Heritage-led Urban Regeneration & the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Heritage-led urban regeneration is expected to be closely linked to the UN 2030 agenda for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as highlighted in (SDG-11.4). However, gentrification, excessive tourism, social exclusion, and others tend to take place in World Heritage Cities and contradict many aspects of urban sustainability in general and the SDGs. This is due to the shortcoming of SDGs in addressing cultural and social sustainability as equally important pillars to environmental and economic sustainability as well as the lack of their clear visibility and integration within WH cities’ policies and practices.

This paper first investigates and positions heritage and culture within the UN Sustainable development Goals (SDGs) for 2030 -namely SDGs 8, 11 and 17- in order to identify the current shortcomings of SDGs in addressing social and cultural sustainability. The case study of the recently inscribed city of As-Salt on the World Heritage List is used to illustrate the need for rebalancing the conflicting priorities of different stakeholders and the consequences of the SDGs’ shortcomings particularly with regards to intangible heritage and the local communities as the carrier of that heritage. Second, the paper investigates other UN initiatives for Sustainable Development, namely the Historical Urban Landscape recommendations (HUL) and the New Urban Agenda (NUA) and suggests how these could be integrated in a timely manner under the umbrella of the SDGs targets. This is done in order to rebalance cultural and social sustainability in the urban regeneration scenarios and processes within World Heritage Cities.