An Approach to Prioritize Urban Conservation Heritage Areas According to Social Indicators

Abstract

Conservation of heritage areas is one of the popular topics in many contemporary studies. Historic Cairo is teeming with historical monuments and landmarks that bear witness to an abundance of historical wealth evolved, not only as the historic capital of the Islamic world but as an exquisite, stunning amalgamation of ancient human ingenuity, regardless of Cairo's international and regional historical importance. It is subjected to extreme deterioration due to the rapid change in culture and social patterns. The heritage area conservation plans lack setting top priorities for the highly deteriorated areas that require accelerated preservation intervention, as well as severely overlooking the social aspects of tradition and customs that must be strategically ingrained in the reservation and urban conservation projects. The study assumed that one of the pillars of the reservation and urban regeneration projects was the social aspects. In addition, it aims to develop a methodology for prioritizing reservation and urban conservation areas as per social aspects. The study's findings revealed the significance of ingraining the social aspects into the reservation and urban conservation projects fabric. Furthermore, by setting a prioritizing methodology that ranks the reservation and urban conservation areas according to reservation criteria, the study result was validated against thorough surveys for the targeted conservation areas. In future conservation studies, it is recommended to integrate all (economic, environmental, and political) aspects and assign weighted criteria against each area with adherence to the system. The results should be incorporated into an integrated system that is statistically ranked to prioritize the preservation and urban conservation of the heritage areas.