Urban interventions in historic districts as an approach to upgrade the local communities

Abstract

The historic districts keep many elements of tangible and intangible heritage, including planning patterns, historic buildings, social networks, lifestyles, traditional crafts, skills, inherited customs and traditions, ceremonial rituals, and appearances. All of that forms unique configurations that express the identity and collective memory of cities. However, in light of the expansion of cities and the accompanying urban transformations, these districts often witness a significant deterioration due to their loss of the higher income groups of their indigenous inhabitants, which leads to a decrease in their economic vitality and level of performance and the deterioration of the residential inventory and living environment in them in general. That is consequently reflected in their resources, even leads to weakening the possibilities of investing it culturally and economically. Therefore, in most countries of the world, these districts have been the focus of many interventions. The early efforts of such interventions were aimed mainly at the conservation of landmark monuments. Later, the scope expanded to include physical, social, economic, and environmental contexts. Because of the importance of this issue, this paper deals with examples of urban interventions in the historic districts of the Arab region, include the projects of El-Hafsia, Tunis, and Al-Darb Al-Ahmar, Cairo, in order to propose reference bases for upgrading the local communities of such districts.