Heritage nomination, a steering committee was established. The steering committee defines general orientations for the management and conservation of the HUL. The steering committee developed regulations for the three sections of the World Heritage area and its buffer zone. The steering committee includes the governor of the Yazd Province, his deputy, the head of the MCHTH local office, the head of Yazd World Heritage Base, the head of local MRUD office, the City Council head, the mayor, the director of Awqaf of Yazd, the president of the University of Yazd, the representatives of the bazaar and neighbourhoods, several experts and scholars, and so on (Yazd World Heritage Base n.d.). Furthermore, a technical committee was established that includes representatives of major stakeholders and is organized within 10 different working groups to identify, study, and monitor different types of projects. The technical committee has eight members including the head of Yazd World Heritage Base, a representative from the provincial MCHTH office, the technical head of Yazd World Heritage Base, the capacity building head of Yazd World Heritage Base, and several experts and academics.

Laws and regulations The Law for Protection of National Heritage (1930) and the Law for Establishing Iranian Cultural Heritage Organization (1979): In 2005, Yazd was listed as a national heritage and hence it is protected by two major national level Iranian laws: The Law for Protection of National Heritage (1930) and the Law for Establishing Iranian Cultural Heritage Organization (1979). ICOMOS (2017) notes that the nominated property is protected under the highest level of protection as a historic city on the national list through cultural heritage legislation and planning tools. The Master Plan and Comprehensive Plan of Yazd City (2016): Yazd has both a master plan and a comprehensive plan. Together, they establish the heights of historic buildings, by determining the number of storeys rather than by measurements: one storey for buildings within the boundary, and 1–2 storeys for buildings in the buffer zone. However, ICOMOS (2017) notes that there is some confusion in the submitted plans as the heights of some buildings are marked as one-storey high, but these are actually one storey above the ground floor. In planning for this historic core and its buffer, the comprehensive plan clearly differs to the laws and regulations of the historic cores. Action plan: As per demand of the Supreme Council of Urban Planning and Architecture and as part of the inscription process, an action plan has been developed with short-term (two years), medium-term (five years), and long-term (ten years) actions. The action plan aims to converge all the 593

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activities related to the historic core that are initiated on local, provincial, and central level. The action plan defines sources and levels of finance allocated from provincial and central budgets as well as donations and waqf resources. Specific regulations required for the World Heritage status: Before being inscribed as a World Heritage city and as part of the nomination process, the committees developed clear rules for the structures with the historic core and the buffer zone. Regarding individual properties, the regulations are clear that no owner can make any changes to the structure, layout, or façade without authorization from MCHTH. These interventions include repairs, installation of poles/pylons, and digging of wells. Furthermore, in case of reconstruction, the original architecture, materials, decorations, and street patterns should be approved by the MCHTH. The height of new buildings cannot surpass the height of houses in the historic core. Covering of courtyards with permanent material is prohibited. To ensure a unified façade throughout the historic core, all facades must align with one of the traditional patterns and be built by traditional material (strawearth plaster and capping made of fired bricks). There are also regulations on signage and billboards along the commercial corridor, while their usage is prohibited throughout the historic core (ICOMOS 2017). Regarding public spaces, the regulations are strict when it comes to qanats. The rules prohibit any transformation of the structure of qanats to sewage or other purposes. Yazd Comprehensive Plan of 2016 has designated a six-meter buffer around active and functional qanats, within which nothing could be constructed. The residents are banned from using the public spaces for storage of construction material and install advertisement and billboards. There is warning against water stagnation on the sidewalks as there are concerns about the damage it could inflict on historic structures (ICOMOS 2017). The regulations are strict in the buffer zone as well. Destruction of any historic structure is prohibited while any repairs must be permitted by MCHTH. The height restriction also applies to the structures in the buffer zone and facades must be repaired with straw plaster or fired brick. Installing poles, building roads, and power lines within the buffer zone are only allowed with approval by MCHTH. In both historic core and the buffer zone, landscaping and vegetation is allowed but only if local species are used.

Challenges of heritage management in Yazd While the city of Yazd is well equipped with the right institutional structure for the management of historic core and a collection of sound regulations, some challenges remain. The first challenge, common to historic urban cores, is about managing the development pressure. This pressure exists both in commercial use of historic structures and in demand for new construction. While the commercial use of historic structures is a positive indicator that the historic core is alive, the pressure to provide parking spaces and additional services remain a challenge. In case of construction of new buildings (which is limited), the use of readily used modern construction material and lack of traditional masons who are familiar with traditional material pose challenges. Another challenge for Yazd is earthquake risk. While it is believed that the earthen architecture of Yazd could reduce the risk of earthquake damage (due to the existence of sabats7 or buttresses, sunken courtyards and thick walls), MCHTH aims to develop techniques to reinforce historic structures. Lastly, the private owners of historic buildings are usually unaware of best practices in preservation in general and earthen architecture in particular. This has resulted in the use of non-compatible material in restoration projects. The legislation that was developed by MCHTH is adequate, but the enforcement has been weak due to the shortage of inspectors. The city has been active in educating the community by publishing guidelines on earthen architecture. However, these guidelines are mostly about preserving the facades and not the integrity of the whole building.

Social and economic issues in the historic core of Yazd While Yazd’s historic core is one of the best preserved in Iran, it is experiencing an exodus of residents. This could be because of the emergence of new and modern housing outside the historic core, which is more 594

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desirable for the residents. As a result, a large population of migrants and some informal settlements have moved in to the historic core. The new residents do not show a sense of belonging to the historic core. The rest of the historic core is inhabited by either elderly population or lower-income residents with fewer housing options. While well-preserved, there are many abandoned buildings in the area, left to decay. The influx of foreign tourists in the last decade has triggered a range of physical improvement projects by the government, which has invested in public spaces and roads to build a more desirable public realm. The number of international tourist arrivals in Yazd was 150,000 in 2016 compared to 20,000 in 2006 (Rezaei 2017). The influx of tourists has also resulted in some new investments in the historic core. These investments are usually made by the non-resident private sector and include adaptive reuse of historic structures to specifically cater to tourists. These establishments are repurposed to serves as cafes, shops, and traditional guesthouses. As of 2017, 15 traditional hotels, 20 guest houses, 15 traditional restaurants, and cafes existed in the historic core of Yazd (MCHTH 2017). These adaptive reuse projects are implemented under the supervision of the local MCHTH office and the municipality. They preserve the historic structures while providing modern bathrooms, air conditioning, wi-fi connection, and other modern infrastructure. Economically, these new establishments have had a positive impact because they employ the local population. Socially, they are a positive occurance because they have ignited a new sense of pride in the residents and a newly found sense of awareness towards the cultural heritage (Rezaei 2017). However, the change in demographics along with the increase in the number of tourists is stripping the historic core from social cohesion and identity. All commercial activity is now geared towards tourists. While gift shops and cafes are popping up all over the historic district, local shops that cater to daily needs of the residents are closing. Overall, this trend of preparing and presenting the city to the tourists could have negative impacts in the future. The tourism development in the recent decade, coupled with outmigration of the indigenous residents, is posing the risk of museumification of the historic core of Yazd, which will result in a lack of authenticity (Rezaei 2017).

Conclusion This chapter analyses the evolution of the management of historic urban cores in Iran. The country started with conserving individual buildings of historical significance in the 1930s and continued towards a more integrated approach to urban conservation in the recent decades. Several lessons could be learned from this Iranian experience, as follows. First, the involvement of the community in conservation of historic urban cores matters. In the Iranian context, the idea of community involvement was not integrated with urban cultural heritage conservation agenda until about a decade ago. The top-down approach to urban conservation did not make this process the most efficient or equitable. Second, the creation of the Iranian Urban Development and Revitalisation Company (UDRC) was a major milestone in converging all policies related to urban conservation and development in historic urban cores. Before UDRC, urban conservation policies were fragmented and uncoordinated and mostly top-down when MRUD, MCHTH, and municipalities were mostly in charge of development and implementation of urban plans in historic cities. But the roles and responsibilities and level of autonomy evolved throughout the years after the 1979 revolution. Third, in the Iranian experience, a duality of approaches towards conservation and development of historic urban cores could be observed. This duality is the result of different schools of thought on what is worthy of conservation and what constitutes ‘modern’ pre- and post-1979 revolution. In post1979 revolution, the difference in ideas resulted from different mandates of different institutions involved in urban development. While some segments of the government embarked on large-scale 595

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development projects in historic cores, others believed in the intra-generational value of cultural heritage and the need to preserve it for future generations, suggesting to leverage these cultural assets for economic benefits through tourism. Fourth, in planning for revitalization of historic urban cores, the city as a whole must be considered. Historic cores are the starting points of the civic structure of the larger cities built around them. In some cases, they are still the nucleus of the urban agglomeration. But in many other cases, the city has grown beyond the historic core, found a new (or several) centre(s), and is functioning independently of its original core. In many of these instances, the planning for the whole city impacts what goes on in the historic cores. For example, in the case study of Yazd, the sprawl has provided new and cheap living spaces for the original residents, who leave the historic core. This has left the core with only lower-income and migrant population, resulting in decaying structures and social cohesion. Historic cores that exist as museums do not survive; they need to be a ‘living’ section of the city, where residents live and work, while providing services for the tourism industry. Finally, the decentralization of decision-making and policy formation is still in process. Historic urban cores are best managed locally. However, most developing countries have not fully decentralized their governance system either because of political or capacity issues. Iranian urban management system is highly centralized. Urban comprehensive plans are all developed through MRUD and only implemented by local municipalities (MRUD 2017). This trend has started to change in mid-2000s, when the first city councils were established. The establishment of regional offices of UDRC empowered decision making on the local level to some extent and the trend since has continued. In the case of Yazd, the collaboration and involvement of all stakeholders on national, provincial, and local levels is facilitated through the two committees. The country needs to defer more authority to the local governments to empower them to manage their own historic urban cores.

Notes 1 MCHTH has gone through different variations. Before the 1979 revolution it was called the Ministry of Culture and Art. After the 1979 revolution, the Ministry was broken down and its responsibilities were divided between two new Ministries of ‘Higher Education’ and ‘Culture and Islamic Guidance’. This fragmentation weakened the mandate of the previous entity. Since this arrangement was not optimal, these entities were once again merged to form the Iranian Cultural Heritage Agency in 1986. This agency along with a separate Tourism Organization was first under the Ministry of Culture. In 1994, the two organizations were merged and became an autonomous organization under the President of Iran. Three years later, another component was added to this mix and Iran Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts, and Tourism Organization was formed. In the summer of 2019, the ICHHTO was changed to the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Tourism, and Handicrafts (MCHTH) (MCHTH n.d.). 2 In 1979, the Pahlavi Dynasty, which ruled Iran since 1920s was overthrown by a revolution, known as the ‘Islamic Revolution’. 3 The Islamic conquest of Iran occurred in the seventh century and put an end to the Sassanid dynasty and the reign of Zoroastrians in Iran. 4 Qajar was a dynasty that ruled Iran before the Pahlavis from 1794 to 1925. 5 These terms are different from the official language used in the national document, in which they are called: historical areas of the city, inefficient infill urban fabrics, urban areas with rural backgrounds, and informal settlements. 6 Qanat is an underground tunnel system in cities of Iran and the Middle-East, which transports water from an underground source through the city and agricultural land. UNESCO inscribed the Persian qanat system as World Heritage in 2016. 7 Sabats are covered passages through the historic cities in hot and arid areas in Iran. They protect residents from direct sunlight in hot summer days.

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References Grigor, T. (2004) ‘Recultivating “good taste”: The early Pahlavi modernists and their society for national heritage’, Iranian Studies, 37: 17–45. ICHHTO (Iran Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts, and Tourism Organization). (2017) Report of activities in the historic area of Yazd in 2016, Yazd: Cultural Heritage Organization Press. ———. (n.d.) Website of Iran cultural heritage, handicrafts, and tourism organization. [online]. Available at: www.ichto.ir/ english (accessed 19 March 2019). ICOMOS. (2017) Advisory body evaluation: Historic City of Yazd (Islamic Republic of Iran) No 1544. Paris: ICOMOS. Available at: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1544/documents (accessed 30 March 2019). Izadi, M. (2008) A study on city centre regeneration: A comparative analysis of two different approaches to the revitalization of historic city centres in Iran, Unpublished PhD Thesis, School of Architecture, Planning, and Landscape, New Castle University, UK. Izadi, M. (2018). Guest Editor’s Note. Haft Shahr 62, 5-15. Paris: ICOMOS. Available at http://www.haftshahrjour nal.ir/article_32853_ae622ea10574cd7affdf3174e13e7cca.pdf MRUD (Ministry of Roads and Urban Development of Islamic Republic of Iran). (2017) Yazd comprehensive plan, Tehran: MURD. ———. (n.d.) Website of the Ministry of Roads and Urban Development of Islamic Republic of Iran. [online]. Available at: https://mrud.ir/en (accessed 19 March 2019). Rezaei, N. (2017) ‘Resident perceptions toward tourism impacts in historic center of Yazd, Iran’, Tourism Geographies, 19(5): 734–755. Shahraki, S. Z., Sauri, D., Serra, P., Modugno, S., Seifolddini, F., and Pourahmad, A. (2011) ‘Urban sprawl pattern and land-use change detection in Yazd, Iran’, Habitat International, 35(4): 521–528. The Islamic Parliament of Iran. (2019) The Law to Support the Conservation and Revitalization of Historic-Cultural Fabric, Tehran, Iran: The Islamic Parliament of Iran UNESCO. (2017) Decisions Adopted during the 41st Session of the World Heritage Committee. [online]. Paris: UNESCO. Available at: https://whc.unesco.org/en/decisions/6890 (accessed 30 March 2019). Urban Development and Revitalization Corporation of Iran (UDRC). (2014) National strategy document on revitalising, upgrading, renovating and enabling deteriorated and underutilised urban fabrics, Tehran: UDRC. Urban Development and Revitalization Corporation of Iran (UDRC). (2019) Main Approaches of Conservation and Revitalization of Historic-Cultural Areas, Tehran: UDRC. ———. (n.d.) A glance at the Iranian urban development and revitalization corporation, Tehran, Iran: Ministry of Housing and UDRC. Yazd CHHTO. (n.d.) The Website of Yazd CHHTO. [online]. Available at: http://portal.yazdcity.ir/ (accessed 15 March 2019). Yazd World Heritage Base. (n.d.) Website of the World Heritage Base of the Historic City of Yazd. [online]. Available at: www.hcyb.ir (accessed 15 March 2019).

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35 ‘LAND IS A VERY LIMITED DEFINITION OF PLACE’ Navigating urban heritage conservation in the Pacific Island nations Anita Smith

Introduction The Pacific region spans more than one-third of the globe and includes more than a thousand islands that range from the continental islands of Papua New Guinea to the tiny remote atolls of the central and eastern Pacific Ocean (Figure 35.1). The region is home to more than a quarter of the world’s languages, concentrated in the large Melanesian archipelagos of Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. This ‘Sea of Islands’ has given rise to traditional Indigenous ways of life that are unique and reflected in cultural landscapes and seascapes, settlements and storied places and in the intangible heritage of traditions, knowledge, stories and song. Most people in the Pacific Islands continue to live in villages where their cultural identity and heritage is defined by genealogical connections to traditional or customary land and sea. Unlike Europe and Asia, urban centres in the Pacific Islands are a very recent phenomenon, initially established as small settlements during European colonization and expanding to become urban landscapes only in the late-twentieth century. In the towns and cities of the region, heritage conservation is limited and narrowly focused on historic buildings and monuments of the colonial period. As such, urban heritage has not yet emerged as a concept in the protection and conservation of cultural heritage in the Pacific Island nations. Elsewhere, urban heritage conservation is increasingly framed by the concept of cultural landscape, or more specifically the Historic Urban Landscape, to recognize the diversity of values and evidence encompassed by urban areas (Taylor 2011: 267). Landscape approaches embrace the aesthetic and scientific values of heritage protection, and an understanding that ‘invariably draws in intangible associations such as identity, social history and a sense of place’ (Waterton 2005: 310). Consideration of the historic environment through the lens of a Historic Urban Landscape has been shown to be useful in identifying the complex elements that make cities distinctive and create their sense of place and identity (UNESCO 2016: 11), while at the same time recognizing and embracing the continuing evolution of urban spaces. A holistic concept of cultural landscape (or seascape) as embracing environmental, cultural, tangible and intangible values underpins Indigenous understandings of place and identity as they are expressed in customary land and sea in the Pacific Islands (Smith and Jones 2007). At a regional level, Pacific Island communities have described the unique character of their heritage in the context of the geography and history of the region: 598

Figure 35.1 Map of the Pacific region including the Pacific Island nations, major geo-cultural divisions on the region and the location of Levuka, Fiji. Source: Anita Smith

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Heritage in the Pacific defines our cultural identity and remains inseparable from our social, economic and environmental well-being, now and for future generations; Our heritage is holistic, embracing all life, both tangible and intangible, and is understood through our cultural traditions; There is an inseparable connection between the outstanding seascapes and landscapes in the Pacific Islands region, which are woven together by the rich cultural, historical and genealogical relationships of Pacific Island peoples; Protection of our heritage must be based on respect for, and understanding and maintenance of the traditional cultural practices, indigenous knowledge and systems of land and sea tenure in the Pacific. (UNESCO 2007: 8) This understanding of heritage and identity as defined by, and expressed in, the landscape potentially provides an appropriate and culturally embedded framework in which a programme for urban heritage conservation in the region may be developed, one that aligns with Indigenous cultural knowledge and practices. Researchers including Purser (2012), Smith and Jones (2007), and Taylor and Altenburg (2006) have argued for the relevance of a cultural landscape approach to the conservation of urban heritage in the region because it is predicated on the creation of community-based and inclusive programmes. Although such an approach may provide an appropriate conceptual and practical tool for urban conservation in the Pacific Islands, significant challenges need to be addressed in adapting the traditional association of cultural identity and heritage values with customary land to the multicultural and diverse values and heritages of urban spaces. These challenges include building consensus around the cultural values of the cities and towns across diverse cultural communities; managing these values through the decision-making processes that align with those of Pacific Island communities; and ensuring that urban heritage conservation contributes to sustainable development in these Small Island Developing States.1 Using as a case study, the evolving approaches to the conservation of the historic port town of Levuka on the Island of Ovalau, Fiji, this chapter discusses how an approach to urban heritage conservation in the Pacific Islands may be envisaged in future. The Historical Port Town of Levuka was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2013 as the best surviving example of the small Pacific colonial port towns that developed during the period of European maritime expansion in the region in the nineteenth century. Since the 1970s, approaches to conservation in the town have evolved from an initial focus on individual buildings to an understanding of the values of this historic fabric as an element within the broader cultural landscape of the town and surrounding villages. In parallel with this conceptual shift, and in many ways leading it, heritage programmes have increasingly engaged with communities living within and outside the town to record and integrate their cultural values into management planning. The history of this evolving approach to the conservation of urban heritage in Levuka provides a potential model and ‘lessons learnt’ for urban heritage conservation in the Pacific Islands.

Place, heritage and urbanization in The Pacific Islands Place and culture Across the Pacific Islands there is a great diversity of environments and societies but also shared histories and lifeways of the Oceanic world. The societies of the region reflect both the common origins and interaction of many Pacific Island communities, in some cases across many thousands of kilometres of ocean, and the distinct social structures that have developed in each archipelago. They include the linguistically and culturally diverse communities of Melanesia in the southwest Pacific; speakers of the

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great family of Polynesian languages in the archipelagos to the east, south and north extremities of the Pacific Islands that reflect shared Polynesian origins and histories across vast oceans; and Micronesians whose traditional navigational and seafaring skills have enabled them to thrive on the tiny isolated islands and atolls of the north central Pacific. Communities and governments across the Pacific Ocean face common issues in achieving sustainable development and in responding to the impacts of climate change and associated sea-level rise. As a region, the Pacific Islands has among the highest proportion of people living within traditional systems of governance and among the highest proportion of land and sea remaining under traditional or customary systems of land tenure and management of any region of the world. In Fiji for example, 87 per cent of land is ‘native land’ held in customary ownership. Overall, more than 80 per cent of the Indigenous populations of the region continue to live in villages on customary or native land. Unlike Indigenous communities elsewhere in the world, Pacific Islanders do not comprise minority nations within a larger state, but live in autonomous nation-states with generally small populations of nonIndigenous heritage. Pacific Islander communities within these nation states may have a shared sense of national identity; but their cultural identity is defined by their genealogical connections to customary land and sea and to relatives elsewhere, in other islands and sometimes over vast distances across the Ocean. The Pacific Ocean is a living entity – a seascape that all Pacific peoples share. The ocean that surrounds us is the one physical entity that all of us in Oceania share. It is the inescapable fact of our lives. For us in Oceania, the sea defines us, what we are and have always been. (Epeli Hau’ofa 1998: 505) Many historic and anthropological studies (see D’arcy 2006), the continuing traditional knowledge systems and traditional voyaging and navigation (UNESCO 2013) attest to the Pacific Ocean being a culturally defined space and seascape. Customary marine tenures form part of the framework that regulates social and political relationships and defines cultural identities (Ruddle et al. 1992: 254). The islands are rich with ancestral stories that explain connectedness, movement between islands, relationships between people and communities, totems exemplifying peoples’ bond with the environment, and elaborate rituals and ceremonies (Nemani 2011:11). This intangible cultural heritage underpins the cultural diversity of Pacific Island communities, and structures their relationships to place, access to resources, social interaction and community decision making. Associations with land and sea are deeply rooted in continuing systems of customary or traditional land and sea tenure, community and extended family. For Pacific Island communities, the concept of ‘place’ is a highly fluid concept and yet fixed by relationships transmitted through language, genealogy and story, and expressed in concepts of kastom or ples in Melanesia; vanua in Fiji; and the Polynesian concept of fenua or whenua that ‘indistinguishably bundle together community/people/place’ (Stratford et al. 2013: 69). It’s not just about a piece of soil – it is that – plus all of the other things, all of the spiritual connections – all of the people, all of the relationships, everything, which in English there isn’t a word for, so they say ‘land’, but land is a very limited definition of place … [we are] not talking about a piece of land. It’s a mentality that includes land … It’s an integrated notion of place. (Konai Helu Thaman quoted in Wilson 2005: 35)

Issues of urbanization In contrast to land held in continuing customary or traditional ownership, less than five per cent of land in the Pacific Island nations is Government land and less than 10 per cent of land is privately

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owned freehold and church land (the Kingdom of Tonga is an exception with 100 per cent owned by the Crown and hereditary titles). Freehold and government land is almost exclusively located in the towns and cities of the region. These urban settlements are primarily towns such as Apia in Samoa and Colonia Pohnpei Micronesia. Only Port Moresby, capital of Papua New Guinea (population around 280,000) and Greater Suva, capital of Fiji (population around 300,000) can be considered cities, although other Melanesian towns of Port Vila, Vanuatu and Honiara, Solomon Islands are approaching a similar size. Although a large majority of people living in the Pacific Island nations are Indigenous, all the countries have multicultural populations. The cultural and ethnic make-up of these communities in each country reflects the specific colonial and post-colonial history of the nation, the movements of labour during the colonial era and more recent arrivals including professionals, business people and representatives of non-governmental organizations. These communities are generally concentrated in the towns and cities, giving the urban areas a relatively high proportion of people of a non-Indigenous heritage, including people of European, American, Indian and Chinese descent along with various non-local Pacific Island communities. These communities comprise a small minority in national populations apart from the Indo-Fijians – Fijians of Indian descent – who arrived as indentured labourers for the sugar industry during the colonial period or as more recent immigrants, who make up 37 per cent of Fiji’s population. The multicultural populations of the towns and cities also increasingly include Indigenous Pacific communities that have been forced to relocate due to the impacts of climate change and/or rising sea level on their customary lands and resources. The urban centres in the Pacific Islands were almost all established as small port settlements during the period of European colonial expansion in the region during the nineteenth or early twentieth centuries, serving initially to facilitate maritime trade, and subsequently as commercial and administrative centres. An important aspect of this urbanization process was alienation of customary lands from traditional landowners to freehold and government lands (ADB 2012: 45). European settlers claimed title to land for housing, churches, and business; while colonial governments required land for public uses (such as administrative offices, police stations, hospitals, and radio operations) as well as for agriculture. By the late-nineteenth century a number of these towns had become the colonial capitals including Apia, Port Vila and Port Moresby. Overall, the settlements remained small in area and population until the second half of the twentieth century when they became national capitals of the newly independent Pacific Island nations. The nature and identity of Pacific urbanization is unique and shaped by the influence of the colonial powers in the genesis of the towns and cities; the strength of Pacific sociocultural orders and their cultural interface within urban areas; impact of rural-to-urban migration; and continuing connections of urban communities to their customary land, people and resources (ADB 2012: xiii). From the 1960s, as the Pacific nations started gaining independence, rural dwellers were increasingly drawn to towns and cities in the likelihood of finding a better life, employment, access to education and health services, and to provide an income stream for their families living in the rural areas. Loss of land through cash cropping and plantations, coupled with increasing island populations, were major push factors (Allen 2012: 168). To accommodate this migration, settlements around the colonial centres expanded into surrounding villages. Cities such as Suva and Honiara developed around a patchwork of traditional villages but over time these have been consumed into the urban footprint, creating a mosaic of traditional villages intermixed with planned and unplanned development (ADB 2012: 45). As the towns and cities grew, the supply of urban freehold and state land became increasingly limited, with more settlers seeking to illegally occupy niches in state and freehold land, such as along creek lines or negotiate with landowners to occupy traditional or customary lands. These squatters and ‘informal’ settlements respectively, vary in their composition, being homogenous or heterogeneous in their clan and ethnic makeup but many are linked by ethnic, clan, and kinship connections to rural areas, 602

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creating ‘villages in the city’ where shared cultural identity; awareness of community norms and obligations; and connection to place of origin are all important (Jones 2012). Around 20 per cent of the population of the Pacific Islands now resides in urban centres (ADB 2012: xiv), although this percentage is greater in some Melanesian countries. Several factors mean that urbanization will continue to accelerate, putting pressure on land and on the fabric of the historic centres. Disappearing land due to sea level rise associated with global warming, especially in the atolls, low lying islands and coastal plains will mean increasing relocation of communities in the coming decades. Access to work, education and health centres will mean increasing movement of people from their own customary land onto land of others. Squatter settlements, especially in and around cities continue to expand as do land disputes regarding boundaries and ownership of customary land. This pattern of multi-cultural communities in the cities and Indigenous communities in peri-urban and village settlements is repeated across the Pacific Island nations albeit at differing scales. It reflects diverse systems of land tenure and land management; differential access to employment, income and education; historical issues of land appropriation; and ethnic and cultural differences. As the urban centres of the national capitals continue to expand, the spatial and social boundaries that have historically distinguished these communities are becoming fluid, bringing diverse communities together in new settings and relationships in new hybrid urban spaces. In the cities and large towns, ‘the boundary between urban and rural is increasingly blurred, as urban extends beyond the idea of place and functions to include the “urban experience,” such as the sharing of tradition, custom, and culture’ (Allen 2012: 11).

Issues of heritage management The diverse cultural heritage values in these emerging hybrid urban landscapes are not protected through any formal mechanism in any Pacific Island nation. Overall, the protection for historic built heritage in the Pacific Islands is weak and national conservation programmes for historic heritage in general are limited in number and scope. Most Pacific nations have heritage legislation protecting historic heritage and maintain registers of historic heritage places, but much of the legislation is outdated and focused exclusively on built heritage (Smith 2014). Heritage places included in national registers are almost exclusively historic buildings and monuments dating to the colonial period, such as courthouses, post offices, museum and World War II monuments that are small in number and considered nationally significant for their architectural and historic values. In general, community interest in historic heritage is limited and conservation efforts are often a response to tourist interest rather than that of the community (Fisher 2004). No systematic national surveys of historic heritage have been conducted in the Pacific Island nations. There are currently no on-going programmes for assessing or managing the heritage values of the multicultural communities in the urban centres or diverse types of heritage, such as infrastructure, industrial heritage, historic town plans or vernacular architecture. In contrast to the protection of historic heritage in the towns and cities, the heritage of Indigenous Pacific Island communities is protected indirectly through legal protection of customary land tenures. These laws ensure the rights of customary owners to make decisions in relation to their land. Cultural heritage is protected through continuing and evolving community cultural practices and customary decision-making processes (Smith 2014). This means that although governments may have legal frameworks that regulate, for example, archaeological research, decision-making in relation to archaeological activities on customary land remains with the customary landowners. Most national and regional cultural heritage programmes in the Pacific Islands support the recognition and conservation of the intangible cultural heritage of Indigenous communities. This reflects the interest of Pacific Island communities in their customary or traditional values, their stories, arts, crafts, traditional knowledge and technologies, dance, performance and language. Places and objects are 603

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considered as expressions of these practices, ‘tangible elements of the culture but a small sub-set of the intangible elements, which are all encompassing’ (Ralph Regenvanu 2002 in Galla 2008). In the increasingly urbanized spaces in which many different Pacific Island communities now live, the distinction between customary and freehold land is blurring while the association of community and identity with tradition of customary land remains strong in the squatter and informal settlements – the ‘villages in the city’. The geographical and social boundaries between the multicultural communities who have historically lived in the town centres and Pacific Islander communities are tested in these hybrid urban landscapes. To recognize and indeed celebrate the evolving and diverse heritage values of the towns and cities, programmes for urban heritage conservation will need to connect the communities and the heritage values of historic town centres with the urban and peri-urban spaces across the boundaries of culture, land tenure and history.

Levuka, Fiji: evolving approaches to heritage values and conservation The inscription of the Historical Port Town of Levuka on the World Heritage List in 2013 was the outcome of twenty years of ongoing research to understand the diversity and complexity of the town’s heritage and consultation to build support for the nomination across the communities of Ovalau. Together, these initiatives led to a gradual shift in focus from the conservation of individual historic buildings in the town to an understanding of Levuka as a living urban cultural landscape or ‘townscape’ of multiple layers and values expressed in a diverse range of evidence. This process and its applications in the conservation and management of the town’s heritage is still evolving and will be critical to the development of an integrated approach to management planning for the World Heritage site and its buffer zone that will support the livelihoods of the people of Ovalau.

Origin and development of Levuka Levuka is located on the narrow coastal strip between the sea and mountains of the island of Ovalau, to the east of Fiji’s largest island, Viti Levu. The town consists of a main street – Beach Street – along the sea front and several adjoining streets and laneways running up into the hills behind (Figure 35.2). These are associated with creeks that run down from the interior of the island, alongside which are paths that connect the inland villages to the town of Levuka. Much of the town’s streetscape of simple, primarily timber shop-fronts, bungalow-style houses, churches and public buildings (Figure 35.3) has remained largely unchanged since the late-nineteenth century. The current town boundary mirrors the extent of the town at that time. Many buildings retain their original function. The surviving churches, school, and government buildings were the first of their kind in Fiji. Levuka was the first British colonial capital of Fiji from 1874 to 1882.2 The development of the town during the nineteenth century followed a pattern similar to that seen in many Pacific Islands. A small beachcomber settlement – white men living with Indigenous communities – was established adjacent to the Indigenous village on the beach at Levuka in the 1820s. The settlement and village grew to a thriving port town and regional trading centre by the 1850s. The British formally annexed the Fiji Islands in 1874, signing the Deed of Cession at Levuka and establishing the town as their administrative capital. In 1875, British Royal Engineers constructed a range of public works such as sea walls, wharves, roads and in 1877 the ‘Town of Levuka’ was formally created, making it the oldest municipality in Fiji. In 1879, Levuka was the port of call for the first boat carrying indentured labourers from India bound for Fiji’s emerging sugar industry. By the 1880s, the town had outgrown the small strip of land between the sea and the hills behind and, along with political and economic factors, this led the British authorities to move the capital of Fiji to its present location of Suva in 1882. Levuka continued to thrive as a port especially for the trade in copra (dried coconut). Commercial 604

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Figure 35.2 The historical port town of Levuka, Fiji. Source: Anita Smith

fishing was also important but by the mid-twentieth century Levuka was a small provincial centre where little changed. Levuka’s history has given the town a far higher proportion of residents of nonIndigenous and mixed descent than many other places in Fiji. This includes people with Indian, Chinese, European, Japanese, and other Pacific Islander heritage as well as iTaukei (Indigenous Fijian) heritage (People of Levuka 2001). Immediately outside the town boundary and spread across Ovalau are 27 iTaukei villages. The most recent census in 2007 indicated a total population of 8,360 people for Ovalau Island. The town of Levuka had just 1,131 residents while over 3,000 people live in the villages and settlements in the peri-urban area adjacent to, or close by, the town boundary. Levuka Vakaviti, the village of the Tui Levuka (Chief of Levuka), is adjacent to the northern town boundary and the informal settlement of Baba, established by ni-Vanuatu and Solomon Islander indentured labourers, straddles the western town boundary. Although the iTaukei villages are autonomous and are not physically integrated within the town boundary, they are dependent on Levuka as the commercial and administrative centre of the island. The villages generally have poor infrastructure and limited opportunities for paid employment, education or health services. The businesses in Levuka, in particular tourism businesses, provide a source of employment for iTaukei and a market for selling village produce. This relationship between the villages and informal settlements on Ovalau and Levuka Town mirrors that of the ‘villages in the city’ in the larger cities and towns in the Pacific. 605

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Figure 35.3 Beach Street, Levuka. Source: Anita Smith

The formal town boundary was gazetted in 1989 under the Fiji Town Planning Act of 1946. Within the town boundary, less than one per cent of land is customary or Native Land. Nearly 28 per cent of land is government owned and 72 per cent is freehold land (Department of National Culture, Heritage and the Arts 2013: 32) and managed through the Levuka Town Planning Scheme. The Scheme is prepared and implemented by the Levuka Town Council. The Town Council does not have any direct responsibility in peri-urban areas outside the town boundaries. Land outside the town boundary is ‘Native Land’, held in traditional customary ownership. Residents of the informal settlement of Baba have a vakavanua or customary agreement with the customary landowners to occupy the land (People’s Community Network 2016). The Levuka Town boundary is the marker not only of distinct land tenures and systems of governance, but a cultural and ethnic boundary between the multicultural community of the town and the surrounding iTaukei villages across the rest of the island. The boundary is emblematic of complex and at times deeply contested histories associated with the colonial processes of land alienation and differential access to economic and social benefits that over time created the conditions for a sense of exclusion in the iTaukei communities of Ovalau (see Fisher 2004; Harrison 2004; Purser 2012). From the 1970s, these tensions began to be expressed in differing opinions as to the nature, relevance and worth of the town’s heritage.

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Heritage conservation in Levuka Heritage conservation efforts in Levuka were initially motivated by the ‘discovery’ of the town’s unique heritage by European tourists and Europeans working in Fiji in the 1970s and 1980s. A link between Levuka’s heritage and tourism was identified in the early 1970s in a study of the tourism industry in newly independent Fiji. The study found that the ‘unspoiled nineteenth century building styles’ would be of interest to foreign tourists and that the key to tourism development was the town’s historical preservation (Belt Collins and Associates 1973: 155). On the back of the study, in 1977, town residents established the Ovalau Tourism and Promotion Committee, subsequently known as the Levuka Historical and Cultural Society as a forum for local opinions about the town’s heritage. A decade later, a further tourism study argued that the conservation of Levuka was in Fiji’s national interest, given that ‘Levuka is the cradle of modern Fiji’ (Pacific Area Travel Association 1985: 3). The report argued strongly for the conservation of the built heritage through a town planning process. In 1989, Levuka was declared Fiji’s first ‘Historic Town’. In 1994, the Fiji Department of Town and Country Planning commissioned HJM Consultants and Timothy Hubbard (1994) to undertake the first systematic survey of Levuka’s heritage. The study identified over 120 buildings in Levuka and several outside the town boundary as being of significance for their historic and/or architectural values. The survey also noted the pattern of intercultural relationships, urban forms and layers of successive development in the town, although no specific evidence of this pattern was provided. The focus of these early heritage studies exclusively on the built heritage of the town was in line with heritage practice in general at the time; but in the context of post-colonial Fiji, it reinforced existing perceptions of the town boundary as a boundary between ‘European’ and Indigenous Fijian interests, promoted the idea of heritage that immediately divided the community into those who ‘had’ heritage – literally owned it as property, in the form of buildings – and those who did not. This division … also rendered large sectors of the local landscape and built environment effectively invisible … creating a ‘heritagescape’ that was partial, fragmentary, and intensely monumentalized. (Purser 2012: 507) This ‘heritagescape’ was not only a partial representation of the town’s tangible heritage, it was also a partial representation of the values of the culturally diverse communities living both inside and outside the town and perpetuated the idea of Levuka as being the ‘heritage of colonialism’ (Smith 2006). In 1997, the Fijian Government had announced that Levuka would be Fiji’s first World Heritage nomination. The decision foregrounded existing tensions between residents in the town of Levuka and those in the peri-urban and rural areas in relation to heritage values, conservation priorities and tourism benefits. Residents outside the town boundary expressed a belief that property owners in the town were the beneficiaries of heritage conservation and associated tourism but not the wider community (Nawadra 1995 in Harrison 2004: 135). iTaukei communities were also largely dismissive of the need to conserve Levuka’s built environment (Fisher 2004: 159–161) and many considered Levuka’s history to not be ‘owned’ by ‘non-European’ Fijians, whether indigenous Fijian or Indo-Fijian (Harrison 2004: 360; Takano 1996: 17). The situation changed in the 2000s through two interrelated processes. In the context of building local support for the World Heritage nomination, the Fijian government began an ongoing process of community consultation to hear the concerns of communities within and outside the town boundary. At the same time, a series of research projects undertaken with communities in the town and villages investigated and analysed a wide range of tangible evidence, illustrative of the complex history embedded in the landscape of Levuka.

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To address tensions in the town and the need to build consensus in the local communities around the World Heritage nomination, the National Trust of Fiji and Department of Culture and Heritage began a lengthy and extensive community awareness programme for the people of Ovalau in 2004. This was (and continues to be) led by a Departmental Heritage Officer permanently stationed in Levuka. The community consultation took place over several years, informing iTaukei and provided a forum for communities to express their views in relation to the development of a management strategy for Levuka that would see heritage conservation and tourism to contribute to the sustainable livelihoods for the wider community of Ovalau. In 2000, a team of international researchers began an extensive programme of systematic archaeological research, intensive mapping and oral history recording in and around Levuka (Burley et al. 2002; Purser 2003). The research, involving local participants, revealed the deep and complex history of the development of the town through successive stages characterized by changing Indigenous and settler interactions and relationships, not as a snapshot of a particular period but a palimpsest of cultural layers, settlements, industries and social interactions from pre-European contact through to the historic period. The research highlighted the diverse tangible evidence associated with successive stages of the town’s history and radically shifted the previous emphasis on the architectural heritage of individual buildings to an appreciation of the town as urban cultural landscape patterned by the social and economic lives of both Indigenous Fijians and settlers in the town. To define the town’s potential World Heritage values of Levuka, in 2003, the National Trust of Fiji and the Department of Culture and Heritage commissioned an international comparative analysis of the town. The aim of which was to identify the heritage values of Levuka within the global processes of European colonization and in particular British colonization in the nineteenth century (Smith 2003). The analysis found that although specific buildings in Levuka do reflect many of the key economic, administrative and social processes of British colonization evident in colonial port towns elsewhere, the urban landscape of Levuka is patterned by the intercultural exchanges and relationships of Indigenous and settler communities. The analysis significantly broadened the heritage values considered of potential World Heritage value and shifted the framework in which the town’s heritage values could be articulated to one that was inclusive of Indigenous agency and cultural values. Following this, in 2005, two participatory cultural mapping projects gave communities in Levuka and throughout Ovalau the opportunity to identify and record their important places and values. The first of these projects focused on the urban landscape of Levuka and the surrounding peri-urban areas. Using an explicitly cultural landscape approach to enable all the different historical phases and communities to be acknowledged and documented, this community-based research captured local understandings of the town’s historical significance as spatial data using GIS technology (Purser 2012). ‘From the outset, project design was driven by the need to create an ongoing, inclusive, and open-ended forum for local discussion and feedback’ (Purser 2012: 500). Among the data recorded, oral place-name research combined with the field survey data identified no fewer than eighteen named settlement enclaves in the hills above the main commercial sector of town, all located within the town boundary but not recorded on official maps (Purser 2012: 509). Although, as Purser (2012: 508) acknowledges, the findings of the project do not resolve debates about how to define the heritage of Levuka, the database created by the research offers a new frame of reference for such discussions. A similar participatory approach was used for a 3D-modelling project for the island of Ovalau in 2006. The aim of the project was to gather community knowledge of cultural and natural resources in their customary lands to support integrated village planning and ecotourism and village-based tourism development (Rambaldi et al. 2006). A large 3D model of Ovalau was created using aerial photographs and GIS technology. The model was then used by 82 iTaukei village representatives to record their spatial knowledge of the island including significant landscape features, natural resources, habitats, pathways and a total of 83 places of cultural heritage significance including old villages and burial grounds. 608

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The model and recorded knowledge did not distinguish between land within and outside the Levuka town boundary. The data was consolidated in the Vanua ko Ovalau Resource Management Plan to guide sustainable management of Ovalau’s natural resources and cultural heritage (ibid: 31–32).3 These studies underline the value of cultural mapping as a tool for engaging with and giving ownership to the people whose histories and livelihoods are associated with a place. The projects acknowledged the cultural heritage values and places that are important to the identity of people residing in the town and in the villages. Community cultural mapping respects the deep knowledge of the landscape held by communities in the Pacific Islands and provides a culturally appropriate method with which to identify the heritage values of urban landscapes in the region. When the ‘Historical Port Town of Levuka’ was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2013, the site was the first (and still only) World Heritage site in a Pacific Island country to recognize the unique processes of cultural contact that took place in the region during the colonial era. The Statement of Outstanding Universal Value describes Levuka as ‘a rare example of a late colonial port town, which illustrates the cultural hybridity of non-settler communities in the Pacific, with an urban plan that merges local settlement traditions with colonial standards’ (UNESCO 2018). The boundary of the World Heritage property is the Levuka town boundary. The buffer zone for the property comprises the complete visual and watershed catchments that surrounds the town and extends to the ridge line of the hills behind the town. The buffer zone is Native or customary land that includes iTaukei villages and the informal settlement of Baba.

Efforts in inclusive and integrated heritage management To give legal protection to the World Heritage site, Fiji has introduced an overarching Heritage Bill 2016. A key feature of the legislation is a requirement for a formal buffer zone and a management plan for the buffer zone that will protect and manage the values of the World Heritage site by guiding proper use of land and natural resources in the buffer zone (Government of Fiji 2016: part 8, paragraphs 31and 32). In effect this will require the coordinated management of the government and freehold land of the town and customary land of the peri-urban area in a management system that integrates two very different systems of decision making and regulation of development. Although the cooperation of different land tenures and regulatory systems in the management of World Heritage properties is not unusual, it will be the first time such a system has been negotiated for a World Heritage property in the Pacific Islands and more generally in the Pacific, to protect the heritage values of an urban landscape. The current management plan for the Historical Port Town of Levuka was approved by the Fijian Government in 2014 (Department of National Culture, Heritage and the Arts 2013). The plan seeks to integrate the heritage values and the management of those values not only in the World Heritage site and buffer zone but also across the whole of Ovalau. In doing so, the plan utilizes the outcomes of various research programmes that have documented and mapped the cultural landscape of the island and urban area. The heritage values within the town boundary continue to be protected primarily through the Levuka Town Planning Scheme, revised in 2016 to include the Levuka Ovalau Heritage Register of 195 heritage places. The Register includes a diversity of built structures and infrastructure, pre-contact village sites and archaeological sites that collectively reflect all phases of the town’s development and its multicultural communities. The register is based on the initial survey of HJM Consultants and Timothy Hubbard (1994) and the cultural mapping of Purser (2012) (National Trust of Fiji 2016). A key aim of the management plan is to link the Levuka Ovalau Heritage Register to Cultural Mapping information for all the iTaukei villages on Ovalau that is held by the iTaukei Institute of Language and Culture ‘to facilitate those who want to delve deeper into the stories of Levuka and the rest of Ovalau’ (Department of National Culture, Heritage and the Arts 2013: 75). 609

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The management plan also sets out a coordinated management system inclusive of customary and private landowners, communities and key stakeholders through the establishment of the Levuka and Ovalau Heritage Management Forum. The forum includes the chiefs of the iTaukei villages, representatives of national government agencies, the Levuka Town Council and Provincial Council, Levuka and Ovalau Heritage Committee, the Tourism Association and the schools, churches and private enterprise within the Word Heritage property. The Forum is central to the success of the management plan in providing a vehicle for negotiating the cultural and community tensions on Ovalau that originated in the processes of colonization and associated appropriation of land and which continue to impact on the development of an integrated approach to heritage management and conservation on the island. Much like the use of an inclusive concept of cultural landscape to identify a range of heritage values in diverse communities, the Forum provides a space in which multiple perspectives on heritage values and priorities can be given voice.

Conclusion Levuka presents a microcosm of region-wide issues in the negotiation of diverse Indigenous and nonIndigenous values, land tenures and systems of decision-making that need consideration in managing the heritage values in the Pacific Island nations. As a rare example of urban heritage conservation in the Pacific Island nations, Levuka provides valuable insights for future approaches to heritage conservation in the emerging hybrid urban spaces of the Pacific Islands. As elsewhere in the world, the historic fabric of town centres in the Pacific Islands is under threat. Public spaces such as markets and town squares, public buildings, historic houses and town plans are rapidly changing, and in many places, disappearing. There are major imperatives to provide infrastructure to the squatter and informal settlements, to upgrade infrastructure throughout the towns and cities, and to provide opportunities for employment and education. The current focus of urban heritage conservation on a limited number of historic buildings means that much of the historic fabric that is of significance to the multicultural communities of the urban areas and increasingly the Pacific Islander communities who now share these spaces will not be considered in planning and development processes. The fabric of the historic centres of the towns and cities needs re-consideration as an element of the surrounding urban and peri-urban landscape. As Bandarin and van Oers (2014: 54) have argued, across the globe, a traditional approach to conservation that focuses on historic buildings and monuments is no longer valid and fails to provide a convincing definition of what historic values are appreciated by modern societies, excludes communities in the definition of heritage and … does not allow for the understanding and management of change. There is much work to be done in understanding the heritage values of the urban centres of the Pacific islands as multicultural spaces that include ‘villages in the city’ that link communities and cultural values to the rural areas while reconfiguring their associations with place within the new urban context. Concepts of heritage and identity that are associated with customary land and community are fundamental to Pacific Island societies. It is unclear how this association may inform a new or different sense of place and relationship to place in the emerging urban centres and, in turn, urban heritage conservation. Similarly, as has been demonstrated in Levuka, the values of multicultural communities in the cities and towns need to be acknowledged and integrated in an understanding of the urban landscape and its meanings for different communities. Current international approaches to urban heritage conservation, such as the Historic Urban Landscape approach and the concept of cultural landscape more broadly, recognize that the success of urban heritage and conservation programmes is underpinned by careful and respectful mapping of cultural diversity, engagement of communities who work and live in the urban spaces, and recognition of the urban landscape as expressing past and present social, cultural and economic life 610

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(Bandarin and van Oers 2014: 56). The history of heritage conservation programmes in Levuka clearly demonstrates the value of such an approach in blurring historical boundaries and current distinctions in the protection and management of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Pacific Island heritage values. Employing such an approach to the region’s urban areas in general will not be easily given the current priorities for heritage management in the region, but it will be crucial in facilitating social cohesion as urbanization continues to grow in the coming decades through migration from rural areas and forced relocation due to the impacts of climate change and sea-level rise.

Notes 1 The Pacific nations referred to in this chapter are fifteen Small Island Developing States (SIDS) of Melanesia (Cook Islands, Fiji, Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu), Micronesia (Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru, Palau) and Polynesia (Tonga, Samoa, Tuvalu, Niue, Cook Islands). 2 For a more detailed history of the town, see Smith (2006) and Government of Fiji (2013). 3 The status of this plan as a guide for resource use and management on Ovalau is unclear. The plan was not incorporated into the current Levuka Ovalau Heritage Management Plan.

References Allen, M. (2012) ‘Land, identity and conflict on Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands’, Australian Geographer, 43(2): 163–180. Asian Development Bank (ADB). (2012) The state of Pacific Towns and cities: Urbanization in ADB’s Pacific developing member countries, Philippines: Asian Development Bank. Bandarin, F. and van Oers, R. (2014) Reconnecting the city: The Historic Urban Landscape approach and the future of urban heritage, Oxford: Wiley & Blackwell. Belt Collins and Associates. (1973) Tourism development program for Fiji, Suva: United Nations Development Programme and Government of Fiji. Burley, D., Chatan, R. and Purser, M. (2002) Archaeological investigations: Totoga creek and vicinity. Historic Levuka archaeological project, Suva: Fiji Museum and National Trust for Fiji. D’arcy, P. (2006) The People of the sea: Environment, identity and history in oceania, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Department of National Culture, Heritage and the Arts. (2013) Levuka heritage management plan, Suva, Fiji: Department of National Culture, Heritage and the Arts. Fisher, D. (2004) ‘A colonial town for neocolonial tourism’, in M. C. Hall and H. Tucker (eds) Tourism and postcolonialism: Contested discourses, identities and representations, London: Routledge, 126–139. Galla, A. (2008) ‘The first voice in heritage conservation’, International Journal of Intangible Heritage, 3: 10–25. Government of Fiji. (2013) Historical Port Town of Levuka, Ovalau. World Heritage Nomination, Available at: https:// whc.unesco.org/uploads/nominations/1399.pdf (accessed 28 July 2018). _______. (2016) Heritage Bill (2016). Available at: www.parliament.gov.fj/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Bill-No10-Heritage.pdf (accessed 28 July 2018). Harrison, D. (2004) ‘Levuka, Fiji: Contested heritage’, Current Issues in Tourism, 7(4–5): 346–369. Hau’ofa, E. (1998) ‘The ocean in us’, The Contemporary Pacific, 10(2): 392–410. HJM Consultants and Timothy Hubbard. (1994) Town of Levuka heritage study, Report to the Fiji Ministry of Housing, Urban Development and Environment and the Pacific Asia Travel Association, Canberra: HJM Consultants and Timothy Hubbard Pty Ltd.. Jones, P. (2012) ‘Searching for a little bit of utopia – Understanding the growth of squatter and informal settlements in Pacific towns and cities’, Australian Planner, 49(4): 327–338. National Trust of Fiji. (2016) Levuka ovalua heritage register, Suva, Fiji: National Trust of Fiji. Nemani, S. (2011) Pacific intangible heritage mapping toolkit, Noumea: Secretariat of the Pacific Community. Pacific Area Travel Association. (1985) Levuka and Ovalau: Tourism development through community restoration, Sydney: PATA. People of Levuka. (2001) Levuka: Living heritage, Suva: Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific. People’s Community Network. (2016) Fiji informal settlement situation analysis, Suva: People’s Community Network. Purser, M. (2003) ‘The view from the verandah: Levuka Bungalows and the transformation of settler identities in later colonialism’, International Journal of Historical Archaeology, 7(4): 293–314. ———. (2012) ‘Emptying the magician’s hat: Participatory GIS-based research in Fiji’, in R. Skeates, C. McDavid and J. Carman (eds) The Oxford handbook of public archaeology, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 496–512.

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Anita Smith Rambaldi, G., Tuivanuavou, S., Namata, P., Vanualailai, P., Rupeni, S. and Rupeni, E. (2006) ‘Resource use, development planning, and safeguarding intangible cultural heritage: Lessons from Fiji Islands’, Participatory Learning and Action, 54 (April): 28–35. Available at: http://pubs.iied.org/G02946/?k=Fiji (accessed 28 July 2018). Ruddle,T., Hviding, E. and Johannes, R. E. (1992) ‘Marine resources management in the context of customary tenure’, Marine Resource Economics, 7(4): 249–273. Smith, A. (2003) A comparative analysis of Levuka, Fiji, Unpublished report, Suva: National Trust of Fiji. _______. (2006) ‘Levuka Fiji: A case study in Pacific Islands heritage management’, in I. Lilley (ed.) Archaeology of Oceania: Australia and the Pacific Islands, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 346–362. _______. (2014) ‘World Heritage and outstanding universal value in the Pacific Islands’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 21(2): 177–190. Smith, A. and Jones, K. (2007) Cultural landscapes of the Pacific Islands, ICOMOS thematic study, Paris: ICOMOS. Stratford, E., Farbotko, C. and Lazrus, H. (2013) ‘Tuvalu, sovereignty and climate change: Considering fenua, the archipelago and emigration’, Island Studies Journal, 8(1): 67–83. Takano, G. (1996) ‘Learning from Levuka: Fiji preservation in the first colonial capital’, Cultural Resource Management, 19(3): 15–17. Taylor, K. (2011) ‘Heritage challenges in Asian urban cultural landscape settings’, in P. Daly and T. Winter (eds) Routledge handbook of heritage in Asia, London: Routledge, 266–279. Taylor, K. and Altenburg, K. (2006) ‘Cultural landscapes in Asia-Pacific: Potential for filling the World Heritage gaps’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 12(3): 267–282. UNESCO. (2007) Appeal to the World Heritage committee from Pacific Island state parties (WHC-07/31.COM/11C), Paris: UNESCO Available at: http://whc.unesco.org/archive/2007/whc07-31com-11ce.pdf (accessed 28 July 2018). _______. (2013) The Canoe is the people: Indigenous navigation in the Pacific, Paris: UNESCO. Available at: https://en. unesco.org/node/282247 (accessed 25 September 2018). _______. (2016) The HUL Guidebook: Managing heritage in dynamic and constantly changing urban environments – A practical guide to UNESCO’s Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape, Paris: UNESCO. _______. (2018) ‘Levuka Historical Port Town’, Available at: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1399 (accessed 28 July 2018). Waterton, E. (2005) ‘Whose sense of place? Reconciling archaeological perspectives with community values: Cultural landscapes in England’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 11(4): 309–325. Wilson, K. L. N. (2005) ‘View from the Mountain: Moloka‘i Nui a Hina, Junctures’, Journal for Thematic Dialogue, 5 December 2005: 31–46. Available at: www.junctures.org/index.php/junctures/article/viewFile/130/134 (accessed 9 September 2018).

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36 HISTORIC URBAN LANDSCAPES IN THE INDIAN OCEAN WATERS Challenges of urban heritage custodianship for the Comoros, Maldives, Mauritius, Mayotte, Réunion, and Seychelles Zaheer Allam and David Jones

Introduction The waters of the Indian Ocean are perhaps the last venue one would expect urban heritage and management issues to be prevalent. Comprising the independent nations of the Maldives, Mauritius, Comoros, and Seychelles as well as the French external Departments of Mayotte and Réunion, they are, in the majority, parts of the Small Island Developing States (SIDS) communities now recognized by UNESCO (2018a, 2018b) (Figure 36.1). SIDS are characterized by a high level of social, economic and environmental vulnerability and constraints (Lamy-Giner 2011; Paratian 1992). They are economically and functionally insular, and are characterized by focused development that revolve around generic but a limited set of industries, tourism being one of the most prominent. These six communities host significant and rapidly burgeoning urban centres rich in multi-cultural issues (Boswell 2008), various colonial and post-independence legacies, culturally diverse governance structures, and natural values-influenced geo-heritage themes. But they are also facing immediate and major issues of climate change, urbanization (Grydehøj et al. 2015), tourism (Naumov 2014), infrastructural deterioration and retrofitting, and ill-funded internal governance policies that are challenging their respective urban heritage. This chapter surveys this physical, economic and governance landscape, including existing cultural heritage recognitions, the conservation and management dilemmas, and challenges confronting the urban landscapes of each nation and Department, respectively. Particular attention is paid to the urban settlements of Malé, Port Louis, Moroni, Victoria, Mamoudzou and Saint-Denis that are the respective capitals and préfectures (administrative capitals) of these nations and Departments. The chapter offers a collective voice from a little heard of sector of the Asia-Pacific region that explains the challenges these communities are confronting in urban heritage identification, assessment, conservation and management.

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Figure 36.1 Locations of the Maldives, Comoros, and Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. Source: Zaheer Allam and David Jones

Looking for urban heritage in the Indian Ocean waters Although these islands share similar geographical relationships with the Indian Ocean waters, each of them shows conspicuous and distinct cultural nuances in their values and urban landscapes. This is predominately due to their different colonization histories and varied cultural exposures to European and Afro-Asian values (Boswell 2008; Krieger 2004; Royle 1997). Despite this, the islands share the same problems including the pollution of surface and potable water (Allam and Jones 2018), poor management of groundwater resources, deterioration of aquatic biodiversity and environmental resources (MMAIFS 2017), the rapid disappearance of biodiversity (Armitage et al. 2017; Mauritius Ministry of Agro-Industry and Food Security 2017), subtle urban heat island effects (Allam and Elahee 2014), urbanization transformations little informed by quality urban planning and climate change responsiveness (Allam and Jones 2018; Mauree 2018; Mauree and Geneletti 2017), and attempts to integrate nature conservation with spatial planning (Hammond et al. 2015; Lagabrielle et al. 2011; Mauritius 2017; SPA 2018), all raising questions about their future governance and environmental directions that lack island-relevant sustainable strategies (Gaeten and Allam 2017; van Oers and Roders 2014). While the region possesses similar pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial histories waxed by slavery, religious social engineering, private entrepreneurship, and piracy, they also share similar ecological, social, economic and political tensions informed by their respective histories but hampered by their spatial and population scales and limited economic bases (Pearce 2015). Their cultural heritage is collectively borne from cross-Ocean diaspora migrations resulting in unique Créole cultural populations (Bissell 2007; Boswell 2008; Choppy 2017) and with 1800s French- and English-inspired colonial architectural styles (La Réunion 2018), albeit mediated by occasional appreciations of the harshness of tropical environments. These isolated communities struggle to sustain viable economies, constantly aspire for development and effective spatial planning (Mauree 2018), seek to protect key natural assets as part of the global ecosystem while prioritizing tourism exploitation at the same time as confronting climate change (Mauritius 2017; Naumov 2014; Nunkoo and Ramkissoon 2010). The latter includes erratic changes in temperatures and unseasonal tropical deluges, rising sea levels and tidal variations that 614

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escalate during tsunami incidents, and the uncertainty of novel ecosystems transformations of their natural habitat assets (Pearce 2015; UNFCCC 2005). UNESCO has been active in supporting SIDS in their efforts to achieve sustainable development and to address their challenges, resulting in the adoption of the SIDS Action Plan (2016–2021), that addresses the following five priority areas within UNESCO’s mandate: 1) Enhancing island capacities to achieve sustainable development through education and the reinforcement of human and institutional capacities; 2) Enhancing SIDS resilience and the sustainability of human interactions with ecological, freshwater and ocean systems; 3) Supporting SIDS in the management of social transformations and the promotion of social inclusion and social justice; 4) Preserving tangible and intangible cultural heritage and promoting culture for island sustainable development; and 5) Increasing connectivity, information management and knowledge-sharing. (UNESCO 2018b) Priority 4, that embraces cultural heritage, seeks to scaffold assistance to enable and ‘address sustainable development as to: (1) Culture for sustainable development; (2) Cultural and natural heritage; (3) Living heritage and cultural industries; and (4) Sustainable tourism’ (UNESCO 2018b). Isolation and lack of internal introspectivity due to the paucity of human and economic resources have resulted in little attention to developing policies to address sustainability and climate change adaptation futures. Additionally, respective urban heritages are under threat of major deterioration because they are little perceived as being essential for each island’s future. Thus, the UNESCO sponsored SIDS network is seeking to enable a cohesive and common voice from these communities. But, despite this, the topic of UNESCO’s Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape (UNESCO 2011) has been little discussed among these islands authorities. The reason is perhaps the lack of cultural heritage expertise maturity in the islands but also the perspective that the islands lack the ‘urban landscapes’ implied in the Recommendation’s scope.

Navigating urban heritage in the Indian Ocean waters In terms of cultural heritage, UNESCO, through its SIDS initiative, has adopted various policies and commenced offering technical assistance and infrastructure, of which the The Mauritius Strategy for the Further Implementation of the Programme of Action for the Sustainable Development of SIDS (UNESCO 2005) sets forth an agreed agenda. Cultural heritage is specifically narrated in Chapter XIX, Para 82 of the Mauritius Strategy. Unfortunately, while Paragraph 82 of the Mauritius Strategy holistically articulates a policy commitment to ‘cultural heritage’, the on-ground execution of this Paragraph has largely involved an emphasis upon the cultural heritage of existing and prospective World Heritage properties of which the urban fabric and any historic districts within Malé, Port Louis, Moroni, Victoria, Mamoudzou and Saint-Denis is not a priority by the respective nation and Department. Of the existing World Heritage Listed properties and Tentative World Heritage nominated properties, the only properties possessing eligibility for one or more of the six cultural heritage criteria are the ‘Coral Stone Mosques of Maldives’, the ‘Mission Ruins of Venn’s Town’ on Seychelles, ‘Le Morne Cultural Landscape’ on Mauritius, and the ‘Aapravasi Ghat’ on Mauritius. Only the Coral Stone Mosques of Maldives and the Aapravasi Ghat in Port Louis (‘where the modern indentured labour diaspora began’; UNESCO 2006) have any association to urban heritage, albeit limited because they are edifice-related properties and are not districts or precincts. The shared historical colonial experience is the linking thread among these islands despite the geographical distances between them (Kumar 2014, 2017). Their colonial histories are, predominantly, what informed their respective urban and cultural heritage within their different landscapes and geographical characteristics. Their historic urban settlements are characterized by colonial era street patterns 615

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and spatial urban planning philosophies, clutching upon the edges of small ports. This urban and cultural heritage is, however, under increasing threat from both natural causes and anthropogenic interventions (Harrison and Hitchcock 2005; Scheyvens and Momsen 2008). The built fabric of these urban settlements is physically deteriorating rapidly due to their tropical climates, the nature and age of their colonial architectural styles and construction technologies (Broeze 1997; Royle 1997). The limited colonial-era sewerage, potable water and storm water management and underground infrastructure in these settlements never envisaged the current urban densities and population growth (Allam and Jones 2018). They are experiencing dramatic rural-to-urban migrations and urban sprawl (Grydehøj et al. 2015), their wider urban and peri-urban spheres are witnessing attempts to deflect urban pressures by proposing new settlements (Rivière et al. 2013; SPA 2018; Vuksanovic 2008) or embracing ‘smart city’ policies (Allam 2018) due to the environmental consequences of these pressures (Conruyt et al. 2013; Hammond et al. 2015; Lestrelin et al. 2017; Mauree and Geneletti 2017). Each settlement is now lethargically responding to these issues in an ad hoc manner, accordingly to the level of incident damage arising from events like tsunamis or flash flooding or increase saline levels in potable water sources, to the onslaught of unseasonal and erratic climate change effects. While heritage planning and management on these islands usually operates within respective frameworks of statutes, ordinances and regulations (Kalman 2014), balancing tight national and Departmental budgets between mitigating climate change impacts and enabling economic development has been resulting in the abandonment of urban heritage conservation assets and policies. Social, political, and economic vicissitudes that have occurred in the recent years have compelled many of these islands to review their approach to economic policies to the disadvantage of urban conservation and development. Urban heritage and urban landscape are little discussed within these nations and Departments. Academic and professional concerns about the urban heritage of these settlements is in its infancy (Boswell 2008; Mlanao 2017; Nouschi 2011; Waltz and Gutpa 2011). These nations and Departments have strived for their cultural heritage resources to be included in the World Heritage List, often as a vehicle to strengthening their economic tourism profile (Baldaccino 2012; Perkins 2012). Such endeavours have also been motivated by the need for the conservation of cultural heritage as embodying the very identity of these insular nations (Salm 1983; Swift 2007). Most of these islands lack resources to address their current challenges while others lack the political will to have their cultural heritage and biodiversity being inscribed as World Heritage properties (Brown and Cave 2010). This is despite UNESCO’s presence in seeking to ensure that their social, cultural and economic programmes are felt positively in the islands through sustainable conservation initiatives, in addition to the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) supporting the islands in past and prospective nominations to the World Heritage List (Akagawa and Sirisrisak 2008). ICOMOS and National Trust partnerships, within the framework of the Japanese Funds-in-Trust project ‘Capacity Building to Support the Conservation of World Heritage Sites and Enhance Sustainable Development of Local Communities in Small Island Developing States (SIDS)’ has been enabling heritage capacity building workshops for Indian Ocean SIDS to enhance their capacities to integrate World Heritage site management within the sustainable development of local communities. ICOMOS responds only to requests made by international bodies, delegates, and other local heritage organizations to take actions.

Portraits of Indian Ocean Small Island Developing States The Comoros Islands The first inhabitants to the Comoros Islands consisted of Polynesian, Melanesian, Malays and Indonesians, travelling by boat arriving in the sixth century. Thereafter, the Islands were populated by a succession of peoples from the coast of Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf, the 616

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Malay Archipelago, and Madagascar, before Portuguese explorers visited the Islands in 1503, and France established colonial rule in 1841 over the islands. The first French colonists landed in Mayotte, and the Malagasy King of Mayotte signed the Treaty of April 1841 ceding the island to the French authorities. In 1908, the Islands were unified under a single administration (Colonie de Mayotte et dépendances) and placed under the authority of the French colonial Governor General of Madagascar. In 1912 the Islands became a province of the colony of Madagascar. An agreement was reached with France in 1973 for the Comoros to become independent in 1978. With referendums on all four of the Islands, three Islands voted for independence by large margins, while Mayotte voted against and remains under French administration today. On 6 July 1975, the Comorian parliament declared independence. With fewer than a million people, the Comoros is one of the most densely populated nations in the world, with an average of 275 inhabitants per km2. In 2001, 34 per cent of the population was considered urban; this continues to grow with a major shift of the rural population into the urban centres. The major urban centres include Moroni (54,000 in 2011), Mutsamudu (25,000 in 2010), Domoni (15,000 in 2010), Fomboni (19,000 in 2010), and Tsémbéhou. There are between 200,000 and 350,000 Comorians in France (Gourjon et al. 2011). Overall, the Comorians depend upon subsistence agriculture, as well as fishing, for their economic survival (Krieger 2004), but is under pressure due to the poor development of its agricultural lands and tourism sector (Walker 2017). The legal context of the Comoros is based upon Islamic law, the Napoleonic Code (due to its French colonial governance), as well as customary law (mila na ntsi). The Comoros national identity has been influenced culturally by Muslims from Arabia, as well as Western (French) culture. Comoros government’s plans for economic development have involved discussions with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to diversify its economic programmes, to minimize public expenditure, to enable privatization of state-owned hotels, and the sale of the state-owned meat marketing company. In response, the IMF has pushed for a reduction of civil servants and the abolition of levies charged on crops. Due to political instability and possibilities of secession, each island in the Comoros has its own government. This arrangement has made it extremely difficult for anyone to draft a comprehensive co-ordinated plan for the nation, let alone for heritage management. While the European Development Program has assisted in enabling urban planning skill expertise, the IMF has struggled to successfully provide resources for agriculture extension and transformation. Additionally, the Comoros has an illiterate rate of above 20 per cent, which is considered high on the world’s scale. Currently there are no Comorian World Heritage designations despite the islands having a rich cultural heritage. However, the World Heritage Center in Paris has been promoting efforts to protect and enhance public awareness concerning Comorian heritage by providing direct staff expertise and technical guidance. The Collectif du Patrimoine des Comores (CPC/Comoros Heritage Collective) is a nongovernment organization (NGO) responsible for cultural heritage advocacy and awareness promotion within the Comoros Islands, and has the support of the World Heritage Center in creating public awareness, as well as developing a training programme to safeguard the Comoros cultural heritage (Mze Hamadi 2011). The Comoros has endeavoured to conserve and maintain its cultural heritage of its ancient cities. But, the urban heritage in the Comoros, whether individual buildings, spaces or precincts, is negatively affected by the political instability and federalist governance system in the Comoros. Key urban heritage includes: the historical town of Domoni with its narrow streets, intricate timber-carved houses and fortification walls and tower; the town of Iconi, the first capital of Grande Comore, that hosts buildings adorned with beautiful woodcarvings and remnants of old palaces and fortifications; the small, walled maritime trade city of Itsandra Mdjini, with its seventeenth-century fortress and 130 m long, fortified 617

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stairway; the town of Moroni’s characteristic maze of narrow streets and continuously occupied royal palace (descendants of the former royal family still live there); and, the historical trading city of Mutsamudu with its densely built urban form and narrow streets with several covered bridges across the streets (where high-ranked women crossed the streets without being noticed) (Figure 36.2).

Maldives The Maldives was characterized by the arrival of Sinhalese people from Sri Lanka from 543 to 483 BCE. It was during this period that Maldive culture evolved and flourished, which survives today. In 1558, the Portuguese established a small garrison in the Maldives, which they administered from Goa, India. Their policy to impose Christianity provoked a local revolt that drove the Portuguese out of the Maldives. In the mid-seventeenth century, the Dutch, with their control over nearby Sri Lanka (then called Ceylon), established hegemony over Maldivian affairs but permitted the continuation of local matters according to Maldive’s Islamic customs. When the British expelled the Dutch from Ceylon in 1796 during the French Revolutionary Wars, Maldives became a British protected area. In 1887, the Maldives became a British crown protectorate and vested Maldivian external relations and defence to the British while retaining home rule, in accordance with Muslim traditional institutions in exchange for an annual tribute. The Maldives remained a British crown protectorate until 1953 when the sultanate was suspended and the First Republic was declared, before the islands achieved full political independence on 26 July 1965. A republic was declared on 11 November 1968, thus ending the 853-year-old sultanate monarchy. The largest ethnic group in the Maldives are Dhivehis, whom share the same culture and speak the Dhivehi language. Predominantly of Indo-Aryan ancestry, they are closely related to the Sinhalese of Sri Lanka and have traces of Middle Eastern, South Asian, Austronesian and African ancestry. In the 2006 census, the population had reached near 300,000. As of April 2008, more than 70,000 foreign employees, along with 33,000 illegal immigrants, comprised more than one third of the Maldivian population. There are 40,000 Bangladeshis in the Maldives, making them the largest group of foreigners working in that country. Nature-based resources remain the engine of the nation’s economic growth, which also contributes to the nation’s GDP.

Figure 36.2 Historic houses in Mutsamudu, Comoros Islands. Source: David Stanley/Wikimedia Commons

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The island nation has a written and oral history that embodies the presence of Hinduism, Buddhism and other religions, and more recently, the conversion of the nation to Islam. Thus, it is common to find religious monuments and temple ruins throughout the islands, across the atolls, including statues, figurines, copper plates and scrolls. Some of these sites have been excavated and researched by local and international experts and have been declared protected heritage sites. But this religious matrix is wrought with religious-poltical tensions (Romero-Frias 2018). Romero-Frias writes: for the past forty years there has been an effort by some sectors of the Maldivian society to destroy the national cultural patrimony with impunity. … [In] 2012 a group of Maldivians armed with hammers entered the premises of the National Museum in the capital and engaged in the systematic destruction of the ancient Buddhist artifacts preserved there … After the initial outburst of indignation and the publishing of a few articles about the destruction of the National Maldivian archaeological heritage by vandals, the matter was slowly buried. Currently the National Museum emphasizes the more recent history of the country. The collection of Buddhist artifacts, even photographs of them, is not on display and the archaeological pieces of ancient history that escaped the destruction of February 2012 have been quietly stowed away. (Romero-Frias 2016: 1, 3) The Maldivian Department of Heritage operates the nation’s urban planning regime, oversees the conservation of heritage buildings and landscapes, trains staff and runs the museums in the nation (UNESCO 2014). The Department is proposing to submit a list of 16 historical sites, including the Friday Mosque and other mosques with stone carvings, to be included on the World Heritage List (Figure 36.3). The list includes the ancient mosques in Haa Alif atoll Baarah, Kelaa and Utheemu, Dharumavantha Rasgefaanu Mosque, Eid Mosques and Kalhuvakaru Mosque in Malé, the ancient mosque in Raa atoll Meedhoo, the ancient mosque in Alif Dhaal Fenfushi, the ‘Geiy Miskiy’ and ‘Kedeyri Miskiy’ in Fuvahmulah, and the mosque at the ‘Koagannu’ area in Seenu atoll HulhuMeedhoo. At the same time, these steps towards listing some heritage sites as World Heritage are hampered by the lack of trained and skilled local expertise and the dearth of documentation to assess such places, especially about handmade carvings of stone (UNESCO 2014). Since there are no ICOMOS affiliated national committee members in the Maldives, ICOMOS does not have any other contact with the nation. The agency only offers advice to the country through invitations. In the Maldives, citizens have exponentially begun to worry about sea level rise associated with climate change, considering that the nation is among the most vulnerable countries in the world (Parry et al. 2007). The 2004 tsunami evidenced this vulnerability for the Maldives due to extensive tsunamicreated inundation or wave damage. However, in contrast, the Maldives’ wetlands contribute to climate change resilience by protecting its people against floods and the rising seas. Programmes by USAID have also contributed in addressing climate-related impacts, which include rising sea levels, escalating droughts, and shortages of potable drinkable water.

Mauritius Mauritius is an island about 2,000 km east of the coastline of the African continent. In 1507, Portuguese sailors visited the uninhabited island, and thereupon the nomenclature of Cirne appears on their maps identifying the island. In 1598, Admiral van Warwyck landed at Grand Port and named the island Mauritius in honour of Prince Maurice van Nassau of the Dutch Republic. The Dutch abandoned their settlements in 1710, and the French took control of the island in 1715 renaming Mauritius the Isle de France. The arrival of French governor Bertrand-François de La Bourdonnais in 1735 coincided with the development of a prosperous sugar production economy and the establishment of Port 619

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Figure 36.3 The old Friday Mosque and minaret in Male, Maldives, in 1981. Source: Xavier Romero-Frias/Wikimedia Commons

Louis as a naval base and shipbuilding node. At the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the French surrendered the island on 3 December 1810 to Great Britain, subject to existing settlers keeping their land and property and the continued use of the French language and law in criminal and civil matters. With this change, the island’s name reverted back to Mauritius. Independence occurred on 12 March 1968, and Mauritius was proclaimed a republic in 1992. The former colonial administrative centre of Port Louis remains today the capital of Mauritius (Schnepel 2017). In 2016, the estimated resident population of the Republic of Mauritius was 1,264,000, with a population on Mauritius island of 1,219,000, and on Rodrigues island of 41,700. Mauritius consists of a multi-ethnic society predominatelty drawn from Indian (mostly of Biharis) with a significant minority of Tamils, African, Chinese and European (mostly French) origin, creating a rich Créole culture (Boswell 2008). The nation’s laws originate from French civil law, updated to embrace British law. Urban planning is executed through Mauritius’ Ministry of Environment and the Ministry of Arts and Culture, including the conservation of natural resources and cultural heritage sites often in collaboration with other Ministries and non-government organizations and the private sector. Managing heritage in Mauritius was traditionally recognized as a responsibility of the elite. However, after independence, the government adopted the European model to manage its heritage. UNESCO has inscribed two World Heritage Sites in Mauritius – the ‘Aapravasi Ghat’ and the ‘Le Morne Cultural Landscape’. The urban precinct and associated buildings that incorporate ‘Aapravasi Ghat’ (or Immigration Depot) depict the earliest unambiguous manifestations of a global financial system, as well as the greatest migrations in history (Swift 2007). These buildings were used during British colonialization to hold contracted or indentured labor workforce coming from India, before

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being transported to Mauritius’ plantations. The Depot became a significant reference point and a cultural identity for Mauritians (Swift 2007; UNESCO 2006). In response to local controversy about uncontrolled urban development that has led to the destruction of some parts of Aapravasi Ghat, in 2017 Mauritius received International Assistance from the World Heritage Fund to prepare a Local Economic Development Plan for Aapravasi Ghat to prevent the demolition of historical buildings in its buffer zone, as well as to put in place mechanisms that ensure integrated management of the area. This included identifying economic opportunities in the buffer zone, through collaborative workshops, towards creating an enabling environment and a legislative framework for the benefit of the local communities (Schnepel 2017; UNESCO 2017). The ‘Le Morne Cultural Landscape’ is a rugged mountain projecting from the Indian Ocean. This natural landscape, which is deeply imbused with cultural meanings, was exploited as a shelter and refuge for runaway slaves and maroons in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These slaves constructed small settlements inside the caves and on the summit of the hills. The landscape was inscribed on the World Heritage List in recognition of the role it played in creating Mauritian culture, including its role as a symbol of freedom, suffering, and sacrifice among the slaves (Bakker and Odendaal 2008; UNESCO 2018b). Other notable heritage buildings include the Government House – a French colonial building built in 1738 – as well as the Port Louis Theater (Figure 36.4). In 2011, Mauritius’ Ministry of Environment recommended the declaration of St Brandon to be designated a Marine Protected Area. What is lacking is heritage recognition of the Grand Bassin (Ganga Talao), a crater lake, considered the most sacred Hindu place in Mauritius as a venue for Hindu pilgrimages. The crater hosts more than 400,000 Hindus between February and March during the Maha Shivaratri festival.

Figure 36.4 The Government House in Port Louis, Mauritius. Source: Martin Falbisoner/Wikimedia Commons

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ICOMOS plays a vital role in cultural heritage management, and it is apparent that ICOMOS was simply involved in advising UNESCO to inscribe the two properties in Mauritius onto the World Heritage Site. The management and accountability oversight of heritage property deterioration is little monitored by authorities in Mauritius (Schnepel 2017).

Mayotte By 1500, the Maore or Mawuti Sultanate was established on the island, and it is known that Portuguese explorers visited it in 1503. In 1832, Mayotte was conquered by Andriantsoly, the former king of Iboina in Madagascar, before being conquered by the neighbouring Mwali Sultanate in 1833, and by the Ndzuwani Sultanate in 1835, before it regained its independence in 1836. In 1841, France purchased Mayotte, and Mayotte was the only island in the Comoros archipelago that voted in referenda in 1974 and 1976 to retain its link with France and forgo independence. Mayotte became an overseas department of France in 2011 as a consequence of a 2009 referendum. Under this change, Mayotte’s traditional Islamic law will be gradually abolished and replaced by the uniform French civil code (Hallaj 2001). In the 2017 census, some 256,500 people were living in Mayotte. Most of the inhabitants of Mayotte are Comorians. The Comorians are a blend of settlers from many areas: Iranian traders, mainland Africans, Arabs and Malagasy. Comorian communities can also be found in other parts of the Comoros chain of islands as well as in Madagascar. Mayotte’s relationship to urban heritage is expressed in its peoples’ ability to overcome and conquer their surrounding environment (Regnault 2011). While IGI Global (2018) has stated that the modern Mayotte population has achieved more ‘civilization’ than their predecessors, its architecture embodies generations of Mayottan social, religious, and cultural values, including responsiveness to environmental conditions and climatic dimensions. There are a number of heritage buildings in Mayotte, of which the most significant one is the Mosque of Tsingoni in the west of Mayotte, which is the first stone mosque built in the sixteenth century (Figure 36.5). However, heritage policy attention on Mayotte has been primarily focused upon single buildings. A precedent is a partnership between the Town Hall of Mamoudzou and the L’Agence Française de Développement to undertake urban restoration of the popular M’Gombani district in the heart of Mamoudzou. A loan of €3.1 million is dedicated to finance work to economically revitalize this landlocked sensitive area, the rehabilitation of homes and construction of new housing as well as new and renovated infrastructure (Badrudin 2012).

Réunion Réunion’s history prior to the arrival of the Portuguese in the early sixteenth century is characterized by Arab trader visits, resulting in its name Dina Morgabin, and probably by visits of Austronesian seafarers on their journeys to Madagascar. The Portuguese first sighted the island around 1507 and are said to have landed on the islands of Réunion and Rodrigues in 1509. Because of the absence of any Portuguese encampment, the island was occupied by France and administered from Mauritius since the 1630s, before it was officially claimed by France in 1642. In 1649, the island was named Île Bourbon after the French Royal House of Bourbon, and French colonization started in 1665 with the French East India Company. The name ‘Île de la Réunion’ was given to the island in 1793 by a decree of the Convention Nationale (the elected Revolutionary Constituent Assembly). From the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, French colonization, supplemented by importing Africans, Chinese and Indians as workers, engineered Réunion’s ethnic diversity (Yu-Sion 2003). Réunion became a Département et région d’outre-mer (overseas département) of France on 19 March 1946. It remains a place ‘where colonial histories and identities are not considered oppressive, as in the case of Réunion, Saint-Denis and Saint-Paul [ … and have] remained “proudly French”’ (Leung 2009: 24; Royle 1997: 82). 622

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Figure 36.5 The minaret of the Mosque of Tsingoni, Mayotte. Source: Ornella Lamberti/Wikimedia Commons

In 2018, Réunion had a population of over 860,000 drawn from African, Indian, European, Malagasy and Chinese peoples. These populations have mixed from the earliest days of the island’s colonial history (the first settlers married women from Madagascar and of Indo-Portuguese heritage), resulting in a majority population of mixed race and of ‘Creole’ culture. Réunion Island’s (La Réunion) capital city is Saint-Denis with a population of 137,195, followed by Saint-Paul (99,307 inhabitants), Saint-Pierre (76,655 inhabitants) and Le Tampon (69,986 inhabitants). Réunion Island not only shows a diverse population but also a rich architectural heritage in rather contrasting landscapes of seashores and mountains. This architectural diversity is associated to the historical, economic and cultural background of the Island (La Réunion 2018). There were self-sustaining towns during slavery times which included the residences of the masters, sugarcane buildings and sleep accommodation of the slaves. These are still apparent in the Villèle Museum which is located in Saint-Paul. This site is dedicated to the island’s history of slavery. The rifle of an infamous bounty hunter, François Mussard, can still be seen there (La Réunion 2018). The abolition of slavery and the collapse of the plantation company 623

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shaped the urban infrastructure. One hallmark building depicting this era is the Prefecture in Saint-Denis (Figure 36.6). Other examples include villas of particular families in Saint-Denis (Deramon and Carrère Villas) and in Saint-Pierre (Orré and Adam de Villiers houses). Moreover, the Central Post Office in 1965 and the Department of Agriculture and Forestry in 1970 have been designed by the architect Jean Bossu who elegantly merged modern architectural etiquettes with some exoticity (La Réunion 2018). Despite these physical assets, Réunion’s approach to cultural heritage has been informed by cultural tourism in crafting ‘Réunion Island, a World in the World’, and its Comite Regional du Tourisme narrating that tourists are particularly attracted to Réunion being presented as a paradise where very different and mixed populations coexist peacefully. The cultural policy of Réunion has been well developed since the end of the 1970s, emphasizing the history of Réunion people and especially the earof slavery. It is clearly a policy ‘made in Réunion for Réunion people’, resulting in a disconnection between cultural tourism and cultural heritage conservation. Thus, Réunion’s public authorities appropriate their historical heritage by making ‘heritage tourism’ a profitable sector with the promotion of lieux, places … as distinct from sur-lieux. … These [latter] spaces, principally associated with transit and communication, are characterized by the fact that an individual doesn’t appropriate them because they don’t have their own identity; they don’t have a history; they are non-lieux. (Regnault 2011: 162–164)

Seychelles It is believed that Austronesian seafarers and later Maldivian and Arab traders were the first to visit the uninhabited Seychelles. In 1502, Portuguese Admiral Vasco da Gama sighted the islands and named them after himself (‘Islands of the Admiral’). In 1609, the first landing by Europeans occurred under

Figure 36.6 Prefecture in Saint-Denis, Réunion. Source: Bbb at wikivoyage/Wikimedia Commons

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Captain Alexander Sharpeigh of the British East India Company. A refuge for pirates for many years, the French took control of the islands in 1756, naming them after Jean Moreau de Séchelles, Louis XV’s Minister of Finance. The British controlled the islands between 1794 and 1810 during the Napoleonic Wars, under a negotiated status of capitulation which gave the settlers a privileged position of neutrality, before Britain eventually assumed full control upon the surrender of Mauritius in 1810 and formalized in 1814 at the Treaty of Paris. The Seychelles became a crown colony, separated from Mauritius in 1903, with independence in 1976. When the British gained control of the islands during the Napoleanic Wars, they allowed the French upper class to retain their land and the continuation of enslaved Africans as labourers. The British administration employed Indians on indentured servitude, as in Mauritius, resulting in a small Indian population. The Indians, like a similar minority of Chinese, were confined to a merchant class. Today, the Seychelles is characterized by a fusion of peoples and cultures. Numerous Seychellois are considered multi-racial, blending from African, Asian and European descent to create a modern creole culture. In 2016, the population of the Seychelles was approximately 94,000, with the largest ethnic groups being of African, French, Indian and Chinese descent. While French and English are the official languages, the Seychellois Creole (Choppy 2017), which is primarily based upon French, is the predominant language. Seychelles hosts a Créole architectural heritage through its buildings around the country. There have been major efforts to ensure the preservation of these structures. The traditional houses in Seychelles are mainly comprised of town houses and plantation houses. The builders focused mainly on the lakou (main house, with a courtyard), kalorife (drying oven for copra), and storage houses. These houses still exist in Seychelles and there are efforts to preserve these traditional buildings as museums for future generations. Museums such as the Kenwyn House in Victoria are already under preservation programmes to enable the future generations to know the forms of architecture that existed in the past. A number of heritage buildings exist, such as the St Francis of Assisi church which dates back to 1888. However, the heritage monument was closed for some time as the funds for renovation was hard to source. Tensions of urban heritage priorities are particularly evident in the capital of the Seychelles, Victoria, where its ‘ramshackle soul … [and] Creole culture may be all the rage – but Creole architecture is not’. Foreign investment is driving development in Victoria, including a much-needed port expansion, causing the demise of the ‘traditional local look: corrugated sheets, high-pitched roofs and large windows to maximise natural light, bright colours’. Thus, ‘Once upon a time the planning authority was very insistent on Creole elements in the architecture being maintained. Now they’ve abandoned that because people want high-rise buildings and because we’re going vertical thanks to the lack of space’ (Hoad 2017). In the Seychelles, a strategic plan seeks for ‘[a]n inclusive, proud, happy and healthy Island Nation with a resilient economy and a pristine environment which provides an attractive place to visit, invest, work and live’ to guide the ‘long term spatial planning framework for the country up to 2040’ (ARUP 2016; SPA 2018). In all these initiatives and non-initiatives, little attention is being given the considerations of their existing built urban fabric.

Challenges for urban heritage management in the Indan Ocean SIDS Urban heritage on the islands of the Indian Ocean suffers numerous challenges through various natural and human agencies (Caballero 2016). While many island ‘capital’ urban towns have new and modern buildings, these urban centres still have many heritage buildings that have withstood time embodying memories of past island days and events. These urban centres have dramatically expanded in the last 20 years to host increased populations, mainly due to immigration. With increasing populations, they are 625

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facing the same problems as mainland centres: increased congestion, increased pollution, stress upon potable water systems, increased flash flood events, rising crime rates, and indiscriminate foreign investment in large-scale infrastructure. These problems detract from historic precinct regeneration and lead to prompt demolition of swaths of buildings in the name of ‘progress or tourism economic gain’ resulting in loss and deterioration of building fabric, streetscapes, and the out-migration of long-standing residents and their occupations and crafts from such places. In the past, tourism was the main economic activity that people in these islands engaged in, were employed in, and from which they greatly benefited (Krieger 2004). While cultural tourism is an economic panacea, it occurs in the absence of coordinated urban heritage planning and conservation (Regnault 2011). For example, Seychelles, Mayotte, and the Réunion have undergone an extreme transformation that attracts more itinerant immigrant labour to the Islands. These islands have various established upmarket resorts that continue to pull many visitors into the islands (Harvey and Perry 2015). These transformations have created tourism-oriented architecture such as the beautiful beaches, museums, and conspicuous housing structures (Royle 1997). However, these states are among the most vulnerable to climate change. Rising sea levels threaten the coastal areas and with it, the very fabric of the tourism industry (Baldaccino 2012; Belle and Bramwell 2005; Perkins 2012). While their respective local authorities are aware that cultural tourism can bring economic benenfits, prompting the founding of several projects including handicraft production, there is a lack of integration of polcies and projects that narrate a consistent policy to manage the respective island cultural wealth and heritage (Regnault 2011). Thus, while respective island tourism sectors are quite competitive, it requires commitment and investments from both the public and private sectors and these islands have failed to attract much investment in the recent years because of the incrasing challenges of illegal immigrants and newer, more accessible and cheaper venues opening up around the edges of the Indian Ocean. With climate change, the ravages of tropical climates and cyclonic seasons, and dwindling government budgets, many old buildings on the islands are falling into disrepair and their appropriation as heritage interpretation ‘ruins’ for visitors, rather than seeking to conserve and reuse them. Additionally, because most of these islands are not in an economic position to build new buildings, increasingly there is a rise of stock of dilapidated and deteriorating buildings hosting government, tourist and domestic functions (Orams 2003). The lack of capacity and will in governing authority and the lack of physical legislative presence on these remote islands are resulting in the escalating of the deterioration of the historic built fabric and a mounting decline in urban living standards. Urban heritage conservation and legistive measures are of low priority on government agendas despite their often significant contribution to island identity, heritage and tourist visitations. Where heritage conservation actions have occurred in these communities, they have been influenced more by international or nationalistic aspirations to elevate cultural and natural landscapes or architectural edifices recalling colonization and salvery, than by local discourse, outrage and expressions of concern. The latter have more often than not been associated with the states’ vernacular urban precincts, however. In surveying Mauritius and the Seychelles, Boswell (2008) makes observation on the sustainability of their heritage management approaches that generally applies to all SIDS in the Indian Ocean. Boswell (2008: 81) notes that, for example, in Mauritius, ‘the island nation’s image is paramount to its success in attracting sufficient foreign investment’. There is a concerted effort to present homogeneous ethnic identities to satisfy the international tourist in search of ‘packaged’ identity for a package ‘holiday’ and thus cultural heritage. She concluded that ‘[t]here are broader historical factors such as trade, slavery and globalisation that influence the form and experience’ of intangible cultural heritage and that these ‘islands are part of important overlapping zones [linked by] … trade, religion, slavery and ethnicity [that] … impact on what the islanders consider as their tangible and intangible heritage’ (ibid.: 81). Thus, each respective island’s ‘[h]eritage regimes currently impose various logistical, political and ideological 626

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constraints on heritage identification and management in these societies [and these] … do not assist in the democratisation process and do not allow for the sustainable management of heritage’ (ibid.: 82).

Conclusion Although these island nations are in the same ocean, they do not share similar cultures and cultural values because they do not share similar immigration and histories of settlement and language. Because the islands were under different pre-European regimes and then European colonization regimes, such history additionally compounds a lack of co-ordiantion or consistency in approach, philosophy and committmnet to urban heritage conservation and practice. Despite this, the islands share the same environmental and economic problems including pollution of surface and saline waters, poor management of groundwater resources, the rapid disappearance of biodiversity, and an uncertainty on the full impact of climate change and on the capacity for adaption and resilience. International efforts, discussed above, have achieved some successes to ensure that each nation is capable of managing its aquatic resources, as well as aquatic ecosystems in a sustainable manner. The notable work of international organizations and foreign agencies, such as UNESCO (1948) ‘to contribute to peace and security in the world by promoting collaboration among nations through education, science, culture and communication’, and ICOMOS (2011) ‘to promote international cooperation in the field of training and education in the protection, conservation and appreciation of monuments and sites, and built heritage in general’, together aim towards the safeguarding of cultural and mixed heritage in the Indian Ocean area. Nevertheless, ICOMOS should also continue to uphold its role of heritage legitimatization by appreciating and classifying specific cultural expressions, which fall under the brand of ‘heritage of humanity’. In the same spirit, ICOMOS should set up agencies in these countries to assist in the promotion of cultural heritage through conservation and recognizing sites that qualify to become World Heritage sites. Through its expert panel of members worldwide, the agency could also raise attention to resources that face a threat if efforts are not made to conserve them. International heritage regimes must focus on respecting and celebrating cultures (Indigenous and imported) in all communities, including these island states, rather than on an assortment of bureaucratically sanctioned cultures. The policies and initiatives discussed above focus upon new urban aspirations, and little in these plans, actions, initiatives, polices and governance rhetoric reflect upon the islands’ exiting colonialderived urban fabric, negating the capacity to narrate identity and meaning nor to offer a quality tourism or economic platform to strengthen each nations’ or Departments’ well-being. The dearth of urban heritage conservation provisions in respective statutory-based planning schemes and the lack of any incentivization mechanism to encourage private or public urban heritage activities compound this issue. Despite this, there are lone voices that express ‘Ou capave mange patrimoine ou?’ (‘without culture there is no future’). But these voices are having little impact upon the larger economic, governance and climate change adaptation issues discussed above (Allam 2018; Mauree 2018; Mlanao 2017; Nouschi 2011; Walz and Gutpa 2011).

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37 A TALE OF TWO CITIES How tourism development is treated in Yangon and Macau’s urban heritage planning Hilary du Cros

Introduction The General Conference of UNESCO directly linked the underlying principles of the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) approach to the adoption of the Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape in November 2011. It has been hailed as ‘a new way to include all these aspects of conservation in an integrated framework’ (Bandarin and Van Oers 2012: xvi). As this current volume explores the awareness about the HUL approach and its implementation in Asia, this chapter discusses two case studies – Yangon in Myanmar and Macau in China. These cases show how tourism becomes a key stakeholder and protagonist heavily influencing the implementation of this concept in urban heritage planning of postcolonial cities. The chapter contrasts the recently developed Yangon Heritage Strategy with urban heritage conservation planning initiatives in Macau, SAR China – another postcolonial heritage city in Asia. The chapter also explores how, despite strong links back to Europe and other Western countries (such as Australia), much of the cultural heritage management practice in these two places has developed along different lines, strongly influenced by local socio-political and economic considerations.

Yangon, Myanmar During British colonial rule, from 1885 to 1948, Myanmar was known as Burma (from the Burmese Bamar). During the four decades after independence, a strange situation evolved in regard to nomenclature for the two official languages, Burmese and English. While in Burmese the country’s name reverted to Myanmar (to show a break from the colonial period), in English the country was titled the Union of Burma and then, after 1974, the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma. Burma only became Myanmar in English by order of the military rulers in 1989, which was around a year after a crackdown on a democratic uprising. Keen to cast themselves as true nationalists, the generals passed the Adaptation of Expression Law 1989, amending all English names in conformity with Burmese pronunciation. Hence, City of Rangoon also became Yangon. Later, this break with colonial history was emphasized by the regime when it moved the capital from Yangon to the purpose-built administrative city Naypyitaw in 2005 (Win 2012).

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Myanmar’s recent history has been shaped by a military dictatorship with an extremely poor human rights record. Many external bodies still use the older appellations as an expression of opposition to the dictatorial ruling, while others refer to Burma/Myanmar or Myanmar/Burma (Henderson 2015). Sometimes this rejection is an expression of an individual’s rejection of military regime’s policy and record by harking back to the older appellation. It is often found to be the case with elderly British and American tourists visiting the Yangon Heritage Trust resource centre, for instance. Meanwhile, its populace and others expected Myanmar to enter a new age of openness and accountability with the election of Aung San Su Kyi in 2015 as the country’s de facto leader. Concerned heritage advocates also hoped that the contested nature of some colonial heritage would ease with support from an associated increase in tourism, as Myanmar was considered a more ‘politically acceptable’ holiday destination (du Cros 2016). Now this increase appears to be slowing in response to recent events making it more difficult for heritage conservation and tourism development advocates alike.

Urban conservation in Yangon The HUL of Yangon (or Rangoon) comprises: British colonial buildings; religious heritage places of all faiths; dynamic streetscapes, vernacular buildings, and markets; transport and engineering heritage; historic gardens and parks (zoo, lakes and Maha Bandoola Gardens); war cemeteries; and archaeological sites that dates from prehistory onwards. Statutory protection for some of these places of heritage significance is provided by the Protection and Preservation of Cultural Heritage Regions Law 1998 and the Antiquities Act 1957, which were both designed for monuments and archaeological sites, such as the ancient city of Bagan and its temples. The national Ministry of Culture has executive power for both laws. The 1998 law does not contain the necessary breadth or flexibility to ensure the proper conservation of Yangon’s diverse and evolving urban heritage. The definition for heritage is also somewhat limited for the 1998 law as it only covers places older than 100 years. Hence, much of Yangon’s significant urban heritage would not fall under its protection. Even so, city authorities created a list of 189 significant properties that should avoid demolition at the urging of heritage advocates. In early 2014, Yangon Heritage Trust (YHT), a not-for-profit agency, drafted a set of proposed first generation regulatory tools. These included the Yangon Heritage Conservation Law, a heritage planning framework and guidelines for managing change to heritage places and conservation areas yet to be enacted fully. In drafting these tools, the Trust worked with local and international experts from a wide variety of fields. The Trust used its own judgment to take the best of this advice and tailor it to local conditions. The Trust also collected information from the experiences of other post-colonial nineteenth and twentieth century cities internationally to ensure proposed systems avoided mistakes made in other countries (Yangon Heritage Trust 2018a). The fraught relationship the national government had with its colonial history before the 2015 election has initially had an unexpected influence on the conservation and planning for most of the former colonial districts in Yangon. Because of the move of the capital and historically low levels of development, much of colonial Rangoon had remained preserved, albeit with little legislative backing, until the onset of a small development boom as foreign investment (mainly from ASEAN countries) and tourism development increased. Consequently, the Yangon Heritage Trust, the city’s main conservation advocate, became concerned that much of the city’s HUL was vulnerable to ad hoc planning of development and inappropriate infrastructure. Some of the worst examples in the last few years are new hotel developments (Henderson 2015; Yangon Heritage Trust 2017). Many of these projects can be traced back to retired military figures from the earlier regime, who have no affection for colonial or any other heritage (du Cros 2016). 632

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Yangon and the Yangon Heritage Trust Dr Thant Myint U and associates (architects, historians, business people, diplomats, and others) founded the Yangon Heritage Trust in 2012. This group has a deep passion for preserving the city’s unique architectural legacy. The idea for the organization began three months earlier, following initial talks between Dr Thant and the Chief Minister of Yangon Region U Myint Swe and then Industry Minister U Soe Thane (now Minister in the President’s Office). In these talks, Dr Thant outlined the urgency of working on a new planning framework for Yangon’s preservation. The June 2012 conference, ‘Towards a Conservation Strategy for Yangon in the Twenty-first Century’ attracted national and international experts, civil society leaders, and government ministers, and marked the start of the Trust’s activities as an organization. An International Advisory Group of urban planners, conservationists, and architects (incidentally from English-speaking countries such as UK and Australia) now supports the Trust by providing technical advice (Yangon Heritage Trust 2018a). Since 2013, the Trust has provided technical and other advice to the municipal authority, Yangon City Development Committee (YCDC), the Department of Human Settlements and Housing Development (DHSHD), the various Union and Regional level ministries and the Association of Myanmar Architects (AMA) on urban heritage planning. Whilst presenting this advice, it still acknowledged the need for an overarching vision for the city and began work on the Yangon Heritage Strategy. Since then, the Trust has almost taken on the role of a de facto city heritage agency in regard to how official significance is assigned to historic buildings/districts and their associated management plans for conservation. For instance, recently in February 2018, Dr Thant Myint U was reported as saying the following on the placing of a plaque on Methodist English High School in Yangon (which is still in use): Preserving these beautiful buildings is first and foremost about preserving a crucial link to Myanmar’s past and recognising the many generations of students and teachers that have contributed so much to Myanmar’s history. Yangon was a great centre of education. It can be that again … The school has produced many scholars, public servants, businessmen, artists, celebrities, statesmen and leaders, including the President of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar, U Htin Kyaw and the State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. (Yangon Heritage Trust 2018b) By mentioning members of the current government, it is likely that Dr Thant also hoped to remind them and others of their shared obligation to acknowledge the role colonial buildings have played in their past and their conservation is therefore important. Nevertheless, the heritage of Yangon is broader than the spectacular colonial buildings (Figure 37.1); it also includes a diverse range of tangible and intangible heritage from many different cultural groups that have lived there for many years (Figure 37.2). As such, it was quickly acknowledged that any urban heritage planning would require a concerted and interdisciplinary approach, which would assist in integrating it into the fledgling local urban planning system (and possibly end up shaping it).

The Yangon Heritage strategy The Yangon Heritage Trust realized early on that conservation could only properly take place within a wider urban planning process and began discussions with city authorities on how best to connect urban conservation to urban planning in ways that went beyond preserving individual buildings. Prior to the work done by the Trust, there was no formal comprehensive legal framework and guidelines or processes for the management of change affecting Yangon’s urban heritage. The Trust recognized that this presented a unique opportunity to draft the first generation of planning controls to incorporate lessons learned from other comparable heritage cities.

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Figure 37.1 British colonial buildings, Yangon. Source: Hilary du Cros

Figure 37.2 Diverse Historic Urban Landscape, Yangon: Hindu Temple among Buddhist and colonial streetscape. Source: Hilary du Cros

The Trust has taken an integrated approach in that it draws on detailed studies made by historians, architects, urban planners, tourism planners and others. It promotes the benefits of conserving Yangon’s heritage assets through good urban planning and sustainable development as being greater than economic. For instance: • • •

Retaining Yangon’s uniqueness, leading to a stronger urban identity. Fostering greater civic pride and inspiring residents, businesses and philanthropists from all Yangon’s diverse communities to engage in urban issues. Improving social cohesion and the continuity of cultural tradition as conservation area designations with good urban infrastructure assist members of established communities to live healthy and happy lives.

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• • •

Enabling residents and visitors to (re)-connect with Yangon’s history and appreciate the important contribution of past generations. Protecting the environment through the conservation and reuse of historic buildings. Encouraging the city to diversify into skilled knowledge-based economies.

The vision for Yangon also allows for new elements to be integrated more carefully than presently so that residents can also enjoy the benefits of modern infrastructure without sacrificing the above. The key aim of the 2017 strategy is to transform Yangon into a liveable regional hub that is able to attract talent, investment and business, while managing change effectively (Yangon Heritage Trust 2017).

Tourism planning in Yangon Yangon has been the centre of modern tourism development for Myanmar. Even so, its tourism sector has barely developed compared with others in the region over the last 50 years. First, because of restrictive visas and limited destination/transport options, and second, because of a tourism boycott in 1996 called for by opposition groups inside the country and in exile. Nevertheless, tourism development continues apace in Yangon, a city with almost intact areas of British colonial architecture and a complicated historical story. Tourism reached a turning point in 2010 when steps were taken towards greater democracy and the National League for Democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, was released from house arrest. An executive body headed by a president, nominally civilian yet backed by the military, took charge in 2011 and the State Peace and Development Council, the title assumed by the junta, was dissolved. This was used as a signal to restore severed diplomatic ties and Myanmar became more open to the outside world. Some commentators spoke about its ‘re-branding as one of Asia’s most promising emerging markets’ and the phrase ‘New Myanmar’ started to be used by the region’s media (Henderson 2015). Recognizing the country’s unique situation in February 2012, a responsible tourism week was held in Naypyitaw involving 22 government ministries as well as private sector organizations and experts. Following extensive consultation, supported by Hanns Seidel Foundation (HSF), a Responsible Tourism Policy was published in September 2012 (MOHT 2012). This initiative was followed in June 2013 by the government unveiling the Tourism Master Plan 2013–2020 (MOHT 2013a). It was completed with Asia Development Bank technical assistance and financial support from Norway, to promote economic growth while attempting to safeguard Myanmar culture and the environment. Six ‘strategic programmes’ were proposed: strengthening the institutional environment; building human resource capacity and promoting service quality; strengthening safeguards and procedures for destination planning and management; developing quality products and services; improving connectivity and tourism-related infrastructure; and building the Tourism Myanmar image, position and brand. Overall, a total of 38 projects were envisaged. It is expected that this would be possible to implement within the timescale of 2013 to 2020. At the time, it was expected to cost US$486.6 million (MOHT 2013a, 2013b). One of the most recent actions to be taken up by a development partner is the creation of a Human Resource Development Strategy and Action Plan by Luxembourg Development (using an Australian-based tourism research company) as a Development Cooperation Project (Paul Rogers, pers. comm., 2018). Despite all this work, there has only been one tourism destination study carried out at city level and that was at the auspices of Yangon Heritage Trust as background for the Yangon Heritage Strategy, again using Australian expertise (du Cros 2016). 635

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Tourism, heritage planning and social responsibility Each year since 2010, Yangon’s overall share of visitor arrivals has been decreasing as the new visa approval system makes the border crossing a more efficient option. The arrivals using the border do not often come to Yangon, as they are accessing other attractions purposely built for them near the crossing. They are also short haul tourists from neighbouring countries, particularly China and Thailand (du Cros 2016). Incoming tourist flows from long haul destinations have dropped over the May 2017–May 2018 period from Canada (–55%), Western Europe (–26%), UK (–22%), and Australasia (–17%). All these countries/regions have proved sensitive to the political climate in Myanmar (MOHT 2018). Before 2010, when Myanmar was under military rule and more recently, possibly in response to the Rohingya/Rakhine crisis, many visitors and tourism companies have heeded calls to boycott Myanmar, as a form of political protest against the regime (Henderson 2015). After 2010, arrivals from beyond neighbouring countries improved. Hence, it is notable that tourism growth has slowed to 2% over the May 2017–May 2018 period (MOHT 2018) and is mainly propped up by visitors from neighbouring countries. A drop-in numbers from UK, Western Europe and Australasia directly affects conservation advocacy in Yangon, because these are the tourists most likely sympathize with its philosophy and visit heritage buildings in the proposed conservation zones. They are more likely to spend more in Yangon and stay longer. They also take more of the guided daylong heritage tours offered both by the Trust and small local tourism operators. They will be more likely to stay in heritage buildings converted to accommodation and do not require new purpose-built facilities and attractions (e.g. hotel-retail complexes). The argument that heritage is important for tourism and should therefore be preserved in urban planning frameworks is harder to make to pro-development authorities, when these tourists are not as evident. It is somewhat worrying that just before the current downturn the Trust had pitched the value of the Yangon Heritage Strategy in these terms at the beginning of its executive summary:

Table 37.1 Key events for Yangon. Political Events

Heritage Conservation

Tourism Development

1885–1948: British rule

1957; 1998: First conservation laws

1996–2011: Boycott of Myanmar by many countries

1988–2011: Military regime

2012: Yangon Heritage Trust (YHT) founded

2005: Tourism master planning largely centralized in Naypyitaw

2005: Capital moves from Yangon to Naypyitaw

2014: Yangon Heritage Conservation law proposed

2012: First Responsible Tourism Week

2015: Election of Aung San Su Kyi and party

2014–2017: YHT oversees a series of specialist studies as background for Yangon Heritage Strategy (YHS)

2013–2017: Tourism boom

2017: Rohingya/ Rakhine province crisis

2017: YHS is launched

2017/2018: Marked drop in long-haul tourist arrivals

Source: Hilary du Cros.

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Now is a key moment for Yangon, Myanmar’s most important urban economic centre. The current political transition and substantial international goodwill provide a once-in-a-life time opportunity to set the city in a new direction. (Yangon Heritage Trust 2017: iv) Overall, Yangon shows that a range of internal and external factors have affected the narrative regarding its urban heritage and tourism planning (see Table 37.1).

Macau Special Administrative Region (SAR), China Although a small city in Asian terms, Macau has been one of the most important hubs for the Eastern and Western cultures for the last four centuries, leaving the modern Macau of today a unique heritage of cultural melding, reflected in its architecture, religious rituals, customs and cuisines. Macau’s historic places, such as the Ruins of St. Paul Church and Seminary, Fortress Hill and A-Ma Temple, and other centuries-old churches and temples (see Figures 37.3 and 37.4), have charmed many tourists and residents who have come to it from all over the world. Macau transitioned from Portuguese control to full Chinese sovereignty in 1999. Despite some pro-China riots during the Cultural Revolution and gangster shootings near the 1999 Handover, Macau has experienced overall a less troubled metamorphosis than Yangon.

Urban heritage planning in Macau In July 2005, the Historic Centre of Macau was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. The site comprises 22 different elements set within the older precincts of the Macau Peninsula. The HUL of Macau comprises Portuguese colonial buildings; religious heritage places of most faiths; dynamic streetscapes, vernacular buildings and some markets; manufacturing heritage (fireworks factories); historic gardens and parks; religious hospices and cemeteries; and, archaeological sites that date from

Figure 37.3 Portuguese colonial buildings, Macau Source: Hilary du Cros

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Figure 37.4 Streetscape mix of East and West, Macau. Na Tcha Temple next to St Paul’s Ruins. Source: Hilary du Cros

prehistory onwards. Macau was added to the Word Heritage List for its intrinsic and Outstanding Universal Value related to the tangible evidence of Macau’s historical and multicultural development under the Portuguese from the sixteenth to the late twentieth century. Outstanding Universal Value can be defined as ‘cultural and/or natural significance, which is so exceptional as to transcend national boundaries and to be of common importance for present and future generations of all humanity’ (UNESCO 1972, Article 11). How Macau arrived at appropriate statutory protection for the whole World Heritage site is outlined below and shows that it was inscribed on the World Heritage List as a matter of trust that this legislation would eventually be framed, which is far from an ideal situation. A buffer zone was officially designated much later in 2013, as part of the Cultural Protection Law (Decree No. 36/2013) (Macau SAR Government 2018). Two general administrative frameworks for heritage management have been identified that are supported by distinctly different heritage protection legislation: the Portuguese-colonial derived in Macau; and the socialist-country-in-transition of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). However, only the former is directly relevant to Macau’s cultural heritage and tourism planning. Even so, there is some indirect influence by the latter regarding the use of the PRC’s recent conservation code, the China Principles (Agnew and Demas 2002) and increasing cultural exchanges (such as through the Macau Institute of Architects). Macau’s heritage protection efforts began with national legislation that listed its most significant colonial sites in 1953 on Portugal’s national list. It then developed local laws to protect a broader range of assets, after it gained greater independence in the 1970s. In 1976, Macau enacted its first truly local heritage legislation – Statutory Order No. 34/76/M. This was in response to Portugal pronouncing

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administrative and legal changes to the running of some of its overseas provinces/colonies (du Cros 2009). This Statutory Order recognized: [t]he city of Macau, a meeting place of two civilizations and cultures, has characteristics that … must be preserved in order to maintain the character that distinguishes Macau from the other population centres of the region in which it is located … [It also] prescribes measures to allow Macau to evolve as a city without losing the heritage that, even today, gives it value, and to preserve and protect that heritage from depredation and modifications that could destroy this artistic and scenic value. (Cultural Protection Law (Decree No. 34/76/M 1976); Macau SAR Government 2018) A 1992 Decree was made to mainly update its listed heritage with new declarations and, unfortunately, some removals. However, it was found that this method of providing protection by issuing decrees was unwieldy and did not allow for adequate statutory protection for both the World Heritage Site and the buffer zone. Consequently, from 2006 until 2013, much time and effort was put into devising a new law that would fit Macau’s unique Chinese/Portuguese legal and administrative needs. During that time, some of the worst damage to the HUL, particularly to its vernacular architecture, occurred as a number of new offices, hotels and casinos were built on the historic section of the Macau Peninsula, instead of within the designated economic zones left by the Portuguese (e.g. Cotai). The new Heritage Protection Law (no. 36) enacted in 2013 in Macau is more in line with international best practice and Portuguese legal instruments rather than the PRC’s national Cultural Relics Act 1982. Accordingly, the process has involved more input from Portuguese heritage practitioners and lawyers than those from the mainland, thereby guaranteeing Macau its autonomy as a SAR under the Basic Law 1999. It was hoped that the new changes to the administration of heritage management would offer more integration of heritage protection and planning into the urban design of Macau (du Cros 2009). However, it is based on Portuguese and perception of international best practices before the HUL Approach, and few people interviewed for this chapter have been able to add it to the mix. An urban planning document is still being prepared to integrate the recent 2013 cultural heritage legislation and the most recent tourism development planning initiatives into an overarching urban planning framework.

Tourism planning in Macau Macau’s gaming industry emerged after 1975 and differed from the traditional Chinese gaming activities by including canine and horse racing and Western card table games along with traditional Chinese ones. The blossoming of the gaming business contributes not only to the visitor flow but also to the visitor expenditure. The positive impact of Macau’s gaming industry is undeniable on Macau’s fiscal situation given most of its manufacturing (e.g. fireworks, toys and clothing) is now defunct. Much of the funding for heritage conservation comes directly from the tax on gaming (du Cros 2009). Macau has experienced a significant boom in its tourism and gaming industry since 2002, as a direct result of the liberalization of casino licensing and the implementation of the Chinese government’s new visa regulations in 2003, which permitted mainland Chinese from the People’s Republic of China to travel independently to Hong Kong and Macau under the Individual Visit Scheme (IVS). The tourism boom has generated significant economic benefits for the community. However, it has also created problems for them, such as overcrowding of public places, traffic congestion, an increasing crime rate, reduction of local services and pollution (du Cros 2007; Vong 2008; Kong and Wan 2011; Wan and Li 2013; Kong, du Cros and Ong 2015). On

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24 October 2018, a bridge linking Macau to Hong Kong and Zhuhai was opened that will also add to the existing traffic congestion in Macau to an unknown extent at this point, although it is causing negative impacts in Hong Kong (Lam 2018). The One Belt and One Road initiative of the Central Government of the People’s Republic of China and the Macau SAR government’s vision to become the ‘World Centre of Tourism and Leisure’ are expected to provide the local tourism industry with a new opportunity for more tourism development. In 2015, the Macau Government Tourism Office (MGTO) initiated the ‘Macau Tourism Industry Development Master Plan’ (the Master Plan) project – the latest in series of master plans going back 20 years. The objective of the Master Plan is to build and manage Macau’s tourism economy and to provide a blueprint for the future development of Macau’s tourism industry over the next 15 years. Expertise for the masterplan was drawn from Australia, China and Macau. In this case, it appears the Master Plan seems to be dominated by consultants from the Australian gaming and hospitality sector. The Master Plan is the programme of actions for achieving the goal of the city becoming the World Center of Tourism and Leisure, the Macau SAR government’s overall vision for the city (MGTO 2017). The tourism is a pillar industry of Macau and its influence is very broad, touching many different areas including its people, enterprises, heritage conservation and the government (du Cros 2009). Similar to the Yangon Heritage Strategy, the Tourism Master Plan provides a framework of objectives, strategies and action plans to be realized over short, medium and long term. However, it allows for some flexibility in response to external factors that affect tourist numbers. As travel preferences change, actions related to dynamic marketing and social media allows for fast identification and responses to opportunities and challenges. It is hoped that new security technologies adopted and a Smart Tourism Control Centre that will be set up will reduce unanticipated events and threats. The Master Plan aims to improve the resilience of Macau to cope with sudden incidents and overcome challenges (MGTO 2017).

Tourism, heritage planning and social responsibility Meanwhile, heritage and gaming remain closely interconnected as the government uses one to pay for the conservation of the other, and promotes heritage attractions over gaming ones in its own marketing for a more balanced destination image. To evoke an image of social responsibility, ‘gambling’ has become ‘gaming’ (as in the United States) and casinos left to undertake their own promotions without much assistance from the public destination marketing authority, the Macau Government Tourism Office. Likewise, responsible gaming is promoted (as it is in Singapore and elsewhere in the region) as a way of trying to upgrade the image of city in the hope that that and its concentration on the new tagline ‘World Centre of Tourism and Leisure’ will encourage a broader range of tourists than just hardcore gamblers. Families, romantic couples and cultural tourists are segments that the Macau SAR government targets most heavily with its advertising. This is done in an effort not to be exposed to the vagaries of PRC controls on the IVS tourists from its side when the PRC feels it needs to keep such tourists from visiting Macau’s casinos (Kong, du Cros and Ong 2015). Overall, Macau also shows that a range of internal and external factors have affected the narrative regarding its urban heritage and tourism planning (see Table 37.2).

Discussion The two case studies present differing examples of how to integrate tourism and heritage into urban planning. Neither is formally using the HUL approach; however, some awareness is evident that historic landscapes are important in their planning frameworks. A closer comparison of legislative 640

A tale of two cities Table 37.2 Key events for Macau Political Events

Heritage Conservation

Tourism Development

1557–1999: Macau in Portuguese possession

1953: Macau heritage places put on Portuguese National List

1975+: Westernizing of gambling with more card games and casinos

1999: Macau becomes special administrative region (SAR) of China

1976: First local heritage decree/law: 1992 Updated decree/law

2002: Sub-licensing of some casinos to outside interests (USA and Australia)

2005: Historic Centre of Macau Independent Visa Scheme (IVS) means World Heritage Site inscribed on WH more mainland Chinese tourists List 2013: New Heritage Law

2017: latest tourism master plan

Source: Hilary du Cros

Table 37.3 Comparison of Yangon and Macau’s urban planning frameworks (based on documents cited in the chapter) Yangon

Macau

Weak statutory protection for historic landscapes.

Statutory protection for historic landscapes has strengthened since 2013.

Not-for-profit heritage organization is conducting stud- Government is conducting the studies which are then ies and the results of which are then used by city author- commented on by the public. ities and commented on by the public. One strategy document supported by more detailed expert studies.

A series of master plans (tourism, urban planning, heritage) not well coordinated in terms of an over-arching urban heritage planning strategy.

Heritage and community well-being is the central concern.

Tourism and economic growth is the central concern.

Expertise drawn from Australia, UK and locally.

Expertise drawn from Portugal, China, Australia and locally.

Tourism industry is in flux after goodwill diminished internationally as a result of Rohingya atrocities.

Tourism industry experiencing some fluctuation in response to PRC Independent Visa Scheme policy change.

Verdict: Most HUL-like approach of the two, more proactive and coordinated.

Verdict: Least HUL-like approach, more reactive and less integrated.

Source: Hilary du Cros

protection, proposed urban planning frameworks, access to expertise, and local conditions for managing heritage tourism reveal a few more insights about current and possible future levels of integration of heritage conservation into the planning systems of the two cities (see Table 37.3).

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What stands out from Table 37.3 is how economic interests associated with tourism and national politics can hold the best plans hostage or drag things in a whole different direction. Trying to be proactive and create liveable cities is more difficult when planning is fragmented and subject to national government policy changes which are not directly concerned with a city’s wellbeing or heritage, as in the case of Macau. Also, the impact of external politics on Yangon may affect how well a sophisticated HUL-esque plan, such as the Yangon Heritage Strategy, can work fully in a semi-democratic context. Not being part of the government, Yangon Heritage Trust can only advise, and its advice is more likely to be taken when there appears to be local and international support for heritage conservation.

Conclusion The two case studies explored in this chapter are examples of how tourism becomes a key stakeholder and protagonist in urban heritage planning of postcolonial cities in Asia. This is not necessarily a benefit, as in the case of Macau, where some overdevelopment for tourism and damage to historic landscapes has occurred, because the strengthening of statutory controls happened quite late. Despite strong links back to Europe and other Western countries (such as Australia), much of the cultural heritage management practice in both cases has developed along alternative lines, clearly influenced by local socio-political and economic conditions, particularly in relation to national public policy. Ideally, Yangon’s approach is clearly closer to HUL, however, it runs up against some entrenched special interest groups that are not necessarily focussed on the well-being of the community or its heritage. The tourism and hospitality sector is still developing in Myanmar and while there are hopes it will take a sustainable approach there is still the strong temptation offered by short-term returns of illadvised development projects. Accordingly, YHT’s Yangon Heritage Strategy will need strong support from the political class to avoid a dilution of its vision. Macau’s approach is markedly more fragmented than what is envisaged in the HUL Approach, with different aspects of urban heritage planning happening at different times in different ways with little integration or cross-reference. An overarching planning framework for Macau has been proposed, however it still has not eventuated. Even so, there is strong political will to manage impacts around the World Heritage elements of the Historic Centre of Macau, so that their preservation and the benefit of that for the community and tourism are apparent. Macau authorities are also in a stronger position financially to manage heritage places for visitation than those in Yangon, which is struggling to find the funding to restore and present its extensive colonial heritage.

References Agnew, N. and Demas, M. (2002) Principles for the Conservation of Heritage Sites in China, Los Angeles: The Getty Conservation Institute (English language version). Bandarin, F. and Van Oers, R. (2012) The Historic Urban Landscape: Managing Heritage in an Urban Century, Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. du Cros, H. (2007) ‘Too much of a good thing? Visitor congestion management issues for popular World Heritage tourist attractions’, Journal of Heritage Tourism, 2(3): 225–238. ——— (2009) ‘Emerging issues for cultural tourism in Macau’, in T. Chung and H. Tieben (eds) Macau Ten Years after the Handover (Special Issue). Journal of Current Chinese Affairs (China Aktuell), 1: 73–99. ——— (2016) Sustainable Heritage Tourism Study, Yangon, Myanmar: Yangon Heritage Trust. [Online]. Available at: www.yhtliveableyangon.org/en/online-annexes/ (accessed 29 June 2018). Henderson, J. (2015) ‘The new dynamics of tourism in South East Asia: Economic development, political change and destination competitiveness’, Tourism Recreation Research, 40(3): 379–390. Kong, W.H., du Cros, H. and Ong, C.E. (2015) ‘Tourism destination image development: A lesson from Macau’, International Journal of Tourism Cities, 1(4): 1–17.

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A tale of two cities Kong, W.H. and Wan, Y.K.P. (2011) ‘Gaming impacts on Macau small tourism ventures’, Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research, 16(5): 573–593. Lam, J. (18 November 2018) ‘Tung Chung Chaos. Hong Kong officials clearly didn’t think things through on megabridge impact’, South China Morning Post. [Online]. Available at: www.scmp.com/comment/letters/article/ 2173604/tung-chung-chaos-hong-kong-officials-clearly-didnt-think-things (accessed 28 November). Macau Government Tourism Office (MGTO) (2017) Macau Tourism Industry Development Masterplan: Executive Summary. [Online]. Available at: https://masterplan.Macautourism.gov.mo/Summary_Report_en.pdf (accessed 30 June 2018). Macau SAR Government (2018) Cultural Protection Laws (Macau). [Online]. Available at: https://bo.io.gov.mo/bo/i/ 2013/36/lei11.asp (accessed 2 September 2018). Ministry of Hotel and Tourism of Myanmar (MOHT) (27 September 2012) Myanmar Responsible Tourism Policy. [Online]. Available at: www.hss.de/fileadmin/media/downloads/Berichte/121015_Myanmar_Tourism_English. pdf (accessed 8 March 2018). ——— (2013a) Myanmar Tourism Master Plan 2013–2020, Naypyitaw, Myanmar: The Republic of the Union of Myanmar. [Online]. Available at: www.myanmartourism.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=408&Ite mid=392 (accessed 8 March 2018). ——— (2013b) Policy on Community Involvement in Tourism, Naypyitaw, Myanmar: The Republic of the Union of Myanmar. [Online]. Available at: www.myanmartourism.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=408&Ite mid=392 (accessed 8 March 2018). ——— (2018). May 2017 to May 2018 Tourism Arrivals, Naypyitaw, Myanmar: The Republic of the Union of Myanmar. Vong, F. (2008) ‘Influence of personal factors on Macau residents’ gaming impact perceptions’, Gaming Research and Review Journal, 12(1/2): 15–28. Wan, Y.K.P. and Li, X. (2013) ‘Sustainability of tourism development in Macau, China’, International Journal of Tourism Research, 30(5): 737–755. UNESCO (1972) The Convention Concering the Protection of the Word Cultural and Natural Heritage, Paris: UNESCO. Win, S. (2012) ‘The Burmese tug on words’, New York Times. 6 July. [Online]. Available at: https://latitude.blogs. nytimes.com/2012/07/06/neither-myanmar-nor-burma-is-a-good-name-for-my-country/ (accessed 29 June 2018). Yangon Heritage Trust (2017) Yangon Heritage Strategy: Combining heritage and development to create Asia’s most liveable city. [Online]. Available at: www.yhtliveableyangon.org/wp-content/uploads/Yangon_Heritage_Strategy_ENG. pdf (accessed 1 July 2018). ——— (2018a) ‘History’, Yangon Heritage Trust. [Online]. Available at: www.yangonheritagetrust.org/history (accessed 29 June 2018). ——— (2018b) ‘Victorian style school building received blue plaque installation’, Yangon Heritage Trust. 1 February 2018, [Online]. Available at: www.yangonheritagetrust.org/victorian-style-school-building-received-blueplaque-installation (accessed 29 June 2018).

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Note: References in italics are to figures, those in bold to tables; ‘n’ refers to chapter notes.: Abeywardana, N. et al. 474n12 Adams, L. L. 90 Adams, P. C. 170 Addis Ababa Principles 226 Addison, A. 190 Adishakti, L. 453, 458 adobe 411, 412 Affandy, F. B. 447 Afghanistan: Amu Darya (Oxus River) 96; Bamiyan 121 Agra, India 118, 550, 552 AHD see authorized heritage discourse Ahmedabad, India 31, 114, 121, 122, 397, 415, 417, 553, 554–556, 555, 556 al-Asaad, Khaled 100 Aleppo, Syria 393 Allahabad, India 283, 283–284 Allen, M. 603 Allworth, E. 84 Altenburg, K. 600 Althusser, L. 115 Amin, A. 170, 176 Amritsar Heritage Street project, India 550, 551 Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) 221, 221–222 Angkor, Cambodia 105 Anshary, M. A. I. 213 Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka 117, 120 ArcGIS analysis 222 ARCHES Heritage Inventory 184, 185, 196n2 Ariel, Israel 29 Arkarapotiwong, P. 105 Asahi Shimbun 483, 484 Ashgabat, Uzbekistan 85 Ashworth, G. J. 54, 60, 290 Askari, A. H. et al. 107

Askew, M. 414 assessing urban heritage policies 20–23; see also Australia: HUL approach; China’s conservation and management; India: monument conservation; Indian Ocean SIDS; Iran: conserving historic urban cores; Macao, China; Pacific Island nations; Yangon, Myanmar Atkinson, D. 174 Aung San Su Kyi 632, 635 Australia: Aboriginal Heritage Act (Vic) (2006) 517, 541n2; as aboriginal landscape 508–509; Broken Hill, New South Wales 532, 537–538; Burra Charter 20, 166, 308, 530–531; Canberra 29, 532, 538–539; Coastal Planning and Management Manual (2003) 517; HUL approach 20–21, 529–530, 532–537, 534, 535, 536; National Heritage List 531, 537–538; Planning and Environment Act (1987) 517; urban conservation practice 530–531; Victoria heritage place legislation 41, 531, 532; Victorian Aboriginal Heritage Register (VAHR) 522; conclusion 540–541; see also Ballarat, Australia; Melbourne, Australia; Wurundjeri’s Melbourne authorized heritage discourse (AHD) 99, 108, 347–348 Avieli, N. 357 Ayodhaya, India 113, 118, 119, 278–279, 280, 282–283, 286, 286–287 Ayutthaya, Thailand 101, 393, 397 Azzout, M. 86 Babri Masjid, Ayodhya 113, 118, 119 Babylonia 121 Bagan, Myanmar 119 Bagnall, G. 101 Balfour, A. 31 Ball State University CapAsia programme 124–125

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Index Ballarat, Australia 9–10, 166–167, 529, 532; Ballarat East 167–169, 168; Historic Urban Landscape 167–169, 178n2, 532–537, 534, 535, 536; methodology 171–176; ‘ordinary heritage’ and attachment to place 174–176, 175; VRM and ‘sense of place’ 167, 169–171; ‘wildness’ 171–174, 172; conclusion 176–178 Bam, Iran 583 Bamiyan, Afghanistan 121 Banaue, Philippines 49, 71, 71–73, 72, 77 Bandarin, F. 3, 4, 44, 50–51, 54, 55, 64, 435, 533, 610, 631 Bandung, Indonesia 29, 447, 460n2 Bang Luang, Thailand 62–63, 63 Bangalore, India 396–397 Bangkok, Thailand 35, 118 Bangladesh: Buddhism 201, 210; Coastal Embankment Improvement Project 75; Hinduism 210; polders 73–75, 74, 77; see also Chittagong, Bangladesh Barak, W. 508, 511, 512, 520–521 Barry, J. 512, 516, 517, 523 Barton, H. 323n3 Basso, K. H. 513 Basu, S. 104 Beatley, T. 364, 365 Beijing, China 101, 114, 118, 122, 569, 572 belief systems 219 Ben-Joseph, E. 379 Benjamin, C. 86, 91–92 Bertolacci, A. 116 Beyer, O. 71 Bhaktapur, Nepal 13, 101, 106, 107, 263, 264, 266–267; see also Navadurga Masked Dance Festival of Bhaktapur Bhopal, India 407 Bhubaneswar, India 104, 118 Billig, M. 174 biodiversity in the urban area 220 biophilic cities 365 Black, H. 101 Bloch 16 552 Boas, F. 48–49 Bon, A. 520 Borate, A. 511 Borobudur, Indonesia 101 Boswell, R. 626–627 Boxem, R. 473n2 Brazil 107 Broken Hill, Australia 532, 537–538 Brown-Saracino, J. 415 Brundtland Commission 323n3, 410 Buddhism 243; Bangladesh 201, 210; India 118; Nepal 70, 118; Sri Lanka 70, 119, 235, 236, 236, 237, 238–239, 240–241, 242; Vietnam 31 building intensity (burgage) cycle 150 Bukhara, Uzbekistan 83–84, 86, 88, 89, 92, 193, 194, 195, 332–333

Bungamati, Nepal 395, 396 Bushell, R. et al. 37 Caballero, G. 5 Cairo, Egypt 117 Cambodia: Angkor 105 Cambridge University Press 347, 348 Canberra, Australia 29, 532, 538–539 Carrithers, M. 123 Central Asia 7, 80–82; Amu Darya (Oxus River) 96; contradictions of urban preservation practice 90–92; cultural amnesia in the Stans 82–85; cultural corridors 92, 94, 95–96; Monument Passports 183; preservation politics 85–86; profiles of action and inaction in the Stans 86, 87–88; tourism 85, 86, 88, 92, 93, 94–95; conclusion 92–96; see also information management systems (IMS) for cultural World Heritage CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food 75 Chakravarty, S. 552 Chan, J. 299 Chapagain, N-K. 242, 243 Charleston, South Carolina 101 Charter for the Conservation of Historic Towns (Washington Charter) 55 Charter on Cultural Routes 296–297, 306–307 charters and declarations 55–56 Chatterjee, V. 104 Chen, Y. 298 Chennai, India 396–397 Chiang Mai, Thailand 348, 360 China: Beijing 101, 114, 118, 122, 569, 572; Communist Party 113–114; community engagement 104; Dujiangyan 321, 322; Guozijian and Yandaixiejie Districts, Beijing 569, 572; Hongkou District, Shanghai 57, 57–60, 58, 59, 63–64; Langzhong, Sichuan provice 223–224, 224; Lijiang 37, 334–335, 335; Lilong urban landscape, Shanghai 318–319, 319; population 408; Quanzhou 104; Shanghai 101; Tiananmen Square, Beijing 114; urbanisation 408; Wuhan, Hubei province 222–223, 223; Xidi and Hongcun 569, 572–573; Zhao’an, Fujian province 225, 225; Zhouzhuang 358–360, 359, 571; see also China’s conservation and management; China’s cultural routes; Macao, China China Principles 226, 298, 299, 304, 567–568 China Urban Sustainability Coalition 366 China’s conservation and management 21–22, 560; agency of public/non-governmental organisations 572–573; China Principles for heritage conservation praxis 567–568; city/local level heritage governance 567; conservation regulations 572; effective review system 573; governance structure 571; historic areas 563; historic district conservation 561–565, 562, 564; intent of conservation policy 571–572; national heritage governance and policies 561, 563–566; provincial/municipal level heritage governance 566; recognition of historic districts 569–571; research

645

Index 571; State Administration of Cultural Heritage (SACH) 298, 565, 566; tourism development 224, 358–360, 573–574; towards effective conservation system 568–574, 570; urban transformation 560–561; conclusion 574–575 China’s cultural routes 13–14, 294; challenges 307–309; feng shui 13, 219, 304, 305, 306, 310n2, 310n3; and HULs 294–298; Image Design 306–307; mountaincity trails of Chóngqing 304–307, 305, 306; recent discussions 299, 300–303, 304; Silk Roads 294–295; conclusion 309 Chittagong, Bangladesh 10–11, 199–200; administrative open spaces 211, 212; Chittagong Club 208, 208; commemorative open spaces 212; commercial public open spaces 210–211, 211; conservation and management of HUL 212–213; cultural open spaces 205; Detail Area Plan (DAP) 212–213; gardens and parks 206–207, 207, 208; historic growth centres and urban landscape 201, 203, 203–204; historical background 200–201, 202; historical landscape typology 204–212; open spaces with bodies of water 205–206; religious open spaces 209, 210; social and community open spaces 208, 208; tea plantations 209; transportation related spaces 209, 209; conclusion 214 Chóngqing, China 304–307, 305, 306 CIDOC (International Committee for Documentation) 184 CIIC (International Committee on Cultural Routes) 296 cities 5–6, 8, 29–30, 113–115; case studies 31–44; colonialism, Eurocentrism, reworlding 115–117; incorporating historic landscapes 121–125; multiple meanings and contestations 118–120; postcolonial confusions 117–118; understanding and intervention 120–121; urban palimpsest concept 30–31; urban palimpsests and HUL approach 44; conclusion 126 city branding 221 climate change 14, 22, 23, 77, 220, 393 CMDA (Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority) 155 CNN 359 Collins Dictionary 511 Colombo, Sri Lanka 116, 234, 234–236, 235, 239, 240; Aadi Vel 239, 240, 243 community-based heritage values see Tamil Brahmin settlement, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India community-focused urban regeneration (Malaysia) 17, 427; advocacy and evidence-based approach 429–430; applying HUL approaches beyond George Town 435–436; Armenian park pilot project 430, 431, 432, 433, 434; key observations 442–443; strengthening planning process 436–442; urban heritage of peninsular Malaysia 427–429; conclusion 443 Comoros Islands 614, 616–618, 618 Constantinidis, D. 176

Convention on Intangible Cultural Heritage 56, 290 Conzen, M. R. G. 150 Cooke, S. 176 Coomaraswamy, A. K. 250 Cooper, W. 510 Cordiner, J. 116 Cosgrove, D. 49 Cultural Ecosystems 547, 548 cultural landscapes 49; and urbanization 52–53 cultural routes in China 295–296 Cunningham, A. 545 Curzon, Viceroy of India 545 Daher, R. F. 465 Dahlgren, G. 323n3 Dakung, S. 450, 460n5 Dalat, Vietnam 29 Dan Tri international 33–34 Darwin, C. 48 Database Management Systems (DBMS) 184 Davis, P. et al. 103 Davy, J. 116 Dawson, A. 516, 518 De Certeau, M. 249 Dearborn, L. M. 351, 360 Delft, Netherlands 378 Delhi, India 101, 124, 152, 546, 548, 554 Devine-Wright, P. 169–170 Dharmapala, A. 117 Ding, Y. 299 ‘Disaster Imagination Game’ (DIG) 400 disaster vulnerability 395–397 Doron, A. 260n3 du Cros, H. 632, 639 Duany, A. et al. 364 Duara, P. 118, 126 Dubrow, G. 122 Dujiangyan, China 321, 322 Duncan, J. 121 Duong, B. H. et al. 37 Duxbury, N. 549 earthquakes: Bam, Iran (2004) 583; Dujiangyan (2008) 321, 322; Gujarat (2001) 394, 397; Kathmandu Valley (2015) 265, 266, 341, 341–342, 394, 395, 397, 398, 399, 401; Urban Earthquake Vulnerability Reduction Project (UEVRP), India 403; see also Kotagede, Yogyakarta: community-based postdisaster rehabilitation Eck, D. 248, 249 eco-cities 365–366 ecological base of urban form 218 ecosystems 22, 217, 220, 226–227; see also Banaue, Philippines emotion 102 Engelhardt, R. A. 8

646

Index English Heritage: Historic Landscape Characterisation (HLC) 213 erasure and appearance 15, 346–348, 348; Authorized Heritage Discourse (AHD) 99, 108, 347–348; Chiang Mai 348, 360; definitions 347–348; Hoi An 349, 354–357, 355; Luang Prabang 349–354, 350, 352, 353; UNESCO World Heritage sites 349–357; World Heritage tentative lists 357–360; Zhouzhuang 358–360, 359; conclusion 360–361 Eurasia; see Central Asia; information management systems (IMS) for cultural World Heritage event cascades 121 Faetanini, M. 553 Farr, D. 364 feng shui (xiang-di) 13, 219, 304, 305, 306, 310n2, 310n3 Fiji 601; see also Levuka, Fiji Fitzgerald, K. 107 Fontal, O. 51 Forsyth, I. et al. 169 fostering sustainable urban heritage 14–17; see also erasure and appearance; pedestrian-oriented streetscape design; rural development strategy; safety and resilience; sustainable urbanism; World Heritage Sites management Fowler, P. 52 fringe belts 150 Fuhren, R. 473n2 Fujii, S. 486 Furukawa, N. 123–124 Galla, A. 604 Galle Fort, Sri Lanka 18, 101, 118, 119–120, 122, 462–464, 463; backdrop to recent transformations 464–465; challenges in managing urban heritage 472; community values vs official/expert values 467–468; conflicting aspirations 471–472; dilemma faced by heritage managers 470–471; endangered heritage 465–472; gentrification and heritagescaping 465–467, 466, 467; local community as agents of change 470; management system 333–334; rapid transformation of community values 468–470; conclusion 472–473 Gammage, B. 516, 523 ‘gateway’ towns 119 Geddes, P. 217, 418 Geng, Z. 572–573 Geographic Information Systems (GIS) 184; for cities in Uzbekistan 193, 193–194, 195 George Town, Malaysia 338, 427, 428, 429, 430–431, 431, 432, 433, 434, 436, 438 Geospatial Content Management Systems (GeoCMS) 184; in cultural heritage 185 ghats on the Ganga, Varanasi, India 12, 248–249, 249; deployable structures 258, 258–259; design grammar of the ghats 249–252, 250, 251; historic palaces 256;

narrative surfaces 257, 257; new conservation approach 254, 255–259; spatial practices at the ghats 252–254, 253, 255, 260n3; visual aids 256; conclusion 259 Gibson, J. et al. 511 Ginzarly, M. et al. 4 GIS see Geographic Information Systems Glover, W. 116 Goetz, N. 105 Gómez-Redondo, C. 51 González-Martínez, P. 3, 4 Graham, B. 54, 60 Graham, N. 122 Grant, M. 323n3 Green Urbanism 365 Greene, P. D. 242 Greffe, X. 50, 54, 64 The Guardian 33 Guest, G. et al. 506 Gujarat, India 394, 397 Haas, T. 364 Habib, K. 199 Hahoe, South Korea 105 Haidara, A. K. 100 Haiti 393, 394, 397 Hampi, India 552 Han, F. 50 Hanns Seidel Foundation (HSF) 635 Hanoi, Vietnam 31–33, 104; Australian embassy 32; Ba Dinh Political Centre 34; Building of War Operations 34; Doan Mon 34, 34; Dragon House 34, 34; ‘French Quarter’ 31, 32; Kinh Thien Palace 34; Quan Su Pagoda 31, 32; Soviet-Vietnamese Friendship Cultural Palace 31, 32; Thang LongHanoi Citadel 32, 33–35, 34 Hardy, A. 251 Haridvar, India 283, 283, 284 Harvey, D. 49, 50 Hasegawa, H. 481 Hashizume, S. 479 Hassan, M. N. 199 Hau’ofa, E. 601 Havell, E. B. 250 Hayden, D. 122 Hays, D. L. 259 HC-DAPNED 138, 148n6 Head, P. 409 Henderson, J. 635 heritage values see Tamil Brahmin settlement, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India heritagization 51 Hershkovitz, L. 118 Hinduism 102; Bangladesh 210; India 113, 118, 490–506; Nepal 70; Sri Lanka 235, 235, 236, 236, 237–238, 239, 240, 242, 243

647

Index Historic Landscape Characterisation (HLC) 213 Historic Urban Landscapes (HUL) 5–8; approach 2–5, 331, 547; concept 53–54; defined 2, 5, 53; future of HULs in the Asia-Pacific 23–24; inter-agency coordination 4; natural landscape in urban heritage 216–217; UNESCO Recommendation 2–3, 4–5, 44, 53–54, 64, 166, 181, 413, 415; and urban palimpsests 44; see also Central Asia; cities; human aspects of historic urban environments; urban cultural landscape ideology; water urbanisms history 120–121 HJM Consultants 607, 609 HLC (Historic Landscape Characterisation) 213 Hoad, P. 625 Hockey, J. L. 516, 518 Hodgson, M. 83 Hoi An Declaration on Conservation of Historic Districts of Asia 37, 55 Hoi An, Vietnam 35, 37–39, 354–357, 355; classification 349, 350, 356; Heritage Homeowner’s Preservation Manual 356; Japanese Bridge 37, 38; protection zones 356–357; tourist precinct 35, 37, 38; Triem Tay 37, 38 Hong Kong 102 Hongkou District, Shanghai 57, 57–60, 58, 59, 63–64 Hosagrahar, J. 124, 277, 549, 550 Hossain, S. 200 Hossain, Z. 199 HSF (Hanns Seidel Foundation) 635 Huang, L. et al. 299 Huang, Y. 321 Hubbard, T. 607, 609 Hue, Vietnam 35, 123–124 HUL see Historic Urban Landscapes HUL Guidebook 4 human aspects of historic urban environments 7–8, 98; bottom-up, community-engaged practice 102–106; culture and experiences of local communities 100–102; culture of orthodox conservation practice 98–100; tools 106–107; conclusion 107–108 human well-being 14; defined 313–314, 314; Dujiangyan, China 321, 322; Heritage Map 317–318, 318, 323n3; as heritage value 315–317, 323n1–2; and historic places 314–315; in Historic Urban Landscapes 313; Lilong urban landscape, Shanghai 318–319, 319; Melaka, Malaysia 319, 320, 320, 323n1, 338; in urban heritage management 317–318; conclusion 321, 322–323 Huyssen, A. 31 ICCROM Integrated Territorial and Urban Conservation programme 2 ICOMOS (International Council on Monuments and Sites) 33, 413, 627; Burra Charter 20, 166, 308, 530–531; Charter for the Conservation of Historic Towns (Washington Charter) 55; Charter on Cultural Routes 296–297, 306–307; China Principles 226, 298, 299,

304, 567–568; Convention on Intangible Cultural Heritage 56, 290; cultural routes 295–296; Hoi An Declaration on Conservation of Historic Districs of Asia 37, 55; International Committee on Cultural Routes (CIIC) 296; Nara Document on Authenticity 55, 56, 298, 316, 347, 413, 415; Seoul Declaration on Heritage and Metropolis in Asia and the Pacific 55–56; Valletta Principles 413; Venice Charter 413, 530, 552; Washington Charter 55, 413; World Heritage List 56; Xi’an Declaration 55 IGI Global 622 IIHS see India Institute for Human Settlements ILO-Quang Nam Province project, Vietnam 37 IMS see information management systems (IMS) for cultural World Heritage India: adobe 411, 412; Agra 118, 550, 552; Ahmedabad 31, 114, 121, 122, 397, 415, 417, 553, 554–556, 555, 556; Allahabad 283, 283–284; Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) 500, 544, 545, 546, 554; Babri Masjid massacre, Ayodhaya 113, 118, 119; Bangalore 396–397; Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) 118; Bhubaneswar 104, 118; Buddhism 118; Chennai 396–397; climate change 393; community engagement 104; Delhi 101, 124, 152, 546, 548, 554; Gujarat earthquake (2001) 394, 397; Hampi, Karnataka 552; Hinduism 113, 118, 490–506; Indian Archaeological Policy (1915) 545; Indian Heritage Cities Network (IHCN) 553; Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JnNURM) 553; Lucknow 550; Mumbai 101, 409, 414, 415, 420, 551; National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA) 553, 554, 556; population 408; Sikkim 411; Srinagar 396–397; tourism 252, 254, 256, 259, 287–290, 291, 502, 505, 550; Urban Earthquake Vulnerability Reduction Project (UEVRP) 403; urbanisation 408–409; water 410–411; World Heritage Sites 415, 552, 556; see also ghats on the Ganga, Varanasi, India; India: holy cities; India: monument conservation; Kolkata, India; Tamil Brahmin settlement, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India India: holy cities 13, 275, 276–279, 278–279; Ayodhya 113, 118, 119, 278–279, 280, 282–283, 286, 286–287; ghats on the Ganga, Varanasi 12, 248–259; Haridvar 283, 283, 284; heritage and pilgrimage inclusive development 287–290; heritage scenario 275–276; HRIDAY programme 287, 288–289, 553; Kumbha Mela, Allahabad 283, 283–284; Nasik 283, 284; Panchakroshi Yatra 285, 285–286; pilgrimage circuits 284–287, 285, 286; PRASAD programme 287–288, 289, 553; Ramalila at Ramanagar, Varanasi 280–282, 282; religious festivals in holy cities 279–284, 280; sustainable development and intangible heritage 290–291; Sustainable Heritage City (SHC) system 287, 288; Ujjain 283, 283, 284; Varanasi 278–279, 280, 280–283, 282, 285, 285–286, 287; conclusion 291–292

648

Index India Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS): SocioEconomics of Urban Heritage 414, 416; Urban India 2011: Evidence 409 India: monument conservation 21, 544; Agra Taj Heritage Corridor Project 550, 552; Ahmedabad 553, 554–556, 555, 556; AMASR Act (1958) 546, 550, 553; Amritsar Heritage Street project 550, 551; Ancient Monuments Preservation Act (1904) 545; Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) 544, 545, 546, 550; Bhopal 407; challenges and opportunities 549–554; city as HUL 548, 548–549; colonial legacy 545; Delhi 554; HUL Recommendation and the historic city 547–548, 552; in independent India 546, 546–547; National Culture Fund (NCF) 554; National Mission on Monuments and Antiquities (NMMA) 553; National Monument Authority (NMA) 553; NPC-AMASR 554; conclusion 556–557 Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) 547, 550; Charter (2004) 552–553; Urban Heritage in Indian Cities 415 Indian Ocean SIDS 22–23, 613, 614; challenges for urban heritage management 625–627; Comoros Islands 614, 616–618, 618; looking for urban heritage 614–615; Maldives 614, 615–616, 618, 619, 620; Mauritius 614, 615–616, 619, 620–622, 621, 626; Mayotte 614, 622, 623; navigating urban heritage 615–616; Réunion 614, 622, 623–624, 624; Seychelles 614, 615–616, 624, 625, 626; tourism 614, 615, 616, 617, 624, 626; conclusion 627 Indonesia (heritage conservation) 17–18, 445; Badan Pelestarian Pusaka Indonesia (BPPI) 447–448; Badan Warisan Sumatera, Medan 447; Bandung Heritage 29, 447, 460n2; Borodudur 101; community involvement in heritage conservation 446–447; community involvement in urban heritage 447–448; heritage regulatory system 445–446; Jakarta Old Town 445–446; Jaringan Pelestarian Pusaka Indonesia (JPPI) 447; Jogja Heritage Society 447, 451; Medan 447; Padang 453; Piagam Pelestarian Pusaka Indonesia 447; Prambanan 101; Solo 104; see also Kotagede, Yogyakarta; Kotagede, Yogyakarta: communitybased post-disaster rehabilitation information management systems (IMS) for cultural World Heritage 10, 181–182, 184, 185; challenges of documentation 183–184; GeoCMS 184, 185; GIS for cities in Uzbekistan 193, 193, 193–194, 195; GIS system 184; HUL and Central Asia 182–183; Silk Roads IMS 184, 186, 196n3; conclusion 195–196; see also Silk Roads CHRIS; World Heritage Sites management INTACH see Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage intangible cultural heritage 219, 331 intangible urban heritage: defined 11–12; safeguarding 11–14; see also India’s holy cities

International Committee for Documentation (CIDOC) 184 International Committee on Cultural Routes (CIIC) 296 International Council on Monuments and Sites see ICOMOS Iran: conserving historic urban cores 22, 579; Bam 583; current legal framework 584–585, 586–588; heritage management institutions 579–580, 583; national policies 580–583; planning process for urban conservation 580; post-1979 revolution 582–583; pre-1979 revolution 581–582; terminology in heritage regulations 583–584, 584; tourism 594–595; Urban Development and Revitalisation Corporation (UDRC) 583–584, 585; conclusion 595–596; see also Yazd, Iran Iraq 101, 393 Irazábal, C. 552 Isar, R. J. et al. 50 Israel: Ariel 29 Italy 29, 393, 400 Itchan Kala, Uzbekistan 193, 194, 195 Itsukushima Shrine, Japan 479 Jackson, J.B. 49, 54, 62 Jacobs, J. 161 Jacques, D. 49 Jakarta Old Town, Indonesia 445–446 Japan: Ama (women divers) 241; Itsukushima Shrine 479; Kyoto 395, 396; ‘ma’ 244; Seto Inland Sea 476, 477–480; Tokyo: Tsukaba Science City 29; World Heritage Sites 479, 485; see also Tomo, Seto Inland Sea Jeans, D. 49 Johnson, A. 360 Johor Bahru, Malaysia 427, 429, 430, 431, 435, 442 Jokilehto, J. et al. 297, 298, 299 Jones, K. 600 Jones, S. 101 Kandy, Sri Lanka 106, 106, 107, 121, 123, 236, 237, 242–243; Dalada Perahera 238–239, 239, 240, 243; Kandyan Arts and Crafts Association 116, 117; Nikken Sekkei Research Institute 125; Temple of the Tooth Relic 240–241, 242–243 Karachi Building and Town Planning Regulations 2002 144 Karachi Neighbourhood Improvement Project (KNIP) 140, 148n8 Karachi, Pakistan: heritage designation 131, 132, 140, 143, 144, 146, 147 Kashmir 397 Kataoka, S. 480 Kathmandu Valley, Nepal 105, 114, 114, 115, 242; Bhaktapur 13, 101, 106, 107, 263, 264, 266–267; Boudhanath Temple 119; Bungamati 395, 396; classes of living urban heritage attributes 266; Gorkha Earthquake (2015) 265, 266, 341, 341–342, 394,

649

Index 395, 397, 398, 399, 401; hiti water systems 397, 398; integrated management plan 15, 340–342; living urban heritage 261–263; Newar community 262–263; threats and safeguarding 263–265; see also Navadurga Masked Dance Festival of Bhaktapur Kathmandu Valley World Heritage Site (KVWHS) 261–262, 271 Kato, K. 241 Kawahara, S. 123–124 Kazakhstan 82, 183 Kerr, D. 515 Khamphaeng Phet, Thailand 124 Khiva, Uzbekistan 68, 85, 86, 87, 92 Khudori, D. 450 King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology (KMITL) 125 King, T. F. 99 Kniffen, F. 54 KNIP (Karachi Neighbourhood Improvement Project) 140, 148n8 Knox, P. L. 169 Kolkata, India 9, 149; accessibility and visibility 160–161; history and built heritage 152–154, 153, 155; land use patterns 158, 158–159; landmarks 157, 159–160, 160; maps 153, 155; modern town planning and built heritage 155–156; morphological evolution of HUL 156–161; morphological interdependencies 161; space syntax 149, 151–152; street grids 157, 157; town plan analysis 149, 150–151; conclusion 161–163 Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA) 155 Kotagede, Yogyakarta 448, 449; conservation advocacy 451; heritage houses 450; history 448–449 Kotagede, Yogyakarta: community-based post-disaster rehabilitation 452, 452–453; assessment/ documentation of heritage damage 454–456, 455; collaborative organization 453–454, 454; follow-up work of heritage rehabilitation 459; publications on heritage/conservation guidelines 456, 457, 458–459; Pusaka Jogja Bangkit! (PJB) 453, 455; restored houses 456, 457, 458; conclusion 459–460 Kuala Kubu Bahru, Malaysia 429 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 427, 428–429, 430, 431, 435–436, 437, 438, 438, 439, 440, 440, 441, 442 KVWHS see Kathmandu Valley World Heritage Site Kyoto, Japan 395, 396 Kyrgyzstan 82 Laconte, P. 409 Lahore, Pakistan 116, 147 Langzhong, Sichuan, China 223–224 Laos: conservation 105; Luang Prabang 335–336, 349–354, 352, 353 Larsen, P. B. 15, 363 Lavender, W. 513 Lefebvre, H. 252 Letellier, R. 183, 188

Leung, M. W. H. 622 Levuka, Fiji 599, 600, 604; heritage conservation 607–609; inclusive and integrated heritage management 609–610; origin and development 604–606, 605, 606; conclusion 610–611 Levy, R. I. 262 Lewis, P. 49, 54 Li, W. 299 Lijiang, China 37, 334–335, 335 Lively, P. 29, 30 Liyanage, N. 124 localizing heritage stewardship 17–20; see also community-focused urban regeneration (Malaysia); Galle Fort, Sri Lanka; Indonesia (heritage conservation); Tamil Brahmin settlement, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India; Tomo, Seto Inland Sea, Japan; Wurundjeri’s Melbourne, Australia Logan, W. 15, 56, 117–118, 363 Long, C. 351 Longley, A. 549 Lowenthal, D. 49 Lu, F. et al. 299 Lu, Z. 298 Luang Prabang, Laos 349, 350–351; classification 350, 351–354, 352, 353; management system 335–336, 351–352 Lucknow, India 550 Lumbini, Nepal 119 Luo, W. et al. 104 Lwin, M. M. 122 Ma’ale Adumim, Occupied West Bank 29 Macao, China 337, 637, 637, 638; key events 641; management system 336–338; tourism, heritage planning and social responsibility 640; tourism planning 639–640; urban heritage planning 637, 638–639; discussion 640, 641, 641–642; conclusion 642 Malaysia: George Town 338, 427, 428, 429, 430–431, 431, 432, 433, 434, 436, 438; Johor Bahru 427, 429, 430, 431, 435, 442; Kuala Kubu Bahru 429; Kuala Lumpur 427, 428–429, 430, 431, 435–436, 437, 438, 438, 439, 440, 440, 441, 442; Melaka 319, 320, 320, 323n1, 338, 428, 429; Penang 101, 119, 120–121, 122, 428; Petaling Jaya 29; Special Area Plans (SAP) 427, 429, 443n1; street design 106–107; Think City 427, 430, 435, 436, 440, 441–443; see also community-focused urban regeneration (Malaysia) Maldives 614, 615–616, 618, 619, 620 Mali: Timbuktu 100 Manzo, L. C. 169–170 mapping tangible urban heritage 8–11; see also Ballarat, Australia; Chittagong, Bangladesh; information management systems (IMS) for cultural World Heritage; Kolkata, India; natural landscape in urban heritage; Sindh, Pakistan Marcard, P. 512

650

Index Marshall, D. et al. 31 Marshall, J. 545 Marston, S. A. 169 Martínez, P. G. 59, 60, 64 Mason, R. 315 Mauritius 614, 615–616, 619, 620–622, 621, 626 Mayotte 614, 622, 623 Medan, Indonesia 447 Medina, E. M. S. 60–61 Mehrotra, R. 547, 548 Meinig, D. W. 30, 48, 49, 54 Melaka, Malaysia 319, 320, 320, 323n1, 338, 428, 429 Melbourne, Australia 40–44, 42, 43, 532, 539, 539–540; Hoddle Grid project 532, 539, 539–540; Planning for all Melbourne (2018) 518; St Kilda Hill 39, 40–44, 42, 43; Westgarthtown 39, 40; see also Wurundjeri’s Melbourne, Australia Menon, A. G. K. 416, 417–418 Mexico 101 MICRA 313 Middle Eastern Geodatabase for Antiquities (MEGA) 184, 185 Minner, J. 107 Mitchell, T. 117 Mitin, I. 30, 31 Miura, K. 105 Miura, M. 479 Miyamoto, T. 481 Miyazaki, H. 486 Mondal, M. K. 75 monumental heritage approach 104–105, 413–415 Morihisa, S. 477, 483 morphological periods 150 morphological frames 150 morphological regions 150 Morris, W. 347 Mostafavi, M. 364 Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina 100 Mosul, Iraq 393 Mouri, K. 483, 486 Mumbai (Bombay), India 101, 409, 414, 415, 420, 551 Munangkarmi, L. B. 273 Murphy-Wandin, J. 515 Murree, Pakistan 29 Myanmar 117; Bagan 119; heritage conservation 122; Pagan 120; see also Yangon, Myanmar Nakamura, S. 485 Nara Document on Authenticity 55, 56, 298, 316, 347, 413, 415 Nasik, India 283, 284 National Nine News 521 natural landscape in urban heritage 11, 216–217; conservation 226–228; ecological, spatial, symbolic dimensions 217–220; heritage values 220–221; historic Chinese cities 222–225, 223, 224, 225; and

liveability 219–220; study methods 221–222; conclusion 229 Navadurga Masked Dance Festival of Bhaktapur 266–267; people 273; physical markers 271, 272; place 267–270, 269; story 271, 272–273; streets 270–271 Nepal: Buddhism 70, 118; guthi system 104, 107; Hinduism 70; hiti water system 68, 68–71, 69, 77, 397, 398; Lumbini 119; Tansen 105; tourism 269; see also Kathmandu Valley, Nepal; Kathmandu Valley World Heritage Site (KVWHS); Navadurga Masked Dance Festival of Bhaktapur New Urbanism, USA 119, 364 New York City: Chinatown 244 New York Times 359 Newman, P. et al. 364 Nicholson, B. 511 Nicholson, M. 511 Nielsen, J. 190 Nijman, J. 409 Nishida, M. 478 Nitschke, G. 244 Noobanjong, K. 118 Noto, Italy 29 numinism 98–99, 99 Nuwara Eliya, Sri Lanka 237–238, 240, 242 Okahashi, J. 340 Okiura, K. 480 One Tambon One Product (OTOP) 125 Ono, C. 476, 488n2 Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) 33, 182, 429, 464 Pacific Area Travel Association 607 Pacific Island nations 22, 598–600, 599; heritage management 603–604; place and culture 600–601; tourism 603, 607; urbanization issues 601–603; conclusion 610–611; see also Levuka, Fiji Padang, Indonesia 453 Pagan, Myanmar 120 Pakistan: Lahore 116, 147; Murree 29; Shikarpur 131, 132; see also Sindh, Pakistan Pandey Sharma, J. 104, 549, 551 Pascoe, B. 509, 515, 518 patina 101 Patten, G. 49 pedestrian-oriented streetscape case study: Deoksugung-gil Street, Seoul 16, 377, 382–383; analysis of site condition 383; basic design concepts 383–384, 384; design features of the street 380, 384, 384–388, 386, 387; in retrospect 390; sustainable aspects 388–390, 389 pedestrian-oriented streetscape design 16, 377–378; characteristics, types, design elements 379, 380; effects and problems of shared street 379, 381–382; from separation to sharing 378; shared street concept 378–379; shared street design in HUL 381–382;

651

Index conclusion 390–391; see also pedestrian-oriented streetscape case study: Deoksugung-gil Street, Seoul Penang, Malaysia 101, 119, 120–121, 122, 428 Percival, R. 116 Pereira Roders, A. 4, 5 Perera, N. 114, 115, 116, 117, 120 Pérez, R. J. 64 Petaling Jaya, Malaysia 29 Pham, T. T. H. 37 Philippines: Banaue Rice Terraces 49, 71, 71–73, 72, 77; National Food Authority 73; National Irrigation Administration (NIA) 73; Vigan 60–62, 61 Pink, S. 169 place branding 221 Plachter, H. 52 Pogson, W. R. 200 Polak, P. 409 Polo, Marco 294 Polonnaruva, Sri Lanka 117 Porcello, T.et al. 244 Porter, L. 512, 516, 517, 523 Potteiger, M. 295, 297 Poulios, I. 51 Power, A. 102 Prambanan, Indonesia 101 Prijoutomo, J. 450 Punekar, A. 54 Punjab Special (Premises) Ordinance 1985 132 Purinton, J. 295, 297 Purser, M. 600, 607, 608, 609 Qanungo, S. B. 204, 212 quality of life 102 Quanzhou, China 104 Quebec, Canada 54 Quercia, D. et al. 246n3 Quitian, A. S. 518 Register, R. 365 Regnault, M. 624 Regulier, C. 252 religion see Buddhism; Hinduism; India: holy cities Relph, E. 54 Réunion 614, 622, 623–624, 624 Rey-Pérez, J. 3, 4 Richards, P. 49, 51 ritual landscape 12–13, 261, 273–274; see also Kathmandu Valley World Heritage Site (KVWHS); Navadurga Masked Dance Festival of Bhaktapur Robertson, I. 49, 51 Rodríguez, G. A. 518 Romero-Frias, X. 619 Rose, D. B. 512 Rose, G. 170 Roseneau, J. 121 Rössler, M. 52 Royle, S. A. 622

Ruan, Y. 299, 574 rural development strategy 16–17, 406; basic needs 410–411; digital and energy revolutions 412; discrepancies in urbanisation: India/China 408–409; distinctiveness and inclusivity of urban heritage 415–418; initiatives/technologies for de-centrist agenda 410–413; local manufacture, global markets 413; monumentalisation of heritage 413–415; population statistics and forecasts 407, 408; questioning paradigms of heritage 413–418; questioning the orthodox urbanisation paradigm 408–410; re-positioning UNESCO HUL initiative 418–419; trends in urbanisation: India 407; conclusion 419–420 Ruskin, J. 99, 99, 347, 348 safeguarding intangible urban heritage 11–14; see also China’s cultural routes; ghats on the Ganga; human well-being; India: holy cities; ritual landscape; sensory heritage of Asian cities safety and resilience 16, 226, 321, 364, 368, 373, 392; agenda for action 401–402; challenges and priorities 399–400, 401; climate change 14, 22, 23, 77, 220, 393; contribution of urban heritage to resilience 397–399; increasing disaster vulnerability 395–397; international/national initiatives 402–403; urban heritage at risk 392–394, 394; conclusion 404 Said, E. 115 Samarkand, Uzbekistan 84, 87, 88, 91, 92, 93, 193, 194, 339, 342–343, 343 Santosa, R. B. 450 Sapa, Vietnam 29 Sapu, S. 460n4 Sauer, C. 30, 49 SBCA see Sindh Building Control Authority Schein, R. 30–31 Schlüter, O. 48 Schofield, J. 102 Schorch, P. 171 Schwenkel, C. 35 SDGs see Sustainable Development Goals sense of place see Ballarat, Australia sensory heritage of Asian cities 12, 233–234; key points 241–244; methodological implications 244–245; Sri Lanka 12, 234–241; conclusion 245 Seoul Declaration on Heritage and Metropolis in Asia and the Pacific 55–56 Seoul, South Korea 121; see also pedestrian-oriented streetscape case study Seto Inland Sea, Japan 476; booming inland sea 478–479; origins of region 477–478; repositioning status: creating destinations 479–480; see also Tomo, Seto Inland Sea, Japan Seychelles 614, 615–616, 624, 625, 626 Shakhrisyabz, Uzbekistan 80–81, 81, 92 Shalalah Saghirah, Syria 76 Shamsuddin, S. 106

652

Index Shan, J. 308 Shanghai, China 57, 57–60, 58, 59, 63–64, 101, 318–319, 319 Shannon, K. 35 Shikarpur, Pakistan 131, 132 Shiva, Vandana 411 Shrestha, P. 269, 272, 273 Si Sathchanalai, Thailand 124, 125 Sigiriya, Sri Lanka 120 Sikkim 411 Silk Roads 294–295; information management systems (IMS) 184, 186, 196n3 Silk Roads CHRIS (Silk Roads Cultural Heritage Resource Information System) 186, 196n4; current and future benefits 192, 192; design and implementation 189, 189–191; planning and understanding context 188, 188–189; populating the system 191; review after implementation 191–192; road map: UCD process 187, 187 Silva, K. D. 44, 106, 107, 262, 263 Sim, J. 106 Simon, D. et al. 291 Sindh Building Control Authority (SBCA): Building and Town Planning Regulations 2002 135; ‘Dangerous Buildings’ list 135, 137, 138, 139, 147n2, 147n3, 147n5, 147n7, 148n6 Sindh Cultural Heritage Preservation Act (SCHPA)1994 9, 131–132, 141, 144 Sindh High Density Development Board Act 2010 134, 147 Sindh, Pakistan 9, 131; competitive schemes and sponsored events 146; deficiencies in management and monitoring 133; environmental level 139–143, 141, 142; heritage designation 131–132, 147n1; heritage property stakeholders 134–143; incentives for heritage property owners 143–145; individual properties 134–139, 135, 137, 139, 147n2, 147n4; Karachi 131, 132, 140, 143, 144, 146, 147; motivational initiatives 146; possible mitigation and problem resolution 143–146; response from heritage property owners 132–133; Shikarpur 131, 132; technical support and advice to heritage owners 145–146; conclusion 146–147 Singapore 101, 428 Singh, Ananta Narayan 281 Singh, Maharaja Vibhuti Narayan 281 Singh, R. P. B. 276, 285 Sixsmith, J. 313, 316 skylines 219 Slater, T. R. 150 Smailes, A. E. 54 Small Island Developing States (SIDS) see Indian Ocean SIDS; Pacific Island nations Smith, A. 600, 607 Smith, J. 50 Smith, L. 45, 50, 99, 108, 167, 347, 418 Smyth, K. 102 Sobti, M. P. 82

Solo, Indonesia 104 Song, Y. 299 South Korea: Hahoe 105; Seoul 16, 121, 377, 382–390; Seoul Declaration 55; Yangdong 105 space syntax 149, 151–152 Spodek, H. 31 spontaneous fantasies 101–102 Sri Lanka 116; Anuradhapura 117, 120; Buddhism 70, 119, 235, 236, 236, 237, 238–239, 240–241, 242; Colombo 116, 234, 234–236, 235, 239, 240, 243; Cultural Triangle 117; everyday spaces 234, 234–238; handiya 124; Hinduism 235, 235, 236, 236, 237–238, 239, 240, 242, 243; Nuwara Eliya 237–238, 240, 242; pola 124; Polonnaruva 117; religious events 238–241, 239, 240, 243–244; sensory heritage 12, 234–241; Sigiriya 120; tourism 117, 119–120; see also Galle Fort, Sri Lanka; Kandy, Sri Lanka Srinagar, India 396–397 stakeholders 4 Stallmeyer, J. C. 351, 360 the Stans 82–85 Steinberg, F. 101 Stewart, Father Columba 100 Stovel, H. 340 Stratford, E. et al. 601 streetscape design see pedestrian-oriented streetscape design Su, J. 243 Sukhothai, Thailand 124–125, 125 Sun, M. 574 sustainability 363 sustainable development 2, 44, 182, 290–291, 410 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 44, 275, 287, 290–291, 363, 364, 549 sustainable urbanism 15–16, 363–366; biophilic cities 365; eco-cities 365–366; economic and social fronts 372–373; environmental front 370–372; Green Urbanism 365; making urban heritage sustainable 369; sustainable and greener environments 368–369; sustainable neighbourhoods and resilient community 368; sustainable transportation and accessibility 367; ubiquitous eco-city 366; zero-carbon cities 366; conclusion 373–374; see also pedestrian-oriented streetscape design Suzuki, M. 483 Sweet, J. 351 Swensen, G. et al. 166 Syria: Aleppo 393; Khaled al-Asaad 100; Shalalah Saghirah 76 Taiwan 103; 406 Plaza, Taipei 122–123, 123; Henshan Township 103 Taj Mahal, India 118, 550 Tajikistan 82, 88, 94 Talukdar, M. A. T. 213 Tamerlane (Timur) 88

653

Index Tamil Brahmin settlement, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India 19, 491–493; ageing settlement 502–503; architecture 493, 493, 497–498, 499, 501, 501–502; bureaucratic incompetency 500–501; community-based heritage values 490–491; community values for heritage conservation 504–506; core values 494–498; lifestyle changes 501–502; nonBrahmin community perspective 503–504; Padmanābhaswāmy Temple 491, 492, 495–496, 498, 500, 501, 502, 505; pressure of tourism 502, 505; sacrality of cultural practices 495–497, 496; sense of community 494–495; shift in attitude towards the temple 498–500; study method 494; threats 494, 498–503; value through convenience of location 497; conclusion 506 Tamil culture 237–238, 242 Tang, W. S. 114 Tansen, Nepal 105 Tao, W. 358 Tashkent, Uzbekistan 85, 90–91, 94 Taylor, K. 3, 121, 299, 307–308, 538, 539, 552, 600 Taylor, M. R. 307–308 TDR (transfer of development rights) 144 Thailand 102; Ayutthaya 101, 393, 397; Bang Luang 62–63, 63, 64; Bangkok 35, 118; Chiang Mai 348, 360; conservation 105; Khamphaeng Phet 124; Si Sathchanalai 124, 125; Sukhothai 124–125, 125 Thaisurya, S. 63 Than Shwe 119 Thang Long-Hanoi Citadel, Hanoi 33–35, 34 Thant Myint U 122, 633 Thein Sein 119 Think City Malaysia 427, 430, 435, 436, 440, 441–443 Thrift, N. 170 Throsby, D. 547 Tiananmen Square, Beijing 118 Timbuktu, Mali 100 Tiwari, S. et al. 262 Toffin, G. 262 Tokyo, Japan: Tsukuba Science City 29 Tolia-Kelly, D. P. 170 Tomo, Seto Inland Sea, Japan 18–19, 476–477, 477, 479; decaying port and redevelopment proposal 482–485, 484; legacy of a port town 480–482, 481; remaining issues and future challenges 487–488; rising concerns and persuading tactics 485–486; ‘World Heritage Litigation’ 486–487; conclusion 488 tourism 23, 101–102, 105, 122, 124, 227, 631, 641, 642; Bang Luang, Thailand 62–63, 64; Central Asia 85, 86, 88, 92, 93, 94–95; China 224, 358–360, 573–574; Hoi An, Vietnam 35, 37, 38; India 252, 254, 256, 259, 287–290, 291, 502, 505, 550; Indian Ocean 614, 615, 616, 617, 624, 626; Iran 594–595; Macao 639–640; Nepal 269; Pacific Island nations 603, 607; Sri Lanka 117, 119–120; Vigan, Philippines 60, 62; Yangon, Myanmar 631, 632, 635–636, 637 town plan analysis 149, 150–151

Tran, V. A. et al. 356–357 transfer of development rights (TDR) 144 Travers, R. 353 Trigger, D. S. 509, 516 Tuan, Y. F. 169, 177 Tunprawat, P. 357 Turkestan 83 Turkmenistan 82, 92, 94; Amu Darya (Oxus River) 96; Merv 94, 95 Turner, M. 3 ubiquitous eco-city 366 Ujang, N. 106 Ujjain, India 283, 283, 284 UNESCO 331, 552; Budapest Declaration on World Heritage 56; and Central Asia 92, 182–183; Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) 275, 276–277, 278, 279, 280, 283, 413; Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions 56, 277; cultural corridors 92, 94, 95; Declaration on the Conservation of Historic Urban Landscapes 53; historic urban area, defined 216; Hoi An Declaration 37, 55; The HUL Guidebook 56, 64; HUL Recommendation 2–3, 4–5, 44, 53–54, 64, 166, 181, 413, 415; Intangible Cultural Heritage Convention 331; Istanbul Declaration on World Heritage 56; Nairobi Recommendation 413, 561; New Life for Historic Cities 53–54; Operational Guidelines 182–183; SIDS Action Plan 615; Silk Roads 294–295; Suzhou Declaration 567; UN-Habitat 37, 52, 363, 416; World Heritage Challenges for the Millennium 56; World Heritage Convention 2, 44, 80, 331, 342, 413, 414; see also World Heritage Sites UNISDR: Handbook for Local Government Leaders 402, 403; Sendai Framework on Disaster Risk Reduction 400, 403; Ten Essentials for building resilience 402, 403 United Nations: Culture and development Resolution (2010) 547–548; New Urban Agenda (NUA) 290, 363; Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 44, 275, 287, 290–291, 363, 364, 549 urban cultural landscape ideology 6, 48–49; case study examples 56–63; charters and declarations 55–56; cultural landscapes and urbanization 52–53; Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) 53–54; human side and heritagization process 49–52; landscape link 54; conclusion 63–64 urban green spaces 218 urban morphology 149 urban palimpsests 29–30; case studies 31–44; concept 30–31; and HUL approach 44 urbanisation see rural development strategy Usui, M. 486 Uzbekistan 86–90, 92–93; Amu Darya (Oxus River) 96; Ashgabat 85; Bukhara 83–84, 86, 88, 89, 92, 193, 194, 195, 332–333; Geographic Information Systems (GIS) 193, 193–194, 195; Itchan Kala 193, 194, 195; Khiva 68, 85, 86, 87, 92; Monument Passports 183;

654

Index Samarkand 84, 87, 88, 91, 92, 93, 193, 194, 339, 342–343, 343; Shakhrisyabz 80–81, 81, 92; Tashkent 85, 90–91, 94 Uzzell, D. 51 Valletta Principles 413 Van Oers, R. 3, 44, 50–51, 53, 54, 55, 64, 435, 610, 631 Varanasi, India 278–279, 280, 280–283, 282, 285, 285–286, 287; see also ghats on the Ganga, Varanasi, India Veldpaus, L. et al. 49 Venice Charter 413, 530, 552 vernacular urbanisms 67; see also water urbanisms VHP (Vishva Hindu Prasad) 118 Vienna Memorandum 2, 53 Vietnam 30; Buddhism 31; Dalat 29; Hanoi 31–35, 32, 34, 104; Hoi An 35, 37–39, 38, 349, 350, 354–357, 355; Hue 35, 123–124; ILO-Quang Nam Province project 37; Sapa 29; Vinh 35, 36 viewshed 218 Vigan, Philippines 60–62, 61 Vinh, Vietnam 35, 36 Viollet-le-Duc, E. E. 99 Vishva Hindu Prasad (VHP) 118 visual research methodologies (VRM) 167, 169; and ‘sense of place’ 169–171 visual traits of natural features 219 Waldheim, C. 364 Wall, G. 101 Wang, H.-J. 122 Wang, J. 299, 563 Wang, J. C. 358 Warsaw, Poland 100 Washington Charter 55, 413 water urbanisms 6–7, 67–68; Banaue Rice Terraces, Philippines 71, 71–73, 72, 77; hiti water system of Nepal 68, 68–71, 69, 77, 397, 398; India 410–411; indigenous water urbanism as in prospect 75–77; polders of Bangladesh 73–75, 74, 77; conclusion 77–78 Waterton, E. 45, 598 Wedge, J. H. 511 Wells, J. C. et al. 100, 107, 124 Westgarthtown, Melbourne, Australia 39, 40 Whitehead, M. 323n3 WHITRAP 318, 321 Whittlesey, D. 30 Wijesuriya, G. 491 Wilson, K. L. N. 601 Winter, T. 465–466, 552 WMF see World Monuments Fund Wong, H. 321 Wonga, S. 510, 512 World Health Organization 199 World Heritage List 56

World Heritage Litigation 486–487 World Heritage Sites 49, 183, 196n1, 329; Cultural Routes 297–298; natural heritage values 220–221; tentative lists 357–360; conclusion 343–344; see also Agra, India; Ahmedabad, India; Banaue Rice Terraces, Philippines; Bukhara, Uzbekistan; Chiang Mai, Thailand; Galle Fort, Sri Lanka; George Town, Malaysia; Hampi, Karnataka, India; Hoi An, Vietnam; Kandy, Sri Lanka; Kathmandu Valley, Nepal; Levuka, Fiji; Lijiang, China; Luang Prabang, Laos; Macao, China; Mauritius; Melaka, Malaysia; Mumbai, India; Samarkand, Uzbekistan; Silk Roads; Vigan, Phlippines; Xidi and Hongcun, China; Yazd, Iran; Zhouzhuang, China World Heritage Sites management 14–15, 329; changing understanding of heritage and management 331–332; integrated management systems 329–330, 330; lessons learned 339–343; managing urban properties in Asia 332–339; conclusion 343–344; see also information management systems (IMS) for cultural World Heritage World Monuments Fund (WMF) 453, 485 Wuchatsch, R. 39 Wuhan, Hubei, China 222, 223, 223 Wurundjeri’s Melbourne, Australia 19–20, 508; Australia as aboriginal landscape 508–511; Berak 508, 511, 512, 520–521; Birrarung Marr and Barak building 518–521, 519, 520; elements of Wurundjeri Country 508, 509, 513–515, 514, 514; Koorong Project 522; language 509–511, 510, 517; Melbourne 508, 516; Narrm 508, 510–511, 512, 513, 516, 521; Woiwurrung-speaking clan groups 509, 510, 511, 517; Wurundjeri Country, urban planning and heritage management 516–518; Wurundjeri Country yesterday and today 511–513; Wurundjeri today 521–522; conclusion 522–523 Wylie, J. 50 Xi’an Declaration 55 Xidi and Hongcun, China 569, 572–573 Xu, H.-G. 358 Yang, C. 106 Yang, J. 299 Yangdong, South Korea 105 Yangon, Myanmar 118, 122, 631–632, 634; key events 636; tourism, heritage planning and social responsibility 636, 637, 641, 642; tourism planning 635; urban conservation 632; Yangon Heritage Strategy 633, 634–635, 636; Yangon Heritage Trust 633, 636, 637 Yazd, Iran 584, 585, 589; boundaries of heritage site 591, 592; challenges of heritage management 594; inscription as World Heritage 589–590, 590, 591; institutional structure of heritage management 591, 592–593; laws and regulations 593–594; qanats 76, 585, 589; social and economic issues 594–595 Yi Jing 200

655

Index Yogyakarta, Indonesia see Kotagede, Yogyakarta; Kotagede, Yogyakarta: community-based postdisaster rehabilitation Yu, K.-J. 299 Zavisca, J. 90

zero-carbon cities 366 Zhao, X. 104 Zhao’an, Fujian,China 225, 225 Zhouzhuang, China 358–360, 359, 571 Zilenski, W. 54 Zukin, S. 415, 472

656