Indian cities face an unprecedented urbanization pressure (50% of India’s population will reside in cities by 2050, UN), which reflects in a rapid and uncontrolled built infrastructure development. Such development often takes place at the expense of natural eco-systems, human scale and cultural distinctiveness, which in turn significantly compromises sustainability, resilience, social cohesion, inclusiveness and economic opportunities. Climate change and extreme weather events further exacerbate negative effects of this unsustainable urbanization process and further deepen poverty and vulnerability in cities. In this context, achieving the SDGs and the New Urban Agenda targets imperatively comes to reviving and harnessing on cities’ unique natural and cultural assets. Yet, the potential of built heritage to address urban development challenges in India has hardly been explored and tapped into.
A number of Asian cities have however demonstrated that such a joint approach unlocks the rich potential of heritage to bring wide economic, social and environmental benefits at both the national and the local level. SEHER INTACH initiated a series of related analytical case studies with the objective of identifying successful heritage integrating policies, institutional set ups and interventions. This talk presents selected Asian cities’ cases and highlights how these learnings could apply to the Indian context.
SEHER INTACH – Sustainable Cities through Heritage Revival – is an integrated urban initiative launched by INTACH in 2017 to respond to equally critical needs of preventing built heritage from demolition and of ensuring that urbanization is inclusive, human scale and environmentally sustainable in India.
Olga Chepelianskaia is an international sustainable urban development consultant, Founder of UNICITI and Program Manager of SEHER INTACH. She specializes on sustainable and climate resilient urban development in Asian cities, natural eco-systems and heritage revival, climate change and clean energy. Over 13 years of her professional engagement, she managed 5 major international programs, covered over 20 cities and 40 countries, and worked with 7 top international institutions: ADB, CDIA, Rockefeller Foundation, UNDP, UNECE, UNEP, and UNESCAP. She has shared finding from her work in a number of urban resilience events, including recently at the UNDP Asia Forum on the Role of Local and Urban Governments in Building Sustainable and Resilient Cities and Rural Areas (Haiyang, China), Climate Forum’17 (Moscow, Russia), ICLEI Resilient Cities Asia-Pacific 2017 (Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam) or the World Urban Forum 9 (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia).
This workshop is free and there is no registration required. Find all the available videos of our previous workshops, here.