IHS at WUF - Heritage beyond history

This networking session addresses the tension between urbanization, cultural heritage and innovation. Its aim is to generate generic strategies in regenerating historic urban cores by means of knowledge exchange. For that reason, this session is directed towards practitioners in urban regeneration.

Although cultural heritage is presented to us as a strategic asset in today’s urban development, we may meanwhile observe cities struggling to find a balance between conserving the cultural qualities of the past and the social needs of the present. The issue is most apparent in the World Heritage Cities as listed by UNESCO. They all, or almost all, struggle with issues of sustainability and inclusiveness. How to adapt the fragile historic urban core to current social needs? How to prevent the much valued historic urban core to become the exclusive domain of the tourist and the gentry?

During this session, the topics of sustainability and inclusiveness of the historic urban core will be discussed by means of an interactive world café setting, preceded by pitches on the subjects. This way we intend to extract and combine existing knowledge to applicable practice.

This session is a joint endeavour of three Dutch institutes with a longstanding and worldwide experience in regenerating historic urban cores:

• RCE: Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands (Ministry of Education, Culture and Science),
• IHS: Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies (Erasmus University of Rotterdam) and
• H&A: section Heritage & Architecture of the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment (Delft University of Technology)