UN Habitat - Goals and Actions for Heritage Conservation

Below are the Goals and Actions established by UN Habitat as they relate to heritage conservation. It's a good check list for all of us to see if we are addressing the issues that need our attention. The section and paragraph numbers are the same as in the original Habitat document.

The Habitat Agenda Goals and Principles, Commitments and the Global Plan of Action

8. Conservation and rehabilitation of the historical and cultural heritage

152. Historical places, objects and manifestations of cultural, scientific, symbolic, spiritual and religious value are important expressions of the culture, identity and religious beliefs of societies. Their role and importance, particularly in the light of the need for cultural identity and continuity in a rapidly changing world, need to be promoted. Buildings, spaces, places and landscapes charged with spiritual and religious value represent an important element of stable and humane social life and community pride.

Conservation, rehabilitation and culturally sensitive adaptive reuse of urban, rural and architectural heritage are also in accordance with the sustainable use of natural and human made resources. Access to culture and the cultural dimension of development is of the utmost importance and all people should be able to benefit from such access.

Actions

153. To promote historical and cultural continuity and to encourage broad civic participation in all kinds of cultural activities, Governments at the appropriate levels, including local authorities, should:

(a) Identify and document, whenever possible, the historical and cultural significance of areas, sites, landscapes, ecosystems, buildings and other objects and manifestations and establish conservation goals relevant to the cultural and spiritual development of society;

(b) Promote the awareness of such heritage in order to highlight its value and the need for its conservation and the financial viability of rehabilitation;

(c) Encourage and support local heritage and cultural institutions, associations and communities in their conservation and rehabilitation efforts and inculcate in children and youth an adequate sense of their heritage;

(d) Promote adequate financial and legal support for the effective protection of the cultural heritage;

(e) Promote education and training in traditional skills in all disciplines appropriate to the conservation and promotion of heritage;

(f) Promote the active role of older persons as custodians of cultural heritage, knowledge, trades and skills.

154. To integrate development with conservation and rehabilitation goals, Governments at the appropriate levels, including local authorities, should:

(a) Recognize that the historical and cultural heritage is an important asset, and strive to maintain the social, cultural and economic viability of historically and culturally important sites and communities;

(b) Preserve the inherited historical settlement and landscape forms, while protecting the integrity of the historical urban fabric and guiding new construction in historical areas;

(c) Provide adequate legal and financial support for the implementation of conservation and rehabilitation activities, in particular through adequate training of specialized human resources;

(d) Promote incentives for such conservation and rehabilitation to public, private and nonprofit developers;

(e) Promote community based action for the conservation, rehabilitation, regeneration and maintenance of neighbourhoods;

(f) Support public and private sector and community partnerships for the rehabilitation of inner cities and neighbourhoods;

(g) Ensure the incorporation of environmental concerns in conservation and rehabilitation projects;

(h) Take measures to reduce acid rain and other types of environmental pollution that damage buildings and other items of cultural and historical value;

(i) Adopt human settlements planning policies, including transport and other infrastructure policies, that avoid environmental degradation of historical and cultural areas;

(j) Ensure that the accessibility concerns of people with disabilities are incorporated in conservation and rehabilitation projects.

Historic Preservation and America in the World - Part 2

Yesterday I wrote Part 1 of Historic Preservation and America in the World. That entry listed the first 10 of 20 reasons why it is important for historic preservation to be a key component of US foreign policy. Today's blog lists reasons 11-20 and tomorrow I'll discuss 10 ways to make that happen.

11. The adaptive reuse of historic buildings is fully compatible with participation in economic globalization, which is critical for stability and prosperity in most of the world.

12. Although neither the proponents nor the opponents of globalization recognize it, there is not one globalization, but two - economic globalization and cultural globalization. The first, while not without challenges, has measurable long term benefits; the second has short term negative social and political consequences, and long term negative economic consequences. The most vociferous opposition to globalization comes from those seeing and appropriately resisting cultural globalization. The adaptive reuse of historic buildings is one of the few strategies that simultaneously allows the beneficial participation in economic globalization, while mitigating the adverse impacts of cultural globalization.

13. Our having a policy encouraging and assisting historic preservation shows our respect for the local culture of each country.

14. There are aspects of other cultures that do not deserve our respect, rather warrant our reproach - the role of women in Saudi Arabia, the rule of law in Pakistan, freedom of worship in China, tolerance of diversity in India. But those cultural changes will not take place under the point of a gun, nor will they - however meritorious change may be - take place overnight. A strategy of our valuing local heritage resources, however, shows our respect for those cultures without condoning every aspect of them.

Medan, Sumatra, Indonesia

15. A historic preservation based policy is applicable anywhere and works equally well in Asia, Africa, or Latin America. 97% of the net world population growth in the next 20 years will be on those three continents.

16. Developing historic preservation as a key component of our international policy provides a useful vehicle for our learning about other cultures on an in-depth and sustained basis. The most vociferous cheerleader for American policies today would hardly claim we're the most culturally aware nation on earth.

Muharraq, Bahrain

17. As we assist other countries in identifying, protecting, and enhancing their historic resources, we are at the same time aiding them in building sustainable and marketable local skills. The crafts and trades required for the conservation of heritage resources are not jobs that can be lost overnight to a cheaper overseas supplier. They are also labor intensive jobs without being make-work jobs.

18. In much of the world the major problem is the migration from the countryside to the already overcrowded urban areas. A combination of technological advances, and protection and enhancement of local resources could be a useful tool in helping to stem that tide. Again, Main Street successes in small towns here are an example of that strategy.

19. Most of the world has begun to recognize (although this is an area where environmentalists in the United States still have much to learn) that the protection and enhancement of heritage resources is a central component of a comprehensive sustainable development strategy. Our national policy should advance that perspective both at home and abroad.

Baku, Azerbaijan

20. Encouraging, assisting, and supporting each country's identification, protection and enhancement of its historic resources is an excellent use of American "soft power", a set of tools too rarely used in recent years. Defense Secretary Gates recognized this deficiency noting recently that more of US foreign policy needs to be on the diplomatic side and less on the military side.

Tomorrow - 10 ways to make historic preservation an important part of US foreign policy.

Historic Preservation and America in The World - Part 1

This is an election year in the United States. Most of the readers of this blog are neither American nor, I suspect, much interested in American politics. I wrote this blog primarily for an American audience on the website of my domestic company PlaceEconomics. But it occurred to me that at least some of my international readers would be interested in attempts to get a larger role for heritage conservation in American foreign policy.

Increasingly in the US the multiple roles of historic preservation are becoming better known - downtown revitalization, neighborhood stabilization, job creation, heritage tourism, affordable housing, local economic development, sustainable development and others.

But less understood is the potential role that historic preservation could play as a central part of the international policy of the United States. So maybe 10 weeks before the general election is a good time to write about those roles.

There are deep divisions within the United States regarding America's actions in the world in the past few years. And there are strong arguments on every side about the rightness or wrongness of our current policies.

But no objective observer and no one who has traveled to foreign countries in recent years can escape three realities: 1) among both America's friends and America's opponents regard for the United States has fallen dramatically in recent years; 2) the regaining of the respect and the reestablishment of the leadership of the United States will take concentrated effort over a long period of time - perhaps a generation or more; and 3) essential to that effort will be the reengagement of the American government with international institutions, most of which were created through the leadership of the United States.

I firmly believe that incorporating historic preservation as a key component of the international policy of the United States can play a central role in our efforts to restore America's place of leadership in the world.

I know that sounds overreaching ... that compared with military bases, massive foreign aid programs to build roads, dams, and hospitals, the CIA, and big embassies, historic preservation cannot possibly play that important role.

I would suggest there are at least twenty reasons why historic preservation not only can play such a role, but needs to:

1. Of the five or six times President Bush has spoken to the General Assembly of the United Nations, and the dozens of initiatives he has announced there, his warmest reception came when he declared that the United States would rejoin UNESCO after an 18-year absence.


Banksa Staivnica, Slovakia

2. There is certainly great expertise in some aspects of historic preservation in other parts of the world, especially in Europe, that surpasses ours here in the United States. What we have exceeded in, however, is the market-based strategies for the adaptive reuse of historic buildings. That could constitute a meaningful contribution to countries around the globe.

3. America is the only military superpower left on earth and there are good reasons that it should remain so. However, if there is one vital lesson from September 11th and from Iraq it is this: having far and away the strongest military is not enough to protect the United States. Historic preservation could serve as a non-military component of a comprehensive strategy that recognizes military strength is necessary but not sufficient for sustained and credible world leadership or for world peace.

4. One of the great economic arguments for historic preservation in the United States is the positive local impact on jobs and household incomes that rehabilitation makes relative both to new construction and to most other economic activities. This aspect is demonstrably true in the rest of the world as well. There are few countries in the world where creating local jobs isn't a high priority, particularly in the developing world.

5. While both the private and public sectors play an important role in historic preservation in the US, it has always been the non-profit sector that has been the strongest advocate, the best educator, and the most innovative problem solver in preservation in America. Change in the developing world will be led by the NGO sector as well. Using historic preservation as a strategy abroad helps us assist in the establishment and effectiveness of NGOs elsewhere.

Singapore

6. A legitimate concern, particularly in World Heritage Cities, is that a heritage tourism strategy can often overwhelm the fragile historic resources. While heritage tourism will still be important, we have been developing the knowledge here as to how to protect those resources from overuse. More importantly, however, more than anywhere else on the globe, we have found economic uses for historic buildings far beyond heritage tourism. My best guess is that 95% of all the historic buildings in economically productive use in the United States have nothing to do with tourism.

Cuenca, Spain

7. A historic preservation based international relations component of American policy would be vastly less expensive for taxpayers than buying missiles for foreign armies or building dams of questionable economic utility and negative environmental impact.

8. We have seen in the US some of the downsides of economic growth and prosperity - suburban sprawl, declining city centers, loss of agricultural lands, environmental degradation, loss of affordable housing and others. Encouraging and assisting developing countries to adopt preservation-based strategies could be central in their preempting those problems before they occur.

9. Economic development is never a quick fix; it is always an incremental process. The demonstrable success of Main Street - economic development in the context of historic preservation - has reinforced the understanding and effectiveness of incrementalism. A historic preservation based component of international policy would inherently be an incremental one, thus both providing the time to regain our rightful position in world leadership and to dissuade the idea that there in an instant answer to difficult economic, political, and social problems.

Hanoi, Vietnam

10. As a parallel to incrementalism, a historic preservation based strategy is inherently long-term. Internationally among the strongest criticisms of American policy is that it seems to be exclusively short term. We certainly need to demonstrate more long-term thinking.


Tomorrow - 10 more reasons for historic preservation to be part of US foreign policy