Protection of Human Rights to the City and Preservation of Historic Urban Landscapes: Ways to Coherence

Ref.: 157
Key theme: 02 Functional integrity of historic urban landscapes
Date of reception: 16/11/2008

AUTHORS (*Main author)

MARKEVICIENE, Jurate * (Lithuania) - The Vilnius Academy of Fine Arts

ABSTRACT

Any society has a rule-governed character; however, international agreements are the reflection of common human values and moral attitudes of humanity, implemented through the principles of international law.
The paper analyses relationships between three different and vividly developing fields of international law: human rights to the city, rights to cultural heritage, and preservation of cultural (urban) landscapes. The objective is to identify their mutual incompatibilities, side-by-sideness, or/and coherence in legislation on preservation and continuity of HULs, as well as to suggest some helpful practical solutions.
The author states that since historic urban areas usually are heritage sites and habitats at the same time, multichotomous values, needs, aspirations, and interests are related to and targeted in the same historic environments. However, who has rights to what, where, when, and why, when aims are contradictory?
The paper indicates that:
1. The mentioned fields of law often tend being isolated one from another. Activities in the field of human rights to the city are targeted in equality and non-discrimination, social cohesion, urban security, special protection for vulnerable persons and groups, access to and supply of public services, right to transport and public mobility, adequate housing, education, healthy environment, etc. Contrary, activities in fields of protection of cultural identity and diversity, as well as of heritage preservation (including HULs) by virtue of their subject tend to be self-focused, paying much less attention to the above-mentioned issues relating to human, civil and communal rights, environment, health and social welfare matters.
2. Issues of HULs (even due only to their scale) usually are trans-sectorial, and soluble not in micro-, but in macro-levels, usually social, economic, and environmental. In addition, solutions for preservation of a HUL often lie outside the protected area. However, on these macro-levels heritage issues tend to be treated as "marginal", "non-important", "of no priority", "non-integral", "out of system", and "complimentary". Globalization pressures strengthen this tendency.
3. This often leads to the situation, where heritage conservation may clash with, and even threaten, other human rights, or vice versa is perceived as excess activities, causing unnecessary restrictions to development, and other vital interests of communities and individuals.
4. Human rights are tightly related to human well-being and the enjoyment of basic human rights, including the right to life itself. Historic towns and urban areas, due to their scale, structure, shape, and other well-knows eco-cultural qualities usually are socio-petal, coherent, fitted to small communities, and sustaining face-to-face interactions in a familiar and secure environment, etc.
On the basis of analysis of relevant UNESCO, UNECE, The Council of Europe, the ICOMOS doctrinal texts (including recommendations), as well as some European legal case studies, related to public participation in the field of urban heritage, the author states that:
1. Due to this important added value, created by historic sites, the mentioned legislation has a huge cross-sectional potential for preservation and continuity of HULs in terms of their physical and visual, as well as functional integrity.
2. Disintegration is much less caused by the international laws, and much more ­ by their practical implementation, which causes conflicts by separating issues of cultural sustainability (including continuity of HULs) and heritage rights from the issues of human rights to the city, not to say about economic and/or propagandic interests for new development.
Finally, the author suggests some practical solutions, regarding coherence of the different fields of law in advocacy for preservation and continuity of HULs' in the context of human rights to the city, such as social cohesion, right to peace and safety in the city, rights of children, right to housing, to the environment, to public transportation and to sustainable urban development, etc.

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