OECD Culture and Local Development.pdf - PACA

4. THE CULTURAL FABRIC OF CITIES
Art cities in developing countries: unbridled tourism versus prudent conservation
Debate over the contribution that an “art city” can make to local development
takes on some special aspects when it comes to developing countries. There, artistic
sites are hard to separate from complex and heterogeneous urban settings that are
often the scene of severe environmental problems and of social conflict over the
appropriation of lands. The solutions will be more complicated, and the expected
spin-offs from tourism may well collide with important social and economic constraints.
A case in point is the city of Salvador da Bahia.
Located in the historic heart of Salvador da Bahia in north-eastern Brazil, the Pelourinho
is an extremely fragile place that is suffering the side-effects of tourism development 113 .
Since 1992 it has been the target of a revitalisation policy involving a large-scale
public effort to safeguard the historic centre and make it a tourist attraction.
As background, it must be recognised that in the city of Salvador there has been
a sharp distinction between the upper town, the political and administrative centre,
and the lower town, the business centre 114 . The social divide between the upper and
lower towns emerged with the city’s modernisation at the end of the 19th century and
the beginning of the 20th, at which time the city’s layout was completely altered. During
the process, the Pelourinho was cut off and it was abandoned by its wealthier residents.
It came to be populated by low-paid workers, domestics, street vendors, the
unemployed, and prostitutes, and by the 1930s it was viewed as a dangerous place.
The first efforts at restoration of the historic centre began in 1967. Pelourinho Square,
one of the city’s most characteristic features, was restored. Other sites were upgraded,
but rehabilitation during this time focused on individual buildings and not on the zone
as a whole. In the early 1990s, a more radical approach was adopted with the Recovery
Plan for the Historic Centre of Salvador; Pelourinho was to be “the spearhead for
marketing the city, the cornerstone of local political consensus, and one of the principal
tourist attractions of the State of Bahia”.
As result, use values were banished from the city in the name of conserving its
existence values for tourists. In contrast to many artistic forms, the city has a use value
for which it was created. It has churches, old dwellings, public buildings, streets and
squares, a built heritage that was designed above all to serve the needs of its
inhabitants. The risk was that the city would be “sanitised” and that any features that
disturbed its “harmony” would be removed 115 .
Since the Nara conference in 1994 (which amended the Venice Charter), we know
that the idea of authenticity in heritage is very relative. A city is the result of constant
evolution and its architecture remains as testimony to different periods of its past.
To favour one period over another implies not only an erroneous reconstruction but
the destruction of all other testimony. Yet renovation of the city is most often conceived
148 CULTURE AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT - ISBN 92-64-00990-6 - © OECD 2005