ECONOMICS UNIQUENESS

GOVERNANCE IN HISTORIC CITY CORE REGENERATION PROJECTS ■ 163
in land uses and users. At the end of the 20th century these historic city cores
also had larger concentrations of low-income households and of elderly populations
than the rest of the city. Low-income residents and low-productivity
informal economic activities have increasingly occupied these areas’ public and
private urban spaces. Most of these uses overtax the carrying capacity of cultural
heritage assets, furthering the deterioration processes. A vicious cycle of
abandonment and physical deterioration ensued. Figure 6.4 shows the loss of
population of the historic city cores in the 1990–2000 period while the cities
continued growing.
Concern for the heritage assets at risk located in the historic city cores usually
emerges soon aft er the onset of the deterioration process, but it takes a long time
for this concern to lead to concrete actions. In the case of Quito, it took about
50 years from the initial statement of intention to conserve the historic city cores
in the 1940s to the establishment of the rescue fund for monuments—Fondo de
Salvamento (FONSAL), which devotes public funds and resources to the conservation
of the outstanding monuments. (Figure 6.5A indicates the timeline
and process of establishing FONSAL.) Th e fund was established aft er the 1978
earthquake that damaged the historic city core, and it became a milestone accomplishment
for the Ecuadorian conservation movement. It demonstrates the preeminence
of the public sector in initiating and leading the conservation process,
with the relatively late arrival of the private-sector actors.
FIGURE 6.4
Oaxaca, Quito, Salvador de Bahia, and Valparaiso: Population Dynamics
of the Historic City Cores (World Heritage Sites) versus the Metropolitan
Area, 1990–2000
3
2
1
0
–1
–2
–3
–4
–5
–6
Source: Author.
2%
–5%
Salvador
de Bahia
1%
–4%
Valparaiso
challenged
2%
–3%
2%
–1%
Oaxaca Quito
problems
WHS growth rate metropolitan area growth rate