Special Session - Rethinking Cultural Heritage and Inclusive Urban Regeneration (WUF13)

Wonderful.
Good afternoon to you all.
Welcome to a very special session, rethinking cultural heritage and inclusive urban regeneration.
Very special because we're hoping at some point to have a performance from a really famous singer here in Azerbijan.
But really, we want to set the tone for the session.
We want to bring the atmosphere of living heritage into this room.
And to your office or wherever you're tuning in from because we are broadcasting this live on UN web TV.
My name is Naz Mashiri.
I am a former journalist and presenter.
You may have seen me on Al Jaeera English.
I'm also a professional moderator, a podcast host, and senior advisor at Birkhov Foundation in Berlin.
Over the next couple of hours, I'm going to be your host.
We're going to have a very brief keynote speech to open the proceedings.
We're expecting to hear from the Executive Director of UN Habitat as well, he'll join us soon.
We're going to have two really high level dialogues, which will be shaped by your answers to a poll.
I hope you have your phones with you because I'm going to explain that to you in a minute and we'll come to that in a moment.
But please do bring your phones out for that.
I also want to say that this session has been superbly curated, of course, by UN Habitat.
Thank you so much for this.
The Kingdom of Morocco and the Ministry of National Territory, Urban Planning, housing, and City policy, and also UN tourism.
Of course, this is being live streamed right now on UN web TV and will be recorded as well for those who can't join us.
I'm going to be speaking English, but there will be some speakers who will be talking in French and Spanish.
We're very lucky to have some brilliant interpreters on hand at the back there in all five UN languages and Azerbijani if you need it.
Do go grab some headsets if you want to.
We have some exciting things.
We have the QR code up there, which you can click on now if you want.
What we want to do and it's really crucial, we want to get you all involved, so please do answer the three questions.
The first question is, what is the most crucial thing in making urban regeneration inclusive? Question two, what is the most pressing challenge facing historic neighborhoods undergoing urban regeneration? The third question is, what is the main priority for joint action after this World Urban Forum.
Of course, that is really important because we want to take what we learn here today and actually make sure we transform something, we do something with everything we're going to hear today.
Also, you'll find on your seats, some of you may be sitting on it, a really amazing game.
I've tried it myself.
It's quite hard, but I'm sure some of you experts will be able to do a better job than I've done.
You can find different parts in that game.
The game you should be sitting on it.
Everybody just have a look at the game.
Don't worry, I'm not going to get you to get up and do it, but you can just look at it.
Also on the game, you'll find a QR code there as well.
Yeah, exactly.
Look, you can find different paths to inclusive urban regeneration in that game.
You can use a pen, you can use your finger.
A bit like today, what we're going to try to do collectively is identify the best paths possible on the journey which we're going to take you on today to protecting heritage around the world, improving lives, and trying to avoid displacement and the negative impacts while doing so, which is absolutely crucial.
So without further ado, to open our session today, I am honored to invite a very, very special guest.
Ismael Sarah Geldin is the founding librarian of the wonderful Biblioteca Alexandrina in Egypt.
Before that, he was the VP of the World Bank.
We are extremely lucky to have him today.
Ismael, the floor is yours.
Please, a round of applause for Ismael.
Thank you so much.
The title, as you can see here, says very clearly, we are focusing on a special case of historic cities in developing countries because the pressures on the urban centers in developing countries is very big and many of them have magnificent cultural heritage that we need to deal with.
So let me just say that in a very brief prologue, I will start by saying we have to think of the city as a living organism.
It is not something static, like a Hollywood set that can be maintained and so on.
It must grow, it must renew itself, both its economic base, its infrastructure, its housing, it must interact with the environment and the world, and it must retain its identity and its character because that's what makes these great historic cities so important.
And so it's very complex because you are dealing part of the city that is a living, growing city, and I'll start with saying that we have four questions to answer what to conserve, for whom to conserve, how to conserve, and at what cost.
So let's start what to conserve.
Are we conserving just particular historic pieces of our cultural heritage, or are we doing entire buildings? Or even more, are we looking at the entire urban character that gives us a sense of place.
This incidentally is Old Saha.
As I said, it will involve physical, social, economic, and environmental considerations on how we deal with this.
It's part of a living integrated tissue of a city.
Now, while cities can grow at the periphery with very modern sites, but the old core have very special urban morphology and structure and they have to be handled with great skill.
Here you can see, for example, on the right hand side, this is from Bohara in Uzbekistan how the important elements of the cultural heritage embedded into a particular urban morphology that's very specific to old historic quarters and economic activities still take place in and around these historic complexes.
The pattern of development is very different from modern cities with their grids and their large scale transport.
You can see when you mix the two, the disaster this comes from 1950s in Iran, they cut across the old district, destroying it completely like a knife cutting through it and so on.
Well, if you talk about urban character, what are we talking about? Scale.
You can't put a 30 story building in the middle of it.
Volumetric patterns in the street alignments, mix of land use, different age of building, street activity.
You look at the street activity in old Cairo, modern old Cairo today, you can see that We need to protect and expand the spaces of human interaction because that's how we're going to get inclusive regeneration we talked about, and we also need to recognize economic activities like shopping and otherwise and also protect the social customs that bring people together and that maintain the sense of community that is so essential when we're going to regenerate these districts.
A beautiful example of how to retain urban character and sense of place city, bused in tourism.
I just want to show you this because it's important to see not a single one of those buildings is by itself very interesting.
In fact, they are No, but it's all together that creates atmosphere of it.
The second question is, who are primary clients? Is it the current residents of the city or the future residents of the city of their own city, or is it just a bunch of tourists passing through? Or is it international community, or is it humanity at large? I will say that I think we do for all of them.
How to conserve is an important question.
Well, simply stated, we have restrictions on some activities, pollution and whether it's air pollution, solid waste, et cetera, which can destroy the urban character, and conservation of significant structures which governments should undertake.
These are too big for any small community to undertake.
This is near the city in Cairo, old Cairo.
And public measures to encourage the conservation by other actors.
Who are these other actors? Well, from outside the historic city, we're talking about international community, international tourists, national tourists, and national government.
Inside the historic city, we have residents who are owners, and we have residents who are renters.
Incidentally, their interests are very different sometimes.
Local businesses, community groups, local government trusts, wa or haboos as we say in North Africa, and investors.
Getting their interests aligned is like solving the Rubic cube.
But we know how to solve rubic cubes, so there should be no difficulty and I'll show you examples where we did very well.
There are different philosophies for conservation.
We clearly distinguish the new from the old in some cases, or to bring back the historic building to its previous splendor and hide the new and sometimes even reconstruction.
This is in doubles in Cairo and you can see very clearly the old pieces and the new pieces, how different they are so that they're not trying to pretend that it was all there, but you can see they completed them for other people to see.
In Shah Nam, in Multan, Pakistan, the brickwork had fallen out, it was put back in place, but the age of the new bricks was written on the back of the brick so that when future people come to restore something, they will know what was new and what was old.
And in this case, this is the Osmo Palace in Damascus.
It's total reconstruction.
You can see on the left hand side how destroyed the palace was, but it was reconstructed really quick.
All of these are useful.
But more important than all is adaptive reuse.
The historic building is reused for a new purpose more compatible with its current needs.
This incident is from F in Morocco and you enter into old Madras, they have these beautiful glazing tiles.
So what activity they have in it, they don't have a small factory.
They have computer work which is not going to destroy the beauty of this building.
In Paris, for example, this is the hotel Salle.
It was a historic building converted into the Picasso Museum, and the great success, my friend Ros Moon who did it, both the modernists were happy and the conservationists were happy.
I told him, you have succeeded beyond any possibility to get both those groups to agree.
Here, for example, is the adaptive reuse of the Russo Pashak adverse in Turkey and many other examples that we can go into.
The question of what costs? Well, we have to get private investors to help support that, whether resident owners, local businesses, crafts, community, national investors, international investors, and we must make sure that we minimize the displacement of the local population.
We must because you have a community, and when you start displacing them and building new buildings, it destroyed the mutual support systems that exist.
So we have to plan for it in advance, involve local community in the design and implementation, and ensure adequate funding sites and opportunities for displaced families.
And we must make sure that whatever we're doing in terms of economics and financial rigor, it must remain affordable to the poor.
The cost of upgrading and services must remain affordable and cross subsidies may have to be used.
And if we are using investments which are justified, whether it's by investors or the government, we must always make sure that ask ourselves on the money, public money, who pays and who benefits.
Frequently, when the government gives tax benefits to rich foreign investors, the taxes are collected from the poor.
So you have to look at the shifting in incidence of the taxation.
And with that we will require really having national and local partnerships in place and to involve and empower the local communities.
So looking beyond that, how do we do that? Well, the cost benefit analysis, which is what we usually use to evaluate investments, in the case of cultural assets, you cannot just rely, for example, on tourist revenues.
If you do, it will lead you to three wrong conclusions.
Number one, that a bunch of whatever heritage I have that a bunch of tourists don't want to come look at is not worth protecting wrong.
Two, that you may want to maximize the number of tourists, even if it denatures what you're trying to protect.
Number three, for example, when we were funding the efforts there in FS from the World Bank, I said, well, if you take only tourist revenues, if you could prove that the casino on the beach gets more funding for the government than restoring fast, then the logic would be to do the casino and not fast, but that's not what we do because fast has this intrinsic intangible quality.
We have to develop a conceptual framework.
I'm going to spare you all the mathematics and equations and so on, but I'll just show you conceptually, what is the full economic value of our cultural heritage.
So to get the total economic value, we have use values and non use values.
Among the use values are direct use and indirect use values, and in the non use values are something we call existence value and other non use value like bequest values.
Between the two, we have also something called an option value.
It's like when you buy an option on something, which is just to hold the possibility of coming back to it later.
So an investment of that kind is worthwhile as well.
And now we know very well how to directly direct use and indirect use, we can calculate option value is a little more difficult.
But existent values and the non use values, we have developed these techniques primarily for environment, and then we adapted them to cultural heritage because to protect the pristine wilderness is an intangible value, and it has been done methodologically it even succeeded in being supported in international courts against very powerful corporations like Exxon Valdez, like Exxon and had lawyers and so on.
They still had to pay $860 million because of what they did there.
Under use values, we have direct benefits.
Well, what do we have there? You have built space, obviously, but it can be a very different apartment buildings in the modern space, but the old city itself has many buildings there that are usable.
Then circulation space that, of course, is in the modern city, but this is much more like the older city.
And we have tourism.
Yes, we want tourism, but not only tourism, tourism is just one factor.
And then economic activities, there are a lot of economic activities in the old cities from bazaars to craftsmen and so on.
The indirect use values include community image.
For example, this is again in City B, you can see the beauty of building a sense of community and by maintaining these are very simple buildings, but maintaining the quality of the street and so on creates a sense of place.
Protecting the community is worthwhile and therefore, it is a value and there's environmental quality.
This is from another historic city in Amsterdam.
The efforts that they've made to make sure that the canals remain clean as an example.
Then there is the fact that we need spaces for social interaction.
From the very poor, notice coffee, hot chocolate, tea to the less poor, but everybody has to interact because that's what creates communities and that's about inclusiveness.
But you can also add an element, which they did, for example, in Tunis in several places.
This is aesthetics.
Very simple aesthetic saying try to use white and blue or blue and white and simple designs that are repeated.
The option to potentially use assets in the future.
We talked about that.
When in existence values, so this is something that contributes to identity, for example.
In Egypt, the pyramids, these are all sphins et cetera, these are all part of the identity of the nation and the country.
So there's no question that this has to be protected.
But equally on the small scale of the community, there are those things like an old mosque, an old Madrasa that becomes the center of the community that has to be protected.
And there are things that have uniqueness and significance.
This is an old piece in the museum in Egypt, 3,100 BC, the first assembly of Egypt as a country.
Or in this case, for example, these are the homes of Mozart where he was born, where he lived, which they maintain as part of the historic living heritage, even though the individual buildings are not particularly valuable, but it's because of the association with Mozart and others.
Then the bequest value that simply says that really a You know, I may not see a tiger in the wilderness ever and I probably will not see a whale either or a rhinoceros in.
But I think many of us feel that if all these animals disappeared, we would be impoverished because of it and we wanted them to continue so our children will see it.
Summation of the conceptual contract that you can see here.
As you go down from the left to the right, it's a decreasing tangibility of benefits went from the left very low this was tangible, we're going towards intangible heritage there.
That's all right.
We must recognize and evaluate the intrinsic value, that intangible benefits of protecting the cultural heritage.
The techniques are the same as those we developed for environmental benefits.
Do we really have ways of calculating intangible economic benefits? Yes, we do.
As I said, I'm going to spare you the mathematics and the equations, but fundamentally, Believe me, we know how to do it really, really well.
Beyond that, what do we do? Well, we need to get dramatic physical visions in one way for people say, well, the city is going to grow, so we need to have something like Dubai or whatever.
That's nice, but that's not the way to go.
The other part is to think about community, the local community, and how can we regenerate the cultural heritage while involving the local community.
Let me show you this.
I mean, Yeah.
You can have the Borja Khalifa, this is the Guggenheim and Bilbao in Spain.
This is the bird's nest in Beijing and iconic structures like the Sydney Opera House or the PFL in Paris.
Yes, these are important markers, but that's not what creates a city.
What creates a city is the interaction of people at the community level and especially the old heart of the city, which most people like to go to because it's part of identity, it's part of heritage.
It's a touchstones of our memory and the wellsprings of our imagination.
So what do you do that? Well, I'll give you an important example.
That's an award winning project from Tunis on a place called the Hafsea District in the town in the old city of Tunis.
And this is the old city of Tunis in the middle, which you can see the modern city is all around it outside.
Heart here in the little yellow circle is where this Hasea District was in the heart of the old city.
This is what it looked like and they started by destroying some of the sites.
You can see these big buildings on the top there, and then it was stopped, and then we said, No, we have to work with the community so that we don't displace the people and we get them to work with us.
This is what we had, as you can see, some of the destruction that had already taken place and by working with the community, funding them with small loans and technical support, look what happened.
They turned the street like that.
Again, look like this.
The old upgraded by the local community.
The streets look like that.
All in all, quite a beautiful neighborhood.
And so not only is it a beautiful neighborhood, but because it was an upgrading of the existing bad housing, it fits exactly right.
You can't even notice it from high towers, no buildings, no big building.
It's all in there, but it has been rejuvenated in an inclusive fashion, maintaining the community, maintaining the community's control of it, and so on.
So not evicting the local community to put up towers for citizens, empowering the local residents to upgrade their own districts and homes, and that is why the involvement of the civil society is essential for sustainability.
And so, my friends, I can say, we can integrate and maintain the cultural heritage in the growing urban context.
We can help the historic cities of the developing world to go from a splendid past to a brilliant future.
And I thank you.
Thank a huge thank you to Ismael Sarah Gilden, founding director of the Biblioteca, Alexandria Baraka A Fique.
You taught us so powerfully how to conserve and for whom, which I think is absolutely crucial.
Also, what I was really struck by was the different interests that people have.
Who are we trying to conserve for and your analogy of it's like solving a rubic cube.
I think it's very, very poignant.
Also, I really like the fact you talked about those age old bricks.
When we want to regenerate, we write the date of those bricks because regeneration is going to happen, it's going to happen, but we have to do it in a very sustainable way.
Also, we need more private investment, but we don't want to displace communities.
This leads us very nicely now into our next panel.
I'd like to invite up onto stage, and by the way, we're going to have some of our panelists speaking in French and in Spanish, so please do make sure you have headsets.
I'd firstly like to invite up Mr.
Adi Benbrahim, the Secretary of State to the Minister of National Territory, Urban Planning, housing, and City policy for the Kingdom of Morocco.
Please come up to the stage.
And Mr.
Inti Minos, Minister of Housing of Mexico City, and Mexico's former Director of Historical Trusts in Mexico City.
Thank you.
Miss Sabina Hajva, Head of State Service for Protection Development and Restoration of Cultural Heritage, from the Ministry of Culture in Azerbijan, our hosts.
And finally, miss Elizabeth Sidisi, Director General of Territorial Planning, Urbanism and architecture of the Government of Catalonia in Spain.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much to our panelists.
It's really an honor to have you at this special session.
Remember question one from our polling.
I hope you all managed to put in your answers.
So let's just take a look and remember the question.
What elements do you consider most crucial in making urban regeneration inclusive? I'm hoping we have some of your answers up.
Okay, great.
What element do you consider most crucial in making urban regeneration inclusive? So We asked you to put in some words, Preservation there, intergenerational, identity, privatization.
We have some interesting elements that have come out of this question.
Of course, urban regeneration is quite complex and it is quite difficult to make it inclusive, but that's what we're all here for.
We want to make sure that we do no harm when we're regenerating areas, of course.
U so I'm going to come firstly to you, Mr.
Ben Brahim, for any quick reactions to the audience's responses and some of those words, you can see there.
Can I also ask you perhaps, what are the main challenges you're seeing in terms of, in cities and governments in your country, Morocco, in urban regeneration and neighborhoods? And how can you address those challenges while making sure that you preserve the cultural identity and identity being one of the keywords that came up in our first poll.
Thank you so much over to you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you, all Ambassador Excellencies.
The problem with regard to the historical parts of cities poses a problem.
As we know, historical neighborhood.
I have vulnerabilities, major vulnerabilities, degradation of buildings, precariousness, pressure on land, and so displacement of people.
Facing these challenges, what approaches should we adopt? First, what we see, we have to give more importance to the buildings.
What should we do to protect the buildings that are in place in historical neighborhood, for example.
So for all, I would say, restoration of the buildings, of the facades, and all these aspects are typically for regeneration, which is the best solution to maintain the building.
But however, it is isolated.
We cannot reason just on restoring buildings.
In a historical building, you also have citizens.
There is a way of life that should be protected.
If we don't develop at the same ties, at the same side economic activities, it's going to be difficult to keep it because we need to develop economic activities in the same neighborhood.
Sometimes we have to think differently when we talk about the renovation, which could be a radical solution, which means to tear down buildings and rebuild the buildings, review all the roads systems, which could be modern, yes, but it's not what we hoped we wanted to do because we would lose the identity of the neighborhood and of the city.
What do we should do in our opinion to maintain the memories of the city is to have a revitalization of the entire neighborhood.
Revitalization by renovating, rehabilitating, not by demolishing, but by rehabilitating the buildings.
And use the heritage as value and integrating it into the economic and cultural project.
We have to reflect in a global way and maintain all economic and social activities in the neighborhood.
This will allow us to improve infrastructures, transportation, create green spaces, and to a certain extent in an old neighborhood.
There's also a problem of unemployment, of precariousness.
So we have to create economic activities, as I said, to really make these areas accessible and attractive for tourists as well.
So we have to revise everything and So think about preservation of buildings develop cultural tourism and protect the buildings.
And if we don't demolish, we have to strengthen the identity of the city.
So we have to work on small store shops and see how we can help them, but to maintain their identity and maintain the identity of the city at the same time.
Increase, of course, that would increase the value of the neighborhoods, the economic value of the neighborhood, but a problem may arise with the increased cost of life, some people, certain residents will leave the neighborhood and go to cheaper neighborhood.
We should be careful to avoid that because we have to think and maintain the citizens in the neighborhoods they belong to.
Of course, there are ways of operating on the policies.
We take the case of Morocco, for example.
Morocco is aware of this problem, and I think there are a lot of initiatives that have been launched.
The very last one is the law 92 on renovation and urban renovation.
In the sense That not in the sense of restoration, but a more global aspect, which is regeneration.
When we take the definition of urban regeneration as indicated by the law, La 9412 take old neighborhood, but to protect the evaluarize the urban spaces.
We have a legal framework.
It explains the definition of regeneration and to maintain the buildings and the spaces and the identity of the area and give it more character.
When we talk about the legal framework, it is a framework city planning as well.
Mr.
Munoz, you've come here from Mexico City.
This is a big time for your city right now.
You're about to host the World Cup, as we all know.
Also, you are going to be hosting the next World Urban Forum next year.
First of all, what are your reactions to some of the points the audience made? By the way, for the audience, do you remember the maze game that you have on your seats? You can scan the code on the maze game and keep answering those questions, please, if you can.
What's your reaction to that? Also, how are you addressing the challenges right now with all of these things that are going on and the regeneration of your wonderful city in Mexico? Thank you.
Thank you so much to all of you.
Welcome.
Thank you for being here.
I would like to express my gratitude to your inhabitant and the government of Azerbaijan for this important dialogue space.
The key the insights we gathered Mexico City in the field of urban regeneration for our historical city, our historical neighborhood.
Be aware that this is the largest living historical quarter in the world globally is included in the world heritage, 700 years of history, rooted in Tactian, the ancient Aztec city, also with the footprint of colonial, the Spanish colonization, modern architectural modernist architecture of the first decades of the 20th century traces of the postwar period and it is an intensely rich a neighborhood and this adds complexity, to be honest.
Every day we receive 1.5 million users visitors, the home city.
From the end of 19th century, we used to have 300,000 inhabitants moving to 30,000 Sada regeneration was the main priority for us.
It was important to give continuity to our vision, to our model about how to visualize how to conceive the historical center, that was, you know, a priority.
It was top on our agenda, how to regenerate the historic district.
It had been, you know, abandoned.
At the end of the 20th century, it was highly depopulated.
But recently, we included the regeneration plan on a top level.
Of our political agenda.
Some lessons have been learned over the last 30 years of a sustained policy, comprehensive policy ending up on a full model.
First key, first insight, the historic district should be understood as a public space.
So I welcome that we agree on some concepts, visions about how we understand all city.
They are not museum cities, they are not a set of isolated buildings.
They are living organisms.
They are living complex or perpetually evolving organisms.
This is the vision we have city of our cities taking into account its heritage, value, the impressive task of preserving the buildings.
So this is also a social fabric.
So in the light of the lessons learned over the decades, our main commitment would be to root the original residents so that they are not forced to I mean to leave.
We don't want them to be displaced.
So we want to strengthen the right to inhabit those historical districts because they resisted the they decided to stay in the old city.
So that's the main insight, the main lessons we learned.
Those original residencies, housing, social housing, affordable housing should be top agenda.
Of course, we are in favor of mixed mixed models, rural, urban, but we want to reserve a place for those living and working and their families, those that were born in the historical areas, those that worked there.
We need to avoid and to prevent gentrification of historic neighborhoods at all costs.
This is a shared notion.
There cannot be a, a single use of the historic district.
We cannot leave it just for tourism, for commercial, activities.
I mean, cultural activities essential is key, but we cannot restrict.
Of course, the city Mexico City has immediate museums, but hybridizations and unmixed blended uses should be given value in our experience.
Other thinking differently wouldn't be sustainable.
I would like to remind an old notion we use in democratic urban planning.
The notion of it was presented by Lefevre.
We should understand Should we understand a city by its use value or by it exchange value? Should we conceive cities as commodities or like places to live, to work, to grow economically, to be happy, to preserve well being of societies? Mainly historical cities should be the place of our memory.
The mirror of our ambitions and aspirations, aspirations of individuals and societies as a whole.
They are the reflection of our historic values.
So historic centers, historic cities are cultural historicals, and they are the product of the large agreements and how we understand our cities urban regeneration should not lead to undesired phenomena and that is why we need to articulate new possibilities to guarantee economic sustainability.
It is utterly crucial to have permanent public guaranteed budgets to regenerate old towns.
With this, of course, new possibilities of public private partnerships.
We need to go in favor of collective interest to preserve our historic neighborhoods and cities.
That should be the result of an democratic agreement so that they can flourish in a balanced way.
Thank you so much and thank you for that wonderful description.
Absolutely.
I remember I was just in Venice recently and it was just very sad to me that so many residents of Venice have had to have moved out of a city and there are very few cities really where historical centers where people are still remain living.
I think Mexico City is probably one of those few.
I'd like to come to you, miss Ajieva.
I I remember coming here for Cop 29 and I actually stayed in the old town in Baku.
It was wonderful.
You have done a lot to regenerate.
Just listening to the other panelists, what similarities or differences do you see and what challenges have there been here in Azerbijan to try to regenerate this urban regeneration and maintain the cultural heritage of the wonderful historical sites that you have here.
One, two, three.
Thank you.
Thank you, for your question.
Also taking opportunity, I would like to welcome all our participants not only in this wonderful session, but also total in our Woof 13.
I would like to express my special thankfulness to doctor Ismail for his brilliant presentation.
Sure.
When we speak about inclusive regeneration, we are not speaking about restoration of only one building.
And for sure the problems are much bigger.
When we speak about inclusive regeneration, we must remember about the right balance between preservation of the heritage, which is our priority and from the second site is creation of the comfortable convenience for people who live in that space because it's very easy to say that preserve not change anything, but it doesn't work like this.
This is not so simple because city is always developing.
People live in that city.
Sure, tourism is very important aspect in that case from economical point of view, from many points of view.
I don't want to decrease the importance of tourism, but tourism is something not in the first stage, not in the first position which we should think about when we speak about preservation because tourists exist.
But how people live in that space, how people may destroy that space because sometimes trying to ameliorate their everyday life, they may destroy some elements of the structure even because they don't understand the importance of that.
Creating regeneration, doing regeneration, especially in inclusive way, we must think about that balance, how to create good conditions for people and how to preserve in maximum level monuments in that situation.
When we speak for sure, I am a completely agree with the colleagues who already give their answers on almost the same question, that when we speak about regeneration, inclusive regeneration, we speak about structure.
We don't speak about only one single building.
We should think about preservation of general structure, of the scales, of the sizes, of the styles.
When we speak, let's say about Azerbijan.
If we take from the smallest part, the historical part of Baku, Ieri Sher, which is today livable thanks to all the efforts dedicated exactly to preservation of life inside, not turning it into a dead city as only a place where tourists come every day, but it's live with its normal life.
Yes, for sure we have some problems because it's livable city.
But I'm very happy to say that after so many years after inclusion of the H into UNESCO list, we were able to preserve it and we were able to preserve a historical atmosphere which constructed there, created there, many millenniums we see.
When we go out of Irish because this is heart of Baku, but outside our city of Baku consists of several circles.
Each new circle is a new historical stage.
When we speak about dead quarters for sure, it's very important to preserve all of them.
Uh, including period of Soviet time, including modern period of development.
Everything must be decided very carefully in that case.
We have also another example of regeneration, after the occupation of our areas, we must today be very hard in creation possible livable conditions for people who lost their lands almost 30 years ago.
Today, for us, it's very important how we will create.
Yes, we create new cities, we create new villages, smart villages sometimes which are more convenient for modern situation, necessities of the people, requirements of the people, but how to make these new places acceptable by local people who lived in that conditions many years ago don't accept new buildings as their heritage.
This is very important to create such a balance as well.
It's possible to speak a lot for sure.
When we speak about historical buildings which already exist, which were created, let's say 19th century, when it was not any ventilation system acceptable today, let's say, when it was not heating system which is convenient for people today, no windows more convenient that we use every day.
What you do in that case? Should we change them to create more comfortable conditions for people who use this space? Or should we keep using some special modern methods we should keep at least facades and so on.
For sure, there are a lot of possibilities for that.
Everyone here in this hall know about a special frames, special ventilation and so on.
It's very, very special case.
What I would like to say, we all together must be very attentive to that questions.
Otherwise, we can just create something very convenient to leave, create something good for tourists, but we can lose our heritage, our um, As Italians say genuine fortune.
If you lose anything, you cannot bring it back.
In that case, I am very agree with doctor Ismail, for whom we do it.
I would like to say that we are like a postmans now we have to pass all that we have to next generation, not only generation that live here.
This is world humans, I think, heritage, which was created during many centuries and so on and we must keep it.
Thank you so much for that.
Really appreciate that.
What I love about this curated session, thank you.
Take it close.
Is that we are traveling continents and we're going to head over to Europe and we're going to head over to Barcelona and Spain and Catalonia.
Miss Cerisi, we know that the city of Barcelona and also Catalonia itself has done so much to try to reclaim areas for the people.
You've had plenty of issues, of course, with tourists in Barcelona as well.
But how challenging has it been in your region and you're speaking Spanish, right? Yeah.
Thank you very much for the presentation.
I will move to Spanish.
It's easier for me.
Thank you for the presentation.
The question in regards The urban transformation in Barcelona and Catalonia, we talked about the transformation of the Barcelona rambles, for example.
But we've also managed other aspects which are interesting, in which we always need to combine urban transformation with social work and accompanying of people.
In fact, the challenge of any urban transformation is without a doubt, the improvement of the people that live in this territory.
This improvement passes through an improvement of urban, of housing, and the improvement of common life.
The example that we've talked about, the Barcelona Ramblas, the project that the county of Barcelona is dealing with the municipality of Barcelona, It's a project that has a scope in a very special problematic.
We have a tourism pressure in emblematic space like the downtown Barcelona and the main axe that traverse the historical area of Barcelona.
We've passed from a social axe from a tourism axe.
The municipality of Barcelona with the project, the will they have is to change and have a social acts on this.
This social acts is accompanied with a global project, a project not only of urbanization, because a project of only urbanization will be generated revalue of the lands, but we accompanying the people that live and stay in a place like this one because in this way, this has happened before to us with constructed buildings and it's kick people out of those areas in those neighborhoods.
What has happened is that they have If people are very vulnerable have concentrated in those specific locations, so we need to do a physical transformation and a social transformation in those locations.
The important thing in a project like this is how you approach it because it should be approached from the participation with the people.
They need to leverage of these urban surroundings.
This location has a connection with the city, but maybe the people that live in this specific area.
The participation process of the citizens of this area and the joint work is the one that enables, in most of the cases, to do a diagnosis.
That is correct, to detect the problem.
Each city, neighborhood has its own problems, therefore, to approach the diagnosis.
From a principle that goes along with the people that are implied in this urban transformation, propose an adequate design, and of course, a definition of priorities because priorities need to be worked on from the people and not from the public administrations.
Last, All of these decisions need to be shared between the public administration, in this case, the specific project, in this case, the municipality of Barcelona, but in other cases, the government or the government that is leading an urban transformation.
This needs to be shared with the people, like we said, live in those spaces or need to live in those spaces and together with the social policies, we can't transform a city by only the physical reference, but with a social accompanying and this social accompanying is necessary to be close because people need a direct relation or direct contact because each case is different.
Assistant, this accompanying needs to come from the administration.
Therefore, this needs to be a joint work with the physical transformation, social transformation, of course, environmental transformation, et cetera because the challenges we face are bigger than just the particular challenges of a concrete specific transformation.
So each project, each example needs to escalate and transmit all of these challenges at a global scale.
I think that would be my presentation.
She in a second.
Big round of applause.
This is going to be quite a dynamic session, and we are really pleased to say we have the Executive Director of UN Habitat and the Claude Rosbck who's here just to give a brief intervention.
Thank you so much.
Of course, the subject is rethinking cultural heritage and inclusive urban regeneration.
UN Habitat is doing a lot on that.
Thank you, over to you.
Good afternoon.
First of all, I really would like to thank the speakers, Professor Ismail and your panelists, Minister, secretary.
It is really a pleasure for me to see that also the room is full and I could hear a little bit of the discussion and it really meaningful, full of content.
This session was also inspired when we went to Cairo for Wolf 12 and we discussed with our regional director sitting over there, Rania.
We had an amazing set of conversations that preceded the World Urban Forum 12 in Cairo precisely about this subject, the importance of culture and the heritage for the new urban agenda.
I'm glad that we are keeping the track and keeping this discussion here in Baku.
And Baku is the perfect place also to have this conversation.
I hope you had the opportunity to see around me a little bit, not this time, of course, but to highlight several Azerijan I will not be able to say anything.
More, but I went to the old city just to give one example.
We are having the privilege of having the wolves in places that can illustrate what we are talking about.
It would be the same in Mexico.
By the way, we're going to walk around the city.
I know better this once walk around the city and really leave the culture.
And for people who live in cities like those, like Cairo, like Baku, like Mexico, and I include myself in that group, we understand how then this heritage becomes part of one's life, and part of the community and the society.
Um, so therefore, these are legacies that we need to preserve.
We have the obligation to preserve.
And it's important to think that, you know, when we talk about cities, when we talk about the new urban agenda, of course, it's critical for us to talk about infrastructure, to talk about sanitation.
These are things, transportation, mobility system, all things that are missing and many gaps that we have to fulfill.
But quite often we don't talk about culture.
We don't talk about heritage, and I really would like that we would be able as a community, as a collective to bring this discussion strongly.
When we talk about the cities of the future, we have to look at the past.
When we talk about housing, even construction materials, we have to look at the cultural context, understand what's going on.
There are so many aspects that connect housing discussions that we're having here, cities to culture and to heritage that we really need to bring into consideration and important to think about that now that we are reviewing the new urban agenda after ten years.
What is it that we expect for the new urban agenda for the next ten years? How we see culture in that place? How we see the culture and the legacy that we have by our ancestors shaping the cities of the future? How can we use and know how the wisdom And the expertise that is there.
I hope this discussion here will help us as a collective to think about that.
It's too much of a complex aspect that we cannot do it by ourselves.
But the previous speakers, they were just saying that we have to work together with other partners.
In the case of the UN, we have to work as a family.
Um, and I'm glad that we are working closely together with UNESCO.
We are working closely together with UN tourism and looking at cultural and heritage as, um, as a central point for development.
We cannot achieve the global agendas, the sustainable development goals if we don't preserve the culture, if we don't take care of the cities that take care of this legacy.
I'm glad to share that this collaboration is ongoing and me, myself, I am committed with the principles of at least these two agencies to work closely together in the future and support this agenda.
We have several projects on the ground that I will not be able to mention, but just recognize the work of habitat teams that have been engaged in several regions around this topic.
There is, there's potential for also promote local economic development, to promote inclusivity.
In one previous session we spoke about informal settlements.
Um, yes, they are occupying sometimes areas that should be preserved, but these are the opportunities that we have to work with these communities to find solutions that generate win situations.
If we address housing right, we can mitigate this type of situation.
Before.
If we offer people decent places to live, there will be no occupation of places that should be serving public good.
But thank you very much, from my heart and I really hope that we can capture the conversations today.
You can capture in the Baku Co to action, and then we can capture for our work and to inform member states in the review of the New Urban Agenda.
Thank you very much.
A huge thank you to Anna Claudia Rossbach for her inspiring words about culture and legacy and how are we going to shape the future of our cities? Just a final question and thought, if you could just keep it short if possible to all of you.
Can you just give us one key policy or planning or finance tool that you think is key to making sure that urban regeneration doesn't cause any harm to residents and also remains inclusive.
Perhaps give us a quick lesson from your city or country.
I'll start with you, Mr.
Brahibm.
Mercy.
Thank you.
Very quickly, regeneration is done for the community who lives there to improve their living conditions, to preserve the neighborhood.
It is a tool, it is a mean to also fund this renovation.
I think it is very interesting The regeneration regeneration has been regulated.
We have an urban regeneration plan and the content is the city regeneration, where it is specified that it should be building regeneration, structural social regeneration, and give priority to social harmonious organization.
We can maintain this in order to avoid gentrification.
So everything is linked, and we have to respect the protection of the heritage.
We have a law regulating the heritage that should not be modified.
This allows us to do urban regeneration in an inclusive way.
And in the correct way.
What is important is how we implement such plan.
This plan should be done by local governance.
Local governance.
We have a local committee chaired by a local authority and a committee consisting of an urban agency, the one for land preservation by the representative of citizens.
There is a full fledged participation.
All the stakeholders are involved.
The members of the committee will not know them, but there are more than 14, all the departments are involved to perform social financial and technical studies.
It is a holistic approach.
This is what counts most.
This plan must be implemented with the participation of the citizens and this really start neighborhood.
This is what we do for urban regeneration.
This is what I wanted to add with regard to this operations.
With regard to Morocco, we have three major operations that have been done.
One is Akmi project underway in Marrakesh and also the hydraulic system that has been taken into account because it is for the water distribution and so the renovation of the water distribution system.
This is important to maintain also the identity of the neighborhood.
Another then we have a dedicated agency organizing urban renovation and regeneration and working in combination with the ministry.
This is very important because they have the expertise, they develop the expertise, and they do prior work in order to protect historical buildings before starting regeneration and renovation.
And so for example, 28 Medinas have been regenerated thanks to an expertise and that involved over 30,000 um homes.
I would like to go back to the operation, an operation that could actually reduce the risk, minimizing the risk of gentrification and increase the cost of living in these historical historical areas.
First of all, I would say that during the renovation, sometimes it is prevention to sell the apartments, to prevent the speculation.
So and also have affordable rentals, affordable rents to avoid the speculation.
So some constraints are set to avoid that.
This aspects should be taken into account, especially for historical cities where there is an historic cultural heritage.
We have to limit tourism because otherwise, citizens tend to leave their apartments to rent their apartments like BB and rented the apartments to tourists.
We should see to which extent we can reduce this phenomenon.
And this increase of this type of business.
And so the urban agency is also in charge if there should be if they should also prevent the renting of individual apartments for just for tourists.
Your intervention short, if you can.
Thank you.
Over to you, Mr.
Minos.
Yeah.
Just a final thought, please.
Thank you so much for giving me the floor very quickly and thank you and quite specifically in terms of best practices and government actions and measures that proved fruitful or lessons learned or what we believe should be doing from now onwards.
One main insight in the field of sustainability.
And also considering how to guarantee sustainable financing.
In this battle against people leaving historical buildings, we need to prevent land, the built space to be emptied, to be.
Left useless, and we need to guarantee that through public policies and through tax incentives.
The key is to avoid empty spaces in historic building by fostering good uses through tax incentives.
The key battle is there to combat idle land, I don't unused buildings.
Right now we are renovating 4,500 units in 150 old buildings state owned because they were expropriated in the last 20 years because they lacked owners.
They had been abandoned, emptied.
We shouldn't be afraid of this tool, of this word.
It's public policy tool, modern tool, expropriation, and it's mainly used by the main historic cities in the world.
It's used in Europe, in the United States, and it is one way of avoiding unused.
The head of government of the city of Mexico, Clara Brugal Molina, she sends her kind greetings to all of, of you.
Right now, at this crossroads of mankind, it is absolutely crucial that we enact better democratic laws and regulations, we need to have democratic, well meaned regulations, and this goes straight against an idea of the world where, you know, the strongest, the lower the strongest prevails? So that's what we want to prevent to avoid at all costs.
So an idea of a city based on the power of money, a free market, that would be the law of the jungle that goes against our idea of democratic cities.
So we need to build on these main values and principles to preserve our heritage.
Understanding heritage by cultural and historical legacy.
Of course, we always need to pay attention to this, to the role of cultural diversity and also sustainability of our historic neighborhoods.
But they are public spaces, open, democratic spaces with a transformative roles.
Our cities, our country could not be understood without the transformative role of public squares as a way where people are expressed.
We managed to stop wars to materialize breakthroughs, the contest, the conquest of new liberties.
That is the space where our complex, diverse identity impermanent evolution is reflected.
We need to Also, invest in infrastructure.
Investing in infrastructure is key, is crucial if we want historical neighborhoods to be living livable organisms, and this needs to be fostered and powered by public authorities.
To conclude, please, if you allow me a couple of seconds.
I'm in favor of recovering a main tool, a main mechanism of international politics.
The executive director mentioned the recommendation about the urban landscape well, issued by UNESCO in 2011.
That recommendation mainly says the one.
We cannot understand the historic city as a set of isolated buildings, monuments, and landmarks.
The historic landmark, it's also its social fabric, to some extent, the whole city.
It's a polycentric city, this city of short ways showing another city, another way of humanity and another way of living historic cities.
It's another it's a place where our memories are embodied democratic cities.
Please, as the city of Mexico, we need to understand that the future started yesterday.
Never forget that.
Thank you.
Ga, thank you so much for waiting patiently.
Just one tool that you would recommend that we could all take away policy, financial, something that we can take and scale, something that you've learned from your great experience in Azerbijan.
Thank you.
Thank you for your question.
I will be very short.
If we speak about all that events to make regeneration and so on, for sure, one of the first and the main questions maybe is finance.
Because we all live in historical cities.
We know that the problems of historical quarters never stop, never finished, so we need this system.
What kind of system we see? We see combination, mix responsibility and financing from local people and also from government and also from some donations and so on.
Because this is our experience.
If you need only people who live in that buildings to pay for all the reconstruction, regeneration, and so on, they will be able only do what they're able to do.
Uh, they will not every person who live in historical cities and we know that in historical quarters and we know that mostly in historical quarters live social people who doesn't have enough money to do what should be done in such historical places.
If only to need to do government like we had in our past in former Soviet Republic, when only government was responsible for preservation of heritage, it was another, uh, problem because in that case, local population, people, residents, they don't feel their responsibility.
For sure, it should be mixed combination of the powers of the possibilities between government, local stakeholders, let's say, and also some donations.
That's it.
Mixed financing, which is crucial.
We'll be talking a little bit about that in the next panel.
But coming to you, miss Cerzi, just one lesson you would say, one policy or thought that you have as we wrap up the session.
Thank you.
Okay.
I would say that apart from funding financing that is utterly indispensable to be able to implement our projects of urban transformation, we need a plan, a well devised plan It should be an comprehensive integrated planning developed together with financing tools.
They need to go hand in hand, otherwise, it wouldn't make sense.
We are here to support people.
It needs to be people centered with clearly defined outcomes.
Those ambitions need to clearly set by the government, by public administrations, what we foresee for the future of a part of the city, for a neighborhood, et cetera, we need to have a well devised structure, well designed and participated with active participation of the population.
That will be the ideal combination.
M.
So much to miss Elizabeth Cerisi, who has come all the way from Catalonia and Spain, to miss Sabina Ajieva who is with our hosts here in Azerbijan, to Mr.
Adi Ben Ibrahim, who is, of course, from the Kingdom of Morocco, who are co curating today's session, and also to Mr.
Inti Munoz from Mexico City, a big round of applause for our wonderful panel.
If I could ask you please to.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
For those of you who are just joining in the room or online, we are having a very interactive, intimate session here.
We have a painter there in the corner who is from Azerbijan and we're going to have a performance for you in a second.
But first, I'd like to introduce a wonderful video from our co curators from the Kingdom of Morocco.
A video that will be in English, but hopefully afterwards, I can explain a little bit about what it was about, but a wonderful video showing what Morocco has been doing in terms of urban regeneration.
If we could play it now, please.
Thank you.
Keser Tur, eloquent symbol of the history and the remarkable architecture, reveals a structure harmoniously set where each element is deliberately designed to meet the needs of the local community.
Built in the 17th century on the northwest of Wazzat River, the Kesser played a crucial role for the camel caravans crossing the desert toward Marrakesh.
A diverse population of Amazons, Arabs and Jews coexisted peacefully for many years.
Located in the heart of the city of Wazak in the southeastern region of Morocco, this Kesser equips a captivating essence that transcend time.
With 411 house halls and about 2000 residents, the Kesser is home to a vibrant economy based on hand crafts, trade, tourism, cinematography, as well as some agricultural activities, including breeding.
This magnificent historic site embodies not only the traditional Moroccan architecture, but it has also been in movie screens worldwide.
Filmmakers around the world have chosen this site for its exceptional setting, its distinctive light, and its enchanting vibe.
Kesser Tower is also home to the famous Kesby of Tower Rear, an architectural and historical icon, which adds an extraordinary dimension to the entire set as such an important site for the local livelihood and surrounding ecosystem.
Kesser Tower Rear has played a pivotal role in agriculture, irrigation, As well as in the protection against storms and the local climate regulation, the traditional buildings and constructions, made of rammed earth genuinely constructed to cope with the extreme climatic conditions of the region blend in perfect symbiosis with its natural environment, thus contributing to the preservation of the biodiversity characteristic of the region.
This site is facing a number of threats that compromise its integrity and sustainability.
Signs of damage of this Moroccan heritage are of increasing concern.
The orphan construction that date back several centuries ago suffered the devastating effects of the time, but also the consequences of human activity, the cracked walls, the collapsed roofs, and the traditional designs have disappeared gradually.
The windows and doors, which testify of the richness of this region are at risk of damage.
In order to provide lasting solutions to the challenges faced by the site and its occupants, the Ministry of Planning of the National Territory, Urban Planning, housing, and City Policy and the United Nations Program for Development have initiated a pilot program called The Sustainable valorization Program for the CORS and Ksp of Morocco.
The program has targeted in the first place, 60 occupied houses threatened to collapse or with unsanitary conditions.
The rehabilitation work includes the consolidation of the foundations and substructures, the rainwater drainage, the construction of randarf walls in Adobe, the waterproofing of terraces, the restoration of passages and covered alleys, the protection of the walls in ACA.
And the reconstruction of the degraded roofs.
In addition to the restoration and rehabilitation, this program has been designed to promote local economic development and the promotion of sustainable tourism through the financing of the revenues generating activities and capacity building for the benefit of the population of the Kesser.
Finally, it is noted that the carried work is based on local know how and the use of local materials while ensuring the preservation of the architectural authenticity of the Kesser.
In fact, Even though considerable efforts have been undertaken to preserve the Kesser, it is important to understand that the preservation of this valuable heritage does not stop here, to maintain the Kesser in good condition, it is essential that the efforts of all stakeholders are pooled in order to ensure decent life for local population.
In terms of safety and comfort, which will guarantee the sustainability of this heritage.
The preservation of the Kesser is a shared responsibility.
It is crucial that everyone, as far as they are concerned, to mobilize all efforts in order to guarantee the sustainability and durability of this exceptional historic site, which testifies of the ingenuity of local populations in adapting with their environment and which, at the same time remains a source of inspiration for researchers in sustainable development, resilience and ecological building.
The sustainable enhancement of SARS in Ksp, a pillar of sustainable territorial development.
What a wonderful video there from the Kingdom of Morocco.
Thank you so much for that.
It was very clear that you are doing a lot in this particular place, es Tau and interesting.
I didn't know that you're using it also for film sets.
Some of the movies I'm sure that we all have seen in Hollywood have been filmed there.
But also how you're dealing with the damage of time, of climate change, of human activity.
And trying to rehabilitate those 60 or so houses in a sustainable way.
I think it's very important.
If you have any questions, I think we can come to you later, to give us more details.
But I think right now, our performers have been waiting, very patiently.
Thank you so much.
I'd like to invite up onto the stage, Ahmad Arav, I hope I've pronounced your name right, who is a Mugme performer from Azerbaijan.
Oh, wonderful.
He's going to really set the tone for our session, bringing in the atmosphere of living heritage over to you.
Come to Become Decode But come to my I that canst my arm is O shut o shalt o Yo Yo Yo.
I'm on the I'm I'm going to more I'm more or I'm going to more o Y.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much to Ahad Agav who is a Mugam performer.
I'm not sure how old you are, but you have a very bright future ahead of you.
Wonderful performance.
He's 10-years-old, the same age as my daughter.
Amazing.
Incredible performance from Azerbijan and really sets the mood and the tone of today's really intimate session.
Wonderful.
We're going to change tax now and I think we are going to move on to our next panel.
I'm just going to take a seat here if you don't mind.
I'm going to call up miss Sandra Carvallo, who is the Director of Market Intelligence Policies and Competitiveness at UN Tourism.
Thank you.
Joining us online, we have miss Zioti Jose Ghar, who is the Deputy Director of World Heritage at Unesco.
I hope she's joining us online.
Really honored to have Mr.
Rafat Mahmoud, the chairman of the board of the I Shahar State Historical Architectural Reserve in Azerbijan.
Last but not least, Mr.
Benedetto Zacchioli president of the European Coalition of Cities Against Racism and chair of the International Coalition of Inclusive and Sustainable Cities of UNESCO.
You take a seat here.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
I know it's a bit far back and we've had so much going on since then, but do you remember those polling questions? We had a second one where we asked you about what you thought about what we could bring together in terms of cultural heritage and sustainability.
Could we bring up the results of the second one? What are the most pressing challenges facing historic neighborhoods? You can see there that tourism It could be, of course, a positive thing, but in some circumstances not and gentrification as well.
I think this is great because we're going to bring you in, Sandra, with your UN tourism hat, please.
What do you think about the results? Because clearly, these are the main issues for people in this audience, at least.
How can cultural heritage, sustainable tourism, climate resilience, local economic development be brought together in one framework.
Over to you.
Thank you.
Very good morning, everyone.
It's a pleasure to be here.
Thank you to the colleagues of UN Habitat and also to our hosts as a pleasure to be back and have good memories of the historic center here as well.
I think it's very interesting because the two green words are identification, tourism, but also there is mass.
So I think the question here, and we as United Nations Agency for tourism is not the sector itself.
It's how it's planned and how it's managed.
And I think from the panel before it was very interesting to hear about tourism as one of the economic and social aspects of an historic central or to say, in general of a city.
And if you think about it as one of the sectors, then we need to place it in the governance model with the other sectors.
We can't look at tourism in an isolated way and we can't use the sector to actually address some of the challenges if we don't put it in the brighter context.
I always say that if you look at tourists as temporary residents of a city because they will use the same resources, they will produce garbage, they will have the same impact, they will use transport.
Then the planning and the integration as a whole is much easier.
I don't want to go because I want to give the floor to the colleagues, but I think there's an important point here, which is to look at the balance of how tourism can actually help that regeneration in cultural terms, but also in terms of creating jobs, particularly for youth.
We know it's an entry path, but also entrepreneurship and the link with culture and creative industry.
I'll leave it here, and I'm sure we can take it further.
Thank you.
I hope we can go to miss Giossi, who is joining us online.
Hello.
Can you hear me? Yes.
Have you been following the discussion? Yes, I have wonderful to have you.
I'd like to come to you with the same question, please.
You can see there we have obviously tourism, gentrification.
But from the perspective of UNESCO, what would you say we could all do better at aligning these mandates, do you think? To try to address these challenges facing historic neighborhoods undergoing urban regeneration? Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Well, first of all, I'm very happy to be here.
Many thanks to UN Habitat and to Azerbijan, I wish I could be there in person to be able to participate, but I'm very happy to be online.
Well, at UNESCO, of course, with the World Heritage Center works on more than 360 world heritage cities across 196 states parties to the 1972 World Heritage Convention, of which, of course, Italy is one and rapid and uncontrolled urbanization and buildings and development pressures.
This is really one of the most significant threats to heritage.
And so the idea is not that heritage is somehow in opposition to socioeconomic development, but rather that it needs to underline how we integrate heritage conservation objectives with the priorities of economic, social, and development housing needs of the local communities and involve them in a framework of sustainable development.
Now, we have two UNESCO instruments that I think address and bring together what you are talking about and what the framework was mentioning, which is one is the 1972 World Heritage Convention, which supports in the protection of um historic cities with their local communities around their commitment to protect the outstanding universal value of their properties.
The second is the 2011 recommendation that some of the speakers earlier also mentioned, the UNSCO recommendation on the historic urban landscape that recognizes the relationship between the built, the natural, and the local communities and that provides a framework in looking at local communities also in engaging with um, knowledge and practices, the intangible cultural heritage.
So this provides a framework that looks at managing heritage for sustainable development and climate resilience through inclusive and minimal change while ensuring that urban transformation respects layered history that makes cities meaningful, livable, and resilient, so that traditional water systems or traditional building practices, historic public spaces are as important as the local practices.
Of construction and use of space tourism is not just about creating experiences for tourists, but are really for local communities to be able to benefit.
Putting the local communities first, and we have several tools and guidance that we have developed that you go around this.
One is the sustainable tourism strategy that emphasizes engaging local communities and bringing benefits to them as the as my colleague just before me was talking about how to manage tourism in ways that actually bring these benefits to local communities.
Also, across regions, UNESCO emphasizes the importance of housing policies that are sensitive to heritage values and priorities for rehabilitation, adaptive use of historic building stock.
From Fz to Havana, from Loan Praban to Stoneown of Zanzibar, The idea of adaptive reuse of historic structures has provided affordable homes while preserving community character.
Also, we have tools for this, such as the UNSCO Urban Heritage Atlas, which is a digital platform, an interactive digital platform that maps historic cities and their characteristics and provides through GIS mapping and serves as a repository, but also as a cultural mapping tool to be able to look at vernacular architecture, traditional techniques, as well as different levels of uh, heritage came from the large scale of natural aspects of ecological aspects to the small scale buildings and their specific characteristics.
Thank you.
Of course, we invite more cities to join this and provide case studies.
The last one that I want to mention um, is a guidance that we're developing for managing urban heritage, which is looking at being able to protect heritage while ensuring compatible urban and sustainable urban development, and that is linked with this urban heritage Atlas.
That looks at the coordination of local governance and heritage sensitive planning.
I'm going to stop here.
Yes.
Thank you talk.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much.
Mr.
Rafaat Mahmoud, over to you.
I wanted to bring you in.
Obviously, we are in Azerbijan, you're hosting this, and in your work in your daily life, you are doing a lot to try to preserve historical architecture in Azerbijan but also would like to hear your reaction to some of what we've heard from the UN and focus on what we can do better to align mandates.
I think that's a key part of this question.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Yes.
On being on the side of the host, first of all, I'm welcoming all the participants.
Certainly, we're delighted to have 13 session of Wolf in Azerbijan, but I'm also very happy to have this dialogue happening here because the topics we discuss is extremely important.
You know, when the dialogue is between the specialists, it's somewhere open, it's a theory, it's international practice, best practice and et cetera, but the regular people when they see they realize that the problem they face in their daily life, it's not that related just to them.
It's happening in all historical cities and this is absolutely important.
For me, as representing the Iasaha and I'm happy to hear that most of you already visited our beautiful city, we call it city in the city.
And we face those challenges which we discussed here on a daily basis.
Lots of issues which you raised referring to other cities and other places absolutely reflected in our work.
The balance which probably is the word mentioned most of all, this is what certainly we have to focus on the balance between commercialization.
Without it, I believe none of the historical cities can survive.
And at least it will not be interesting.
We've seen such cities in many places that certainly we don't want to replicate.
We want to have our Is I Shahira living city.
First of all, I will just mention that recently we started a new phase reforms and what we're starting from is first, we want to know the citizens living in there.
We conduct for the time being the huge survey On the individual level.
Luckily, we don't have that many people living.
It's just about 3,000, so we can manage it.
We conduct the survive to know all the problems, all the issues they have in their daily life and base the strategy on it.
We're very much focused on to make their life more comfortable and conduct lots of actions in order to provide them, including using the new technologies, digitalization, digital catastro mobility control and et cetera.
But an important issue is also to work with the private sector.
He my important message, of course, for the administration, again, being on the practical side.
First, the administration needs to work on a trust, trust from the citizens, trust from the particular partners from the private sector and the strategy of administration certainly to be very clear and open, transparent for all the stakeholders.
I can tell more, but I know the time is limited.
Thank you so much.
That's great.
Trust, I think, I'm not sure if trust was one of the words that came up, but I think it's a really important one actually.
Over to you, Benedetto, actually, that's quite a good segue into you when we're talking about trust, talking about the issues and the challenges around urban regeneration.
I'd really like you to reflect on some of the points that have been raised by the panel, but also our audience in terms of what they see as the biggest challenges.
So first of all, thank you to having me.
I was thinking about because the challenges of the Uber generations and tourism together are really high.
First of all, I thought that my origin, I live in Rome, that is a tiny spot of tourism around the world.
Just last year, we add in our cities 35 million tourists in just one year.
When I heard speaking about over tourism, I can understand what is not just over is ultra over tourism, something that is for a normal resident in Rome is something that is sometimes difficult to tackle.
Anyway, first ingredient is not to forget never when we speak about urban regeneration of the first word, that is urban.
Urban city is something that is really important, never to be forgotten because in my neighborhood, in your neighbor in our neighborhoods, is not just building to be restored or regenerated, is something really more I can say this mel I can say the colors, I can say the shops that are there or some place of worship that are there.
When we regenerate cannot be a matter only of technicians, or I was deputy mayor in my town, or just a matter of the politicians.
The core design of a urban regeneration is absolutely essential.
It's not just for citizen to be consulted.
No.
Co design means that we are the pencil, the politician, the technicians, the expert, the cultural expert, but also the citizen that live concretely in a place.
Otherwise, we risk the displacement that sometimes is not just that the people is displaced in a physical sense, but is displaced keeping their house there, but they cannot recognize anymore their neighborhood and they feel displaced.
When you lost the sense of belonging to your not just town but neighborhood, is the community that is totally lost.
It become not a regeneration, but just that we set up a set like a cinema set and stop for the use of someone else.
And that sty struggle.
I'm just quite finishing that sty struggle that we have nowadays with this ultra fantastic tourism that for the politicians is understandable because it's enriching budgetaryly speaking, the city, but we restore the container, we lose the content.
We cannot absolutely have these lacks to have that.
No, we cannot lose.
Politics and expert are a disservice like UNESCO, like the other international.
Level are at the service of the cities, they are not served by them, but they are serving them.
This is an imperative.
I think that this is one of the best.
I have two examples.
One could be, for example, Barcelona.
I was in there two days ago.
They launched their anti racist plan and anti discrimination plan for ten years in the cities.
Maybe we can guess what about here, but no, it's just that because in how we design, redesign or co design our part of the cities, There is something that is belonging also to the idea of discrimination and not discrimination that belong to my network.
In Palermo, they are doing a regeneration of a part of the city and they are doing co designing, not listening, just listening to the citizens but design with them.
I finished.
Thank you so much.
Just coming to you, Sandra, and maybe very briefly to Zioti because we're running out of time.
Just quickly, can you tell us what the UN is doing? In terms of partnerships and what is needed? What are your intentions? Because when we leave here in Baku, we want to take things forward.
What are your intentions? What are you doing? What are your intentions? Briefly, please.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I think to the point that was mentioned before, I think we have three things which are important.
One, to look at the sector as an enabler and like any sector to regulate it and to control it when it's necessary.
I think this is something that we've been working from our side.
We created an initiative for mayors on sustainable urban tourism.
Why? Because it's often thought that tourism itself will be the problem and the solver of the problem.
But the person in charge of tourism generally doesn't have the tools or the urban perspective.
For us, the most important thing is, how do we place tourism in the global urban agenda in a way that serves that agenda and the residents.
I think this is for us the most important point.
We're working with the colleagues of UN Habitat to make sure that This takes place.
It's not common actually tourism probably was not sitting at the table of this discussions many years ago.
Now, I think it should be on both perspectives on how do we manage it better, with limits, with regulation, but also how do we make the most of it for those cities and settlements who want to bring in still that economic value and social as well and to them.
The third thing we're doing, we're working with UNESCO, with our colleagues on different areas.
I would like also to highlight one point that we haven't spoken yet here, which is accessibility.
For us, it's a very important point to make sure that universal design is also in the tourism sector a priority.
We've been working quite a lot with the colleagues on world Heritage sites so that this can be enjoyed by residents but also by visitors in an equal and non discriminatory way.
That can be accessible for all.
I'll leave it there.
I think most importantly, the same thing that happens within the system happens at national and local level.
We do need multi layer governance mechanisms because if we don't sit all at the table, it will be very difficult to actually solve the challenges that we face.
In this case, the tourism goes from being a challenge to being an opportunity.
Thank you.
Gotti, over to you.
Thank you very much.
Very quickly, I think that if you're talking about housing and regeneration in historic areas, there are three things that you might say or four things that are essential.
One is to look at it in terms of reuse of existing historic stock.
Looking at second is looking at traditional building practices.
The third is looking at integrating climate resilience, and the fourth is ensuring that local communities are engaged and empowered.
What are the UN agencies and how are we working together? Of course, we work very closely together with the UNWTO, we work very closely with UN habitat.
But the most important thing, I think that we are doing together, first of all, is looking at standards standard setting, which is being able to say, well, what are the ways in which things should be done correctly? This is number one.
The second is looking at developing and what we have, as I mentioned, developing tools, guidance towards this so that it enables people and empowers them to be able to take actions towards the standards that have been set and that have been agreed upon.
By all the different member states and stakeholders.
The third is looking at sharing good practices.
This is again, of course, UN Habitat has their own practices that have been included, but I can talk about the World Heritage Canopy website, for example, where heritage related practices for sustainable development, particularly in urban areas is included.
Um, the final point is on sharing data, and of course, we are part of the global data, the Urban Data Coalition.
We have the Culture 2030 indicators for measuring the role and contribution of culture to the 2030 agenda, which is at the national and the local level, and this data is part of the Global Urban Observatory.
But most important, we have the framework of the sustainable development goals and the New Urban Agenda to which we are all committed.
So we are all working in a single framework to be able to support the countries, the same member states that thank you so much to be able to achieve this.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Mr.
Rafat Mahmoud.
Just a few points.
First, historic heritage must remain alive.
That's what we have to be focused on, not frozen.
Second, urban regeneration must improve the lives of residents, not only the experience of visitors at all what we discussed.
Last but not least, the future of historic cities depends on, again, the same word balance between preservation and development, technology and identity, tourism, and authentic urban life.
Benedetto, obviously, you work on issues like racism, you speak to a lot of communities around the world.
What are they telling you? What should the UN and governments be doing more of? More, I think, nothing.
There is always a bit of space to improve United Nations, they are doing a lot.
We cannot always complain and say, always is not enough, but there's already something.
But for the other hand and to the other hand, I think that there is a thing that has to be taken into consideration that are two things actually.
The first is to avoid when we speak about that, to the mosaification of the city.
When I see in my town all these tourists that I cannot go to the office.
Roma.
Yes.
That I cannot go to the office because they are really full in there about coliseum and so on.
They look at you and say, has to be amazing to live in Rome.
No.
In this kind of Roma, no, thank you.
But this part of the mosification.
The second one is the intergenerational discussion about this stuff.
Also in this room, there are youth around.
So we elder, we don't have to think of the youth like the next generation or like more politician, they say, Guys, I'm here in front of you youth and it's amazing because you are the future.
That means I'm the present, you stay seated.
It's not your time.
I don't want to listen to you.
No.
Is absolutely the other way around, is to work with them also because maybe not in the big, big, big cities, but in the medium and small sized cities is full of young administrator, young mayor, young deputy mayors that day by day they work and they work really with an effort and us to be recognized and us to be heard.
So that are two things to take always into consideration.
Thank you so much to our wonderful panelists.
A big round of applause, please.
Thanks to all of you who've been watching online or being here in the audience, I'm Nazan Mashiri.
We've seen a clear commitment, I think, today, expressed for making sure that heritage led processes are sustainable and urban regeneration happens in an inclusive way.
I think we have some clear calls to action here.
Um, I'd like to thank the curators of accession, UN Habitat, you on tourism, the Kingdom of Morocco, and also, I think Simona, who's over there, you're the wonderful painter.
A Simosa, a big round of applause for her as well.
You can go and check out her painting in a minute.
Please do fill out an audience survey before you leave as well.
But a huge thanks to all of you again and I hope you had a wonderful time at this rethinking cultural heritage and inclusive urban regeneration special session.
Thank you so much.
And a round of applause for the moderator because absolutely will recognize and all the translator interpreters.
Of course for us.
Thank you.
Wonderful job.
Thank you so much.
You should be doing this.
Thank you.
Bye bye.