| Abstract: |
Since the 1980s, the promotion of heritage values has gradually become a
relevant issue for urban planning. Together with the emergence of new
peripheries, inner-city areas and particularly old historic centres, affected
by deterioration due to the recession of the last decades, have been the
object of study and actions. Consequently, the need to turn the historic
centres into areas of development for the market, through legislative measures
and investments in infrastructure and services, and the re-evaluation of the
heritage value of existing buildings, oscillated between policies which,
linked to the mechanisms of economic and cultural globalization, promoted
tourism as a source of revenue while striving to find alternatives to
gentrification. The renewed priority given to the development of inner-city
areas, centred round the rehabilitation of their historic values and central
nature, has generated innovative operating modes in the urban environment that
seek to reconcile the challenges of modernity, particularly in regard to
social inequalities with those of the past, and to rethink the central role of
historic centres, their relations with the city and their development in terms
of sustainability. The goal of our contribution is to gain a better
understanding of the major challenges of the rehabilitation of historic
centres within the framework of ‘innovative’ approaches to urban planning,
aiming at promoting sustainable living conditions. The analysis is based on an
ongoing comparative and transdisciplinary research project, in which the
decision-making processes of concrete interventions for the rehabilitation of
inner-areas with heritage value are being analyzed in different cities of the
world: Buenos Aires, La Havana and Bangkok. The main questions that arose in
our analysis concern the contexts allowing for innovation, focusing on those
institutional arrangements, which, as modes of governance, were introduced in
the interventions, studied. |
| Keywords: |
urban planning, innovative planning, urban governance, decision-making, sustainable development, historic centres, heritage values, access to the city |