Keynote speech during workshop about Caribbean World Heritage Sites in the light of today’s global challenges.
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City growth threatens sustainable development of cities. Over the past decades increased urbanization has created more pressure - not only on the suburban outskirts - but also in the inner core of the cities, putting important environmental issues such as water management and cultural heritage under stress. Cultural heritage, either standing monuments or archaeological remains, is internationally recognized as an important legacy of our history. The European Convention on the Protection of the Archaeological Heritage incorporates concepts and ideas that have become accepted practice in Europe. Conservation and enhancement of archaeological heritage is one of the goals of urban planning policies. One of the key objectives of the European policy is to protect, preferably in-situ, archaeological remains buried in the soil or seabed and to incorporate archaeological heritage into spatial planning policies. Conflicts with prior uses and unappreciated impacts on other subsurface resources, amongst them archaeological heritage, make use of underground space in cities suboptimal. In terms of ecosystem services, the subsurface environment acts either as a carrier of archaeological heritage in situ (stewardship) or supports above-ground cultural heritage. Often, it’s not enough to protect the heritage site or monument itself: new developments outside a specific protected area can lead to changes in groundwater level, and cause serious damage to heritage buildings and archaeological deposits. This paper presents good practices in cultural heritage management and the use of subsurface knowledge in urban areas.
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Coastal and marine cultural heritage (CMCH) is at risk due to its location and its often indefinable value. As these risks are likely to intensify in the future, there is an urgent need to build CMCH resilience. We argue that the current CMCH risk management paradigm narrowly focuses on the present and preservation. This tends to exclude debates about the contested nature of resilience and how it may be achieved beyond a strict preservationist approach. There is a need, therefore, to progress a broader and more dynamic framing of CMCH management that recognises the shift away from strict preservationist approaches and incorporates the complexity of heritage’s socio-political contexts. Drawing on critical cultural heritage literature, we reconceptualise CMCH management by rethinking the temporality of cultural heritage. We argue that cultural heritage may exist in four socio-temporal manifestations (extant, lost, dormant, and potential) and that CMCH management consists of three broad socio-political steering processes (continuity, discontinuity, and transformation). Our reconceptualisation of CMCH management is a first step in countering the presentness trap in CMCH management. It provides a useful conceptual framing through which to understand processes beyond the preservationist approach and raises questions about the contingent and contested nature of CMCH, ethical questions around loss and transformation, and the democratisation of cultural heritage management.
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The role of Jewish heritage for the city of Belmonte.
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The role of smart cities in order to improve older people’s quality of life, sustainability and opportunities, accessibility, mobility, and connectivity is increasing and acknowledged in public policy and private sector strategies in countries all over the world. Smart cities are one of the technological-driven initiatives that may help create an age-friendly city. Few research studies have analysed emerging countries in terms of their national strategies on smart or age-friendly cities. In this study, Romania which is predicted to become one of the most ageing countries in the European Union is used as a case study. Through document analysis, current initiatives at the local, regional, and national level addressing the issue of smart and age-friendly cities in Romania are investigated. In addition, a case study is presented to indicate possible ways of the smart cities initiatives to target and involve older adults. The role of different stakeholders is analysed in terms of whether initiatives are fragmentary or sustainable over time, and the importance of some key factors, such as private–public partnerships and transnational bodies. The results are discussed revealing the particularities of the smart cities initiatives in Romania in the time frame 2012–2020, which to date, have limited connection to the age-friendly cities agenda. Based on the findings, a set of recommendations are formulated to move the agenda forward. CC-BY Original article: https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17145202 (This article belongs to the Special Issue Feature Papers "Age-Friendly Cities & Communities: State of the Art and Future Perspectives") https://www.dehaagsehogeschool.nl/onderzoek/lectoraten/details/urban-ageing#over-het-lectoraat
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Urban ageing is an emerging domain that deals with the population of older people living in cities. The ageing of society is a positive yet challenging phenomenon, as population ageing and urbanisation are the culmination of successful human development. One could argue whether the city environment is an ideal place for people to grow old and live at an old age compared to rural areas. This viewpoint article explores and describes the challenges that are encountered when making cities age-friendly in Europe. Such challenges include the creation of inclusive neighbourhoods and the implementation of technology for ageing-in-place. Examples from projects in two age-friendly cities in The Netherlands (The Hague) and Poland (Cracow) are shown to illustrate the potential of making cities more tuned to the needs of older people and identify important challenges for the next couple of years. Overall, the global ageing of urban populations calls for more age-friendly approaches to be implemented in our cities. It is a challenge to prepare for these developments in such a way that both current and future generations of older people can benefit from age-friendly strategies. CC-BY Original article: https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph15112473 https://www.dehaagsehogeschool.nl/onderzoek/lectoraten/details/urban-ageing#over-het-lectoraat
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The shallow subsurface in historic cities often contains extensive archaeological remains, also known as cultural deposits. Preservation conditions for naturally degradable archaeological remains are strongly dependent on the presence or absence of groundwater. One of the main goals at such heritage sites is to establish a stable hydrological environment. Green infrastructural solutions such as Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SUDS) can support preservation of cultural deposits. Several cases show that implementation of SUDS can be cost effective at preservation of cultural deposits. These include Motte of Montferland, City mound of Vlaardingen, Weiwerd in Delfzijl, and the Leidse Rijn area. In all cases, the amount of underground infrastructure is minimised to prevent damaging cultural layers. SUDS have been implemented to preserve cultural heritage. The first monitoring results and evaluation of the processes give valuable lessons learned, transnational knowledge exchange is an important element to bring the experiences across boundaries.
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This booklet reports on experiments carried out by Van Hall Larenstein University of Applied Sciences in the context of the VALUE project. It consists of three parts. The first two chapters describe some experiments carried out in the Dutch town of Amersfoort and the students’ input and approach. This is followed by an intermezzo on sources of inspiration outside the Netherlands and examples of the way urban green spaces and elements can provide an impulse for towns and cities. The final two chapters concern the way such a green strategy can be designed in Dutch urban settings. Chapter 5 discusses how local governments can use the added value provided by urban green spaces for new investments:value capturing. Chapter 6 focuses on a new type of planning: Planning by Surprise, which combines dreams and pragmatism. The photo essay at the centre of the book tells the story of the many sides of green spaces in towns and cities. Unintentional, intentional, planned, dreamed of, drawn,remembered, pictured, developed: Planning by Surprise.
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In this article, the preservation of the monumental built environment from the colonial period is related to and discussed within the perspective of heritage ownership. It contributes to a debate in which heritage resource preservation is approached and connected to several heritage ownership issues. It argues that an effective built environmental preservation policy for colonial heritage is strongly related to and dependent on issues such as legal property ownership, legislation on listed buildings, enforcement of such legislation, and the willingness among different categories of potential owners to participate and support such preservation. Especially, when it comes to built colonial heritage as an imported alien resource from a colonial past, these issues are particularly interesting and sensitive. A good illustration of these issues is the case of Paramaribo, Suriname. The national government policy following the inscription of the historic inner city of Paramaribo on the World Heritage List of UNESCO in 2002 clearly demonstrates an area of tension and difficulty between and within the interested parties. It shows that monumental preservation and heritage management and interpretation are strongly affected and determined by concepts such as ownership, affinity, interest, economic priorities, and political will. By referring to the actual problems encountered in the preservation efforts relating to the built colonial heritage in Paramaribo and subsequently explaining these problems in relation to specific ownership issues, this article throws light on a number of dilemmas. Conclusions are drawn widening the argument and contributing to the ongoing debate on heritage ownership issues and monument preservation policies especially as it relates to the global issue of managing the relics of now defunct empires. In recent years an increasing interest can be detected in issues concerning the legal property ownership of heritage. This growth in interest focuses in particular on the legislation in relationship to property ownership issues. An important aim of national governments is to use legislation to safeguard their cultural property by embedding it in law, especially, when this cultural property has a high monetary or identity value (as stressed by Fechner, 1998). Additionally, the growing awareness and recognition of heritage as a valuable economic, sociopsychological and environmental asset is receiving increasing international attention. For example, the international acknowledgment that heritage resources are under pressure from all kinds of processes and impacts has encouraged the need for an extension of international legal measures. Consequently, this international interest, often expressed in conventions, charters, and treaties, encourages national and local initiatives (Techera, 2011). An interesting complication to this issue is the question that arises where it involves the monumental built environment from the colonial period that is being preserved and restored, as it may be viewed as a heritage based on alien resources. In particular the acceptance, recognition, and role of what may be viewed as an imported colonial built environment in a multicultural and multiethnic context, may impact effective legislation. Although the discussion about the roles of heritage within a plural cultural and ethnic society has already begun (recently emphasized by Van Maanen, 2011; Ashworth, Graham, & Tunbridge, 2007), it is still an underresearched topic when it comes to legal property ownership as part of a management strategy for preserving built colonial heritage resources. This article examines in particular the effectiveness of policies and laws pursued in Suriname as an instrument for the preservation of resources. It highlights the legal and administrative challenges facing the implementation, management, and enforcement of these strategies and measures. The first part of this article examines the debate about the approach and strategy in using law in conservation and preservation policies. Then the article proceeds to introduce Suriname as an instructive case study. It describes the existing multiethnic context of Suriname and the evolution of legislative policy for the historic inner city of the capital, Paramaribo, with its monumental built environment from the colonial period. By using field data, the article continues with an analysis of the effectiveness and impacts of this administrative and legal framework established in Suriname. It examines in detail the main problems encountered and the extent to which this strategy is supported by the key stakeholders.
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In this paper we discuss the general approach and choices we made in developing a prototype of a social media monitor. The main goal of the museum monitor is to offer museum professionals and researchers better insight in the effects of their own social media usage and compare this with other actors in the cultural heritage sector. It gives researchers the opportunity to consider communication within the sector as whole. In the research project “Museum Compass” we have developed a prototype of a social media monitor, which contains data of current and historic online activities on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Foursquare and Flickr of all registered Dutch museums. We discuss – mostly in a practical sense – our approach for developing the monitor and give a few examples as a result of its usage.
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