ECONOMICS UNIQUENESS

6
Governance in Historic City Core
Regeneration Projects
Eduardo Rojas
Lecturer in Historic Preservation, University of Pennsylvania (U.S.)
Former Principal Urban Development Specialist, Inter-American Development Bank
The focus of this chapter is on the governance issues raised by historic city core
regeneration projects. Further, it explores processes through which the heritage
values of historic city cores lead different stakeholders to support, fi nance, and
implement conservation activities. The proposed analytical framework is tested
in four Latin American cities: Oaxaca, Quito, Salvador de Bahia, and Valparaiso.
These mid-size cities, with very high urban growth rates, feature important historic
city cores that are included on the United Nations Educational, Scientifi c and
Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage List and are the subject of active
conservation efforts. From the governance perspective, the conservation strategies
that managed to engage the interest of a wider group of actors are those
of Oaxaca and Quito. In both cities, the conservation process was able to adapt
and create new uses for urban heritage assets that also have economic use and
non-use values. The chapter concludes that the sustainability of the conservation
process is attributed, in part, to the greater diversifi cation and mix of uses and
users of the historic city core, and, in part, to the fi nancing scheme which does
not depend on the fortunes of only one activity or the budget allocation of a sole
institution. In addition, expansion of the residential land uses brings stability to the
process and generates demand for local commerce.
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