SPACE AND THE EMBODIMENT OF CULTURAL HERITAGE Las Palenqueras De San Basilio De Palenque The Palenqueras Palenque, the “Walled City” Summing Up

Photo: General View of Cartagena Source: Alcaldía de Cartagena de Indias 20191

Ifrah Asif Héctor J. Berdecia-Hernández Kathie Brill Dara Epison Emily Jacobi Nour Jafar Kimberly La Porte David Nugroho Laura Margaret Sollmann Sung Di

Lecturer: Eduardo Rojas

Edited by: Eduardo Rojas & Héctor J. Berdecia-Hernández

Advanced Topics Seminar “Urban Regeneration in the Americas: The Conservation and Development of Urban Heritage Areas” Spring 2020 Final Report University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design

Philadelphia 2020

The information and opinion contained in this publication are the authors’ and do not represent the views of the University of Pennsylvania

FOREWORD

The report contains the results of the authors’ fieldwork conducted as part of the seminar-based course Urban Regeneration in the

Americas: The Conservation and Development of Urban Heritage

Areas conducted jointly by the Programs in Historic Preservation and City and Regional Planning of the Stuart Weitzman School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania during the Spring Semester of 2020. The course explored emerging issues in the rapidly changing urban heritage conservation research and practice field, particularly those related to implementing a growing international consensus on the significant role played by urban heritage in the social and economic development of communities. City governments and investors increasingly use adaptive rehabilitation approaches to put the urban heritage to contemporary uses. This trend—that answers to the growing demand for residential, retail, craft production, and office space in historic neighborhoods of cities of all sizes—often conflicts with the interest of urban communities to preserve their intangible and tangible heritage. The ensuing issues are at the cutting edge of the research and practice of urban heritage conservation, city planning, urban design, and architecture, making their study suited for a multidisciplinary approach. The course allowed the graduate students to individually and collectively explore selected issues confronted by conservationists, urban planners, landscape architects, and architects in turning the urban heritage into a social and economic development resource. The course included three parallel streams of work: lectures, seminar discussions, and a field study structured in ways that they support each other. The lectures introduced concepts and discussed the issues involved in integrating the urban heritage in the social and economic development process of communities. The seminar section allowed the students to examine selected issues in the conservation of urban heritage sites concentrating on problems commonly faced by cities in the Global South but retaining a global view. In the field-study section, students were able to pursue their research, planning, or design interests in the historic center of Cartagena de Indias in Colombia, a Latin American urban heritage site inscribed in UNESCO’s World Heritage List.

The city and port of Cartagena played a prominent role in the colonial trade within the Spanish Empire in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. Cartagena is the capital of the state of Bolívar and has a population of about 990,000 occupying an area of 240 square miles. The city plays an important role in Colombia’s economy for its port, industrial and tourism activities. Tourism expanded rapidly from the 1970s boosted by the attraction of the Historic Center declared a National Monument in 1959 and inscribed in the World Heritage List (WHL) of the United Nations Education, Science and Culture Organization (UNESCO) in 1984. The Historic Center of Cartagena faces challenges that impact its patrimonial and socioeconomic function and compromise the long-term sustainability of the conservation efforts carried out in the last 50 years by the Central Government, the Municipality, and the private sector. The solution to these problems requires public policy, planning, and urban design interventions to regulate development and promote public-private cooperation. The course explored a selected set of issues through seminar discussions and fieldwork in Cartagena. The results of this academic endeavor are included in the different parts of the present report. The body of the report is made of six chapters prepared by the students based on the fieldwork and addressing pressing issues including the accessibility and integration of the historic center with the rest of the city; displacement of local population by mass tourism encouraged by the dominant “tourism-oriented” development narrative; the presence and contribution of afro-Colombian communities in the historic center; the use of public spaces by mass tourism; the regulation of rapid change in the historic center; and the opportunities offered by tactical interventions in addressing some of the issues. The report includes the results of the seminar work as inserts and boxes in the different chapters as pertinent or complementary to the discussion.

The work completed by the students does not intend to be a comprehensive analysis of the challenges and opportunities offered by this remarkable World Heritage Site. The main aim is contributing to a conversation about issues not normally discussed in Cartagena by providing a rationale for assigning them a priority in the debate, making structured presentations of the main themes that can be discussed, and suggesting viable paths to find solutions. The bulk of the work contained in this report was conducted before the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic were felt in Cartagena (the second half of March 2020) and that greatly affected the functioning of the Historic Center that up to that date was densely occupied and heavily used by mass international recreation-oriented tourism activities. At the time of preparing this report (late May of 2020), it is not possible to predict the long-term consequences for the Historic Center of this global event. The short term impacts are briefly discussed in the closing chapter “A Path for Sustainability” and they point to a reduction in the density of use of public spaces and open areas of the center a trend that would align with a central conclusion of the fieldwork pointing to the need to rebalance the use of the historic center with its carrying capacity implying a reduction in the density of usage.

The lecturer and the students are grateful for the support provided by the Fundación del Centro Histórico de Cartagena (Cartagena Historic Center Foundation) and the Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano during the field visit to the historic center and the subsequent discussions and the preparation of the field report. Their contributions were invaluable for attaining the goals of the course and for the preparation of this report.