توسعه شهری پایدار در مناطق تاریخی با استفاده از روش دنباله دار های توریستی : مطالعه موردی از میراث فرهنگی و توسعه شهری (CHUD) پروژه در صیدا، لبنان

Cultural assets are vital aspects for any urban development process. Their importance increases considerably in historical areas, where the richness of cultural heritage has the ability to motivate cultural tourism. This paper emphasizes the sustainable development of urban historical areas based on their potential as cultural tourism sites. It argues that to guarantee the sustainability of any development intervention in these areas, a master planning process must be undertaken to balance all of the aspects of development. It tackles the interconnectedness of these aspects as an approach to their simultaneous development. As a focus of study, this paper raises a question about the ability of a ‘heritage trail’—an area of direct interactions between parties sharing in urban development in historic areas—to achieve the sustainability goals of the involved areas. To answer this question, the paper investigates three nodes of interaction stimulated by the heritage trail: conservation and rehabilitation, interpretation, and micro-economic development. To illustrate the validity of the proposed approach, this paper discusses the heritage trail as an approach used in the Cultural Heritage and Urban Development (CHUD) project in the historical core of Saida (Old Saida), Lebanon as a case study.

Heritage is a part of the cultural tradition of any society (Nuryanti, 1996, p. 249). In this study, heritage is taken to include architectural and historical values, in addition to people whose heritage is encapsulated in daily routines (Howard and Pinder, 2003, p. 58). This comprehensive vision merges both tangible and intangible dimensions, in what Howard et al. call ‘fields of heritage’. The value of these fields of heritage as a capital stock is what makes them worthy of conservation.1 This vision considers heritage sites to be assets in any development processes, and ‘marketing’ these cultural assets is seen as an important means to urban development. Tourism is seen as the major commodification force that is responsible for transforming culture into a product (Hewison, 1987, p. 139). However, the commodification of these cultural heritage assets raises questions about the limits to their sustainability, and, accordingly, the sustainability of these areas’ development. This development requires comprehensive revitalization practices to deal with all community aspects; it has to be tackled from many different perspectives in order to adequately involve social and economic dimensions, in addition to purely physical protection and enhancement measures (Doratli et al., 2004, p. 329). Because development requires balanced coordination between its different aspects, there appear to be major defects in the project that is the focus of this paper, namely the ‘Cultural Heritage and Urban Development’ project (CHUD) in Old Saida. Joseph Saba, World Bank Country Director for Lebanon, states the project vision thus: “This … treats Lebanon’s cultural assets as economic assets and integrates them into the life of the community to achieve local growth,” (World Bank, 2003a). While sharing this same broad aim across all CHUD projects in five secondary cities in Lebanon (Baalbeck, Byblos, Saida, Tripoli, and Tyre) the intervention in each city varies according to local characteristics. In Saida, the distinctive physical morphology of the historical core (Old Saida) extends its heritage value beyond the importance of each building. To take advantage of this, the heritage trail has been developed as an approach to CHUD, based on the richness of Old Saida as a field of heritage. The main goal of the project in Old Saida has been to achieve local community development, rather than just scattered tourism-oriented projects, but the CHUD project could not effectively expand its perspective to achieve these goals. A number of sub-projects related to local-economic development and rehabilitation of historical sites have been carried out as part of the CHUD project. These (mainly rehabilitating public places, such as town squares, pedestrian areas, and traditional markets), have mostly concentrated on physical renovation rather than urban regeneration, and have had only minor impacts on the economic profile of the old city. These unbalanced interventions are negatively affecting the local people living in the core, and are leading to an isolated ghetto, and might eventually lead to an empty center. This paper investigates the defects in the ‘Cultural Heritage and Urban Development’ project (CHUD) applied in Old Saida, in order to explain the role of the ‘heritage trail’ as an integrative and capacity-building tool of sustainable community development. The case of Old Saida offers a prototype of development that any similar case can emulate. A heritage trail is one of the direct applications of the local ‘bottom-up’ approaches to the creation of heritage tourism. These approaches give a larger role to the visitors’ imaginations in shaping the processes that underlie the development of these fields of unique heritage (Chang et al., 1996, p. 287). ‘Interaction’ is key to either bottom-up approach, whether it is the user approach or the actor-centered approach. Both of these are based on regulating the type of interactions between the three components of tourism in heritage fields: site, locals, and tourists (Middleton and Hawkins, 1998). A heritage trail is a domain through which all of these components, as the players in urban development in heritage areas, can interact (Galt, 1995). Each player adopts a set of needs that he or she tries to meet through these interactions. The sustainability of the resulting development is based on the ability of the heritage areas to meet and balance all of these multiple needs. To examine the role of the heritage trail, this paper investigates the qualities of Old Saida that formulate its heritage richness. It reviews the character of the local people and their activities, the urban morphology of Old Saida, and the visitors’ characteristics and interests. Next, it addresses the interrelationships found among three key areas of interactions linked along the heritage trail, those of conservation and physical rehabilitation practices, the interpretation of the historical core, and CHUD local-economic development, in light of sustainable urban development principles. In addition to discourse analyses, the paper follows a methodology that encompasses a number of inquiry approaches, as follows: • The paper presents a review of the literature on the sustainable development of historical areas based on their cultural heritage value. In addition, it investigates the interrelationships between conservation and rehabilitation practices, interpretation, and local-economic development as locals and tourists interact in places developed along the heritage trail. • The paper uses the findings of two questionnaires developed by the Consultation and Research Institute (CRI) as a part of its analytical study.2 The first is used to shed light on the cultural artifacts of Old Saida that make it attractive to tourists. It also describes the characteristics of tourists and the cultural enrichment provided by their visit to Old Saida. The second questionnaire is used to assess the impact of the CHUD project from an economic point of view. It studies local-economic development as a parameter of the impacts the project has on the local community in Old Saida. Interactions along the heritage trail and the sustainable urban development of historical areas The available literature tackles cultural tourism and its interdependent activities mainly through two different but compatible perspectives. The first strand of literature studies two complementary but opposing perspectives, the details of which vary according to the specifics of the study. This includes, for example, ‘Setting’ and ‘Visitor’ (Moscardo, 1996); ‘Production’ and ‘Consumption’ (Nuryanti, 1996 and Cohen, 1988); local and global, bottom-up as opposed to top-down, and user versus visitor perspectives (Chang et al., 1996); and ‘Supply’ and ‘Demand’ (Mazzanti, 2003). The second strand takes a different approach, focusing on the areas of intersections between these perspectives. It emphasizes the shared concerns of all participants, including that of the visitor, the host place, and the locals, as key players in cultural tourism (Pearce, 2001, Russo, 2002, Cheung, 1999 and Middleton and Hawkins, 1998), and thus also in sustainable urban redevelopment practices. A heritage trail is one physical manifestation of the interactions between tourists, locals, and the host place. It is seen as a direct application of the Krippendorf model of ‘human tourism’. He builds his vision on an argument that ‘animation’ should have a central role in tourism. The role of animation is to help remove barriers and encourage the exploratory spirit, creating openness for new contacts (Krippendorf, 1987, p. 142). This model stresses the importance of learning, self-discovery, and exploration as motives for, and activities in, tourism. This implies a mutual relationship between tourists and heritage sites that the heritage trail is configured to fit. In view of this, a heritage trail adds value to cultural tourism in old cities. Furthermore, as a self-guided tour, it permits tourists to directly interact with locals within the built-heritage attractions. These direct interactions are the base upon which the tourist discovers, experiences, and consumes the cultural history (Hewison, 1987, p. 139). It is important to note that this perspective highlights tourism as a major force for commodifying history (Richards, 1996, p. 265), raising questions about the limits of their sustainability as cultural heritage assets. On one hand, Hewison offers cautions about the long-term consequences of commodifying history, as the preservation process might be shaped to meet political and economic, rather than cultural, ends, threatening the sustainability of cultural tourism (Garrod and Fyall, 2000, p. 683). On the other hand, Richards (1996) argues that postmodern forms of tourism, with their concerns for image and authenticity, have come to insure the qualities of heritage tourism assets as a guarantee of the sustainability of those assets and the tourism they generate (Richards, 1996, p. 266). Nevertheless, dealing with heritage based on its definition as anything ‘associated with the word inheritance; that is, something transferred from one generation to another’ (Nuryanti, 1996) raises the dilemma of contradictions between preservation and development. While the aim of preservation is to maintain an historical legacy in such a way that it can be safely handed to future generations as a hereditary identity feature, ‘development’ aims to profit from the use of a community and its environment. Keeping these two contradictory perspectives in balance requires various degrees of revitalization (Nuryanti, 1996, p. 255). This involves the integration of the historic legacy, inheritance, and sense of place with the demands of contemporary economic, political, and social conditions (Doratli et al., 2004, Howard and Pinder, 2003 and Pearce, 2001). All of these aspects generate a ‘vicious circle of development’ in heritage areas (Russo, 2002, p. 165). This circle encompasses the development potential contained in the local histories, tourism as a domain through which these potentials are activated, and different related aspects of development (environmental, economic, and social) as prerequisites of holistic development. All of these aspects are dynamically related to each other. Meeting sustainability requirements in this circle guarantees the community is flourishing and, thus, continued development. Tosun (2001) highlights tourism as one of the domains that has to be incorporated as part of a strategy to achieve sustainable development; he asserts that “the tourism industry should not seek for its own perpetuity at the cost of others”. This raises a question about whether, and how, tourism can facilitate a broader sustainability. Hu (2007) argues that for tourism to promote the latter, its development should be made consistent with the general tenets of sustainable development. He states six principles for ensuring sound tourism development based on the stated goal of sustainable development, which for him is, “to integrate the environment (both ecological and socio-cultural) and development (including material and spiritual well-being), with the key objectives of enhancing the quality of life whilst maintaining the ecological and socio-cultural integrity of the world’s human and natural resources over an indefinite period of time” (Hu, 2007, p. 10). His six principles are as follows: 1. tourism initiatives should be considered alongside other development options, which implies that tourism should ideally be complementary to, rather than dominant over, local economies; 2. tourism should aim to improve local residents’ quality of life while providing quality experiences to visitors and protecting the quality of the environment; 3. tourism should recognize the interdependency between maintaining a prosperous industry and successful management of the local resources on which it is based; 4. tourism should balance the needs of hosts, guests, the environment and the industry itself; 5. the tourism sector and other sectors in destination areas should cooperate to ensure the integrity of the resource base because all sectors share these environmental and cultural assets; 6. the tourism industry should recognize the links existing between destination areas and the wider environment. Another perspective relies on a ‘three pillars’ model (Keiner, 2005 and UNIDO, 2005), addressing the interrelation between sustainable urban development and sustainable cultural tourism by investigating the role of built heritage in three sustainability dimensions, that of environmental, economic, and social sustainability (Tweed and Sutherland, 2007, pp. 63–64). The environmental dimension is mainly directed towards the conservative use of heritage assets, focusing on the technical problems of maintaining the fabric of existing buildings. The economic dimension is seen as the most important prerequisite for the fulfillment of human needs and for any lasting improvements to the living conditions of the community. The social dimension of sustainable development emphasizes enhancing the quality of life for all community members. All of these sustainable tourism development principles and models emphasize the importance of a balanced interaction between site, locals, and tourists as a prerequisite to achieve sustainable urban development in historical areas. Heritage trails must respond to the interaction among the different areas important to cultural tourism: conservation and rehabilitation, interpretation, and local-economic development (Fig. 1). These areas formulate the base upon which tourists, local people, and hosting places are mutually interacting to meet everyone’s needs. Conservation and rehabilitation lies at the heart of these needs. For locals, it is about sustaining the values and meanings of their practices and environment, including any or all of the following aspects: cultural, historical, traditional, artistic, social, economic, functional, environmental, and experiential (Nuryanti, 1996, pp. 255–256). For visitors, it is a prerequisite for any understanding of the original character of the place. According to Mesik (2007) heritage trails publicly acknowledge significant conservation activity, for as they become increasingly popular as a means of promoting an area’s cultural tourism activities, they generate an increasing awareness of the local heritage and stimulate an interest in conservation. In addition, interpretation creates a wide and a dynamic area of interaction between tourists, locals and the host place. Nuryanti (1996) highlights complexity inherent in interpreting built heritage, where a number of interrelated issues and activities are included. Stewart et al. (1998) highlights the importance of revealing the meanings of places, provoking thought about places and most importantly, making the link between people and places (Stewart et al., 1998, p. 257). Furthermore, as a hub of many other interrelated activities, interpretation extends its influence beyond those brought up by Stewart. Specifically, it has direct impacts on other related areas of interaction, including heritage conservation, community rehabilitation, and local-economic development. Hall and McArthur argue that the goal of interpretation extends beyond enhancing visitor experience. They link interpretation to heritage management and conservation. They assert that “the visitor experience should be placed at the center of any heritage management process” (Hall and McArthur, 1993, p. 13). Moreover, to enhance the visitor experience is to consequently ensure public support for heritage conservation (Moscardo, 1996, p. 378). Stewart et al. (1998) agrees with this argument and emphasizes the role of interpretation as a process to develop a positive attitude towards conservation. Finally, and as the most related to direct interactions between tourists, local people, and hosting places, local-economic development is seen as an appropriate context in which to study the impacts of a heritage trail. Nuryanti (1996) argues that local economic benefits are based on the mutual needs that these interactions are set to satisfy. For tourism, local people, as an integral part of the “heritage locus,” can contribute vitality to an area and thereby assist in the maintenance of an atmosphere conducive to tourism. For local people, tourism can promote the rehabilitation of historic areas, thus improving the lives of residents. Furthermore, for local people, the most important benefits of tourism are likely to be economic, in the forms of increased incomes and job opportunities. Archer and Fletcher (1990) classify these economic benefits into three different types: direct, indirect and induced. Direct effects are a result of the direct involvement of local people in works related directly to the tourism industry. These include wages, salaries and profits. Additionally, direct effects include government revenues derived from taxes and fees. Indirect effects are a result of the needs of those working in the tourism domain to promote their business activities or to sustain them. These include labor, food, beverages, and other consumables. Induced effects are a result of increased income levels, as a portion of these incomes are re-spent on goods and services. As a facilitator of direct interactions between place, local people, and tourists, a heritage trail is a dynamic expression of the human tourism concept. To ensure tourism that works in concert with the principles of sustainable urban development in historical areas, a heritage trail has to guide interactions among the different parties in a way that guarantees a responsible commodification of heritage assets. Keeping a balanced relationship between the preservation and the exploitation of these assets requires attention to conservation and rehabilitation, interpretation, and local-economic development. Table 1 links these heritage trail’s areas of interactions to the principles for sustainable tourism development. The Cultural Heritage and Urban Development project (CHUD) The CHUD project is based on the World Bank’s country assistance strategy for Lebanon, which recognizes the importance of both preserving Lebanon’s built cultural heritage and developing environmentally-friendly tourism. It focuses on cultural tourism as an approach to achieve its objectives. Thus, CHUD exploits the potential of cultural tourism as an effective tool to act in concert with the local communities in an historic area, to develop the historic centers of the five main secondary cities in Lebanon (Baalbeck, Byblos, Saida, Tripoli and Tyre). CHUD works simultaneously with other development programs applied to these underprivileged communities. The main objective of the project is to finance conservation and associated urban infrastructure improvements in the selected sites. To achieve its objectives, the CHUD project employs three different but integrated approaches (CDR, 2008). The first is to rehabilitate historic city centers and improve urban infrastructure in and around old towns with the involvement of the private sector. This approach includes cultural heritage preservation, conservation of Saida and Tripoli historic old towns, urban regeneration, and capacity building in cultural heritage preservation and cultural tourism development (World Bank, 2008). The second is to promote conservation and sustainable management of archaeological sites, primarily in Baalbeck and Tyre, which are on UNESCO’s World Heritage List. This approach includes site operation and visitor management. The third is to provide technical assistance to help municipalities effectively revitalize and manage historic urban cores and sites, to ensure their upkeep and productive use for the benefit of local residents. Moreover, this third approach includes providing technical assistance services to strengthen the capacities of the Directorate General of Antiquities (DGA), the Directorate General of Urban Planning (DGU), and to target municipalities in cultural heritage preservation and tourism development. The application of the CHUD project varies according to the project type, the local characteristics, and the seeming potential of each city (Ministry of Tourism, 2007 and Council for Development and Reconstruction (CDR), 2008). In Saida, the CHUD project is concentrated in the city’s historic core. This core dates from medieval times and represents an agglomeration of history (Ministry of Tourism, 2007). It is considered unique in that it has not been disrupted by urban planning schemes and thus continues to exist within its medieval walls. It has a total area of 20 ha. with a population estimated to be around 14,000 residents and a density exceeding 485 persons/ha (CDR, 2002). The existing historic core of Saida, continuously occupied since antiquity, contains a mix of monuments—residential, commercial, secular, and religious—most of which date back to the 400 years of Ottoman rule. In particular, various buildings have been attributed to Prince Fakhr Eddine, who ruled in the 17th century. These include his palace to the southwest of the great mosque as well as palaces of various khans to the north of the city. In addition, the city also contains a host of private residences, such as the Hammoud home and the Debbaneh residence, dating back to the same century. Moreover, many of the mosques, churches, and other structures standing today were constructed over the remains of earlier structures, such as temples and other buildings (CDR, 2002, p. 200). The CHUD project aims to achieve sustainable urban development of Old Saida based on a balanced coordination of various aspects of development. It tackles the linkage between tourism and the diverse and rich cultural heritage assets to improve deteriorated conditions and to alleviate urban poverty. This indicates that CHUD’s strategic approach has shifted from tourism-oriented projects alone to the overall development of local communities. This vision implies that tourism-oriented activities are included in a more comprehensive approach that seeks the economic and urban development of Old Saida. The detailed CHUD interventions in Old Saida include the rehabilitation of ‘Bab Al-Saraya’ and its surroundings (Fig. 2), the rehabilitation and renewal of old pedestrian routes within the old city, the adaptive re-use of old historical buildings, the conservation of the terrestrial citadel and its surroundings areas, and the promotion of local food and drink industries. Full-size image (57 K) The aim of the project in Saida is therefore to utilize the cultural and historic wealth of different ancient urban cores to increase the economic potential of these areas and their vicinities (IIRC, 2001, p. 26). By improving the economic and social conditions in the ancient cores, the project aims to facilitate the sustainable maintenance of the urban fabric, to generate income for the municipalities to expedite subsequent development operations, and to cover the costs of mitigating actions that have been made necessary by the transformation of the existing situation. Based on this vision, the detailed aims and objectives of the CHUD project in Saida are defined in Table 2, which is organized according to three main principles: the conservation and management of heritage sites, the support of governmental institutions, and the enhancement of both the social and economic aspects of the community (CDR, 2008).

The significance of heritage sites extends beyond the value of their monuments and artifacts. They have to be seen within a broad perspective that relates the physical and non-physical aspects of heritage. All of these aspects of heritage work, as creating community assets, can be utilized to the community’s benefit. Cultural tourism is a domain through which the community can harness its cultural heritage assets because of their ability to attract an increased number of tourists. This commodification of culture shifts it from being a process to a product, which may threaten its continuity. However, the postmodern types of tourism limit these commodification processes and guarantee its sustainability. While these heritage sites depend mainly on cultural tourism for development, the sustainable development of these sites requires a comprehensive vision that uses the results of cultural tourism to feed broader economic and social development. This vision considers the diverse aspects of development and their interdependency as a guarantee of the sustainability of the development. A heritage trail is one tactic that has the ability to relate different development aspects within a comprehensive understanding. It builds on marketing community heritage assets by developing an interactive domain that combines place, tourists, and local people. The interactions of these three players are based on mutual needs that have to be satisfied. Meeting these needs is accomplished through three shared and successive areas of interactions: conservation and rehabilitation practices, heritage interpretation, and local-economic development. To test the theoretical approach laid out at the beginning of the paper, this paper studied the Cultural Heritage and Urban Development (CHUD) project in the historical core of Saida (Old Saida), as an example of a project that uses cultural potential as the basis of urban development in Lebanese historic areas. It correlates the detailed projects applied to Old Saida with CHUD aims and objectives to be achieved in this historical area. A heritage trail is a domain in which place, local people, and tourists are continuously interacting. Its role is to configure different arenas of interaction (conservation and rehabilitation practices, interpretation, and micro-economic development) to meet the needs of those key players. In addition, these areas of interaction are arranged successively, such that any uneven intervention in historical areas undermines their balanced interrelationships. Limiting the conservation and rehabilitation interventions in Old Saida mainly to the historical monuments, rather than all of the residential areas, threatens the existence of local people in the historical core. This in turn affects the intangible heritage of the historical core, and consequently, its interpretation qualities. In addition, the lack of tourist information services and a clear signage system, and the deficiency in related amenities and landscaping elements along the proposed trail are responsible for tourists’ dissatisfaction with the interpretation. This was reflected in a decreased rank given by tourists who were visiting on their own compared with visitors with tour operators and tourists who had visited the city before compared with visitors who were visiting the city for the first-time. This will negatively affect the number of tourists in the long run, decreasing the local micro-economic development. Moreover, assessment of the micro-economic impact of the CHUD project shows that a number of H&T activities (mainly within the manufacturing sector) are threatened due to their low profitability, in spite of their importance as authentic history, adding to the heritage value of Old Saida. A number of national bottlenecks are also clearly evident in Saida’s historic core. Technical and bureaucratic complexities and prohibitive financial costs discourage owners and tenants alike from investing in the restoration of historic structures. Current property and rent laws further compound these problems, rendering the restoration of old properties almost impossible. What is more, the presentation, promotion and appreciation of cultural heritage and archaeological sites are characterized by overlapping mandates and a lack of effective coordination between the major stakeholders, including the DGA, MOT, and local municipalities.