Bratislava, Camerino, Hamburg and Valencia announce local plans to build cultural heritage resilience


12 November 2020


Bratislava, Camerino, Hamburg and Valencia announce local plans to build cultural heritage resilience

Image source: Las Naves.


The four ARCH pilot cities have now established their individual local work plans that will guide the cities’ work on strengthening the resilience of local cultural heritage. The work plans define objectives, strategies, actions and corresponding indicators of success. Each local work plan is supported by a team of local partners, which is the result of stakeholder analysis undertaken by city staff to identify, engage and mobilise a core group in support of locally-defined objectives.

The cities were supported in this process with a common framework designed by project partner ICLEI, as well as a facilitated workshop in September 2020 where other partners provided feedback on the draft objectives, strategies and indicators. Defining (and refining) these components, as well as mobilising a core team of local stakeholders to support their achievement, is crucial in order to establish a clear, robust and credible pathway for local actions – of equal importance to the research agenda defined by scientific partners.

Says ARCH city partner Emilio Servera, working for Las Naves (Valencia):
"The process has been very valuable in helping us to define the concrete actions that we would like to develop in Valencia within the ARCH project. On the initial stages of ARCH, the project team had identified a portfolio of potential actions which could be developed in order to achieve the desired aims, and aligned with the city's strategies. We have taken the development of this local work plan as an opportunity to start the co-creation process with key local stakeholders from academia, industry, government and society. With their cooperation, we have been able to prioritise and schedule the key actions that we would like to implement together to increase the resilience of the Huerta, the Albufera and the city itself. The local partners helped us to identify the most promising paths to follow, and through this process we have planned our travel itinerary as a group."

Each local work plan hinges on an overall aim that informs the detailed design of the plan, as follows:

Bratislava: to increase the resilience of the medieval town centre, the Devin Castle located on the dolomite cliff above the Danube River, and Celto-Roman structures on the Bratislava Castle hill, creating space for different stakeholders to interact, and new capacity to deal with climate change impacts, with a view to aligning adaptation and mitigation goals and integrating these with its municipal policies.

Camerino: to mitigate the impact of natural hazards of the small old town with an integrated approach, developing knowledge and tools for monitoring and preserving cultural heritage.

Hamburg: to integrate climate change adaptation into management of the World Heritage site Speicherstadt and Kontorhausviertel, including improved monitoring of impacts on built fabric, as well as on visitors and the local community, and increased community awareness.

Valencia: to improve the resilience of the Huerta and the Albufera and to demonstrate how they support the city of Valencia in adapting to climate change.

To know more about the local work plans, click here.


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