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Urban planning and world heritage

Urban planning and world heritage

Published on 19 December 2013 - Updated 09 January 2014
Cet article date d'il y a plus de 10 ans

Landscape and development, Mission Val de Loire

The Association des Biens Français du Patrimoine Mondial is organising a work seminar on the theme “Urban planning, a regulatory tool at the service of the protection and management of properties inscribed on the World Heritage List?” to be held at La Défense on Wednesday 22 January 2014. The seminar is being organised with the support of the Ministry of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy and the Ministry of Territorial Equality, and in partnership with Mission Bassin Minier and Mission Val de Loire.

The day will aim to take specific cases in point into account in giving thought to the interplay between and complementarity of urban planning and traditional heritage protection tools with a view to modulating future practice, as well as encourage full account being taken of patrimonial and landscaping values in these outstanding territories’ development policies and projects.

With 38 properties currently inscribed on the World Heritage List, France possesses the 4^th highest number of sites worldwide. The variety of French properties singled out by the international community mirrors the continuing development and richness of the List originally constituted by the 1972 Convention, which now contains natural sites, historic towns, monuments, cultural landscapes and series of properties.

According to the terms of the Convention, conservation of properties benefiting from such international recognition is ensured by national protective measures implemented by each State Party to safeguard their Outstanding Universal Value (OUV).

In France, most of the sites currently inscribed are protected by traditional tools for protection of heritage and such sites as Historical Monuments (law of 1913), their surroundings (law of 1943), listed sites (law of 1930), safeguarded sectors (law of 1962), and ZPPAUPs and AVAPs (Architectural, Urban & Landscape Heritage Protection Zones and Architecture & Heritage Enhancement Areas – laws of 1983 and 2010 respectively).

Since 1992, with the addition of the “cultural landscape” category, increasing numbers of “very large-scale” sites have been inscribed on the World Heritage List. The size of such sites has created new protection and management issues that have led the areas concerned to adapt the regulatory “toolbox” so as to combine traditional heritage protection tools with tools in aid of territorial development – i.e. such urban-planning documents as the SCOT, PLU and PLUi.

The seminar has been designed with this context in mind, aimed, among others, at managers of French properties, their institutional and technical partners and actors in territorial development and planning.