10 C O N T E X T 1 1 0 : J U LY 2 0 0 9 Conference report: Cambridge heritage seminar Historic cities in a globalising world The University of Cambridge is host this year to an intensive and varied programme of events that celebrate the 800th year of its foundation.The theme of the 10th Cambridge Heritage Seminar, hosted at the Department of Archaeology, was ‘The Future of Historic Cities’.With contributions from researchers, policymakers and practitioners, the seminar debated how to preserve the identity and diversity of historic cities and cultural landscapes in a rapidly globalising world. Marie Louise Stig Sørensen, senior lecturer in archaeology at the university, explained that the primary objective of the series had been to facilitate exchanges between people from professions and institutional frameworks that do not routinely interact.The themes of the seminars – from ‘Contested Domains’ in 1997, through ‘The Condition of Heritage’ in 2001 and ‘Intangible Cultural Heritage’ in 2006, to ‘Packaging the Past’ in 2008 – have sought to reflect the progress of the debate. The debate has evolved from a sense of marginalisation and lack of coordination in the mid-1990s, to a level of maturity today that enables it to embrace the concept of sustainable development, and articulate the complex inter-linked meanings and values at the scale of historic cities. Referring to the qualities of cities as places rather than assemblages of monuments, Sørensen highlighted that ‘the historic city has become a kind of laboratory of socially aware conservation practices’. Maria Costi, architect and resident of the walled city of Nicosia, Cyprus, described restoration projects that have been undertaken there.The municipality’s focus on ‘bringing life to the old city’ was directed at the restoration of historic buildings as museums, cultural centres and exhibition halls.This restoration came at the loss of important parts of a historic centre neighbourhood, and socio-economic transformation came at the expense of community facilities in health, sports and public open space. Costi spoke passionately about the need to address the disappearance of functions, of conflicts between homes and nightclubs, traditional markets and cultural centres, and the priority that should be attached to ‘the immaterial elements: for it is those that preserve the quality of life, not romantic facades’. Costi concluded that ‘the immaterial elements should be studied and restored with the same precision and attention – if not more so – as the material elements: that is the future of historic cities’. Much of the debate concerned the question of heritage as a product of social practices, rather than a management issue focused on the preservation of selected physical objects for their aesthetic or historical value and tourism potential. Several presentations queried whose heritage it was that we were preserving and what we meant by the term, whether in ancient cities such as Xi’an and Beijing in China, coastal colonial towns and villages in Brazil, or historic settlements across the continents that were experiencing the most rapid development and change. How can the diversity of cultural heritage be transmitted to future generations if it is appropriated for image-making and selective socioeconomic advantage to the prejudice, if not exclusion, of the local communities whose traditions forged it? PatrickWright, professor at the Institute of Cultural Analysis at NottinghamTrent University, characterised the heritage industry as ‘a toxic veneer smeared over history, detached from reality’. Lim Jong-Hyun, originally from South Korea and now teaching historic preservation at the Savannah College of Art, USA, urged a distinction between the meaning of the tourist industry in different parts of the world. In Europe and North America it was a means to protect the identity of a place; in south east Asia, the means by which local people could secure the basic necessities of life. The question ‘whose city?’ provided the opening for John Preston, historic environment manager for Cambridge, in his presentation on the seminar’s host city. Cambridge is a city of contrasts: town and gown, history and change, wealth and deprivation, locals and students, residents and visitors, market town and multicultural city. It is a historic city that is both evolving and experiencing dynamic growth. How do we address the ability of such a city to withstand certain kinds of change but not others? Preston described how early townscape analysis in the city had focused on the physical aspects and ignored uses. He compared this to the new historic core appraisal and historic environment supplementary planning document, that addresses vulnerability and the capacity for change, and sets out policies for promoting and managing positive change in terms of land use as well as townscape. Ron van Oers, coordinator of the UNESCOWorld Heritage Cities Programme, described cities as ‘the dispensers of cultural identity’. He emphasised the importance of sustaining and reviving the cultural processes that had developed them.Van Oers spoke of a crisis in urban planning, emphasised that the conservation discipline had not kept pace with the pressures being faced by urban sites, stated that decentralisation was an important component of globalisation, and underlined the role of local governance in undertaking urban conservation. Dennis Rodwell, consultant in cultural heritage and sustainable urban development Cambridge’s historic built environment is characterised by dramatically contrasting architectural styles and scales.
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