The Road to Quebec

We were approached by the Organization of World Heritage Cities to feed the preparatory programme towards the OWHC 16th World Congress, held in 2022 in Quebec City under the strapline “Enhancing Livability in World Heritage Cities”. Our role in it was to draft a scoping paper and facilitate two online workshops that involved site managers from Porto, Córdoba, Aranjuez, Cusco, Querétaro, Oaxaca, San Miguel de Allende, Puebla, México City, Regensburg, Vienna, Rhodes, Gyeongj, Brasilia and Vilnius. Some priority themes emerged from the discussion:

• This is about keeping the historic city liveable. Thus, housing should play a primary role in heritage-driven urban regeneration.
• Site management as a continuous multi-stakeholder process.
• Need for planning tools closer to UN-Habitat and the New Urban Agenda rather than UNESCO only.
• More authentic heritage valorisation needs to be cultivated from education and awareness.
• Inter-generational dialogue is helpful to foster liveability in the historic city.
• Need for new “financing dynamics”.
• Small-scale actions as an affordable way to do impactful things.

La serie de talleres temáticos “The Road to Quebec” tuvieron la finalidad de preparar la agenda de temas prioritarios para el 16º Congreso Mundial de la Organización de las Ciudades del Patrimonio Mundial en Quebec City. El encargo incluyó la redacción de una ponencia (scoping paper), la moderación de dos tallers y la redacción de un documento de conclusiones que elevar a la Secretaría General de la OCPM. Las ciudades participantes en los talleres fueron Oporto, Córdoba, Aranjuez, Querétaro, Cusco, Oaxaca, San Miguel de Allende, Puebla, Ciudad de México, Regensburg, Vienna, Rhodes, Gyeongju, Brasilia y Vilnius.