How can you balance economic development with historic site preservation?

Conducting heritage impact assessments helps to gauge the site's importance to guide development. Balancing economic benefits involves recognizing the site's potential for tourism, cultural events, and adaptive reuse. Collaborating with stakeholders, utilizing economic impact studies, and integrating preservation incentives ensures that economic development aligns with preserving the site's historic value.

- Developing comprehensive plans that identify and assess the economic potential of the historic site while considering its historical and cultural value. - Strengthening collaborations between government and private entities to leverage resources and expertise. - Promoting sustainable tourism that highlights the historical significance of the site and generates income. - Involving the local community in decision-making processes Establishing incentives such as tax exemptions or grants for businesses or individuals contributing to the preservation of historic sites and enforcing regulations to protect them from destructive or inappropriate development. - Increasing awareness about the importance of historic preservation

This is very important issues in developing countries like Ethiopia, where I live. Because On the capital city Addis Ababa there are many historic sites & as the same time there is also fast economic development. The government demolishes historic sites & buildings for the sake of new construction & new buildings. So to solve such kind of problems • Promoting tourism both internal & external tourism • Architectural intervention to upgrade these historic sites • Making these historical sites attractive public places • Hosting some kind of social, historical, Regional events have also great impact. In this way we can preserve historical site & boost the economic developments at the same time.

Historic preservation is a challenge. Restoration or excavation whatever the work is so expensive. Finding skilled masters is a challenge. Central government has other priorities, if there is economic problems, then cultural heritage preservation remains the last thing to do; local government does not have that financial resources. Then, private sector wants to benefit from tourism as much as possible, ignoring damages done to historic sites. What we have NGO or CSOs constantly striving to find resources. Who can best protect the assets? The locals, the closest ones. The only way is to build a structure that you can see various contributions from above stakeholders. Academy also plays an important role.

In these types of projects, you usually find two groups with different viewpoints. The government tends to view heritage as a way to gain political and economic benefits, often favoring business interests over the needs of the local residents. This approach has resulted in several development projects closely following the neoliberal urban paradigm. On the flip side, local communities see heritage as a vital social and political resource, essential for crafting an alternative urban development model that challenges the neoliberal paradigm. Bringing these two perspectives together is quite a tough challenge.

Organizing public forums, workshops, and charrettes allows diverse voices (residents, businesses, historians) to express their concerns and ideas. Same can be done with an online platform or surveys to broaden participation. Collaborative planning committees with representatives from various sectors ensure consensus-building and informed decision-making. Ultimately, engaging stakeholders creates a shared vision, fostering support for sustainable development that honors history while promoting economic growth.

Not only local contributions from the representatives of the public, authorities of all levels, non-governmental activist communities, and academic institutions are valuable. It is crucial to involve national and even international organizations to get insights about historic objects and their actual value. However, you have to consider the activity scope of these entities – it is useless to engage such entities as UNESCO or ICCROM to protect, for instance, typical churches of small towns in the Czech Republic from commercial activities because of public concerns. Meanwhile, it makes sense to contact entities participating in the Europa Nostra network and Citizen Science projects.

In this stake holder meeting, looking for sufficient funds and financial backers for Restoration and development of the site is important as well. In most developing country cities due to lack of funds most historical sites are torn down, for new modern projects.

The historic efforts sometimes over reach. There needs to be balance, because if you over complicate the process, the historic site never gets restored and eventually gets torn down.

A way of aligning the preservation vision with the economic development is through regulations that ensure benefical outcomes directly for the historic sites and thereby for their residents. There is an interesting policy in New York City named "Development Rights", best known as "Air Rights", that allows landmarked buildings to sell their air rights - according to zoning regulations - in order to provide them with funding for maintenance, since reparations reach sky-high costs. Every city needs a diagnoses to figure out a mechanism that fits their demands with their possibilities but these is a successful practice that has helped the involved properties, given that each of them is part of the beautiful essence and skyline of the city.

We have a very successful story from Oman for one of the old historic cities called Nizwa. The old city had abandoned mud houses and so many challenges occurred. Recently, reinnovation of the mud houses has improved the economy and sustainability of this city. It opens a lot of opportunities for the city citizens and it is becoming now as a successful model for other cities.

Finding a balance between economic growth and preserving historical sites requires to use sustainable tourism strategies that protect the integrity of historical places while using them (simply put) to make money. To do this, could be used, among others, the following proposals: 1. plan and re-plan cities based on scientifically based data 2. support the community involvement to preservation 3. enhance private-public collaboration 4. teach people the value of history and culture preservation 5. donate to conservation efforts 6. promote responsible tourism 7. create stricter preservation laws both for companies and individuals 8. give companies incentives to support efforts to protect the historical sites and their surrounding environment

For as much as it important to preserve site or rather historic building, I think it is about time we consider the economic value and location preservation because there are areas or building that have no economic value and are not worth being preserved thus increasing the depreciation of an area.