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Day
2 — Tuesday October 7, 2003
Roundtable I: Choosing Heritage Priorities |
| The moderator of this first round-table
session, Montréal Executive Committee Member Helen
Fotopulos, invited the first participant, Martin
Dickie, representative of the Vienna Old Town Conservation
Fund, to address the 100 or so delegates gathered in the Grand Hall
of the Bonsecours Market building. |
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Mr. Dickie began by asserting that urban
heritage, more than a mere touchstone to the past, must be seen as
an expression of a certain magnificence that “impresses
the hearts and minds,” that generates legitimate pride
on the part of its heirs — and, of course, fascination on the
part of tourists. This approach has certainly appeared to be successful
in Vienna, where protection and conservation efforts enjoy widespread
public support. These efforts are not limited to historical monuments;
they also affect private built heritage as well as — via the
designation of “protected zones” — landscape heritage,
which is an essential component of neighbourhood cultural identity.
There are currently 118 protected zones in Vienna, containing about
10,000 buildings. |
| Since these changes were enacted to the municipal
building code in 1972, several buildings that would not normally
be individually protected are nonetheless subject to heritage-conservation
regulations because they lie within urban zones that have been deemed
worthy of being preserved as is. Protection of typical small villages,
which have been merged with Vienna, is also part of the protected-zone
conservation concept. Since the new regulatory framework is likely
to infringe upon the rights of private owners of affected buildings,
the city, in an effort to prevent any conflict-of-interest cases,
has created a program to provide financial assistance for carrying
out the maintenance and restoration work related to these buildings’
conservation. The system has so far been hugely successful.
Lastly, Mr. Dickie spoke of the importance of physically
occupying heritage buildings, of calling on local talent to redevelop
them, of finding new uses for them and of making them part of citizens’
daily existence, so as to prevent their being seen as pointless
and their upkeep being viewed as a luxury.
http://www.wien.gv.at/english/
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| Next to speak was the Mayor of Xi’an,
Sun Qingyun, who reminded delegates that, as the
cradle of Chinese civilization and the Imperial Capital under 13 dynasties,
his city is more than 3,000 years old and enjoys considerable recognition
around the world. The sheer age of Xi’an, however, leads to
problems in deciding what to preserve, what to destroy, and what to
redevelop among the hodgepodge of styles and eras that have succeeded
one another during those 3,000 years. The problem is all the more
acute in that Xi’an is also a modern city, with a focus on high
technology and industrial expansion, and confronted with accelerated
urban development. |
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It soon became clear that any intervention by
the City of Xi’an would have to be part of a coherent, viable
master plan that would maintain a certain chronological “readability”
of the city’s long history; incorporate a practical vision
of urbanity that would allow smooth integration of the city’s
modern face; and (in the name of unavoidable profitability) take
into account the demands of international tourism.
Grounding their actions in systematic reliance
on and strict respect of historical sources, Xi’an municipal
authorities adopted a heritage policy and urban plan that gives
pride of place to the vestiges of the grandeur of the Tang Dynasty
while maintaining the significant elements of other dynasties, traditional-style
popular construction, and harmony of natural landscapes with built
heritage.
In choosing to alter as little as possible the
integrity of original elements by making only those modifications
and treatments designed to guarantee ongoing conservation, Xi’an
followed the strictest possible standards in its efforts to redevelop
such sites as the Great Wild Goose Pagoda (emblematic of the old
city and now bordered by expansive wooded grounds that evoke the
original site, known as the Tang Emperors’ Lotus Park) and
the adjacent City Wall, which at more than 600 years old is the
best-preserved wall in China. The Mayor of Xi’an concluded
his presentation by requesting the assistance of Unesco and friendly
countries for the recognition and protection of key sites, and declared:
“History has granted us glory! Consequently, it is our
duty to bequeath our heritage to the world, for it belongs not only
to the Chinese, but to all humankind.”
http://www.tourismchina-ca.com
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| Next, Gábor Demszky,
Mayor of Budapest, emphasized the vital importance that must be ascribed
to joint responsibility of civic authorities and private property
owners in matters of heritage preservation. Having adopted a heritage
policy aligned with Unesco principles, Budapest has committed to financially
supporting heritage preservation efforts agreed to by citizens. The
city’s program has a specific budget to provide interest-free
loans and renovation grants; though they do not cover all costs, subsidies
are awarded on the condition that buildings be restored to their original
state and not be resold for 10 years. |
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Like Montréal, however, Budapest has a
new city administration, the result of a recent merger of several
municipalities, and there are emerging problems specific to this
situation. The decentralization of municipal power, approved democratically,
creates 23 quasi-autonomous districts that have their own independent
budgets, the power to collect their own taxes, and full decision-making
authority regarding preservation (or not) of sites that fall within
their jurisdiction. The central administration cooperates with the
districts, but cannot force any decisions. “For this reason,”
said Mr. Demszky, “I urge those cities who are still
in the process of defining the jurisdictions of their municipal
authorities to avoid excessive decentralization, which is disastrous
from a heritage point of view because it leads to political disputes
that are harmful to the urban landscape and the sociocultural climate
of a city.”
http://www.budapest.hu/engine.aspx?page=meetbudapest |
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Lastly, Luc
Noppen, Professor in the Department of Urban and Tourism
Studies at Université du Québec à Montréal
and holder of the Canada Research Chair on Urban Heritage in the university’s
School of Management, explored the sensitive issue of the preservation
of religious heritage, against a background of mass disinterest on
the part of the communities that originally built and maintained houses
of worship in Québec. |
After providing a history of heritage choices
in Québec, which have evolved from the “heritage-ization”
and learned conservation of historical evidence likely to be reflective
of the Québécois national identity, to the collectivist
anti-establishment movements of the 1970s and the re-appropriation
of the debate by citizens over the past decade, Prof. Noppen touched
upon the fate that awaits buildings described as useless or unusable
for various reasons, especially the many abandoned churches in Québec
— of which 400 have been eliminated in Montréal alone.
Current legislation contains no provision for churches
that have yet to be classified as either public or private heritage
buildings. As community assets — since they were built with
funds raised publicly and locally — churches are seldom “rescued,”
unlike commercial buildings that are often restored by private concerns
or taken over by the state. Privatization for commercial purposes
in fact has a negative community impact, as people tend to see it
as devaluing public heritage. Recognizing houses of worship as municipal
public property would not lead to all churches being preserved,
especially given the fact that the usefulness of such conservation
is in doubt because of the irreversible decline in the number of
worshippers.
According to Prof. Noppen, there must be a clear
position on this issue on the part of the public, and authorities
must commit, in the name of the greater good and using the financial
means that are available, to restoring certain selected sites. Such
selective conservation could be funded in part by the selling off
of assets that are not selected.
“Heritage is not the sum of all our ‘preservable’
assets; rather it is the reflection of our cultural and historical
evolution. Citizens must get involved, and there must be a democratic
process of heritage selection — which must be a tool for development,
not merely a tool for protection of properties of historical value
that remains frozen in time,” Prof. Noppen concluded.
Interventions by delegates and participants clarified
the terms and conditions for granting of subsidies in the cities
of Vienna and Budapest, which, because they are contingent on conformity
requirements and resale restrictions, do not have any significant
impact on the property value of the affected buildings. They also
clarified green and blue heritage policies, which in the case of
Vienna lie outside the city’s jurisdiction, but are of concern
in Budapest, which is struggling with a massive project to clean
up the Danube — for which, fortunately, it has secured a World
Bank loan as well as substantial funding from the European Union.
http://www.unites.uqam.ca/src/regroupements/chaire-canada-patrimoine-urbain.htm
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| The issue of decentralization of
powers emerged once again in a comment by Helen Fotopulos,
who advocated improved balance between the city’s vision and
the local plans in each borough, “where heritage must
be at the forefront.” Bernard Fabre,
Deputy Mayor of Montpellier, took the opportunity to congratulate
Montréal on the way it has integrated urban life into heritage
revitalization, “because extreme museumification can lead
to depopulation of urban areas.”
The Deputy Mayor of Lyon, Patrice Béghain,
criticized the state monopoly on heritage protection in his country,
and the French government’s new plan to transfer financial
responsibility for restoration projects to the Collectivités
territoriales. This decision breaks the chain of responsibility,
he said, and will probably have a negative impact “unless
urban planners across all of France are taught sound principles
of heritage preservation.”
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