Traditional conservation efforts did not improve the conditions in most historic urban centers of Arab cities. The internationally adopted shift in historic urban conservation grants better urban vitality and sustainability for these areas. This study investigates the existing trends and forthcoming changes in urban conservation and their implication on historical centers. Urban Heritage Conservation UHC trends were reviewed, conservation parameters were defined, and quality aspects of successful historic urban conservation were identified, and an assessment framework was developed to evaluate the resulting conserved urban heritage. Two case studies of Arab cities, Jeddah and Aman, were analyzed. The findings highlight the most common urban issues such as reusing historic buildings, traffic congestion, and lack of funds. The impact of urban management on historic areas’ quality was revealed. Moreover, the paper ends with recommendations for conservation authorities. These include engaging residents in the conservation efforts, adopting more innovative traffic solutions to ease congestions, turning the historic area into a pedestrian-friendly space, attracting visitors through arranging cultural events, creating new job opportunities through heritage, and improving the image of the areas through urban regulations. The paper’s findings would contribute to the knowledge related to Urban Heritage Conservation (UHC), and its recommendations would help practitioners and decision-makers.
As Arab countries are beginning to recover from the socioeconomic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, conservation programs are restarting. Noticeably, traditional conservation efforts have not helped improve the poor living conditions in most historic urban centers of Arab cities due to many reasons such as a lack of funds, urban management policies, and the narrow scope of conservation projects. In 2016, the UN urban agenda recognized tangible and intangible heritage as the basis for sustainable, vibrant, urban economies. These efforts reflect the new shift in conservation activities to tangible and intangible heritage and consider urban heritage a tourist product rather than antiquity. This approach grants urban vitality and sustainability for heritage areas. Thus, this study investigates the existing trends and forthcoming changes in conservation and their implication for the deteriorated historic urban city centers of the Arab world. International urban heritage conservation trends were highlighted, objectives and bases of successful urban conservation trends were reviewed, and an assessment framework was developed. Two case studies of historic centers in two Arab cities, Jeddah, and Aman, were empirically assessed using the developed framework. The findings highlight the most common urban problems of the historic centers in terms of urban management policies and trends. In addition, the impact of urban management policies on historic urban areas' sustainability, vitality, and quality was revealed. The paper ends with recommendations for conservation authorities to define a proposed framework to embed the conservation within the urban development plans for deteriorated historic urban centers. The paper's findings and recommendations can contribute to the required knowledge related to urban heritage conservation for practitioners and decision-makers.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.