Urban Development Series Knowledge Papers

19 items available

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https://hdl.handle.net/10986/18027
Produced by the World Bank’s Urban Development and Resilience Unit of the Sustainable Development Network, the Urban Development Series discusses the challenge of urbanization and what it will mean for developing countries in the decades ahead. The Series aims to explore and delve more substantively into the core issues framed by the World Bank’s 2009 Urban Strategy Systems of Cities: Harnessing Urbanization for Growth and Poverty Alleviation. Across the five domains of the Urban Strategy, the Series provides a focal point for publications that seek to foster a better understanding of (i) the core elements of the city system, (ii) pro-poor policies, (iii) city economies, (iv) urban land and housing markets, (v) sustainable urban environment, and other urban issues germane to the urban development agenda for sustainable cities and communities.

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2010 - 20112
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Author: Licciardi, Guido × Document Type: Publications & Research × Supported Language: en ×

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    Conserving the Past as a Foundation for the Future : China-World Bank Partnership on Cultural Heritage Conservation
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2011-09) Ebbe, Katrinka; Licciardi, Guido; Baeumler, Axel
    The rich cultural heritage of China is an essential touchstone of its collective identity. The country's archaeological sites, historic architecture, expressive arts, cultural landscapes, and ethnic diversity also are treasured around the world. Despite their importance, China's cultural assets are under tremendous pressure due to the country's rapid development, particularly its rapid urbanization. Moreover, rising incomes and mobility have significantly increased domestic tourism, leading to the overdevelopment and deterioration of cultural heritage sites. However, many of China's government officials, conservationists, and community groups have recognized these threats and, over the past several decades, have worked tirelessly to protect their country's cultural heritage. Based on the 12 projects developed under this partnership, this report presents an overview of the project approaches and experiences, takes stock of the challenges, extracts initial lessons learned, and identifies new directions and challenges ahead. The principal audience of the report is national, provincial, and municipal decision-makers engaged in conserving China's cultural heritage. This report also is intended to be of relevance to World Bank staff and those in the international community who wish to gain an overview of the projects conserving cultural heritage in China that have received World Bank financing.
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    The Urban Rehabilitation of Medinas : The World Bank Experience in the Middle East and North Africa
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2010-05) Bigio, Anthony G.; Licciardi, Guido
    The paper presents the key objectives for the rehabilitation of historic centers or medinas in the Middle East and North Africa as elaborated by the World Bank on the basis of twenty years of past and present lending and technical assistance operations to the governments of the region. These are: 1) the conservation of the urban and cultural heritage; 2) the local economic development of the historic city; and 3) the improvement of the living conditions of the resident population. The paper presents some innovative ways to classify the contemporary users of the medinas into different catagories which then become the market segments to reach via the rehabilitation initiatives given the readically changed present role of historic cities as urban cores of much larger urban agglomerations.The paper reviews the financial and fiscal instrucments that can be used to mobilize the necessary resources, including the roles of scaled up private sector investments and of internaitonal development financing in support of national and local governments. As sustainale culutral tourism I sput forth as the main economic rationale for investment of financial reosurces in medina rehabilitation, the paper also presents an innovative multi-vriteria index to determine the tourism potential of historic cities in the region, which has been recently used in the case of Morocco for a national strategy for the rehabilitation of its historic cities.