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• Bütün sənətkarları və əlaqədar şəxsləri tarixi dəyərləri
qorumağa həvəsləndirmək üçün görülən tədbirlər. Şəhər mühi-
tində bütün strukturları qorumaq üçün birbaşa müdaxilə bir sıra
hallarda işə yaramır.
Important issues
Professor Ġsmail Serageldin:
– The protection of our
cultural heritage is an essential
part of protecting a sense of
identity, a sense of who we are,
that underlines that the present
is a link from a well defined
past to a future crafted by our
actions, guided by our aspira-
tions and our innate abilities,
individually and collectively
This cultural heritage covers
many things: literature, visual art, music buildings, customs,
ritual and the objects of everyday use. This essay will focus the
built environment and specifically historic cities. By that, we
mean the living historic cities, not the conservation of
monuments and archaeological sites. More focus will be given
to the living cities of the developing world, where the challenge
of protecting the heritage is greatest.
A critical social discourse
The rapidly urbanizing developing world faces many
social challenges. Population growth, influx of rural migrants,
and an evolving economic base, all challenge the ability of the
cities to provide jobs and livelihoods. Crumbling infrastructure,
poor and over stretched social services, rampant real estate spe-
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culation and weak governments all contribute to putting tre-
mendous pressure on the central cities, often loci of invaluable
architectural and urbanistic heritage, while the degradation of
the urban environment limits the abilities of a growing, shifting
homeless population to take root and establish communities
with a minimum standard of decent housing. The animosities
between groups rise and tensions within the cities fray the
social fabric as much as economic speculation transforms the
urban tissue. The inner historic cities are increasingly ghettoi-
zed, with the middle-class and economic activities either
fleeing the historic core or actively destroying its very fabric.
Against this spiral of mounting problems, a response is
possible. This positive response to the challenges of old cities
is possible, even under difficult conditions. To protect the ur-
ban context, the sense of place and to revitalize the old city is
indicative that a whole city can be kept alive, its economic base
rejuvenated and its links to the surrounding modern city
reinforced. This requires much more than a restoration project
it requires Herculean efforts at urban revitalization.
Within that context, some efforts have done much that is
innovative, creative and successful. Such projects, many of
which have been recognized internationally by various awards
and
publications, have each shown
in an exemplary fashion one
facet of the solution. The proper integration of the old city, res-
tored and renovated, into the fabric of the new metropolis is fea-
sible and has been successfully achieved in some places, like
Bukhara. In some cases, the linking of the restoration of the dif-
ferent buildings has been achieved to make the whole more than
the sum of the parts, as was done in Sanaa. In rare cases it has
been possible to transform the socio-economic base, as was do-
ne in Hafsia in Tunis. Problems of the poor and of potential
community strife were addressed in the Aranya project in Indo-
re, India. The intractable problems of the homeless were
addressed in the Hyderabad, Pakistan Project. And there are so