By Khoo Salma Nasution.

Being honoured with World Heritage status is one thing, making it work for George Town is another. The city is not alone in struggling to draw advantages from such an award. There are others it can learn from. For that purpose, Lestari Heritage organised a conference on “Economics of Heritage Revitalisation” on Oct 8+9. 2009, Khoo Salma Nasution reports.

MORE than a year after Penang and Malacca were conferred World Heritage status, some people still wonder whether the award is more of a burden than a boon. While Unesco and the international heritage community have acknowledged George Town's unique qualities, some Penangites still need convincing.

Since the loss of free port status around 1970, George Town has been in decline. In light of the global economic slowdown, the real estate sector is worried that height restrictions on the city will only dampen Penang's economic buoyancy. Earlier this year, it was announced that four previously approved high-rise developments in the World Heritage Site would exceed the Unesco-endorsed height limits. After months of suspense, the Penang state leadership managed to resolve the crisis to the satisfaction of the World Heritage Committee, but at the risk of being sued by an unhappy developer.

A host of other problems are reported by the Cultural Heritage Advisory Team (CHAT), an alliance of groups monitoring the state of heritage on the ground. Day by day, unapproved renovations simply strip away heritage character. Illegal conversions of old houses into irresistibly lucrative bird's nest breeders tend to damage the physical fabric, pose a latent public health hazard and traumatise the neighbours. Obviously, regulation and enforcement need to be seriously tackled.

Even among pro-heritage people, there are competing visions. Real estate investors are excited about the potential for upmarket heritage shops, restaurants, boutique hotels and swanky homes for foreigners. The dismal alternative, they argue, would be slum tenements or outright dereliction. On the other hand, community voices warn against the dangers of “gentrification”, the loss of traditional trades and the eviction of tenants who have lived there for generations.

Funding the right approach
What would it take for George Town to succeed as a World Heritage city? What is the right approach? What needs to be done? How can “heritage revitalisation” be relevant to the community and local population? These were the questions asked by the 250 people who recently attended the conference on the “Economics of Heritage Revitalisation”.

“We have committed ourselves to Unesco to protect, preserve and promote the George Town World Heritage Site,” declared Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng. However, he cautioned that experts should not see heritage conservation as their sole preserve. “We must also create a sense of belonging amongst the people of Penang that can connect them with the heritage city of George Town. It is important that heritage conservation is perceived as something alive, relevant to our lives and a source and symbol of pride.”

Unesco expects George Town and Malacca to prepare a comprehensive conservation plan which takes into account the proper conservation of shophouses and adequate techniques of intervention. The cities are to implement measures for decreasing motor traffic and controlling tourism pressures. As monitoring is crucial, a thorough set of indicators for the whole range of urban and architectural heritage components needs to be established.

In order to maintain World Heritage status, we have to fundamentally protect our Outstanding Universal Values (OUVs). For the uninitiated, OUVs are the criteria which put the cities of George Town and Malacca on the World Heritage map. The Historic Cities of the Straits of Malacca are recognised as (1) trading settlements at the crossroads of civilisations, (2) historic townscapes with a wonderful range of shophouses and townhouses and (3) hubs of living multicultural heritage. While some are concerned that we are prioritising heritage over business vitality, experience in other World Heritage Sites (WHS) shows that OUVs may hold the keys to regenerating George Town.

Studying others
Learning from examples within and around WHS in eight countries, it is heartening to know that other cities have succeeded against greater odds. The story of Vigan WHS's success, told personally by the Mayoress Eva Medina, is certainly compelling. Vigan City is consistently one of the best-performing local government units in the Philippines today. But just 15 years ago, the once important Spanish colonial town was a ghost town and a moribund municipality.

Like George Town, citizens had to fight for the reinstatement of Vigan's lapsed city status. Owners of historic properties did not have clear guidelines about conservation. Due to inadequate national implementation of heritage legislation, heritage buildings were being badly renovated or demolished. “Then we realised that the responsibility of safeguarding our heritage belonged to us, the people of Vigan. Hence, we took the initiative to enact our own local legislation and encourage community involvement,” said Medina.

Hou Weidong of the China Academy of Cultural Heritage stressed just how serious the China government is when it comes to managing its heritage sites. Around the Yungang Grottos WHS, squatter settlements will be cleared to return the surroundings to the original forested landscape. Some months ago, Hangzhou made the news for announcing plans to shave off its highrise buildings on the West Lake's eastern shore, in its bid for the coveted World Heritage status.

In terms of public financing for heritage conservation, the Hoi An Ancient Town WHS administration has established a scheme to capture tourism revenue from admission tickets to heritage sites. Tran Van An from the Hoi An Centre for Monuments Management and Preservation explained how the bulk of the income is channelled into an innovative programme of restoration and maintenance of heritage sites and festivals, while 25% of this revenue is used as operational funds.

However, in the case of George Town, tourism taxes accrue to federal, not state, coffers. To stay on the list, George Town and Malacca have to prepare their Special Area Plans by early 2011. The federal government has reportedly allocated RM30mil for Malacca but nothing for George Town, even though the two cities, like Siamese twins, have a common destiny.

Treading lightly
Despite the lack of a tourism policy, George Town has become Penang's flagship attraction, and walking tours have proliferated. Tim Curtis, head of the culture unit at Unesco Bangkok, warned that tourism is a powerful force which must be harnessed and managed in order to safeguard the authenticity and integrity of the properties on the World Heritage list: “Often times, the changes are creeping and cumulative until one day one wakes up to discover that the very spirit of a place that was once so characteristic and unique has in fact been lost.”

Culturally motivated tourists are supposed to tread more lightly than mass tourists. But to win them, our tourism entrepreneurs will have to adapt to the cultural tourist's expectations of things hand-made, eco-friendly, enlightened, and of quality.

Karl Steinberg of Galle Fort Hotel, Sri Lanka, strongly advised against the superficial duplication of heritage: “Anyone can go in and remake the walls and floors and duplicate the windows. But you need to be careful not to take away the patina. You need to save and preserve the spirit of that place, because that is the unique experience that no one can duplicate.”

Steinberg showed how he and Penang partner Chris Ong transformed a derelict villa into a heritage boutique hotel in the Galle WHS. The result not only won a Unesco Asia-Pacific Heritage Award but earned acclaim from National Geographic Traveler for being “as close to a Graham Greene scene as you'll find these days.”

Clearer heritage guidelines are needed to steer renovators into achieviig “modern” and “functional” without sacrificing “authenticity” and “patina of age”. Indeed, the mainstreaming of proper conservation practice is critical to our heritage credibility. While assuring us that sensitive and careful restoration will undoubtedly add value to heritage properties, Steinberg also cautioned that lack of government enforcement can undermine economic value. “As an investor, I cannot put money into a heritage property not knowing if the building next door will be allowed to fall derelict or be used for bird's nest breeding.”

Puan Maimunah Mohd Sharif, general manager of the new George Town World Heritage office, is all too aware of the situation: “We need business within the the George Town World Heritage Site but these businesses must be within existing policies and guidelines. We must look into the interests of all stakeholders.”

As communities are gradually being evicted by enthusiastic investors, a socially-minded government should show interest in the provision of affordable housing. Ipoh-born Verena Ong, a senior heritage specialist from Sydney, helped to develop conservation management guidelines for Miller's Point on behalf of the New South Wales department of housing. This rare, early residential precinct of Sydney's port in the shadow of Sydney Bridge has resisted the pressures of gentrification despite its being on valuable inner city land, right next to the tourist magnet known as The Rocks. A number of schemes were established to upgrade the public realm, encourage progressive restoration, and enrich the memory of place through oral history programmes.

In India, conservation is dominated by archaeologists, and it is difficult even for architects to get a foot through the door. On one site, Gurmeet Rai of Cultural Resource Conservation Initiative (CRCI) India found that the artisans had been reduced to labour: “This is our colonial legacy. Workers are disconnected from the values of the site because nobody asked them.” She struck a chord with the conference participants when she said: “I don't see community as outside the door. Community involves all those who work on the site, including artisans. Community to us is ‘two or more people who agree by will or custom to follow a certain norm’. From our experience, people who can contribute to the site come from diverse backgrounds.”

The conservation of a temple in Punjap presented many issues because the community was fragmented and divisive. Gurmeet discovered that it was critical to understand how the community used the temple's watertank, as it was linked to their sanitation needs. Once the community's trust was gained, the women came forward wanting to be engaged and asking for skills training programmes: “Conservation is a social question. The making of a management plan provides a platform for developing a process. As such, it should include both formal and informal groups,” she said.

Dynamic heritage
Perhaps the most dynamic conservation approaches are to be found in Kyoto, where culture has been harnessed to a mature heritage movement that constantly has to contend with the powerful development pressures in Japan. In historic Kyoto, 17 World Heritage monuments have been listed since 1994. More than 100 traditional handcraft works necessary for daily life and traditional events, religions and festivals, and 32 types of traditional handcraft industries are protected.

Professor Yoshifumi Muneta from Kyoto Prefectural University showed how people's attitudes towards cultural heritage had altered over the years. Changes in planning, the tourism market and retail patterns produced a drastic change in public opinion which, in turn, transformed the paradigm of urban development.

After a period of economic growth, the Japanese domestic market suffered the negative impacts of globalisation in the 1990s. Many old-style enterprises started to disappear after the distribution revolution caused by globalisation: “Traditional trades people seemed to be giving up. However, their attitude changed when they could see the future trends. Some small-scale retailers and manufacturers survived by adapting to value-added lifestyles,” Muneta said.

Although highrises dominate the Kyoto business are, the city surprisingly still has 28,000 machiya or townhouses. During the “primitive phase”, the old Kyoto machiya were simply converted into restaurants and souvenir shops. But at a later stage, when conversions had to follow design guidelines, professionals helped to visualise the restoration work for ordinary people: “Now the creative class knows how to exploit the beauty of the machiya. They are transforming the evolution of machiya and furthering the evolution of Japanese style.”

Muneta advised us to study market trends in order to realise the potential of the shophouse: “The old house is an incubator for new ideas. They have a value for businesses which can innovate in response to a changing market.” The historic district of Kyoto has become a ‘hot spot’ for young people, who are rediscovering traditional dining. For George Town, good food in an authentic and stylish heritage setting seems to be an obvious strategy.

In the Macau WHS, “Young local fashion designers are merging Asian modernity with their local cultural heritage to produce new fabrics and designs, in the style of Jim Thompson Silks.” Hilary du Cros from its Institute for Tourism Studies said George Town should find its own unique and sustainable style of tourism products by tapping the talents of student designers, local modern artists as well as traditional artisans.

Within George Town itself, there are thousands of heritage buildings, hundreds of festivals and urban traditions, and more than a hundred NGOs, associations and clanhouses. In order to translate this cultural diversity and social capital into economic terms, we need cultural and social entrepreneurs. There is evidence that George Town is beginning to attract the “creative class”. The only question is, is it too little too late, or are we seeing a real transition to growing George Town as a creative city?

Clearly, what we ned is broadened ownership and a collective vision based on new thinking about heritage sites.

“The approach to protecting non-monumental sites differs somewhat from that of monumental sites. Historic towns in Asia are being protected for the value of their entire urban setting and for their living human traditions,” said Curtis of Unesco Bangkok. “By moving the management of cultural resources beyond the responsibility of a small elite to the larger population, heritage can become an important tool for sustainable socio-economic development.

“Preservation can help to create jobs and generate income based in traditional technologies and know-how. Local communities should be empowered to play a leading role in the conservation, monitoring, maintenance, and presentation of their heritage. We need to develop ways by which they can benefit from their heritage while keeping their social and spiritual traditions intact.”

One developer told the participants: “Our project sustainability depends very much on the reigniting of Penang and the revitalisation of George Town.” Meanwhile, community-driven success stories such as the Han Jiang Ancestral Temple and Cheng Hoe Seah are emerging. The Penang Heritage Trust has experience in spearheading partnerships with government backing, corporate sponsorship and NGO energy.

What next?
Towards the close of the conference, those present streamed into four participatory workshops. The one on creative environment attracted the largest crowd and whipped up a storm of ideas: “We need a civic-cultural centre in the heart of George Town; we need spaces for community creativity; dead spaces should be turned over to artists.”

The thought that Penang Town Hall, now an underutilised venue, could again become the hub of cultural life it once was, flashed through our minds. The other three groups elaborated on strategies just as critical to revitalisation – business collaborations, innovative communications strategies and, above all, good governance.

The responsibility of delivery falls on the shoulders of Puan Maimunah, who is operationalising the George Town World Heritage Office, with the full involvement of other groups such as the Cultural Heritage Advisory Team, the Penang Heritage Trust, and representatives from Universiti Sains Malaysia's School of Housing, Building and Planning. Resolved to face the challenged ahead, she said: “We need to formulate indicators to measure our performance, we must have ownership.”

The end of the conference felt like a new beginning. Platforms must be created, the dialogue must continue. If our World Heritage Site is to be protected, and its promised benefits realised, stakeholders need to join hands and make things happen.

George Town is waiting. The world is watching.

** Reproduced with permission. This article first appeared in the January 2010 issue of the Penang Economic Monthly. This 11-year old magazine published by the Socio-economic and Environmental Research Institute (SERI) is being overhauled and commercialised. This endeavour is in response to the growing insight among Penangites and Penang lovers that the downward trend in the state's fortunes cannot be succesfully reversed unless they themselves get seriously involved. The goal is to inspire positive action among readers towards attaining a "Penang Renaissance".

For more information, please visit the Penang Economic Monthly site or contact the Socio-economic and Environmental Research Institute (SERI) at 604-2283306.

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