Monday, September 11, 2017

Cultural Heritage and the City


Cultural Heritage and the City
European University Institute

First class Sept 4, at FutureLearn


Anna Triandafyllidou
Full Professor at the European University Institute, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, Global Governance Programme where she directs the Research Area on Cultural Pluralism.

She is Visiting Professor at the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium, since 2002 and Editor in Chief of the Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies since 2013.


 Jeremie Molho
Research Associate at the Global Governance Programme of the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute.

From 2010 to 2013, he completed several missions at the archaeological site of Carthage in Tunisia for the NGO Urbanistes du Monde, in collaboration with the UNESCO and local stakeholders.

From 2012 to 2014, he was a member of the Istanbul Urban Observatory at the French Institute for Anatolian Studies in Istanbul and he set up a cycle of urban excursions on the city’s train stations.

Since 2011, he has been conducting research on the cultural economy and the cultural policies of a wide variety of cities: Marseille, Genoa, Istanbul, Singapore, Hong Kong.


WEEK ONE:

Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies online repository

Professor Trianafyllidou's website

European University Institute's Global Governance Program

The Interpretation of Cultures by Clifford Geertz Amazon

Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society by  Raymond Williams Amazon

 

Culture-
Culture is a type of knowledge, a system of meaning.
Culture is the context within which behaviours, events, processes, and institutions are situated.
Culture is the set of mental categories that we learn as we grow up and which help us organize our behaviour and interpret our experiences.
Culture is mostly about ideas and behaviour.

Heritage-
Heritage can be seen as one aspect of culture.
Heritage has a stronger material connotation than culture and is oriented towards the past.
Heritage, as a system of tangible and intangible objects and practices, contribute to forging the sense of belonging to a community.
Heritage can be natural – our environment – and constructed: what we create.
Heritage also may be lost because of destruction, loss or decay.


  Instead of a fixed set of definitions for each language, Nick Dines draws on (Raymond) Williams’s approach of cultural materialism on semantic use, and his notion of “keyword” to account for the shifting meanings of the concept of cultural heritage depending on cultural contexts. Ex. British vs. Italian usage of heritage.

UNESCO team assesses damages to Syria's Palmyra world heritage site UN News Centre

Palmyra, Syria before ISIS 



Palmyra, Syria after ISIS 



'They observed the destruction of the triumphal arch and Temple of Baal Shamin, which was “smashed to smithereens,” UNESCO said. The members of the mission observed a minute of silence in memory of the victims murdered at the amphitheatre. The experts had to examine damages to the Temple of Bel from a distance, as the edifice is still inaccessible and demining operations have not been completed.' 


UN World Urbanization Prospects pdf

Globalisation “refers to the widening, deepening and speeding up of global interconnectedness” and includes four socio-spatial dimensions.

 1.  The stretching of social, political, and economic activities across borders;
 2.  The intensification of interconnectedness and of patterns of interaction and flows;
 3.  The speeding up of global interactions and processes;
 4.  The intertwining of the local and global in ways that local events may affect distant lands.


Modern Cultural Heritage

Cultural heritage policy involves four types of actors:
1.  National authorities such as culture ministries and their different branches
2.  Civil society actors cultural associations and foundations
3.  International organizations whose aim is to preserve and promote heritage such as UNESCO
4.  Professionals, experts working in the field of heritage restoration or preservation
5.  Private companies such publishers and art galleries.

For the purposes of:

- To preserve and protect cultural heritage
- To use it for educational purposes
- To promote citizen participation and inclusion
- To create employment and promote economic growth

WEEK TWO: 
  

UNESCO

The only two means UNESCO has to enforce the preservation and protection of heritage are either putting a site on the list of endangered heritage or to unlist it. The latter has happened in two cases:

1.  2007,  Oman’s Arabian Oryx Sanctuary was degraded because of oil extraction activities




2.  2009, Dresden Elbe Valley was removed from the list because of the construction of a four-lane bridge on the site.




These examples show that in the end, UNESCO was unable to stop local authorities from degrading their sites.


UNESCO website United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

International Council of Museums website  (ICOM)

International Council on Monuments and Sites website (ICOMOS)

Arab League Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization website (ALECSO)

Global Heritage Fund website

Europa Nostra website

Aga Khan Trust for Culture website

UNESCO Archaeological Site of Carthage videos World Heritage List

UNESCO Report on Culture and Sustainable Urban Development  large pdf

Monitoring and Evaluation in Cultural Heritage Projects at the World Bank Overview

Some of the positive affects of urban governance of Cultural Heritage:
(Order varies by city and those involved in the designation.)

1.  Creating jobs directly at sites or museums
2.  Attracting tourists, thus generating indirect revenues
3.  Educating the urban population on their past, passing on knowledge to future generations
4.  Creating intercultural dialogue
5.  Regenerating urban areas and improving the wellbeing of their inhabitants

There are three key conceptual frameworks of power dynamics in the strategies towards urban cultural heritage.      

                              1. Levels of governance: constraint or resource?
                              2. Urban policy sectors: who gets involved?
                              3. Three modes of regulation: public actors, private actors and civil society


Carthage
The complexity of urban governance of cultural heritage.

Different scales of governance are intertwined.

1.  Local scale: The municipality is a key actor, despite the few powers that municipalities have in the centralised Tunisian administrative system.

2. National scale: Key strategic decisions made involving not only the ministry of culture, but also ministries of planning, transport, or tourism.

3. The presidency:  Directly involved because of the presence of the Presidential Palace.

4. National Institute of Heritage: In charge of the archaeological works

5. Agency for Enhancement, Promotion of Cultural Heritage: In charge of the operation and the promotion of the site.

6. UNESCO was central in defining a strategy for the site through numerous reports and missions. It still advocates strongly for actions to preserve and enhance the site.

7.  Private actors: Involved since the 1980s. (Following the limitations of the restrictive approach defined by the 1985 decree, which defined no-construction zones and led to the permanent vacancy of numerous lots.)
                            In the following two decades, the private sector became increasingly involved in the site.
                                                       1.)  One operates the Acropolium, the former Cathedral located on top of Byrsa Hill. The firm that manages this building operates a different ticket policy from the rest of the site.
                                                       2.)  The second, a private operator recently established a complex named the Phoenix of Carthage. The initial goal planned for this location was to set up an information point for the whole site. But the company in charge of the project eventually developed a venue for entertainment and weddings that does not benefit visitors of the site.
                                                      3.). Another example of intervention of the private sector is the selling of parcels of the site to a real-estate developer for high-standing villas. This shows the risks that privatization can represent for the integrity of a cultural heritage site.

8. Civil society:
                          1.)  The Association for the Safeguarding of the Medina in the 1960s, launched the UNESCO campaign.
                          2.). After the Tunisian revolution in 2011, the civil society denounced the sale of parcels of the site to the relatives of the former president.
                          3.). The Tunisian press published nearly 20 articles in early 2011 to make the public aware of the situation in Carthage.
                          4.). Over 4000 people signed the petition entitled the “Call for the defence of the cultural site of Carthage Sidi Bou Saïd”.
                          5.) Two new non-profit organizations, the “Friends of Carthage” and the “Dwellers of Carthage” were created to put forward their vision on the future of the site.


WEEK THREE:

Global and Local Change on the Port-City Waterfront American Geographical Society

The house where Hitler was born NBC 

The house where Hitler was born -follow up CBS

The Big Dig -Istanbul’s city planners have a problem: too much history The New Yorker 

Gentrification in Istanbul Driving Residents Out Al Jazeera YouTube 

Gentrification: What It Is, Why It Is, and What Can Be Done about It Geography Compass 2

Urban Heritage and Social Movements pdf

The Shaping of a European Cultural Identity Through EU Cultural Policy EJST

European Cities and Capitals of Culture Palmer/Rae Associates

European Expert Network on Culture pdf 



Urban Heritage Tension:

1.  Archaeology vs urban development
2.  Preserving the historical landscape vs adjusting to urban change
3.  Authenticity vs instrumentalization of heritage




 Photo credits: By Buddha_Bamiyan_1963.jpg: UNESCO/A Lezine; Original uploader was Tsui at de.wikipedia.Later version(s) were uploaded by Liberal Freemason at de.wikipedia.Buddhas_of_Bamiyan4.jpg: Carl Montgomeryderivative work: Zaccarias (talk) - Buddha_Bamiyan_1963.jpgBuddhas_of_Bamiyan4.jpg, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8249891


The bulk of this class was drawn from this document:
UNESCO Report on Culture and Sustainable Urban Development  large pdf 


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