This is not the letter to the Three Wise Men. But it looks like it. The city council of Cordoba This week he announced the progress of the management plan for the historic center, prepared by SEI Patrimony Living. It is a kind of road map or strategic plan for the the next two decades and with the challenge of saving a territory as emblematic as it is threatened by depopulation and aging; the use and maintenance of its vast heritage (732 protected assetsof which around a hundred fall under state or regional regulations) or mainly tourist pressure.
This first document, detailed these days by ABC, It will be completed by the end of the year. -date on which it must be approved- with the participation of the groups concerned: neighbors, professionals and experts in the field as well as opposition groups. Although it already has a first and striking list of agents who have been asked their opinion on the state of Casco.
This program also comes at an ideal time for the City Hall in the public eye. UNESCO (after the doubts raised by the controversy over solar panels). Even if the plan respects the World Heritage Areawhich extends over 80 hectares (from the medina to San Basilio and passing through the Roman Bridge), can be extrapolated to the entire historical complex -one of the largest in Europe with about 120 hectares of surface area-. In a few days, the city will host the world meeting of organizations that bring together cities with the UNESCO seal and, obviously, this planning is a magnificent business card for Cordoba before the 200 congressmen from 60 cities who will reflect on the conservation of universal goods and values. It should not be forgotten that it is the city with the most world heritage titles.
Wiring near the church of San Lorenzo
So much so that the analysis of the 278 pages of the initial document distils a story very much in line with the protocols of UNESCO and its theorists, many speeches of climate change, technology, contemporary culture and even citizen participation; and, surprisingly, less emphasis than expected on very fashionable problems such as imbalances in tourist pressure (taxes, apartments, vandalism, etc.), or old ones such as basic services for living in a region steeped in history: retirement homes, parking lots, theirs terraces -a UNESCO property within another protected property-, schools or new tourist products and uses, among other aspects.
The project’s editors first made a diagnosis of how the old neighborhood is based on the plans and documents that already exist on the subject, on the analysis systems and indicators that the City Hall manages to test in this part of the city and on the opinions expressed by a list of agents and work tables. With all the information contained in the mixer, 70 factors were stipulated that more or less affect the property and 64 lines of action with an economic and temporal projection, as well as signals to those who should promote them, who could benefit from them or who could be interested. And the account of all this comes down to the not insignificant figure of 312 million euros (almost a year’s budget from the City Council matrix).
A new “trial” to safeguard the values that made UNESCO protect the world in 1984 and 1994 Mosque-Cathedral as well as to its most direct historical environment but also to the rest of the monumental and historical face of the old medina and the ajerquia, inside the walls, but also outside. looking at the river -the pending topic- and connect this urban heart with other parts of the city (the so-called green block of Parque Cruz Conde for example), the Sierra or the site of Medina Azaharaanother of the properties inscribed on the World Heritage List.
Background
The sewing, tailoring and unpicking work will continue for almost 20 years. The measure envisaged in the longer term reaches 17 and curiously is the strengthening of the Helmet Office to implement this management plan.
THE context in Cordoba on the application of this type of programs – which can further increase the proposed measures and their total cost in this last period of contributions – do not indicate a certain optimism. The same General Urban Plan of 2001, almost 25 years later, leaves intact a significant part of the land and residential facilities.
He Special plan for the historic centerwhose updating is envisaged in the majority of the orientations of this roadmap, has not seen all the objectives that it set itself in writing achieved. Not by public investments, and even less by private investments. It cherished an amalgam of very similar proposals and guidelines (and more detailed urban and heritage aspects) that have been left aside. And this goes without saying the vain attempts of the city’s successive strategic plans, which have failed and come up against the same unfinished projects.
Two people on a street in Axerquía, Córdoba
In this context, a new attempt is born to heal the wounds for which the Helmet is sutured and from the first diagnosis, medicines are sought such as housing for young people or the reactivation of hundreds of empty or demolished plots – with a not very lax regulation. whose modification does not appear in this Management Plan -, the provision of basic services to the elderly population or to those who wish to go and live in the old founding neighborhoods. Or, on the other side of the static photo, the commitment to the cultural and technological industries injected into a very singular plot but which can provide it with incentives.
Of these initial 312 million, direct measures aimed at rehabilitating housing or encouraging the recruitment of new residents exceed 25 million euros. Nearly 100 million bear names and first names in sites whose rehabilitation is urgent and on which work is being carried out at different rates. Of the 25 million of the Master Plan for the Mosque with deteriorated walls, Regina, Santa Clara, the Pósito de la Corredera, the stables and equestrian uses, the Miraflores wasteland and the surroundings of Calahorra and the special plan of the Alcázar for which 40 million euros are planned to expand its footprint to the river, recover historic routes and gardens.
The bet on green spaces, new open spaces, trees and the softening of sidewalks or the maintenance of buildings contribute to a more cultural and environmental use of the river, the Guadalmellato Canal or the Sierra. About 120 million bills that include connecting corridors from the outside to the inside. And, in addition, a chapter of measures to revive a lost traditional trade.
