Community participation in urban architectural heritage in hanoi 2013 proccedings

The International Conference on Sustainable Built Environment for Now and the Future Hanoi, 26 -27 March 2013 The community’s participation in urban architectural heritage in Hanoi Dao Thi Nhu , Do Tu Lan , Nguyen Quoc Toan Pantheon Sorbonne University, French Urban Development Agency National University of Civil Engineering, Hanoi, Vietnam Vietnam ABSTRACT: With a long history of more than 1000 years, Hanoi City, the capital of Vietnam, has a lot of valuable urban architectural heritages (UAHs) which create an opportunity for a unique and charming urban identity However, the urbanization pressure after Renovation policy and poor management have led to a rapid, out-of-control urban transformation Illegal construction transfers, renovation, and ineffective policies, etc have adversely affected UAHs with encroachment, disfunctioning and partly or wholly visible destruction The conservation projects, favouring technical and technological measures, have had rather limited results so far On the other hand, the history of establishment and development of UAHs in Hanoi, mostly affected by citizens and the folk life demonstrates the important role of the community in conserving the UAHs In the positive aspect, the community can not only help survive the heritages physically but also give the real estates a “soul” The article addresses issues of the community’s participation in preserving UAHs in Hanoi with reference to some certain kinds of conservation projects, field surveys and interviews to authorities An assessment of Hanoi citizens’ involvement under the current view of participatory approach and challenges of community’s participation in the Hanoi context are stressed The paper concludes with some recommendations to encourage public involvement to adapt the urbanization context INTRODUCTION With a long history of more than 1000 years, Hanoi City, the capital of Vietnam, has many valuable urban architectural heritages (UAHs) including traditional buildings built and maintained either by the people/the community or the sovereign states The community’s heritages include temples, pagodas, communal houses, traditional housing and others recognized monuments While sovereign states’ works are those such as Thang Long citadel, Van Mieu Quoc Tu Giam, etc Affected and influenced by revolutions during rises and falls of dynasties and recently the urbanization, these heritages have more and more integrated the context of the common life in some way then have been much affected by the residents This closeness and share of urban living space have created a mutual interaction among urban community and heritages that can be considered as a premise for recently encouraging the community’s involvement in the UAHs conservation projects The community’s participation method has become a global approach in heritage conservation since the 1990s (Sarvarzadeh & Abidin, 2012) By the end of the 20th century, many countries and practical professionals over the world have applied this method for UAHs preservation The participation of the community is considered as a solution which could achieve following purposes: resolving the contradictions between conservation and development among needs, benefits of the community and local authorities (Sirisrisak T., 2009); building and consolidating the “living” cultural context for UAHs; supporting heritage touristic development activities towards the culture in which community’s role is a vital element of the heritage back63 ground as well as a factor that emphasizes the local cultural values in order to give satisfaction for touristic activities; and taking resources from people (Sarvarzadeh & Abidin, 2012) In fact, in recent years, many UAHs conservation projects in Hanoi have focused on the community involvement However, according to the evaluation of several experts, these projects were small-scale, the community participation in Hanoi was rather limited The participation has not meant the responsibilities and empowerment of the people This paper contributes to research on the aspects of community participation in UAH conservation: situation, level, challenges of the community participation METHODOLOGY + Reviews of previous researches, projects on heritage conservation + Interviews of people, authorities such as officers of Ancient Quarter management Broad, Heritage conservation department, related social organizations including Associations of The Elderly and Association of Veterans, and direct managers of selected UAHs + Photographs of the participation of people in typical heritages Photographs were taken randomly yet comprehensively to compare the level of interest in partipating among the people, the change of the heritage elements under the impact of urban elements + Valuate the results derived from the data THE SITUATION OF THE COMMUNITY’S PARTICIPATION IN UAHS CONSERVATION IN HANOI 1.1 The urban architectural heritages of Hanoi The urban architectural heritages of Hanoi could be categorized in the following groups: - The traditional heritage building group: including temples, pagodas, churches, communal houses, valuable housing: the “tube houses” and the French-colonial architecture villas (French-styled villas) and the other relics created, maintained and recognized by the people as a valuable building of history, culture, art, architecture, spirituality, memory in their social and cultural life - Particular heritage groups inherited by the previous institute: the Thang Long Citadel, Van Mieu Quoc Tu Giam, etc - The typical urban issue or urban pattern group: including the Ancient Quarter (Pho co), the Old quarter (or the French Quarter) (Pho Phap) and the area of urbanized traditional villages 1.2 1.2.1 Types of conservation projects with the community’s participation Projects by the Vietnamese government and/or sponsoring organizations The UAHs conservation projects taking into account the community’s participation conducted by the State or/and other organizations mainly focus on the particularly valuable areas such as the Ancient Quarter, the French Quarter and the urbanized traditional villages - Projects in the Ancient quarter: The Ancient Quarter is a neighbourhood with high density of UAHs where the community mostly as inhabitants infuse daily life into the heritages UAHs in this area include valuable "tube" houses, temples, communal houses, and also a unique typical road network connecting the blocks However, the number of these heritages has been increasingly declining due to the overcrowding population, the housing pressure, the desire for “modernization”, the lack of appropriate and timely management mechanisms and policies In order to conserve the remaining buildings, the Government has had many research projects with the support of foreign experts but with little success Unsuccessful projects have been those which have sought to tackle only structural problems with technique-oriented solutions over-looking social aspects of the heritages On the contrary, successful are projects that identify and solve technical problems and also take into account the interests and concerns of the related community That is these cases of Quan De temple, Kim Ngan communal house, Huyen Thuyen pagoda project and cross-cultural building in the An64 cient quarter that balanced the conservation requirements and concerns of the landowners, with 5,25,13,33 landowners respectly The typical failed project was the case of the tube house at 47 Hang Bac The architecture was dwelled by households, out of which were illegal residents These illegal residents were not entitled to support program that was applied to heritage owners as part of the conservation project They, as the majority, therefore showed no cooperation leading to the project’s inevitable failure Unfortunately, the deterioration of the heritages made it too vulnerable to survive the fire in 2012 and the house was easily burned down entirely before any fire-fighters came Failure at bigger scale was the relocation project in the Ancient Quarter which aims to reduce the population and development pressure to support conservation task1 approved by the People's Committee of Hanoi in 1998 The project also failed to address the social issues of the project resulting in total onhold After more than 10 years, this project is still at the research stage Also, the coordination project among the State, other organizations and local people was carried out On the other hand, successful example is the renovation of the facade of Ta Hien Street, which was completed in early 2011 In this project, homeowners signed in a commitment of responsibilities to protect and maintain external faỗade and surrounding environment which were renovated by the State The project marked the corporation betweens stakeholders and the role of community in conservation and maintain However, it should raise the “community forum” to maintain community’s involvement and to support the future discussion and feedback     Figure 1: A coordination project by the State and local people was carried out at Ta Hien street (Completed in 2011) Source: internet 2012 - The same issues can be seen in the conservation research projects in the French Quarter and urbanized traditional villages Generally speaking, for the project by the State or sponsoring organizations, Project would receive community support and participation if their interests would be not compromised for only the sake of the heritage, if not being leveraged 1.2.2 The conservation project is willing to be done by the community or voluntary community organization - The conservation project for religious heritages This kind of projects has been flourished in many recent years and has been paid attention by not only local but also outside or oversea community These projects are often planned and executed by heritage managers such as the monks after gathering fund from the the faithful Donators are often overseas or local wealthy community, who entirely depend on their religious leaders on the project matters While donators have had little idea about the historical and architectural values to be conserved of the heritage, the The project was divided into two phases The first phase plans to relocate about 1,800 households accounting for 40% of the population in the Ancient Quarter and reduce the density from 83,000 people per km2 to 50,000 people per km2 65 above-mentioned project managers haven’t done no better than the donators as observed This may due to lack of expertise and heritage knowledge In some worse cases, the the projects may be an opportunity to pocket the donated fund with schemed consultancy contracts where the heritage values are certainly not priority - The conservation projects on housing (on tube house in Ancient Quarter and French villas in the Old Quarter) This kind of project is mainly done by the local community They perform many different forms which bring both positive and negative results The participation of the people can be found in the following types: (1) People repaire or remode their living space (either their own legal houses or illegal living spaces) to prevent degradation and for its improvement However, this process was carried out fragmentarily, unsystematically, asynchronously in terms of architecture, technique as well as execution time due to so complex ownership More, due to locating at the out-of-sight or easily neglected part of the structure, many living spaces are out of control and management of the local authority then it usually get poor interventions by the users The house was quickly changed and even distorted by dividing, adding, dropping and cutting of the available space also Illegal possession also led to illegal modification Like the conservation case of religious monuments, the owners or the users also take advantage of the poor management to pay bribes or even accept fines as long as they can continue, in this case, harming the heritage (2) There are also UAH residents who are conscious about protecting heritage value for their next generation But they are hardly capable of implementing their good intent due to lack of expertise or fund or mostly both or supporting policies On the other hand, these residents can’t avoid pressure of improving deteriorated living space or temptation of selling their heritage properties to those who would likely modernize for business purposes At the moment, there haven’t been any policies so financially support the resident who want take part in the conservation tasks (3) Only a few other people were luckily to be funded partially or completely thanks to cooperation project between the State and foreign organization to preserve their house They are instructed to preserve the exterior value of the house and they must sign in commitments of conservation issued by the state (as the case in Ta Hien Street) However, in fact these people were not facilitated to speak out their voice (if any) after the project complete No connection between the community with feedback agencies was created 1.2.3 Abandoned UAHs by both the State and community – the surrounding space of UAHs The general picture today can be seen that, conservation projects that were conducted are the projects which mostly focus on the individual buildings but neglect their urban surroundings such as public space, open space, street or sidewalk space and ect In fact, the physical urban surroundings are the most vulnerable and often abused by the people who live around them According to many experts, up to 70% of these spaces in Ancient Quarter have been illegally occupied for housing, for business or for community activities Over the time, the abused spaces have been privatized and fossilized, malfunctioning and distorting the heritages According to a recently broadcasted interview, a lot of people living in the Ancient quarter had no idea or impossibly recognize the traditional houses, pagodas, temples in their very own neighbourhood due to the increasing and swift alteration of the heritage outer space THE LEVEL OF COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION IN THE COMPARISON WITH THEORY ONE IN THE WORLD 2.1 Theory of community participation in the world World-wide studies divide the community participation into different levels The most classic typology is corresponding to the extent of citizens’ power in determining the end product Based on deep observations and analysis, Arnstein classified into eight forms of community participation which are grouped in to three levels of participation The highest level of community participation is identified when the community have full management rights or have the empowerment to make the final decision This involvement is considered as tokenism if the resident community only to be informed or consulted, but in fact the decision belongs to traditional power holders The project is identified as no involvement of the community if that only give a "psychotherapy" program which in substance is to "educate" and "cure" community awareness 66 Table A ladder of citizen participation of Arnstein, 1969 (source: Arnstein, 199) Involvement forms 2.2 citizen control Delegated Power Partnership Placation Consultation Informing Therapy Manipulation Explanation These two highest levels allow the have-nots to have major decision-making or full managerial power Allows the have-nots to negotiate and engage in trade-offs with traditional power holders Ground rules allow the have-nots to advise, but retain for the power holders the continued right to decide Allow the have-nots to hear and to have a voice However, “they lack the power to insure that their views will be heeded by the powerful” Real objective is not to enable people to participate in planning or conducting programmes, but to enable power holders to “educate” and “cure” the participants Degree of participation Degree of citizen power Degree of tokenism Nonparticipation Evaluating the community participation in the heritage conservation projects in Hanoi In comparison with the worldwide theory, generally speaking, the community participation in Hanoi project is at a very low level and tokenism whether that project was carried out by the State, sponsoring organization or resident community (1) Participants not have the true right to choose solution, consider and make the final decision in order to not only bring actual benefits to them but also preserve the heritage values recognized by the community (2) The project information is only shared as announcements by posters, signboards, or consultation by meetings, workshops or questionnaire surveys The inadequate knowledge may lead to missing understanding, awareness, opposite assessment and negative action of participants (3) Few citizens have the opportunity to express their own opinions but conversely, people have not be really active and responsible for their participation People are often willing to delegate their right, responsibility to other representative individuals or group to decide the final determination (4) The lack of the sense of community, collective consensus of the heritage value lead difficult to be able to make the right decision for common interest (5) There are also some community groups with scholars or experts who have deep understanding on heritage and conservation However their participation is rather small, fragmented and sometimes inconsistent (6) To some extent, the spontaneous involvement of people especially without the instruction and management of the authority and professionals, is undermining, deteriorating or countering heritage conservation (7) The different conservation motives between the public and the Government While the government is more interested in the historical, cultural and aesthetic values the heritage - related community is much less interested in those but more in practical uses, physical elements or spiritual practice of the monument (8) Lack of policies and mechanisms to encourage people to participate in urban architectural heritage conservation, (9) conflicts of interest from the different stakeholders lead difficult to carry out the conservation project Even though still passive, public participation in recent years has shown a good signal in UAHs conservation, particularly more attention to important monuments and registered monuments Residents not wait for supporting programs of the local authority but initiatively carry out or propose conservation work The voice of public in the case of O Quan Chuong Gate and, most recently, in the case of Tram Gian pagoda show that citizens more and more pay attention to UAHs and aware their vital roles as well as responsibilities The aggressiveness of community in this case has presented the need of citizens in preserving and maintaining typical value for their urban heritage even though they may be limited in action THE CHALLENGES OF COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION IN UAHS CONSERVATION IN HANOI Aspect of policy, mechanism, and management in heritage conservation The lack of necessary policy, mechanism, legal framework and corresponding regulations to guide and control the implementation and management for UAHs cause disorientation for managers, loopholes enabling bureaucracy, corruption, bribery and the loss of trust of the people 67 Community coherence in society is not solid Sharing views and benefits are the most important to unite a community for effective community decision making However, in fact, although living in the same city or the same neighbourhood, the Hanoian community not share many common points, especially common responsibility, interests, benefits on UAHs like what they have ever had in their original place (Nguyen Thua Hy, 2010) It can be said that, community coherence in Hanoi isnot so solid due to the following reasons: (1) The strong flow of immigration, migration after the Renovation contributed to the disturbance of community coherence, (2) The increasingly rapid population and housing demand have narrowed the urban space and reduced many public spaces where are considered as catalytic spaces that enhance public communication and relations This situation has been more serious in the centre of the city such as in Ancient Quarter, French Quarter where are identified as that "every inch of land is an inch of gold" (3) Community relationships are built based on the competitive background of market economy relationships could be a reason that prevents the natural community cohesion (4) The new community organizations born after Renovation such as "resident groups", "association of women, youth, the elderly" that based on freedom and voluntary not really promote community cohesion like the previous ones which based on rights, obligations and responsibilities of residents to community that were normally identified in the “village convention” of the each village community2 The pressure of seeking the livelihood When the life is still difficult, naturally people will not pay much attention to UAHs conservation In fact, there are many people living in heritage areas not have good situation of economic, or must seek a livelihood that may affect on the conservation of heritage The restriction in knowledge about the UAH values of some parts of community Obviously, when people not have sufficient knowledge, they hardly have responsible and loving attitude to heritage that is the reason for a number of individuals or groups who abuse and control heritage in a personal way CONCLUSION - In terms of participatory approach, community’s involvement in UAHs in Ha Noi is still far from participation level given passiveness and lack of motivation and responsibility As afore-mentioned, the community has not fully participated in conserving the UAHs when their interest and right of raising their voices have been still compromised or neglected as conservation projects mostly have not addressed the social problems attached to the heritages thoroughly - Recommendations to build full community participation in sense of participatory approach Comprehensive study of the UAHs in both technical and social terms is a must to every conservation projects Particularly, solution proposed for the projects should consider the interest of related community, which is residents in case of tube-houses and other housing UAHs As observed, the solution to-be should be discussed with the participation of the very residents to be practical - For UAHs that are public properties and have been encroached by community, It is important to educate the whole community about the irreversible value of the heritage and build sense of collective ownership in which each individual feel being apart of and owning the heritage Collective ownership enables the community as a whole to protect the heritage from individual encroachment While ingrained psyche of heritage value protection will refrain the community themselves from possible consensus encroachment of the heritages - And of course, it is the authority and organizations that are responsible for the such task it is not easy for people o the task due to lack of expertise to fully appreciate the heritage values, and , poor community coherence of urbanization Therefore, It should raise the support of the Government and local authority through participatory program on heritage values propaganda; UAH forums or clubs to support connection network between participants where they can share experiences, information and launch systematically the conservation movement in large scale; raising awareness through educating programme; giving rewards to recognize the individual and collective contributions; delivering leaflets; carrying out events related to heritage; raising and attracting community activities that could create a "sense of community", "sense of belongingness", "sense of ownership", " sense of pride " of each neighbourhood, then evolve into "competition feeling" 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Nonparticipation Evaluating the community participation in the heritage conservation projects in Hanoi In comparison with the worldwide theory, generally speaking, the community participation in Hanoi project... of urban elements + Valuate the results derived from the data THE SITUATION OF THE COMMUNITY? ??S PARTICIPATION IN UAHS CONSERVATION IN HANOI 1.1 The urban architectural heritages of Hanoi The urban. .. of community in this case has presented the need of citizens in preserving and maintaining typical value for their urban heritage even though they may be limited in action THE CHALLENGES OF COMMUNITY