CULTURE is an intrinsic dimension of urbanism and sound urban development. Cities in India and around the world face haphazard development that erode cultural heritage, constrain cultural creativity, and thus forego enormous social and economic value. These are not simple problems for there are also cultural processes that promote unwise urban development, heritage degradation, and social conflict. Indeed, culture and urban development have such diverse meanings that they require sustained inquiry and commitment.¹

My perspective on these issues is shaped by studies of the former Mughal capitals of Agra, Delhi, and Lahore. Of these, Agra seems the most enigmatic. European travellers compared Mughal Agra with London and Paris. True, it suffered long periods of decline and was eclipsed by later imperial, state, and national capitals. But still it seems an example of underrealized cultural heritage assets that could support a high quality of urban life. Ferrying across the Yamuna river to work on the Mahtab Bagh project in 1998, few imagined that the garden would become one of the best places to experience the Taj Mahal, with tourist visits increasing every year and inclusive proposals for the Kuchpura and Taj Ganj neighbourhoods.² Delhi has an embarrassment of cultural assets in not one but many historical capitals, depending upon how one counts them, including two from the Mughal era.³ It has world class cultural institutions and programming. It thus is a surprise to hear some commentators on Delhi lament the city’s tenuous identity compared with other cities in India.

The Aga Khan Trust for Culture’s Nizamuddin Urban Renewal Initiative⁴ stands out as a model for linking urban heritage conservation, community development, and environmental planning. One hopes the Archaeological Survey of India’s workshops in October 2013 will further advance riverfront conservation in Delhi and Agra. Across the border, the proud expression ‘Lahore, Lahore hai’ is still heard in the Mughal city of gardens, though it rings less confidently as the city and large infrastructure projects spill out across the plains engulfing historic places and memories. Could there be a time when residents lament, ‘Lahore, Lahore tha’, or even ‘Lahore kahan hai?’ There are promising efforts to integrate sensitive urban infrastructure upgrading with urban heritage conservation in the walled city of Lahore.⁵ But much more is needed along these lines to balance conservation and development. It has been some time since these three cities were compared in terms of shared heritage and urban development approaches.

The conference, Culture as an Asset in Historical Cities, was informed by the Planning Commission’s support for a new JNNURM flexible fund for innovative cultural investment projects. This initiative occurs within the broad context of INTACH chapter projects, the Indian Heritage Cities Network, the PEARL network, a new JNNURM Heritage tool kit, and an Inclusive Heritage-Based City Development programme. The conference presentations, panel discussions, and visits to Nizamuddin were indicative of the even wider scope of cultural asset creation, leveraging and stewardship, as well as the pressing challenges and losses occurring in cities across India.

After the first day of presentations, participants began to discuss recommendations for consideration by the Planning Commission, Ministry of Finance, JNNURM, Urban Local Bodies, and funding agencies. Discussions were frank and wide-ranging, from philosophical debates about urban culture to pragmatic aspects of project implementation. I was part of a discussion group with Ashok Khurana, Benny Kuriakose, Ashok Lal, Shveta Mathur, Ratish Nanda, and R.J. Vasavada. Discussions continued with Planning Commission members and other participants the next day. Notes from the panel discussions and recommendations submitted at the end of the conference supplemented the draft recommendations below. They constitute only an initial appraisal of conference findings, presented with an apology for any errors and omissions.

Day 1: Opening Session – Planning and Policy Recommendations. The opening session featured presentations by members of the Planning Commission, Ministry of Finance, and cultural heritage leaders. Three policy topics stood out.

1. The current policy framework does not adequately address culture as an asset for urban development in historic cities. At the national level, the 12th Five Year Plan had an inter-governmental Working Group on Culture consisting of 42 members with well-articulated terms of reference. The culture working group⁶ posted a report on art and culture that surveyed sectoral topics including pro-poor tourism, but it did not address urban development processes, problems, or investment opportunities. Conversely, the housing and urban development working group and steering committee did not address cultural heritage assets. Recommendation: The Planning Commission could still address these issues and give direction for equitable investment by commissioning a cross-cutting policy paper on ‘Culture as an Asset in Urban Development’ from a reconstituted inter-ministerial working group on culture. If constituted as a standing committee the Working group could offer continuing guidance on policy implementation challenges in ways that are principled yet flexible across different states, cities, and situations that arise.

2. JNNURM constitutes the second key component of a policy framework. The first phase of JNNURM received few proposals for heritage investment. Some participants regard the culture of JNNURM as large in scale, top-down, and focused on infrastructure; and noted that JNNURM has no reform primer on heritage planning. However, its 2013 revised toolkit for city development plans gives more substantial guidance on heritage management.⁷ Recommendation: The next phase of JNNURM and its flexible fund should build upon the revised toolkit and in addition: (a) prepare a heritage reform primer that is mandatory for historic cities projects; (b) be strategic and efficient rather than comprehensive and burdensome about the suite of reforms required for historic cities projects; (c) encourage small innovative pilot projects as well as major projects; (d) strive for balanced investment across different city types and sizes; and (e) include significant budgets for project preparation, supervision, and monitoring costs.

3. The third key policy component identified in the seminar is financing, in part through public-private partnerships. These are innovative but not entirely new ideas.⁸ While seminar participants voiced support for emerging public-private approaches, some of the leading examples involved private philanthropy. There is a need to distinguish between private business and private philanthropic roles, e.g., in special purpose vehicles for rehabilitation, operation, leasing, and transfer; land value finance mechanisms; urban development funds; impact investment funds, etc.⁹ Under some circumstances, for example, private organizations may be able to pay higher wage rates for skilled artisans than public agencies and thereby attain greater income distribution and higher construction quality. In addition to JNNURM DPR evaluation methods, advances are needed in the valuation of cultural assets and social distribution of economic benefits.¹⁰ Recommendation: Treating culture as an ‘asset’ for conservation and investment requires more rigorous and comprehensive methods for social and economic valuation of proposed projects, including the distributional of impacts and benefits for marginalized groups. Public-private partnerships can play innovative roles in financing cultural investment projects, but it is important to design those partnerships for socially inclusive heritage-based urban development.

Day 1: Session 1 – Community-based Urban Development and Heritage Conservation.

4. All of the seminar presentations, from the opening statements to case studies in Agra, Assam, and Mumbai, stressed the importance of community based urban development that goes far beyond standard practices of public participation. One presentation stressed the role of the arts in community empowerment, another the role of pro-poor tourism, and others support for community craft traditions. All stressed investment in public outreach, awareness, education, and inclusive development. Recommendation: Bottom-up community-based approaches are a first principle for investing in culture as an asset in historic cities. Project proposals should be required to specify how community-based approaches will be organized to advance heritage conservation, urban livelihoods, and other public goods.

5. Conference discussions grappled with the widening gap between runaway urban land markets that drive less affluent culture groups out of cities, and fixed rent control policies that contribute to deterioration of historic buildings and neighbourhoods. These are key urban land policy issues worldwide and especially in rapidly urbanizing countries like India. They cannot be addressed without a combination of strong land market regulations, incentives, and analytical tools. In the cultural investment field, for example, hedonic price analysis is sometimes used to estimate economic benefits of cultural investment, but those methods must be complemented by rigorous analysis of distributional impacts.¹¹ The National Monument Authority has established regulations for the 100 metre and 300 metre zones around sites of national importance, but the mechanisms for incentives, monitoring, and critical evaluation are not yet in place. Recommendation: Well-designed regulations, incentives, and monitoring of urban land markets and housing supply and impacts are prerequisites for sound investment in the cultural assets of historic cities.

6. Presentation of community-based projects received feedback on the importance of deeper historical research on those cities, a suggestion that was welcomed by presenters. Other presentations stressed opportunities for community job creation and support for traditional artisans. These points underscored the importance of organizing and working in strong multi-disciplinary teams. Recommendation: Community-based cultural heritage conservation depends upon multi-disciplinary teams that draw together expertise in conservation architecture, social sciences, urban history, ecology, and traditional building methods, as well as the engineering professions.

7. In the emerging field of urban heritage conservation, cities will need to manage convergent funding from multiple governmental and non-governmental sources. Some civil society organizations and conservation firms have relevant experience in this regard. Recommendation: Funding agencies should encourage and facilitate convergent funding, integrate cultural asset investment with other urban development projects, and develop administrative flexibility for projects that have multiple funding sources. A capacity building programme for ULB staff for managing convergent funding could help ensure effective implementation of complex urban conservation projects.

Day 1: Session 2: Built Form and Tangible Heritage. The conference included sessions on tangible and intangible heritage, though it was recognized and demonstrated that they are inextricably linked with one another. The tangible heritage case studies featured the Delhi World Heritage City nomination, Ahmedabad urban morphological analysis, and Muziris heritage project in Kerala.

8. Understanding the historical development, built fabric, and building typologies of a city are important dimensions of heritage conservation. They help move beyond an insular monuments approach and damaging processes of urban infrastructure development. Recommendation: Urban master plans, city development plans, and detailed project reports should adopt area conservation strategies that link site protection with larger-scale urban heritage analysis and planning. These plans must be precisely framed if they are to be practical and implemented in timely ways.

9. The Archaeological Survey of India and National Monuments Authority regulate physical interventions in the vicinity of listed historical sites of national importance. The first 100 metres is a prohibited zone, while the next 200 metres is a regulated zone. Implementing these regulations in terms of documenting historical and baseline conditions, developing by-laws, and evaluating proposals in the regulated zones by competent authorities at the state level and NMA, is of such a vast magnitude that it calls for innovative approaches.¹² Recommendation: Mobilize and educate a wide range of civil society organizations and university programmes to systematically document and monitor changes in the cultural assets of regulated areas in historic cities.

10. The idea of culture as an asset for urban development prompted philosophical debates during the conference, including the proposition that urban development can be a means of cultural innovation, asset creation and conservation, as well as a threat. India has world class cultural theorists, scholars, and artisans who shed light on complex questions about cultural histories, movements, and change.¹³ Social scientists have been actively involved in urban development policy analysis. Artists, humanists, university faculty and students could likewise be more fully engaged in cultural policy formulation and analysis. Recommendation: The working group on culture mentioned above, and others, should convene major conferences on urban cultures of South Asia with the aim of engaging the wealth of intellectual talent in urban history and theory to critically debate major policy issues and alternatives.

Day 2: Session 3: Intangible Heritage, Art, Music, Tradition, Craft.

11. This session vibrantly demonstrated how the arts shape culture and create cultural assets. They redefine public goods and spaces in ways that can transform urban development. Case studies ranged from Edinburgh to Mumbai, Delhi, Ahmedabad and Chicago. Speakers described artistic engagements with cultural conflict, suffering, and creative cultural experiments. The degraded conditions of the rivers, waterworks, and urban environments were recurring themes. The emerging role of new media in urban cultures was demonstrated. Recommendation: Urban programmes including JNNURM should embrace the arts and intangible heritage, making space for them in terms of access to financing, creative use of underused buildings and spaces for artists, artisans, and entertainers; and one-stop windows for event permissions.

12. The final discussion addressed the need for streamlined planning tools to support rather than constrain urban artistic expression, including flexible land use and streamlined permission for cultural activities and performance. Just as culture is an asset for urban development, so too can wise urban development promote cultural conservation and innovation. Recommendation: Urban development programmes including those of JNNURM and related programmes should consciously invest in cultural activities and spaces in ways that enhance the lives and livelihoods of all social and economic groups in historic cities, and indeed in all human settlements and environments.

 

Footnotes:

1. A. Kroeber and C. Kluckhohn, Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions. Vintage Books, New York, 1963; Gavin Shatkin (ed.), Contesting the Indian City: Global Visions and the Politics of the Local. John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, UK, 2013.

2. J.L. Wescoat Jr., ‘Waterworks and Landscape Design at the Mahtab Bagh’, in Elizabeth B. Moynihan (ed.), The Moonlight Garden: New Discoveries at the Taj Mahal. Smithsonian Institution and University of Washington Press, Washington, DC, 2000, pp. 59-78.

3. A.G.K. Menon, S. Liddle and A. Lopez, Delhi: A Living Heritage. INTACH, Delhi, 2010; J.L. Wescoat, Jr., ‘Conserving Urban Water Heritage in Multi-Centered Regions: An Historical-Geographic Approach to Early Modern Delhi’, Change over Time, 2014.

4. Aga Khan Trust for Culture. Nizamuddin Urban Renewal Initiative. www.nizamuddinrenewal.org, 2014.

5. Philip Jodidio (ed.), The Aga Khan Historic Cities Programme: Strategies for Urban Regeneration. Prestel, Munich, 2011; J.L. Wescoat Jr., ‘Waterworks and Culture in Metropolitan Lahore’, Asian Art and Culture. Spring/Summer: 21-36, 1995.

6. Ministry of Culture, Report of the Working Group on Art and Culture for XII Five Year Plan (2012-17). Ministry of Culture, Delhi, 2012.

7. JNNURM, Revised Toolkit for Preparation of City Development Plan. Delhi. Online at: http://jnnurm.nic.in/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/CDP-Toolkit-Book-Second-Revised-2012- as-printing.pdf, 2013.

8. World Bank, Culture Counts: Financing, Resources, and the Economics of Culture in Sustainable Development. Washington: World Bank, 1999; Ismail Serageldin, E. Shluger and J. Martin-Brown (eds.), Heritage Cities and Sacred Sites. World Bank, Washington, DC, 2001.

9. Guido Licciardi and Rana Amirtahmasebi (eds.), The Economics of Uniqueness: Investing in Historic City Cores and Cultural Heritage Assets for Sustainable Development. World Bank, Washington, 2012.

10. Ibid.; Isher Judge Ahluwalia, Ravi Kanbur and P.K. Mohanty, Urbanisation in India: Challenges, Opportunities and the Way Forward. Sage, Delhi, 2014.

11. Guido Licciardi and Rana Amirtahmasebi, 2012, op cit. (fn 9)

12. Benny Kuriakose, Nupur Prothi Khanna and Malvika Bajaj Saini, Guidelines for Preparation of a Heritage Management Plan. INTACH, Delhi, 2010.

13. INTACH, Heritage Conservation and Urban Development. INTACH, Delhi, 2005; Sunil Kumar, The Present in Delhi’s Pasts. Three Essays, Delhi, 2002; Romila Thapar, The Past Before Us. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2013; K. Vatsyanan, Plural Cultures & Monolithic Structures: Comprehending India. Primus Books, Delhi, 2013.