URBAN HERITAGE AND SUSTAINABILITY IN THE AGE OF GLOBALISATION (2025)

2024, Open Book Publishers (OBP)

This book offers a deep exploration of architectural and urban heritage, using interdisciplinary and intercultural approaches to assess how historical, social, economic and political factors have impacted heritage development and its sustainability. It sheds light on the stakes of heritage conservation, management and maintenance in today’s globalised world.Through detailed studies of historic cities, the book explores both the tangible aspects of their built heritage (urban fabric, housing design, construction methods and materials for thermal comfort) and the intangible components of local communities (including identities, cultures, religions, values and ways of life) in diverse case studies in Egypt, France, India, Iran, Jordan, Morocco, Syria and Tunisia.By addressing not only urban and architectural heritage but also socio-cultural, environmental and political issues—including economic challenges and climatic concerns—this book is an essential resource for scholars and researchers across fields, including architecture, civil engineering, urban planning, sociology and philosophical anthropology.

Conserving the relevance of heritage: corrective actions for sustainable historical fabric of the Arab city

2015

Traditional quarters represent a valuable cultural and economic asset in the contemporary city, for which conservation policies are developed. Between the urban fabric, architectural character and the human asset, traditional quarters exhibit their distinctiveness and authenticity. What is unjustifiably ignored is the fact that traditional quarters have never been frozen in time. Rather, they are a product of multi-layered additions of cultures, styles, social and economical development. In their preservation of such history, policies have largely ignored economy, industrial and spatial logic on the old quarters while focusing on style of buildings in forms of touristic attractions and images of the past. Modernity was the aim of every process of architectural production, and technology played significant part in every construction at all historical periods. This paper investigates the tendency to modernity that shaped the traditional quarters of the Arab city and how best new build...

Notes on Urban and Architectural Heritage Conservation of Historic Cores in the Middle East: A Critical Review, Evaluation and Recommendations

2024

The historic cores in the Middle East (after this referred to as "ME") region, a fragmented and thoroughly changed region during the 19th and 20th centuries, have many identities and authenticity challenges. Unfortunately, the rapid development rate, economic and rapid urbanisation, fast population increase, conflicts, lack of appreciation and awareness, and increasing market values gradually replace urban heritage buildings with newer, higher-density identity-less structures. This paper attempts to present the features, obstacles, challenges, and opportunities facing the urban built heritage at the historical cores and the neighbourhood within their physical, cultural and social life in the ME. It analyses questions for maintaining identity and authenticity, the future of traditional physical, technical and functional architectural elements paradigms and their contemporary reinterpretation and rethinking conservation from sustainable technical culture to socio-cultural sustainability. The paper investigates several issues related to the conservation concepts of the urban and architectural heritage in the ME. Special attention is given to the decision-making framework in the conservation practice, the destruction of the traditional urban heritage, and the destruction resulting from the ME region's political changes (modernisation). The focus is to identify, discuss and analyse how to deal with the challenges of maintaining the identity and authenticity of their historic urban cores. Finally, guidelines and framework recommendations are made for possible measures that may be taken for social sustainability.

Heritage Buildings' Façades as Facilitators for Local Sustainable Development: The Case of Cairo's El Korba Area

Heritage Journal, 2022

Previous research has highlighted the correlation between the design of the built environment and sustainable development, underscoring how buildings have the potential to accelerate the realization of the SDGs. However, the specific contribution of built heritage to the SDGs have been seldom studied, and little research has attempted to link built heritage architectural features with sustainable development. This research examines how heritage façades, and the street-level activities they instigate, contribute to local sustainable development. The researchers build on existing knowledge to develop a framework that links façade features with the SDGs. The framework is used to reexamine several case studies in El Korba, located in Heliopolis, Cairo (Egypt). Many researchers have studied this area architecturally, historically, and socially, but no research has studied its possible contribution to local sustainable development. The findings highlight how those heritage façades serve as a means for sustainable development on the social, economic, and environmental levels. The paper also underscores how the deterioration of this built heritage location risks diluting the architectural features that drive their contribution to the SDGs. The findings also substantiate several of the connections in the framework, which enables future researchers to link the design features of heritage building façades and the SDGs and document how different built heritage locations support sustainable development.

'Urban Heritage, Development and Sustainability' book review, Context 150, 07 2017

Context, 2017

Urban Heritage, Development and Sustainability forms part of the same Routledge series ‘Key Issues in Cultural Heritage’ as Heritage and Globalisation, a review of which appeared in Context 123. Similar in format (it is a collection of 16 essays contributed by academics and practitioners), the book offers a spectrum of reflections and case studies on models and practices in urban heritage. With a particular focus on tensions between conservation and development, Urban Heritage explores the disconnection between international frameworks and national and local implementation; assesses how international heritage branding can legitimise unsustainable practices at national and local level; and champions bottom-up approaches for the negotiation and realisation of socio-culturally inclusive conservation strategies.

World Heritage, Urban Design and Tourism: Three Cities in the Middle East

2014

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, ...

The diversity of architectural and urban heritage in southern Jordan and northwestern Saudi Arabia: The local experience of the two countries in conserving heritage and its development.

The process of conserving architectural heritage is a societal perquisite and a necessity for this generation, for it brings together the past, present and the future that is passed by generations to strengthen the existing civilizations. Heritage is what best portrays identity and originality, and is considered the first mark of civilizations that dominated then perished in the area of the architectural heritage across Jordan and Saudi Arabia; our study focus, their architectural heritage is found to be a distinguished art and a legacy that differ from the rest of the region by its variations as a result of the many historic eras that both countries have witnessed. This paper will address the issue of conserving architecture and urban heritage and its development within the Jordanian and Saudi experience, which is characterized by its abundance and diversity. The paper will review the concepts of development of the process of preserving architectural heritage, where not only the customary processes were approached but the community and environment were included as well. The primary research question is determined by the nature of the factors that influence the attainment of the architectural and urban preservation approach, which will be stated at the end of this study. The paper at hand presume that any city acquires its architectural character from the consistency and harmony between its components over various successive eras, hence, one of the most important and notable projects that was implemented in southern Jordan and northwestern Saudi Arabia will be examined, this project is connected to the preservation of architectural and urban heritage as well as the rehabilitation of these areas, an analysis of the steps of execution of selected models that include the most important of these areas will be conducted. The paper aims to identify the components that ensure that the preservation process is auspicious and interactive with the surrounding environment in a sustainable and satisfactory by the onlookers. This study will adopt the descriptive analytical method with which information will be collected, field visits, photographs and personal interviews with the concerned parties will be used. The acquired data will be analyzed to introduce results and recommendations.

Urban and Architectural Heritage Conservation within Sustainability [Working Title]

2019

Cultural Heritage and Sustainable Urban Development: the Case of Port Said city in Egypt

Cogent Social Sciences , 2022

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) assure the importance of protecting and safeguarding the world’s cultural and natural heritage. Furthermore, culture is now considered the fourth dimension when addressing sustainability after the environmental, social, and economic dimensions. This paper investigates cultural heritage-related dimensions in Port Said City in Egypt, focusing on the Arab district, and addresses the relation between the tangible and intangible heritage to achieve sustainable urban development. These dimensions are embedded in the distinctive architecture, urban settings, and the famous resistance festival under threat, “The Allenby festival” The authors argue that perceiving the intangible festival’s heritage is strongly connected with perceiving the urban and architectural heritage and building a cultural management framework that guarantees the sustainable urban development of the Arab district precisely and Port Said city. This paper aims to point out the unique values related to cultural heritage and community, given the critical role in linking contexts and tangible urban heritage with the intangible experience.

Heritage and sustainable development; bound-partners in a believable future

Two global notions are improving their importance: heritage and sustainable development – obviously involving safeguard and climate changes. New transformations in urban areas are showing the great tension existing among heritage and development needs. Heritage and Sustainable development still need, public interventions with the purpose of implement a virtuous and self standing development strategy. The great Maghreb’s towns will be presented as study case: challenges, chances and realities. It’s largely clear that the main issues to manage heritage and sustainability at urban scale are not any more technical ones. The issue is a global policy able to combine together the countless partial strategies and interests existing in human settlements. Generally speaking, both heritage and sustainability are requesting public strategies and policies; therefore a transformation of general urban actors in advised ones is needed. Keywords: Maghreb, Casablanca, Tunis, Algiers, sustainable development, modern heritage.

Sustainable Heritage Development: Learning from Urban Conservation of Heritage Projects in Non Western Contexts

Urban conservation has been a subject of academic and professional discourse for over three decades. Conservation in this paper is seen as an umbrella term that covers a wide spectrum of issues that can be classified under three categories: socio-physical, socio-cultural, and environmental concerns. It is also manifested as a process of evolutionary development which involves preserving, restoring, and adapting old structures, while introducing new ones; a process that respects the continuity of history and tradition, the needs of inhabitants and their cultural aspirations. This understanding indicates that urban conservation is a process of continuous yet controlled interventions in the environment. The extent and the degree of such an intervention is dependent upon crucial factors that include the value system adopted by the society, the resources available, and the cultural and environmental context within which such an intervention takes place. With an ultimate goal to discern lessons from urban conservation practices, urban rehabilitation and adaptive re-use is discussed with reference to a number of non-western case studies. The paper aims at exploring the merits of six conservation and rehabilitation projects which have received considerable coverage and recognition on a national and international level while they have not been put into contextual comparison with others. Merits of these projects are analyzed and highlighted in this article to work as an archetype for similar projects around the world. The paper concludes that to maintain sustainability of the revitalisation and urban conservation approaches, the typical urban tissue and essential qualities of the historic areas and of the life of the communities residing there should be maintained, while adapting the physical structures and activities to some of today's requirements.