ABSTRACT:The conservation of intangible heritage in historical regions has recently become a progressively important topic in the international level. Till recently, in the protection process of historical cities, the concentration has been on the tangible cultural heritage, built environment and historical buildings in old districts ;while safeguarding the intangible cultural heritage has been generally neglected. This paper aims at highlighting the significant role of the intangible heritage in the urban renewal policies of old historical districts. It undertakes the conservation and urban renewal activities of Mosul Old City (MOC) as a case study, and it explains that there are broad distinctions in various aspects between space structural analysis and intangible elements investigation, which designates that the intangible elements do not correlate to material or synthetic items within the urban fabric in the same high grade that is associated with the inhabitants memory of the historical area. It emphasizes the importance of the preservation of intangible heritage besides the tangible one in the urban renewal policies.

Governments attempt to take advantage of cultural heritage that is rich in old cities, and work on its rehabilitation to achieve many goals well known to people who works in the urban renewal field. Like other Arabic Islamic cities, Mosul is characterized with its richness of cultural and spiritual heritage and all its alleys tell the story of building and their memories. The most recent studies on inter urban renewal for many cities in Iraq (including the project of urban renewal of the old city of Mosul, done at end of 2009) adopted by the General Directorate of Urban Planning, which has referred to a number of expert companies, is a clear example of that projects which the country took an interest in it recently. Although the project has prepared surveys of the case and has adopted strategy of identifying a set of thematic routes that formed essential arteries of the urban area of the old city of Mosul, but that strategy remained in many cases, vague and far from the reality of the urban space and its potentiality. This paper attempts to evaluate the strategy of the election of such routes carried out by that project through the findings of that study on one hand. In addition, between the reality of the surveying of a number of those routes on the other hand, to distinguish the compatibility of the real situation with the goals of that project and then the validity of those strategies. The results declare that the election of such routs is far away from actuality, so that it is true to announce that this strategy is invalid with in the corresponding of potentiality of the actual case of Mosul city.