ACHIEVING COMMUNITY OBJECTIVES
Communities exercise a number
of important responsibilities on behalf of their
citizens. These may occur in the areas of transport,
hygiene, shelter and social services. Communities
also encourage development to provide an adequate
financial base for desired activity and suitable
levels of employment. In historic towns of special
importance, protection of a community's heritage
should not occur at the expense of goals in these
areas; by the same token, these goals should not
necessarily take precedence over those of conservation.
Adoption of an "integrated conservation"
approach implicitly acknowledges the extent to which
actions to support conservation and other community
social, cultural and economic goals must support
each other. It also suggests the degree to which
conservation and other programmes must employ indicators
which cross a wide spectrum of social / cultural
/ economic areas, if their effectiveness is to be
fully measured and improved.
Even though cultural and social
benefits are difficult to quantify in terms as precise
as those for financial aspects, it is important
to describe these qualitative measures as accurately
as possible. In recent years, economists have begun
to measure the qualitative benefits of heritage
conservation as well as those of other social programmes;
their experiences and case studies are only now
beginning to provide useful reference standards.
Similarly, it is possible to identify
a great number of financial indicators of interest
to conservation programmes, including vacancy rates
for residential and commercial tenancies, annual
spending on property rehabilitation and repair,
and the municipal tax base. In urban centres, population
instability, industrial obsolescence, decaying municipal
infrastructure, shifting patterns of use, the desire
to increase motor vehicle accessibility (usually
at the expense of the pedestrian environment), the
gentrification of older residential and commercial
neighbourhoods, and the growth of uncontrolled tourism
are just a few of the over-riding trends in which
conservation policies must function.
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HOUSING
Housing in historic towns can
present special problems. Often below contemporary
standards of space, safety, stability or sanitation,
residential improvement may easily result in the
destruction of its historic qualities. If associated
costs can not be borne by the residents, then upgrading
efforts may also result in their displacement, and
erosion of the neighbourhood's social make-up. This
phenomenon, known as "gentrification", may be regretted
as much as the loss of physical forms and detail
to the the introduction of incompatible new materials
and systems.
Many successful approaches have
been adopted in historic cities to address these
major problems :
- technological advances
have permitted dampness and other unhealthy states
to be controlled; for example, damp walls may
now be separated from the sources of ground moisture
with the insertion of damp-proof courses;
- smaller apartments have
been combined to create larger, more suitable
units without unnecessary sacrifice of external
forms;
- subsidies from public
authorities have allowed extra costs of housing
improvement to be met by the public purse;
- citizens have been encouraged
to form co-operatives and to become owners of
their own properties, at preferential interest
rates and pay-back periods.
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MUNICIPAL SERVICES
Though archaeological vestiges
within some of the cities on the World Heritage
List suggest early concern for the supply of water
and sewage, these examples seem rare Many of these
early systems are now in a state of perpetual decay,
and quite unable to meet the increasing needs of
the cities above them, without radical rebuilding.
Unfortunately, in historic
cities, the ongoing trenching necessary to repair
and upgrade these systems results in greater and
greater destruction of below-ground archaeological
resources. The palliative of "archaeological salvage"
only permits recovery of a fraction of threatened
material, and most such excavation occurs without
adequate archaeological supervision. Equally, the
desire to improve public transit with underground
tunnelling, or to improve the aesthetic appearance
of historic districts by burying communications
wiring or underground parking may threaten the integrity
of the archaeologically valuable substratum.
Approaches to maintaining
and upgrading municipal services to modern standards
which do not compromise conservation goals will
likely focus on:
- building-in long-term
quality in materials choice and fabrication in
below ground water and sewer systems;
- questioning the conventional
wisdom (e.g. the view that electrical services,
or parking are always best hidden from view below
ground).
- preparing surveys of
archaeological potential, which permit assessment
of risk with each proposed subterranean intrusion.
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TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT
Vehicular traffic is generally
perceived as a threat to the integrity of historic
towns. The scale and pattern of streets created
before the arrival of the motor car do not easily
provide the convenience and accessibility that modern
day motorists or coach companies might desire.
At the same time, improving the
ability of the roads system to deliver people and
goods to the workplace and customers to the marketplace
is generally perceived as critical to a city's economic
functioning. Historic cities seek traffic management
systems which increase accessibility without detriment
to heritage character. Analysis of options for improvement
should therefore rely on criteria free from untested
assumptions.
For example, in dealing with an
access problem, criteria should address the need
to bring a given number of people (rather than vehicles)
to work in a given time period; in dealing with
servicing, criteria should address the need to provide
adequate service to stores during reasonable hours,
not simply the need to provide front unloading space
for service vehicles; in dealing with parking problems
of inadequate space, applicable criteria should
address adequacy and type of spaces required to
meet needs by sectors in a city, rather than simply
generalizing about global numbers of spaces required;
and in managing the clustering of tour buses around
important destinations, attention should give priority
to provision of adequate points for drop-off and
pick-in preference to simply increasing parking
spaces.
- traffic "calming": measures
which inhibit driver behaviour, including introduction
of speed bumps, narrowing junctions and placing
carriageways and sidewalks on the same level;
- "park and ride" schemes
: measures providing good public transit connections
to the center of the city;
- mini-trans-shipment depots
: small storage depots within pedestrian precincts,
permitting further distribution to retail outlets
by means of small carts or trolleys.
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PEDESTRIAN EXPERIENCE
In many historic cities, the security
of the pedestrian environment has been threatened
by efforts to improve motor-car accessibility. In
the last two decades, growing awareness of the value
of maintaining the amenity offered to cities by
pedestrian precincts has reversed the trend of the
earlier part of the century.
Older European cities have almost
all delineated walking zones, usually along major
shopping streets. Vehicular access is usually limited
to service vehicles at relatively quiet periods
of the day. In many cases, these districts work
very well from a variety of points of view:
- maintaining oasis of
relative tranquility for citizens, free from the
noise and pollution of main traffic arteries;
- protecting older districts
from the physical wear and tear occasioned by
cars and trucks;
- maintaining a sense of
civility and visual order in districts unformed
by the needs of the car, where for example, traditional
paving patterns and materials have been maintained;
- acting as magnets for
local residents and visitors, and thus stimulating
economic vitality.
Other parts of the world, envious
of the older, humanly- scaled environments of Europe
which offer such scope for developing pedestrian
experience have often attempted to import these
ideas, with mixed results. In North Africa, for
example, such efforts have not usually been successful.
While it has been possible to re-create the amenity
of European pedestrian environments, economic upgrading
has not always accompanied these efforts. In North
America, the greater distances between work and
home, the greater dependence on the car and different
attitudes to leisure have resulted in the long-term
business and activity declines observed in most
North American pedestrian zones.
The success of pedestrianization
schemes will usually follow from analysis of a broad
range of factors, including social and economic
patterns, in the planning stages.
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TOURISM
Many historic cities, confronting
decaying or obsolete economies, recognize their
special character as an asset which can be exploited
for economic gain. If unmanaged, the development
of these assets for tourism may present as many
problems as it solves, increasing the degradation
of popular historic structures and spaces, and alienating
the local population both from the visitors and
the valuable sites they have come to see.
As well, economic benefits cited
as accruing to the community, often end up in the
hands of outsiders or remote tour operators. Many
towns, having suffered at the hands of indiscriminate
tourism, are beginning to develop a broader approach,
called "heritage tourism", or "cultural tourism".
This approach continues to view tourism as a development
opportunity, and historic quarters as prime assets
- but the goal has broadened to offer tourists not
just destinations, but experiences. The approach
expands contact between visitors and visited, encourages
small-scale local economic opportunities (e.g. bed
and breakfast), kindles the civic pride of "hosts",
disperses tourists over a wider spectrum of activities
and sites and keeps much of the investment in local
hands.
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