PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to account for and to justify the UN's recent appeal to “all Member States, intergovernmental bodies, organizations of the United Nations system and relevant non‐governmental organizations […] to ensure a more visible and effective integration and mainstreaming of culture in development policies and strategies at all levels”.Design/methodology/approachThe paper delves into the history of ideas leading up to the UN's belated recognition of culture's influence (a full ten years into the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)). It shows how the post‐Second World War intuitions embraced in UNESCO's Constitution matured in the course of the nation‐building and decolonization processes that have given way to today's context of advanced globalization.FindingsAgainst that background, rising international awareness of the issues involved in the environment‐development nexus conspired with growing concern for the safeguarding of world heritage and cultural diversity, finally culminating in the establishment of specific international standards that call for sustainable, integrated approaches to development.Originality/valueDrawing from UNESCO's experience, the paper provides compelling evidence in support of the idea that culture, creative industries and cultural heritage contribute a great deal to development, in terms not only of quantitative economic growth (income, employment), but also of qualitative standards of equity and well‐being. In light of such criteria, examples are offered and plans are laid out for concerted action in view of attaining the Millennium Development Goals in 2015 and of building on from there.

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This essay examines the ways in which the private, domestic landscape of historic Delhi changed between 1847 and 1910. I look at Delhi's ubiquitous introverted courtyard house, the haveli, during a time of dramatic cultural dislocation. Modernity and the British colonial presence together had the consequence of fragmenting sprawling princely mansions to modest dwellings and tenement houses or redefining them as more rational and efficient homes. Tracing the transformation of the haveli in form and meaning serves as a mirror to the changes in the city during the time. In Delhi, monolithic and oppositional categorization of "traditional" and "modern" masked more complex identities as the quintessential "traditional" city grew and changed in ways that were distinctly "untraditional." The landscapes of domestic architecture reveal a city struggling to define itself as modern-on its own terms.