World Heritage, Urban Design and Tourism

Three Cities in the Middle East

Luna Khirfan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781134784790
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Kunst
• Subtopic: Museumswissenschaft

Urban planners and conservationists in historic cities around the world grapple with the competing interests of conservation, urban design, and economic and social development. This book offers an interdisciplinary approach to the key relationships between heritage conservation, city space design, and tourism development in historic cities, linking theory and practice in a unique way. The book offers an investigation of three Middle Eastern historic cities, Aleppo, Acre and Salt, all of which face significant challenges of heritage conservation, adaptation to contemporary needs, and tourism development. It presents practical scenarios for the conservation and design of historic urban spaces and the development of sustainable tourism, from the perspective of planners, local communities and international tourists. The author offers a comparative approach which transcends political strife and provides valuable lessons for the other cities inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List, especially those in developing countries.

PART I
The Context

Chapter 1
Historic Urban Landscapes: World Heritage and the Contradictions of Tourism

The Evolution of World Heritage

An awareness of the value of the built heritage was heightened following the First World War and the destruction of numerous historically significant monuments in Europe and beyond. The notion of what came to be known as ‘world heritage’ evolved in 1959 when Egypt appealed to the international community, represented by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), to save numerous archaeological monuments in Nubia between Sudan and Egypt that were threatened by imminent flooding due to the construction of the Aswan High Dam. UNESCO spearheaded the international efforts to relocate the temple of Abu Simbel in which experts from around the globe participated. These experts also contributed to the excavation and the documentation of multiple other sites affected by the flooding (Hassan, 2007: 89). In addition, UNESCO garnered international financial support from nearly 50 countries that collectively contributed half of the total US $80 million required for these efforts (UNESCO World Heritage Centre, 2008). This incident ‘established a precedent in which the concept of “world heritage” has emerged as a principal notion in archaeological circles’ (Hassan, 2007: 89). Simultaneously, however, this same notion of a collective world heritage also created a sense of entitlement among the donor countries that demanded to acquire half of all the archaeological finds in Nubia. Consequently, entire structures were dispersed across museums around the world, including the Temple of Dandur that is exhibited in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Temple of Ellesiya that sits in the Egyptian Museum of Turin (Säve-Söderberg, 1987). Several other international campaigns followed at other sites such as Venice in Italy and Mohenjodaro in Pakistan (Hassan, 2007; UNESCO World Heritage Centre, 2008) throughout which the notion of world heritage gained further prominence until it was eventually cemented through the UNESCO Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (henceforth the Convention). The General Conference – UNESCO’s governing body – adopted the Convention in November of 1972 (UNESCO, 1972). Thereafter, UNESCO established the World Heritage Center and entrusted it to coordinate with the State Parties – that is member states that had ratified the Convention – on all matters related to the World Heritage List. The World Heritage Center directs the preparation of tentative lists; the nomination and inscription on the World Heritage List; the management of international and emergency assistance; the organization of training courses; and the monitoring activities (UNESCO, 1992–2014a). Three advisory bodies offer expert assistance to UNESCO and the World Heritage Center: the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) and the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property¹ (ICCROM) advise on issues related to the conservation of cultural heritage including training (UNESCO 2008) while the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) evaluates the nominations of natural heritage.

A committee known as the World Heritage Committee² (henceforth, the Committee) was entrusted with establishing and defining the criteria for inscription on the World Heritage List (UNESCO, 1972: Articles 11.2 and 11.5). At the request of this Committee, the conservation experts at ICOMOS prepared in 1976 a document titled the Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention (henceforth, the Operational Guidelines). In this document, two sets of criteria were specified for inscription on the World Heritage List: six for cultural heritage and four for natural heritage (Jokilehto et al., 2008; UNESCO, 1977: Article 5.ii). Between 1977 and 2013 the Operational Guidelines underwent 16 revisions, and they continue to play a significant role in regulating all the procedures pertaining to world heritage (UNESCO, 1977; UNESCO, 1978). Each State Party is encouraged to generate an inventory – a tentative list – of all the properties that it may potentially seek to inscribe on the World Heritage List (UNESCO, 2008: Article 17.62). Only properties that have been on the Tentative List for at least one year may be nominated for the World Heritage List (UNESCO, 2008: Articles 62.67 and 62.128).

AlSayyad has observed that the term heritage ‘derives from the Old French eritage, meaning property which devolves by right of inheritance in a process involving a series of linked hereditary successions’ (AlSayyad, 2001: 2). Indeed, UNESCO translated this notion of inherited property when it defined ‘cultural heritage’ as consisting of one or a combination of ‘monuments, groups of buildings and sites’ (UNESCO World Heritage Centre, 2008: 3). The Convention offered detailed definitions for each of these three elements whereas monuments refer to ‘architectural works, works of monumental sculpture and painting, elements or structures of an archaeological nature, inscriptions, cave dwellings and combinations of features which are of outstanding universal value from the point of view of history, art or science’. Likewise, groups of buildings refer to ‘groups of separate or connected buildings which, because of their architecture, their homogeneity or their place in the landscape, are of outstanding universal value from the point of view of history, art or science’. And lastly, sites are the ‘works of man or the combined works of nature and man, and areas including archaeological sites which are of outstanding universal value from the historical, aesthetic, ethnological or anthropological point of view’ (UNESCO, 1972: 3). Historic towns were typically included within the ‘groups of buildings’ category until the 1987 Operational Guidelines, which, under ‘groups of buildings’ distinguished between abandoned historic towns, inhabited historic towns and contemporary towns (UNESCO, 1987: Article 24.i, ii and iii). Then in 2011 the Records of the General Conference of UNESCO proposed a Recommendation for Historic Urban Landscapes (UNESCO, 2011a), which eventually yielded ‘A New International Instrument: the proposed UNESCO Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL)’ (UNESCO, 2011b).

The World Heritage List and the Historic Urban Landscape

While a successful inscription on the World Heritage List is a significant feat, the world heritage status brings about a profound effect on the historic city, bringing to bear interventions that significantly affect it physically, morphologically and socio-culturally. Most notably is the attention that world heritage destinations attract from the tourism industry especially, the influx of tourists and the irreversible negative impacts of tourism development (Di Giovine, 2009; Rakić and Chambers, 2007). Unmanageably large tourist numbers are especially problematic for historic cities, where entry controls such as fees are difficult to impose (Frey and Steiner, 2010: 10). Furthermore, sites that are inscribed on the World Heritage List receive only minimum funding from UNESCO³ (UNESCO World Heritage Centre, 2008). Given that thus far 238 cities have been inscribed on the World Heritage List (The Organization of World Heritage Cities, 2011), there is a dire need to address the financial challenges of urban conservation and development and devise methods that balance the needs of the local communities and the international tourists (Rakić, 2007). Indeed, one can detect such a need by tracing the activities of numerous institutions and organizations that have been founded to aid cities inscribed on the World Heritage List, including the Organization for World Heritage Cities⁴ (The Organization of World Heritage Cities, 2011). Also, because UNESCO was ‘concerned by the multitude of World Heritage Cities facing difficulties in reconciling conservation and development’, it founded in 1996 the World Heritage Cities Programme (UNESCO, 1992–2014a; also personal correspondence with Kirsten Manz from the World Heritage Cities Programme). These concerns had surfaced in the wake of the debates over the Wien-Mitte train station in Vienna, Austria – a city on the World Heritage List – where a contemporary structure was designed (van Oers, 2010). Consequently, the World Heritage Center organized a conference titled ‘World Heritage and Contemporary Architecture – Managing the Historic Urban Landscape’ in Vienna in May 2005. The participants adopted what came to be known as the Vienna Memorandum that outlined the ‘principles and guidelines that promoted an integrated and harmonious relationship between conservation and new urban developments in order to preserve the integrity of the historic urban landscape’ (van Oers, 2010: 3). However, because UNESCO also recognized that it has been over 30 years since its 1976 Recommendation Concerning the Safeguarding and Contemporary Role of Historic Areas (van Oers, 2010), it decided in 2005⁵ that the Vienna Memorandum should constitute the draft for a new recommendation that would ‘complement and update the existing ones on the subject of conservation of historic urban landscapes, with special reference to the need to link contemporary architecture to the urban historic context’ (UNESCO, 2005b: Decision 29 COM 5D). This new recommendation, with the provisional title ‘Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape’ was adopted at the 36th General Conference of UNESCO in the Fall of 2011 (UNESCO, 1992–2014a, UNESCO, 2011b).

The following section addresses the conflicts that arise from planning for tourism in historic cities in general, and in World Heritage cities in particular.

The Contradictions of Tourism and the Historic Urban Landscape

The World Tourism Organization defined tourism as ‘the activities of persons traveling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes’⁶ (World Tourism Organization, 1995: Article 1.1–19). While this definition focused on the demand side, tourism nevertheless is an important economic activity for the supply side as well – in this case, for historic cities particularly, as their cultural heritage constitutes an important resource that attracts the international tourists (Graham, 2002: 1007). Therefore, and especially in developing countries with limited choices for economic growth combined with an abundance of cultural heritage, tourism constitutes an important economic sector for some cities, regions and even nations (Ashworth and Tunbridge, 1990). For example, tourism ranks second among the national sources of revenue after foreign aid for Jordan (ANSAmed, 2013), where Petra, a World Heritage Site famous for its rock-carved façade from the second to third century BC, is considered the ‘oil of Jordan’ (Gray, 2002).

De-industrialization and the subsequent deteriorating economic situation in the developed and developing worlds respectively gave rise to a global shift towards the service industries – tourism included (Chang et al., 1996; Harvey, 2001). Tourism creates direct and indirect employment opportunities, generates a multiplier effect through the recycling of tourists’ expenditure in the local economy and stimulates local products such as souvenirs and crafts (Bosselman et al., 1999; Graham et al., 2000). Similar to other industries, however, tourism is susceptible to cycles, competition and trends. One such contemporary trend is alternative tourism that marks a shift from mass tourism (that is, organized guided tours) toward experience-based tourism in historic urban landscapes (Mieczkowski, 1995). The latter, as Chapter 6 discusses, produces complex relations between the hosts and the tourists, more so than in confined resorts for example, because the hosts and tourists share the same urban space and simultaneously avail themselves of its amenities and services (Chang et al., 1996; Law, 1996). The consequences of this shift are identifiable both at the demand side (that is, the tourists), and at the supply side (that is, the historic urban landscape).

To begin with, the tourists, who constitute the demand side, seek urban heritage destinations with distinctive local identities, preferably destinations that represent the ‘other’ that differs from their own socio-cultural backgrounds (MacCannell, 1999). Echtner and Prasad (2003) have identified three types of such ‘otherness’ that are specifically based on tourism demand from the developed to the developing world. These are known as the ‘three “Un”-myths’ namely, the unchanged, the unrestrained and the uncivilized (Echtner and Prasad, 2003). Historic urban landscapes in developing countries, with their distinctively local aura, are perceived as timeless and static in past times in a typical manifestation of the myth of the unchanged⁷ (Echtner and Prasad, 2003: 668–9). Experience-based urban heritage tourism intimates that the sense of place ensues from both contemporary and historic processes, which, combined, contribute to a distinctive place experience. Interestingly, planning thus far lacks the tools that enable us to define what elements constitute a distinctive experience of the historic urban landscape, and by extension, what tools enable us to evaluate these experiential elements. Such gaps in the analytical capacity render it difficult to plan for the future sustainability of these experiences. These challenges act in concert with additional limitations on the supply side, as historic urban destinations strive to differentiate their distinctiveness in an increasingly competitive global market through deploying a triad of place-making strategies that includes image marketing, urban rehabilitation and tourism development (Gold and Gold, 1995). Collectively, these strategies fashion place distinctiveness either prior to or after the arrival of the tourists at the historic city. Prior to their arrival, image marketing influences the destination choices of potential tourists by demonstrating the historic urban landscape’s unique selling preposition (USP) or its distinctiveness. Once these tourists arrive at the historic city, their experiences are shaped through interventions that include historic conservation, urban design and urban rehabilitation as well as tourism de...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Plates
• List of Tables
• List of Abbreviations
• Note on Transliteration
• List of Foreign Words
• Acknowledgements
• Part I The Context
• Part II Place-making
• Part III Place Experience
• Bibliography
• Index