UNESCO published this text, by Alain Borie and François Denieul, in 1984. The World Heritage Convention was enacted in 1972, and the first properties were inscribed in 1978, so this is a rather early text in the production of the “world heritage” concept in its urban derivations.
This is a classical manual, based on the decomposition of the urban tissues in systems: lots, streets, buildings, open spaces… a lot of images in the final part.
Can you just talk about Elephant and Castle and not about London? Or Jersey and not Manhattan? I’ll try to write about Mestre (where I took not a single picture) without mentioning the one reference across the lagoon (339 snaps in 4 days).
I can talk about Mestre in many ways (not to my pride somehow): a place where you get from an airport to jump into a train each morning and come back to sleep each night. Or a harbour where I never saw a ship. Or a place where each night I thougt “here, at least you have not to pull a luggage through low light and somehow derelict, narrow streets”. But the simplest would be to say that Mestre is just a sample of the 95% of the European territory in which we live despite the fact it is not that thrilling, even if it is much more practical than the really emotional 5% that makes us go through Mestre in the first place.
And the “best” is that once you’re out, you read and conclude that, had you known that city under different conditions, it could even have been intresting. But you can’t be the gate to Venice and remain unharmed…
Historical architecture can be complex in shape, and quality drawings to document their conservation by traditional means can be an interesting, albeit long and tedious process. Photogrametry has been used for some years, but it was not necessarily an economic solution. Today there are new tools which could reduce the costs (time will always be needed…) as Wohlfeil, Strackenbrock and Kossyk describe in their article.
Kapuzinsberg as seen from the Modern Art Museum, in Mönschberg
To many people (above a certain age…) the image of Salzburg can be that of “The sound of music”. Incidentally, Germans and Austrians seem not to have liked the film due to the many inconsistencies it displays, both in geography and in terms of relation with the real story of the Trap family; it seems their canonical story was the one of a previous German movie. It is also a place marked (just ask tourists) by Mozart and the music festival.
Elevations in the central area, according to ASTER data
In physical terms, Salzburg is a city in the valley of the Salzach, marked by the presence of two large hills: Kapuzinberg to the east, rising some 230 m over the river, and Mönschberg to the west, with lesser heights but a clear plateau. The German border is just across the airport, and according to the elevation map, here it seems the Austrians got the mountains and the Germans the plains. Quite fast you get over 1.000 m, mainly to the south, with impressive views of the summits.
UNESCO core area limits
The historical core of Salzburg is inscribed in the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1996. The core area encompasses 236 hectares, in which the two hills are almost half the surface, and the buffer zone measures 467 hectares. The site declaration recognizes the role of the city as a meeting point for northern and southern Europe; the city is considered a relevant example of an European ecclesiastical city-state, preserving well its townscape and architecture, and a relevant arts city, especially when it comes to music, with Mozart as an example.
Medieval walls in Mönschberg
The west as seen from Mönschberg
The 1997 Flächenwidmungsplan (Municipal Plan) clearly protects the two main hills, surrounded by urban land (red). The city, which was initiated between both hills, has today filled most of the level areas. The geometric proportion of hills, river and urban tissue, despite the built density, deliver a balanced result in the urban core.
The urban development plan
Salzburg could have chosen to maintain its landscape only in the space between hills (most of the tourists never get out of that area), but overall there seems not to exist any major nuisance in the rest of the city. And the Alps are always there on the background, a much more important feature than the debate on whether the film is really authentic…
The Alps as seen looking south from Mönschberg
Just about an hour drive from Madrid, with some 5.000 residents, far from anything similar to a metro area, but with a substantial architecture. A small European town.
Just a visit to an old fortress, nowadays besieged by tourism
The Ministry for Education, Culture and Sports hosts this interesting resource on the internet. It is curious to see on the heading image the “Thorns Crown”, a work by Higueras in the Ciudad Universitaria, Madrid (it has a logic, since it is the HQ of the Spanish Cultural Heritage Institute).
Those that have never lived in a port city often have no idea on how variable their landscape is. A ship of a certain size can be longer and higher than many buildings, and its skyline can change with the arrival of sizeable volumes of colours that can be quite different from those of the buildings. However, this game is far from being reserved to ships.
Ports are, as cemeteries, areas in which architecture develops along particular lines. On the former, aesthetic rules can be taken far from what is allowed in the city of the living; in ports, what is utilitarian clearly takes control, as well for buildings as for any foreseeable contraption. There are outstanding port buildings, which have outstanding architectures, but most are rather limited in that sense, with multiple additions and improvements that are often without much architectural interest. When you focus on mobile contraptions, especially on freight ports, a world of vehicles, cranes and bridges opens and can easily become surprising.
The new crane (left) and the former, still in use model
Some days ago, walking by the port of La Coruña, I saw one of the new cranes in motion. Just a few decades ago the former, wood-cabin cranes were substituted by new, higher, steel ones, that as the former moved along railroad tracks. About a decade ago new cranes, a bit higher, moving on tires, were introduced. Seeing one such machine when they go from one wharf to another, moving very slow, is not without reminding the motion picture “Despicable me” and Gru’s car: high, with a permanent air of instability, and in fact seeming a toy… but for its overwhelming weight.
The dome on the left protects some solid bulks from the wind
On the other side, the machinery for solid bulk, which sometimes can create allergic outbreaks if dispersed through the air, has a clear urban presence.
The Aerial Lift Bridge
When ports are on busy circulation corridors, the need for bridges appears, and so that for complex solutions. In Duluth the Aerial Lift Bridge is one of the city icons. It was built to grant access to the Minnesota Point peninsula after the opening of a navigation channel through its base. The first years it was a transporter bridge, to be later transformed in the current car bridge with a vertical motion platform that adapts to the air draft of passing ships. Besides, as in many ports in this area of the great lakes, where iron ore is one of the most common bulk freights, the contraptions that allow the transfer of the load from trains to ships are simply impressive (something that can be well perceived on this video about a different port in Michigan http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzWwTOt39Es&list=PL7eOOJxsVrlgY0de0Osk7DTF8l2r9ksOb&feature=share&index=3). Such wharfs can only be seen (but not in active) in zones of Spain like Huelva or Almería.
Pont de Recouvrance, in Brest. Image by Yoann Meudec et Philippe Lannuzel, 2009-2010, Etude Brest,forme d’une ville, Adeupa, available on http://www.flickr.com/photos/25180713@N05/4786472739/in/photolist-8hXVA4-bvtpLn-bvtqtg-bvtr8X-bvts1c-7JfyYt-7WpV1X-bwYhDC-8xz4w6-azXDTu-9bfD25-9bcwq8-9bcw8K-9bcvyk-aBJgNq-8hji4i-eXBpU7-ewQsRA-85GhRV-fKfHeR-9MHDU9-gdHUMx-8fdN7E-8UPgju-bUtd7P-bUtdyp-92dR6j-9ixVTm-9ixWhq-azuP2G-azs97e-e7KivK-aV1fxR-f7Eqhj-dTcn1k-d7v49y-cyHSgC-8Sc35j-dcJqyF-bbH5XH-8HMkB9-agbC7g-bo8bEB
Brest also has a moving bridge at Recouvrance, with a more contemporary structure. It is the main French port for naval repair, so it is common to see many large ships; as a relevant naval station, there are also many other “toys”, but not always visible.
View of Puerto Montt, as seen in the website of the Port Authority (empormontt.cl)
In Puerto Montt the port has less such contraptions; but you can see the Andean volcanoes on the background (something the other three ports can hardly compete with…)
Lerma is a small city (pop. 2.886) in northern Castille. It plays a role as a central hub for a series of smaller rural municipalities. It once had a powerful duke (just see his palace) and it has a clear classical grand square (plaza mayor) in a castillian way: sober. The Duke’s Palace is overwhelming in volume (it is today a Parador, i.e., part of a state-run luxury hotels chain), while the rest of the square is much humbler in architectural terms. The square is paved with coblestones. In any big city I would rather have no cars parked on this square; but in such a small city I’m affraid they contribute to give some life to that urban core. They are surely not the best aesthetic element, but life comes from people coming and going, even if it is just to have a lamb treat.
The square, looking at the Duke’s Palace
A view from the gates of the Duke’s Palace
A zoom of the prior image. Notice the electronic signpost on the left, and the separative recycling bins on the floor
The clear temptation is to see it so, isolated, as Moebius drew it. But to have it you have to control what happens in a radious of several kilometers
Mont St Michel, Jollain (1680-1690), at Gallica.fr. You can access the original file on http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b55004671p
Mont-Saint-Michel during the middle XIXth century and today. Both images are taken from geoportail.fr
I once heard that in the US they say of things that are really exceptional that they are “like the Grand Canyon; each time you go it overwhelms you”. I have never visited the Grand Canyon, and I only visited once the Mont Saint Michel, but I think the comment is really up to the point in this case.
The Mont Saint Michelwas inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1979, as a masterpiece of human creative genius, a unique testimony of a cultural tradition which is living, and its direct association with events and living traditions, and artistic works of outstanding universal significance.
Why choose the Mont Saint Michel, apart from its undeniable esthetic value? Because the problems to manage the heritage are clear. The delimitation of the protected site and its buffer zone has been strongly debated. Ensuring the visual protection of an element of this magnitude in what is essentially a flat landscape leads to restrict buildings and every kind of built element (wind turbines, for instance) over dozens of kilometers; restituting the maritime character of the island to avoid its definitive incorporation to the mainland needs costly infrastructure, also debated. And an island with a 1 sq km area and less than 50 residents influences a large territory, raising debates on which is the real sense of sustainable development. It is one of the clearest cases I know of a valuable landscape, but also of the difficulties of sharing the conservation costs.
Site and buffer zone. The geographic scale is really large.
metrhispanic 