Why is it so important to recover city centres?
Published by the 23 of February of 2024 en Regional development
The UN global agenda considers SDG 11 (goal 4) with priority in cities and cultural heritage and the relevance of historic city centres as a tool for urban and sutainable develpment.
Historic city centres will contribute to significantly reduce inequity, segregation, environmental deterioration and to rebuild social structure giving more human identity to the urban spaces. In Latin America there are 33 historic city centres declared as world heritage site. Mexico City have carried out succesful efforts under public-privet-international community agreements.
Historic city centres have: tangible and intagible heritage; potential for multidimentional sinegy generation once the centre is revitalized in cultural, social, economic and unban conditions; transform itself into vibrant city centre; and the posibilty to generate equitable and prosperous cities.
Revitalization of historic city centres goes beyond its architecture value, heritage and artistic value thorugh time. They are considered economic activity nodes for small business, for urban innovation labs to create new forms of citizen participation, spaces for arts, culture, business and turism.
However, 65% of historic city centres in the region show a certain degree of deterioration and abandonment, generating a domino effect: youth migration to find better opportunities in education, jobs, housing and basic services, which forces business closing moving to a better place to find a better ROI, lowering tax colletion, licencing and other government income.
Historic city centres have the identity of the city, urban simbols, architecture and living style as historical testimony. The boost for creative economy develpment withing the zone and the innovation through culture, might influence a better local quality of life, in the economy of the zone at the same time arts and culture push identity components to conect the person with urban environment, help to understand it, to assess the environment and make it theirs for preservation and protection. All these links support the creation of new business for local day-to-day activities and for new visitors. (Payá Perez, 2018)
A new value added of historic city centres and consolidated neighborhoods is its basic services infraestucture needed for any activity. In the Historic City Centre of Leon Guanajuato Mexico, for example, infraestructure has been renovated in the recent years, as well as in the consolidated neighborhoods. WATER is the new asset is the time of water shortage; the city centre is not in the list of neighborhoods tha will suffer water shortage. The more the neighborhood is far away from the city centre, the higer the probability to have water shortages.
Therefore, we have to reevaluate what historic city centres offer to live and enjoy in our own cities.
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