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CELEBRATING OUR URBAN HERITAGE
INNOVATIVE
STRATEGIES FOR URBAN HERITAGE CONSERVATION, SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT, AND
RENEWABLE ENERGY
Luigi Fusco Girard
Sustainable
Urban Development
Currently there are
three important challenges to be addressed in the coming decade:
-
Mitigating the
negative impacts of global economic competition;
-
Reducing
inequality and the growing disparities in wealth, income, employment
opportunities, and overall quality of life;
-
Reversing the
tide of climate change and global warming.
These three
interdependent issues are concentrated in urban areas. Cities and
urbanized regions produce the highest level of water, soil, and air
pollution. Poverty, once a mainly rural issue, is rapidly rising
in urban regions. Increasingly, advanced production processes are
urban-based.
Cities can make a
difference resolving the above three critical issues. Urban policies
are essential in order to counteract the negative effects of climate
change. These policies include land use, transportation, waste
management, construction methods, and many other aspects of the current
environmental challenge. Similarly, overcoming of poverty,
unemployment, and social exclusion, along with improving overall
economic performances in the face of global competition, depends on
specific urban policies, programs, and related initiatives.
Urban development
strategies related to the physical structure of cities are a key element
of community economic regeneration by enhancing urban assets that
improve attractiveness. This means assigning a “focus” to every urban
neighborhood that orients its future growth as an integrated asset of a
polycentric region. This “focus” is often represented by cultural and
architectural heritage that is restored to new and greater vitality,
involving an important contribution to urban environmental quality of
life, and to cultural and architectural place-identity. Cities and
urban regions become more able to generate new functions and prevent the
loss of existing activities. The role of conservation of urban physical
and cultural heritage can be interpreted not only as an “attractor”, but
also as an “incubator” or catalyst for new economic services, from
tourism to innovation.
Conservation and
renovation projects as vital elements of urban regeneration
Which kind of
conservation project? Each conservation project or plan implies choices
among different values, objectives, uses, functions, materials,
technologies, and combinations among new and ancient architecture, and
between arts and sciences. It is always necessary to compare different
alternatives in terms of the entire range of direct and indirect
impacts, both in the medium-term and the long-term. Any rehabilitation
or restoration proposal is designed in part to stimulate higher use
values. Generally this involved increased energy consumption. If the
energy sources are based on conventional carbon-based fuels, then even
as heritage conservation induces new economic investment and
development, it also negatively contributes to the problem of climate
change. In other words, the long-run effects of these heritage
restoration projects may be harmful in that without energy conservation,
they are not environmentally sustainable.
Sustainable
conservation and renewable energy usage should be closely linked
Heritage
conservation should be an important part of a more general urban
economic development strategy of city, as well as a spatial development
strategy. At the same time, it must also be part of an energy
conservation and renewable resources utilization strategy. For example,
“solar city strategies” can promote closer integration of the economic
and ecological systems, such that urban environmental economics can be
implemented to foster sustainable prosperity and quality of life. A
strategy based on renewable energy can positively affect the physical
structure of a city, both its form and its building architecture.
Strategies for
conserving the built environment are designed to preserve and enhance
cultural, historic, and artistic values, and more importantly, to
provide a set of economic and social benefits and contribute to
improving the quality and sustainability of the urban ecology. Urban
planning and spatial development policy can be both economic and
ecological if the overall systems are balanced, starting with energy
production and consumption. Conservation of urban heritage can be
genuinely sustainable to the extent that it revitalizes communities by
creating a dynamic, growth-oriented mix of new functions that regenerate
economic and social life, while at the same time reducing energy
consumption and increasing the use of renewable resources.
Cultural Heritage in Global Economic
Competition: Tourism and Local Economic Development
The need to
emphasize the elements that “make the difference” urban areas rises from
increasing global economic competition. This implies a widespread
strategy of city and regional maintenance, rehabilitation and
restoration, characterized by the recycling and renewal of all major
spatial resources. Communities, cities, and urban regions are investing
in heritage conservation to become more attractive for foreign
investment and for creating decent employment opportunities. If they
also are able to link conservation to the use of renewable energy
sources, they can help reduce the negative impacts of climate change and
thus become far more sustainable and economically viable in the long
run. Potential conflicts between conservation and development can be
avoided by increasing the functional integration of urban space through
better and more comprehensive planning and research. Enhancing the
functional integration of housing, work, leisure, and mobility, along
with social, cultural, and public services helps reduce exchange
distances and circulation length, and is an essential means of
minimizing the displacement of people and the excessive consumption of
physical assets such as materials, water, and energy.
Organizing the
multifunctional use of space in more efficient ways
The ecological
restoration process aims to preserve and increase the use values of
green spaces, avoiding their transformation into exchange values under
the pressure of speculative urban rents. Cultural and environmental
integrated conservation produces relevant economic and social benefits
overall. For example, tourism represents an economic sector of
increasing importance for many local, regional, and national economies.
The success of tourism depends on a set of elements including
transportation accessibility (infrastructure and network links),
attractiveness due to natural and cultural resources (beaches,
mountains, and monuments), and the supply of various amenities and
services (cultural and social). It is characterized by a major positive
multiplier effect on business activities, employment, investment, and
development by drawing in revenues and resources from outside of the
marketplace. Direct employment resulting from renewed cultural assets
can be calculated to generate 1.5 overall new jobs for every 10,000
visitors, to which new jobs specifically in the tourism sector along
with temporary construction and renovation jobs in the field of heritage
investments must be added. Tourism helps increase property values,
wealth, jobs, incomes, and a positive international balance of payments
for the tourist destination and its surrounding region and nation. This
is also its limitation, because of the negative impacts of tourism on
the same resources (the natural and built environment) on which it is
based. Each site has a specific “carrying capacity” that should
not be overly utilized. Also, tourist demand is characterized by high
variability. It is necessary to identify new “strategic niches” such as
tourism linked to health and welfare (thermal or “medical tourism”),
sports tourism linked to recreational activities (riding or golf),
agricultural tourism linked to specialized local farming activities (biofarming),
“elite tourism” (oriented towards longer stays by the same absolute
number of users but with a much higher willingness to pay), and cultural
tourism (based on the supply of cultural sites, amenities, and
services).
Historic urban
centers can again become the places where traditional activities of the
“old economy” like craftsmanship and trade (sometimes informal and
hidden) can be combined with information technology and
telecommunications-based “new economy” entrepreneurial functions. Such
multifunctional development “growth poles” and hubs currently
characterize most recent urban regeneration investments and strategies.
Central cities must
realize that in order to compete in global markets to attract capital,
economic activities, and most importantly, people, they first need
valorize their specific cultural identity, represented best by their
historic urban core. But the economics of historic urban centers does
not simply correspond to the promotion of tourism, because while
building hotels, residences and supermarkets can create jobs, it can
also destroy physical and cultural heritage values that are much greater
economic assets over time, and once they are destroyed and lost, they
cannot easily if ever be replaced.
Renewal and
restoration of urban cultural heritage with many greatly specialized
functions in the rising fields of the “knowledge economy” are rapidly
multiplying, through the transformation of cultural assets concentrated
in historic urban centers into areas of excellence for new multi-media
production and services, graphic design, software research, internet
website construction, and many related activities.
The challenge is not
only to link these artistic and cultural activities to entrepreneurial
initiatives, such as investing in the installation of high-speed
“broadband” cable infrastructure to help expand information and
communications technology usage by small and medium-sized enterprises,
but also to spread their utilization in schools and among citizens
living and working in these communities. New “incubators” of
development and cooperation capabilities are implemented in this way, by
means of advanced research and development and technology
commercialization. Cultural assets and heritage conservation can be
promoted in the context of developing new direct, indirect, and induced
business and employment growth, with significant impacts on economic,
social, and environmental conditions. This might include, for example,
linking a potentially dynamic growth sector with improving the
conditions of everyday life, through the adoption of new informatics,
telematics, and communications technologies.
‘Beauty’ for Improving Wealth and
Reducing Poverty
Today
“attractiveness” reflected in the quality of life, is a key economic
development factor due to a combination of environmental, social,
cultural, and economic values. Both artistic and ecological resources
contribute to the beauty of a site or a landscape, which in turn can
potentially attract economic activities that produce wealth and reduce
poverty.
Beauty is linked not
only to the existing order in a territory. It reflects the harmony
existing among its different elements. It transmits a sense of
completeness rising from the perception that some attributes are
satisfied at their maximum level. Beauty is the synthesis of different
dimensions: it is the perception that every element is mutually
interconnected, and fosters a sense of connection between community,
capital, and assets.
The excellence or
beauty of a site is not only an aesthetic element, but contributes to
economic development. The natural and manmade beauty helps to increase
productivity of all forms of capital. Giovanni Botero asserted back in
1538 that beauty was one of the four “attractive virtues” of a city. It
attracts new economic activities, and both enhances and therefore helps
retain existing activities. Many experts now argue that quality of life
is one of the most important factors in the success or failure of
economic growth and prosperity. Beauty and quality of life are closely
linked.
A high quality
environment can improve the sense of well-being in a specific site; it
can also open people’s minds and lift their vision to a greater sense of
community and civic spirit. Sites characterized by beauty can help
overcome civic fragmentation and contribute to social integration.
Social capital and
cultural heritage are important elements of urban attractiveness.
Increasingly the attractiveness of a site is being perceived in relation
to its sustainability, such as possible utilization of renewable
resources. Culture, arts, and innovation in the field of energy
conservation can help generating a stimulating economic environment
The beauty of a
landscape or a site can be compromised by pollution or improper usage
such as inappropriate “modernization.” Excessive energy consumption
leads to climate changes due to the greenhouse gas impacts of carbon
dioxide (CO2) pollution. In the long run this can damage many currently
attractive and productive cultural and agricultural landscapes, because
of the rising variations in temperature and the rising frequency of
“extreme” meteorological events like hurricanes, floods, and tsunamis.
Changes in the hydrological cycle of surface water evaporation,
precipitation, and flow may become catastrophic in terms of a growing
lack of fresh water, parching forests and agricultural soils, drying up
rivers and lakes, and rapid soil erosion, with the harmful consequences
both of increased flooding and greater drought. Landscape beauty is
more and more threatened by the use of fossil fuels like oil and gas,
coke and coal.
The value of
preserved (or lost) beauty is an important benefit (or cost) item to
take into account when comparing traditional energy sources versus newer
and cleaner fuels. This comparison must include cultural, visual, and
symbolic values, not just functional ones.
Conservation, Restoration, Renewal, and
New Energy Sources
Conservation and
renovation of physical and cultural heritage is more effective when
linked to innovative economic production and investment. The
multifunctional use of urban space can become the new integrated and
sustainable conservation strategy that brings about a set of
agglomeration economies and social benefits. But there are also
negative externalities, because the multifunctional use of space implies
an increase of energy consumption. Such a rehabilitation process may be
an advantage for present users, but represents a distinct disadvantage
for future generations due to pollution and its negative impacts on
climate change.
Beauty and
conventional energies are in conflict in the future. The impacts of the
greenhouse effect and of air and water pollution caused by sulfur oxide,
nitrogen dioxide, benzene, and various particulates are destined to harm
our cultural and agricultural landscapes, reducing the carrying capacity
of land and producing a major loss of ecological and economic value.
Economic and social
systems need energy in order to survive and grow. However, beauty and
new renewable energy sources are congruent and can produce economically
sustainable development by connecting cultural and environmental
heritage conservation with innovations in the energy field, through the
use of renewable energy sources combined with substantially improved
energy efficiency. Geothermal springs, water, wind, and solar power are
all widely available in varying degrees from place to place, and they
can be used effectively to make urban heritage both more sustainable and
more valuable. This, in turn, can help promote technological innovation
and related spin-off activities such as research and development, which
generates substantial new employment.
The productive
sector of renewable energies is characterized by a very promising
potential of expansion, especially relating to small and medium-sized
enterprises that can help stimulate local economic development. The
capability to generate new employment in technology-oriented sectors
will arise from the increasingly widespread application of energy
conservation and the use of renewable energy sources in housing,
transportation, industry, trade, services, education, health, and many
other aspects of urban daily life.
The above is true,
in general, for western and northern European cities and regions,
characterized by their specific cultural heritage. But the perspective
of heritage conservation in the framework of conservation and renewable
energy strategies is even more necessary for cities and regions in
southern and eastern Europe that are on the threshold of a widespread
new development and modernization processes. To attract economic
investment and production, including heritage tourism, they must face
these difficult challenges in new and innovative ways. Conservation
strategies must be part of overall urban and regional economic
development strategies, which in turn should be closely linked to
renewable energy strategies.
Toward the Scenario of ‘Solar Cities
and Regions’
Today each
community, town, city, and region faces at least two very different
scenarios. One scenario is a continuation of the status quo approach,
with all of the predictably harmful consequences in terms of
environmental and social impacts. Alternatively, based on a new social
and environmental vision, there is an ecological-economic scenario. We
can imagine that this much more sustainable scenario adopts a longer
term perspective by planning for a transition towards a human economy
that is no longer carbon-based, but more and more “de-carbonized”.
The so-called “solar
city and region” is characterized by a new and original mix of renewable
energies. The most sustainable scenario is represented by a combination
“solar/hydrogen”, “wind/hydrogen”, “geothermal/hydrogen”,
“micro-hydroelectric water power/hydrogen”, and “biomass/hydrogen” with
hydrogen production also from urban wastes converted to energy through
thermovalorization power plants. Solar cities and regions will directly
use sunlight (or indirectly use wind power, water power, or biomass) to
produce energy. Accumulation is possible through hydrogen (produced
mostly by a water electrolysis process). Hydrogen can be used for
heating and cooling buildings and water, as well as for urban ground,
water, or air transportation, including through the use of fuel cells.
Fixed fuel cells will likely become more widely utilized in the coming
decades. Projects that provide for the matching of photovoltaic panels
with electrolysis process and fixed fuel cells correspond to the vision
of the solar city/region.
In promoting and
supporting sustainable heritage conservation, fuel cells can be used in
residential, commercial, and industrial buildings and landscapes. With
these fuel cells, it will be possible to store the surplus energy in the
form of hydrogen for use during the night when additional power is
needed to offset the loss of direct sunlight. Waste collection also can
contribute to the decentralized production of hydrogen. The convenience
and economic viability of this strategy is based over the long term on
favorable cost comparisons with conventional forms of carbon-based
fossil fuels due to the dramatic rise in traditional energy prices, and
correspondingly, the decreasing relative costs of renewable energy.
Good and Best Practices
In order to
transform urban and regional economies from running on fossil fuels to
operating through energy conservation and energy efficient renewable
sources, new technologies and techniques must be tried and tested.
Today there are a growing number of good and best practices involving
conservation projects using energy efficient renewable sources. These
initiatives must be assessed carefully, identifying their positive and
negative aspects. Freiburg in Germany is an excellent example not only
of building a solar city and region, but of doing so with widespread and
active citizen participation. In the Vauban district where low energy
consumption dwellings and passive solar dwellings were built, old French
military barracks from the early 19h century were renewed
using photovoltaic technology. A cogeneration system, fed by the nearby
woodland area by-products, produces electric power and heating for the
whole district. Due to the promotion of mobility based on walking,
cycling, and public transit rather than private automobiles, energy
consumption in the Vauban district was substantially reduced, along with
major reductions in emissions of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and a
variety of other minerals. In addition, photovoltaic cells were used in
the renovation of the Town Hall and the Victoria Hotel, close to the
historic city center. Similarly, the restoration of the House of
Parliament in Berlin involved the installation of a Foster dome and
photovoltaic panels. The Austrian experience has become somewhat of a
model in Europe, especially with respect to the reducing carbon
emissions. In particular, the city of Vienna implemented a subsidized
building renewal program that significantly decreased both fossil fuel
consumption and carbon-based emissions.
Older buildings can
be more expensive to maintain and manage due to inadequate insulation
that leads to greater energy loss compared to more modern buildings.
One study in Denmark determined that older buildings require two to four
times more energy per square meter for heating and cooling. Thus in
restoring and renovating older structures of old assets, new energy
conservation techniques and renewable energy efficient technologies must
be introduced to lower ongoing costs, though these machines and methods
must be made compatible with the preservation of historic cultural and
architectural values. In Kolding, Denmark, photovoltaic cells are being
used in the renewal of historic buildings and neighborhoods. In Arles,
France, the municipality restored a church that was originally built one
thousand years ago, to be used today as a major tourist attraction and
information center. Three photovoltaic fronts with 70 panels were
installed on the church. In Dublin, Ireland, energy efficient
materials, solar panels, photovoltaic and wind energy systems, and other
modern conservation methods were used to in the renovation of the Temple
Bar, turning this historic structure into a 21st century
“green building” that reduced energy costs by 80 percent, more than
offsetting the added costs of energy innovation
Added capital costs
of restoration costs are balanced not only by reductions in ongoing
energy consumption expenses, but by a wider set environmental, social,
economic, and cultural benefits. Diminishing the damaging air pollution
emissions of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and other
particulates causes far less harm to human health and to the health of
our ecosystem. Combining energy efficient conservation with energy
production using renewable sources contributes to increased employment,
enhancing overall demand with clear multiplier effects, while at the
same time escaping the harmful effects of dependency on oil and gas.
Overall, these enlightened and sustainable practices can help encourage
new cultural and civic values.
Tools for Building the Transition
Toward the Solar City/Region: Urban Conservation and Energy Planning
The “solar
city/region” represents a perspective linked to the systematic
introduction renewable energy. The transition towards the solar
city/region requires active participation by citizens, institutions,
planners, and designers. This change will proceed more rapidly if
architects and urban planners develop creative solutions to reshape
urban buildings and open spaces in new ways, saving on both materials
and energy consumption and costs.
Energy availability
is a vital factor in urban life because it assures its vitality in terms
of economic development and quality of life, with impacts on employment
rates, social conditions, and cultural styles. The development and use
of renewable energy in urban regions can be accelerated by clearing away
existing various economic, technical, and institutional constraints,
especially those linked to the adoption of specific technologies such as
harnessing solar and wind power. In addition, it will be necessary to
make urban planning an “active” (not neutral) tool supporting research
and development of energy conservation methods and renewable energy
sources, which not only reduce negative environmental impacts including
air pollution, but they can help generate new economic activities and
increased employment.
Urban planning
policies and regulations can encourage more energy-efficient insulation
of cultural heritage structures, including public works and
infrastructure, residential dwellings, and commercial buildings. This
new type of urban planning can promote creation of thermal districts
that integrate heat and cooling with electric power generation, and it
also can foster combining the management of waste products and materials
with recycling and reuse. Moreover, through more aggressive rule-making
along with financial incentives, urban planning can enhance the capacity
of individual dwellings and entire neighborhoods both to conserve energy
and to produce at least some energy locally to help meet the growing
demand. At the same time, urban planners should focus on buildings and
communities providing for natural ventilation and the cooling of spaces.
This should help induce market-based investors to find an appropriate
rate or return in energy innovations, which, through conservation,
sustainable technology, and economic competition, should reduce
production costs in the long run.
Conservation
planning has its foundation in the ways that energy is produced and
consumed. In other words, it must be closely tied to energy planning.
The combination of heritage conservation activities and renewable energy
systems represents the “entrance point” and the critical element needed
to activate sustainable urban development strategies. From careful
energy and conservation planning, genuine sustainable economic
development can result. In fact, the energy issues are
structurally interdependent with land-use, urban spatial planning,
transportation, housing, infrastructure, and industrial policies.
Urban communities
and regions represent the places where the transition from a
carbon-based economy to an economy based on renewable sources can start
occurring “on the ground”. Sustainable urban development strategies
that include both heritage conservation and renewable energy can be the
starting point for activating a process of change.
Participatory Evaluation of Cultural
Heritage Landscapes
We are now faced
with new choices: how to compare different alternative actions in
multidimensional urban space? Further, how do we compare newly produced
values with lost values. Which are the most important values in urban
heritage conservation? Which heritage values have recently been
damaged? What are the impacts of combining heritage conservation with
renewable energy strategies for the sustainable regeneration of
economic, social, cultural, and ecological life?
There are many
evaluation issues related to the above-mentioned comprehensive and
innovative strategies. For example, beauty value can be assessed in
terms of different approaches (economic, ecological, and socio-cultural)
different levels of intervention (strategic or operational). Local
Agenda 21 movements in urban communities promoting sustainable
development to improve the environment and stop climate change seem to
be the best political arena for creating a strategic vision of solar
city/region through widespread and coherent participatory processes.
The adoption of a “Local Agenda 21 of Culture” at the 2004
UNESCO-sponsored Universal Forum of Cultures in Barcelona as a central
element for making strategic and participatory urban development
decisions based on cultural heritage and comparable issues can serve as
a model for evaluating the production of new values as opposed to
existing “status quo” values.
An example of
evaluations derived from participation is the concept of “intrinsic
values” of cultural landscapes. The value of the historic center of
Italian communities like Assisi or Gubbio is not only represented by
each of their monuments, but by the integration between the various
monuments and the surrounding environment that has been shaped over many
centuries to define their collective cultural identity and particular
historical sense of unity. Intrinsic value reflects this sense of
cultural belonging, resulting from the unified integration of many
diverse components that all combine together to express the “spirit” of
the place. Sacred sites, both natural and built monuments, are examples
of resources that represent predominantly “intangible” values unrelated
to their construction and maintenance costs or to the revenues they
directly or indirectly generate: people assign them spiritual values
that are not overtly connected to the economic dimension, even if some
benefits can be monetarily measured, such as spending and donations by
visitors and tourists.
The roots of these
intrinsic values are in cultural traditions, in the history of a
community that reflects itself in the whole of the physical signs,
symbols, and spiritual values that inspire it. The value of natural
holy places is not just through preserving biodiversity, but in the
richness of nature that provides the essence for a number of goods and
services, including ingredients for products such as medicines and
cosmetics, and most importantly, through the deep linkages with human
relationships and communities. For example, places represent living
embodiments of the collective memory of vital historic events that help
determines a sense of co-belonging, of deep unity between people and
nature and between individuals, families, and larger communities: of
mutual interdependence that connects all of us together as a fundamental
characteristic of humanity.
Likewise, the value
of a religious monumental complex, or of pilgrimage places, goes beyond
the emotions evoked by their aesthetic beauty by opening one’s self to a
spiritual relationship characterized by the acknowledgement of a deeper
unity with the cosmos, inspiring, in turn, decisions and behavior that
guide human actions. They touch us with the personal experience of the
evolution of community life over time, of shared beliefs, and of our
relationships with others who share this common identity. They emanate
an “intrinsic” value that is an expression of cultural patterns, and
these differences from place to place are more urgently in need of
preservation in our increasingly globalized and homogenized world.
UNESCO’s World Heritage Forum acknowledges
intangible/spiritual/religious values in designating world heritage
sites, in addition to archaeological, artistic, and many other historic
values to be honored, and conserved. These values do not always revolve
around cost-benefit analyses or measurements “willingness to pay” and
thus cannot generally be characterized in precise monetary data. Thus
it is necessary to develop more sophisticated, multidimensional
approaches to values assessment with respect to heritage conservation.
If all of us are not
careful, these intrinsic historic values can be forever lost due to
excessive “modernization” initiatives, and also because of the harmful
impacts of greenhouse gases, air pollution, and climate change. The
perception and acknowledgement of these values help to build a new
strategic vision, comparing benefits lost versus benefits gained, costs
incurred versus costs foregone. At this level, evaluations consist
first of all in acknowledging new and future, not just past or current
values. Producing value added can involve both continuity and change.
Evaluation of the
“complex convenience” of the investment in cultural heritage
conservation should always be included in a multidimensional
perspective, using specific techniques and indicators. The economic
impacts of the introduction of renewable energy sources in urban
heritage preservation can be effectively highlighted by emphasizing the
convenience of the investment in renewable sources if all the external
monetary effects and the saved costs to the heritage site are included
together with cultural and symbolic benefits. They will clearly
indicate that it is entirely possible and even very desirable to
implement positive sum game strategies that conserve the natural and the
human environment and generate sustainable prosperity and quality of
life at the same time.
Conclusion
Investing in urban
heritage conservation can be a major catalyst of economic development
and urban regeneration, far beyond the simple appeal to cultural and/or
physical attractiveness. Historic buildings and sites characterized by
special beauty are able — in rich and poor countries alike — to improve
quality of life, and then to more effectively promote investment,
development, and growth of jobs, businesses, incomes, and wealth.
Beauty is an economic resource that is able to attract a wide range of
production and consumption activities: we have to conserve it in a
sustainable way, because, in turn, beauty lifts the human spirit and
contributes to community the “good life” for families and communities.
“Solar” cities and
regions really are sustainable cities and regions. Energy conservation
and renewable energy generation and use is fast becoming our only viable
future, if we want to build and maintain a better world. The
environment, energy, and economic development form a very complex and
interdependent triangle, one that ultimately emphasizes the benefits of
clean and renewable energy sources. Environmental conservation and
energy efficiency are necessary though not sufficient precondition for
sustainable development of our world over the next millennium
Sustainable heritage
conservation is characterized by a multifunctional renewal of urban
space and by a high rate of relative utilization of a multiplicity of
renewable energy sources, including but not limited to photovoltaics,
wind, geothermal, micro-hydroelectric, and biomass, in various desirable
combinations with hydrogen. Restoration and preservation of urban
heritage sites is sustainable if it is able to use energy with the
highest efficiency, and especially if it manages to produce by itself
the energy it needs, together with the recycling of water and materials
resources. In fact, both are fundamental to sustain life. A
worldwide movement — “Local Agenda 21 for Culture” — should be organized
to support integrated heritage conservation and renewable energy
strategies in every nation, region, city, town, and community.
Urban planning and
development has always succeeded based on cultural dimensions: on
values, new ideas, and visions of the future. Culture is one of the
main engines of urban development. The world needs a strategic cultural
plan for stimulating widespread democratic citizen participation about
identifying and prioritizing goals, strategies, and actions. The
starting point for good urban governance is represented by heritage
conservation closely integrated with “solar” urban regions.
Luigi Fusco Girard
is a Professor of Economy and Environmental Evaluation and Director of
the Department of Conservation of Cultural and Environmental Heritage in
the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Napoli Federico II in
Naples, Italy. Dr. Fusco Girard is a member of the Board of Directors
of Global Urban Development, serving as Co-Chair of the GUD Program
Committee on Celebrating Our Urban Heritage. He is co-author of
The Human
Sustainable City, and Economic and Financial Aspects of the
Conservation of Monuments and Historic City Centers.
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