part 1 - Iccrom

MEASURING HERITAGE CONSERVATION PERFORMANCE
6th International Seminar on Urban Conservation
that can be measured by following up the filing of
demolition and new work forms. Regarding the
statements of Environmental Protection Areas and
Historical Protection Areas, a plan is being devised
to permit monitoring (identification, recording, and
assessment tasks) in those areas, as an evaluation
tool to measure effectiveness of the proposed conservation
measures.
Last but equally important are the supervision
actions that must be proposed in relation to the
interventions in the buildings included in the
inventory.18 Establishing protection degrees to
limit and define the permitted actions on the property
becomes worthless if compliance is not supervised.
It is also necessary to have a comprehensive
preventive conservation program of that unique
property in order to ensure its conservation conditions
once intervention has been made.19 It is worth
remembering that one of the primary dimensions of
heritage is its documentary nature, and each intervention
damages the property to a higher or lower
degree. Therefore, the actions must be anticipated in
order for harm to be minimized.
Conclusion
From the mid-20 th century until the enactment of
the Rosario Urban Plan, the instruments responsible
for preserving and conserving urban cultural
heritage proved to be inadequate and insufficient.
Isolated efforts, an elaboration of the inventory or
an approximation to the definition of Historical Protection
Areas, cannot be managed in a sustainable
way. Heritage management policies must cease to
be restrictive and must permit city transformations
through the effective inclusion of the heritage property
in urban planning.
In the recent years the Conservation Program has
developed a sustained action in relation to urban
heritage, eliminating the dissociated interpretation
of heritage and urban development, and including
it as an inseparable factor in the constitution of the
city landscape. While cultural heritage refers to the
inhabitants’ identity and the city memory — the
identity dimension — its potential cannot be wasted
in relation to its capacity to promote urban transformations
and local development. So far, actions have
focused on the identity dimension rather than on
the transformation potential, economic appraisal,
sustainability and participation of citizens.
As I see it, however, guidelines or instruments
have to be devised to evaluate the effectiveness of
the proposed actions and to monitor their effect in
the long term. Imbalances must be noticed, and the
instruments that directly or indirectly act on complex
heritage property must be self-regulated or
adjusted. Preventive conservation has contributed
a new commitment to follow up and control
actions on cultural property, struggling for minimal
interventions, potential to reverse actions and supported
by scientific knowledge. Urban heritage conservation
policies should be ruled in the same way,
introducing conservation and intervention evaluation
and monitoring tools.
From the aforesaid, several questions arise:
• Which indicators account for the effectiveness
of the conservation policies
implemented?
• Is monitoring a key tool?
• Who must execute it?
• Does citizens’ participation have the highest
potential to follow up the actions that
compromise urban heritage?
If the citizens are uninterested in conservation,
nothing can be sustained. Heritage protection is not
feasible just with the elaboration of property inventories
or protective regulations. These represent the
reference framework and the starting point of a continuous
and permanent follow-up and monitoring
of actions, which public conservation policies elaborate
in relation to urban landscape transformations.
References
Martinez de San Vicente, I. 1985. La formación
de la estructura colectiva de la ciudad de Rosario.
Cuadernos del CURDIUR. Facultad de Arquitectura,
Planeamiento y Diseño. Universidad Nacional de
Rosario.
Plan Director de Rosario. Bases para el acuerdo.
Documento integrado. 2001.Tomo I y II. Secretaria
de Planeamiento Urbano. Plan Director. Edición
Digital.
Programa de Preservación y Rehabilitación del
Patrimonio. Informe estadístico. 2004. Expedientes
de vización previa.
Recopilación de Ordenanzas, decretos, decretoordenanzas,
decreto Concejo Deliberante referidas
a patrimonio. (Available at: http://www.rosario.
gov.ar/normativa, leyes provinciales y nacionales).
Rainero, C. 2012. How to register memory? Documentation, recording, archiving and preservation of intangible cultural heritage in
Venezuela. In Zancheti, S. M. & K. Similä, eds. Measuring heritage conservation performance, pp. 59-66. Rome, ICCROM.
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