Historic Urban Landscape Research Papers (original) (raw)

This monograph is a curation of reflections on the Heritage City Development and Augmentation Yojana (HRIDAY) program conceptualised, funded and regulated by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA), Government of India and further discourses that are triggered by it. HRIDAY is a unique infrastructure development program that not only places cultural heritage at its centre, but also acknowledges the need to involve local and grounded issues of community, infrastructure and governance. As a pilot, this flagship scheme of the government selected twelve heritage cities that are geographically spread over the country and culturally diverse. It supports development of physical, social, economic and institutional infrastructures in these cities. The scheme is being considered to be taken to more cities in the future, in the same form or another, and from that point of view, this monograph provides for material that can inform the future trajectories of development of historic cities.

This engagement has provided an opportunity to initiate a dialogue on heritage, historic settlements and conservation practice in India by leading thinkers on the subject. It has also provided a platform to showcase the leading conservation practices in India, provide academic reflections and deliberate on the future directions. The 19th General Assembly of ICOMOS, with the theme of Heritage and Democracy for the Scientific Symposium, provided an opportunity for these critical deliberations. Questions of expanse or limits of the heritage discourse, the transformative nature of conservation processes, issues of equity and inclusivity, critiques for sustainable development, aspects of human rights and diversity, ethics of engagement, have been raised in the thematic groups of the Scientific Symposium. Keeping these questions as underlying themes, the content of the monograph is a result of a year-long process of deliberation upon the HRIDAY program, through on ground studies, workshops with experts and dialogue with the City Anchors.

The content of the monograph is divided in three parts. The first part delivers as experts’ voice that elaborate upon positions that have triggered from the questions embedded within HRIDAY. These voices are a call to expand and deepen history, heritage and conservation discourses beyond the divides of ‘tangible’ and ‘intangible’, beyond the boundaries of a particular professional expertise and beyond the limits of roles, rules and regulations. These areas of discussions and opinions in the monograph are a result of a two day workshop that called upon experts, academics, practitioners and students to look at the processes of continuity and change examined in historic cities through HRIDAY or otherwise and reflect upon it as a matter of principle. Key topics discussed in the workshop were: a) the need to expand and deepen the heritage and conservation discourse, b) concerns for sustainable development, equity and inclusiveness in all aspects of planning, design, implementation and monitoring of processes in historic cities, c) procedural access of all people involved in the making and the governance of the city and d) tools and methods that facilitate the concerns of inclusion and accessibility.

In order to present opinions on this discourse, the articles presented here have recalled certain positions from another time or place through case studies and in some cases have dwelled upon some specific processes/ attitudes of the City Hriday Plans. Some articles suggest an alternative imagination or vision of historic cities to trigger thoughts for the way these cities are understood by bringing in experience from elsewhere. This has been possible due to the intent of the HRIDAY program of seeking a paradigm shift in the way historic cities are developed, designed and governed. In many ways, these articles mirror the gaps between the objectives laid out in the HRIDAY program linking conservation and development, tourism and local economies, tangible built environment and local knowledge, basic quality of life and the soul of the city and the ground conditions. The scheme, in many ways, is path breaking in its thinking as it attempts to bring together aspects of development discourse that are conventionally not part of the conservation discourse of historic cities.

The second part of the monograph include selected aspects of the City Hriday Plans (CHP) prepared by the Anchor agencies and the studies undertaken by the students on HRIDAY Cities at the graduate level of Conservation, Urban Design and Planning at Faculty of Architecture and Faculty of Planning at CEPT University. The content of the CHP presented here is curated by the Anchors themselves in order to present their vision for the city and to highlight a select number of projects that according to them characterize that vision. While the monograph provides a platform for bringing together this professional work, it has also, very interestingly, brought out the similarities and differences of approaches taken by the Anchors for the cities they are envisioning a future. This indeed provides a very good feedback to the guidelines that were provided in the HRIDAY scheme , in terms of how much do they enable or limit and further what are the underlying aspects of the guidelines that come across as a an accepted position of the scheme.

This part also gives an outline of the on ground studies conducted by the students of CEPT University, which was the first leg of the collaboration between ICOMOS, India and the University. The seven on ground studies have been undertaken in the cities that have seen significant utilization of funds, implying a greater impact of the schemes on ground. The studies focused on various aspects such as tourism infrastructure needs and assessment, approaches to conservation, incorporation of intangible, inclusion through methods of participation, stakeholder perceptions, tools of design and the resultant sense of place. In many ways, the discussions brought to the foreground meanings of heritage as interpreted by various stakeholders, methodical frameworks of the scheme and the concerns for sustainable development and public participation. These ideas were carried forward in subsequent workshop with experts and practitioners. The data collected through these studies also provided the base material for certain reflections and are integral and invaluable part of the monograph.

The last part of the monograph provides a critical feedback and way forward from multiple perspectives. It has a feedback from the perspective of a city Anchor that brings forth the challenges faced by professionals at the time of implementation of such ideas and highlights the large gaps in capacities on ground, necessary negotiations, absence of understanding of cultural spaces and assets as public goods and as a human right. There is a critical reflection by the ICOMOS India National Scientific Committees of Historic Towns and Villages and Cultural Routes, members who participated in the discussion in various capacities. The intention of this critical feedback is to integrate the discourses that have emerged from HRIDAY to the larger concerns of improved quality of life, creation of public spaces and place making in historic settlements as they form a part of a greater socio-economic and cultural landscape. In the end, the editors jointly bring together various threads of the discourse triggered by this scheme and impacts not only these settlements which are part of the HRIDAY scheme, but also other initiatives to conserve historic settlements and urban historic landscapes in this rich and diverse country. In this regard, the varied backgrounds of the editors have enabled an interdisciplinary reflection on the scheme and its processes and hence in essence, is an interdisciplinary collaboration.

Before we end this note, we would like to acknowledge the support of Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Government of India, ICOMOS India and CEPT University. Their faith in us as curators gave us the necessary freedom to put together a monograph that is representative of the scheme and simultaneously has a critical stance. The Directed Research Program at CEPT proved to be a valuable institutional framework to engage interested students in the research. We would like to thank all the City Anchors for being extremely supportive in providing the material and their perspectives. The workshop and Open Talk hosted at the CEPT University, was an encouraging trigger of discussions and we thank all who actively and enthusiastically participated in it. And lastly, we thank all the authors, members of National Scientific Committees of ICOMOS India and students of CEPT University for having contributed their valuable work to this monograph.