Water, ports and UNESCO's Historic Urban Landscape approach

Learning from the Past to Protect, Adapt and Design a more Sustainable Future

The video Water, Ports and UNESCO’s Historic Urban Landscape Approach provides a global overview on the water-heritage challenges. The current water challenges, resulting from climate change, interfere in different dimensions with heritage management. Regarding the historic dimension, the roots of the historic water systems are explained and sometimes lessons from the past can be learned. The heritage dimension, on the other hand, does not only look for strategies to protect heritage against water threats, but also for strategies to adapt heritage to changing water conditions. In the planning dimension, finally, heritage is positioned as a factor in spatial development and to accommodate current water challenges. In this last dimension UNESCO’s HUL approach is applied. The video compares the examples of Amsterdam (Netherlands), Venice (Italy) and Saint Louis (Senegal).

The video is produced by Delft University of Technology, commissioned by the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands (RCE) to support UNESCO’s celebration of 10 years of the UNESCO Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape approach in 2021.