Urbanicide in all good faith

A serial killer of cities is wandering about the planet. Its name is

UNESCO, and its lethal weapon is the label World Heritage, with
which it drains the lifeblood from glorious villages and ancient
metropolises, embalming them in brand-name time warp.

This article was originally published in Domus 982 / JulyAugust 2014

It is heartrending (srcedrapajui) to watch the death throes (smrtne boli)
of so many cities. Glorious, opulent and hectic for centuries
and in some cases millennia, they survived the vicissitudes
(nestalnosti) of history, wars, pestilence and earthquakes. But now,
one after the other, they are withering and becoming steadily
less populated, reduced to theatrical backdrops against which a
bloodless pantomime is performed. Where life once throbbed,
and cantankerous (svadljiv) humans elbowed their way through
the world, pushing and shoving and trampling (gaenje) on one
another, now you will find only ubiquitously (posvuda) similar
snack bars and stalls selling quaint specialities and muslins,
batiks and cottons, beach wraps and bracelets. What was once
a bustling din of loud excitement is now all conveniently listed
in travel brochures.
The death warrant for these cities is delivered at the end of a
lengthy bureaucratic process held in a building in Paris, in
Place Fontenoy, in the seventh arrondissement. The verdict is
an indelible label, a branding iron that marks you forever.
The label I refer to is that of the World Heritage Sites, issued
by UNESCO. Its touch is lethal: wherever the UNESCO

hallmark is applied to a city, the city dies out, becoming the

stuff of taxidermy.
This veritable urbanicide (an ugly word, nevertheless better
than the horrible femicide) is not deliberately perpetrated.
On the contrary, it is committed in all good faith and with the
loftiest intentions, to preserve examples of heritage for the
benefit of humanity. But, as the word says, to preserve means
to embalm, or freeze, to rescue from wear and tear and the
scars of time; it means to halt time and fix it in a snapshot, to
prevent it from changing and evolving.
The urbanistic dilemma offered by UNESCO is an irksome
one. There are of course, monuments that need to be defended
and protected. But it is also true that, if in 450 BC the
Acropolis in Athens had been protected just the way it was
then, we would have neither the Propylaeum nor the
Parthenon, nor the Erectheum. UNESCO would have turned
its nose up in horror at Rome as it was in the 16th and 17th
centuries, which produced an admirable pot-pourri of
antiquity, mannerism and baroque. Thank heavens the Marais
in Paris was not declared a World Heritage site, otherwise we
could forget the Beaubourg.
A balance needs to be struck between constructing and
preserving. We want to live in cities that include museums and
works of art, not in mausoleums with dormitory suburbs
attached. It is an inhuman punishment to spend ones life in
the guest-quarters of an endless museum. I recently went back
to San Gimignano after a 30-year absence. Within its walls
there is not a butcher, not a greengrocer, nor genuine baker to
be found. Why so? After the bars, restaurants and souvenir

shops have closed, you wont find the locals sleeping in the
city centre any more they all live outside, in modern condos.
Within the city walls, everything has become a set for
medieval costume movies, with the inevitable products of
invention of tradition for commercial uses. The smaller the
city the quicker its demise.
Not only in Italy. In Laos, Luang Prabang has suffered the
same fate, and its historic centre is now a tourist trap, its
houses all converted into hotels and restaurants, with the usual
street market identical the world over selling the same old
necklaces, canvas handbags and leather belts. To find out
where the Laotians really live, you have to pedal a couple of
kilometres out to Phothisalath Road, beyond Phu Vao Road.
If you walk through Porto, Portugal, you will immediately
perceive the invisible frontier of the declared World Heritage
area: the variegated and heterogeneous humanity of its urban
fabric gives way as if by magic to a monotonous monoculture
of innkeepers, bar-tenders and waiters touting for customers
recognisable by their hiking boots worn in the city, by their
hideously short shorts and hairy legs (why on earth do human
beings on a tourist mission feel authorised to dress as they
would never dream of doing at home?). Likewise, the World
Heritage brand acts as an ideological diploma issued to the
hotel industry, as the cultured and humanitarian face of the
worldwide tourist machine.
With two aggravating circumstances. The first is what might
be called chronological integralism, or temporal
fundamentalism, whereby what dates from an earlier time is
worthier of merit. If a site happens to be a thousand years

older, the excavation of a Roman wall is justification for

tampering with a magnificent medieval cloister (as happened
in Lisbon Cathedral). The second aggravating circumstance is
of a general philosophical nature: since UNESCO is
multiplying its world heritage sites and since humanity
continues to produce works of art (or so we hope), if after
2000 years we are already immobilised by innumerable pieces
of heritages, what will happen in another 1000 or 2000 years
time? Will we all be living on the moon and buying tickets to
visit the planet Earth?

The 759 cultural heritage sites include 254

cities. The absolute majority of these artcities are situated in Europe
Let us remember how it has gone so far: in 1972, after several
years of discussions, the UNESCO General Conference
adopted the World Heritage Convention, which to date (2014)
has been adopted by 190 countries. In 1976 the World
Heritage Committee was established, and in 1978 it identified
its first site. By 2014, after 38 ordinary and 10 extraordinary
sessions, it had defined 981 sites in 160 countries. Of these
world heritage sites, 759 are cultural, 193 natural, and 29
mixed.
The 759 cultural heritage sites include 254 cities (entire or
partial, one district only or the historic centre only). The
absolute majority (138) of these art-cities are situated in

Europe. In turn, almost half of the European art cities are in

just four countries: Italy (29 art cities, including Vatican City
and the Republic of San Marino), Spain (17), France and
Germany (11 each). Considering its relatively small surface,
Italy is the country with the worlds highest density of world
heritage sites.
The fact is that the branding just keeps rolling on. One might
have thought that what there was to be declared heritage in a
country like ours, so packed with history, ought to have
already been branded by now. On the contrary: proceeding by
decades, in Italy in the 70s just one site had been declared a
world heritage; in the 80s, 5 more were added; and the 90s
witnessed the biggest explosion, with 25 new heritage sites.
But even in the first decade of our millennium a further 14
were identified; joined by 6 more in the first four years of the
current decade. That makes a total of no less than 51 natural
and art sites.
It is tragic moreover, that cities, towns and regions are queuing
up and canvassing to get themselves embalmed. Like the
countries aspiring to host the Olympics, unaware of the
consequent ruination that will drag them into the abyss (see
Greece), so our mayors, councillors and tourist offices strive
to obtain the coveted status. We are terrified at the prospect of
our country being reduced to one vast museum, where we will
have to buy a ticket in order to walk around, while desperately
looking for a way out. Theyll make a movie called Escape
from the Museum to provide us with a breath of fresh air, a
splash
of life, and the spectacle of cities changing before we return to

our mothballed environs.

all rights reserved

Marco dEramo was born in Rome in 1947. He was a

theoretical physics researcher at Rome University for two
years, and then studied sociology in Paris with Pierre
Bourdieu. For many years he was a special correspondent for
the daily newspaper il manifesto in the US. His book The Pig
and the Skyscraper. Chicago, a History of our Future, Verso,
London/New York 2002, has been translated into various
languages and used in numerous urban planning courses.