Communitys awareness and perspective on urban architectural heritage in hanoi the foundation of conservation with communitys engagement

Community’s awareness and perspective on Urban Architectural Heritage in Hanoi: the foundation of conservation with community’s engagement Dao Thi Nhu nhuxd@yahoo.com, PhD candidate, Vietnam Urban Development Agency Nguyen Quoc Toan Toan41xf@yahoo.com, PhD candidate, National University of Civil Engineering Abstract: Hanoi owns a large huge of valuable urban architectural heritages (UAHs), including a heritage recognized by UNESCO as a World heritage This is an honor but also a big challenge for the City in storing and preserving the heritage in the context of strong and rapid urbanization Although The Government and specialized agencies have had many efforts to find solutions, but to date, the results are very limited As the results, UAHs in Hanoi are more and more degraded, abused and threatened by factors of urban development and new demands of the citizens One important reason is identified as a lack of community participation in the conservation project Why there are so many projects with highly appreciated technical solutions can not be applied in practice? Why the local community not know or not want to participate the project, event for UAHs in their living place? Why some heritages attract a lot of community’s involvement while others can not? And so on All these questions may find the answer through a study on the sense of community, their perspectives on the value of UAHs in the modern life, challenges of community involvement and their motivation for UAH’s support A survey method at some typical public UAH points of the city which both connect to various types of UAHs in Hanoi and cover many different functions in the context of development of the City will help to clarify these issues In addition, a further study for some characterized UAH areas is required to check neighbourhood issues that may affect on the awareness and usage of the people The identification of consciousness and assessment as well as the needs of the community is neccessary to support UAHs conservation and proposed realistic solutions, contributing an identity City Keywords (5): community participation, urbanization, urban architectural heritage Sub-themes (Tick one item): ฀ Modeling of structures (AMS) ฀ Materials for construction (MFC) ฀ x Innovative design and methods in construction (IDM) ฀ Geotechnics for environment and energy (GEE) 1 Introduction Hanoi city (about 3.6 million urbanites in 2015) possesses a huge number of valuable urban architectural heritage pieces (UAHs) It is a great pride for the city which is 1000-year old but it is also its great responsibility to keep Over the years, Government, authorities, professional organizations and community strive to preserve these UAHs but the results are very limited [Hoang, (2010); Tran, (2009); Katherine et al, (2009); To, (2003)] One of the reasons determined by renowned experts is the lack of cooperation and participation of the community [Hoang, (2010); Tran, (2009)] As the result, many UAHs are out of concern, cannot be preserved, or are not preserved as they would deserve while others get a lot of supports which may even harm UAHs This paper focuses on a survey which helps to explore community involvement's issues such as: community’s awareness and perspectives about the role of UAHs in the modern urban life; participation ways; limitations, expectations and motivations of the community's participation This is an important foundation to decide strategies to encourage community involvement and make plans for reasonable, relevant and synchronous participation Methodology A survey was carried out in two particular heritage areas of the city, Hoan Kiem Lake (Sword Lake) and Western Lake where exist many notable features: a varied UAHs space including isolated and combined heritage, religious traditional buildings beside valuable houses and public buildings, heritage pieces with traditional functions beside urban space with modern functions, etc These two heritage clusters are also two unique touristic centres, two open green spaces and two development and historical centres of the capital1 The advantage of this approach is easily accessible to a variety of communities with different personalities and needs, and relationships to UAHs, the appearance of these people is unpredictable, irregular and completely random so that it is convenient for data collection which ensure representativeness, objectiveness and randomness Besides, these two UAHs areas can also connect to different function spaces and many heritage sites so that this helps community easier to visualize and to make general comments on heritages However with this methodology the result may hardly explore special cases or cases affected by neighbourhood characteristics Therefore, a deeper survey for two specific urban areas of the city is required Therefore, the Ancient Quarter (AQ) and an urbanized village (namely Vong Thi) on Western Lake have been chosen In addition, in-depth interviews have also been randomly conducted about for a fully exploration The total number of answers obtained in the two heritage areas is 138, the total for the two specific areas is 60 (30 for each) and 20 respondents for deep interviews including pagoda abbots (Trụ trì), temple guardian (Cụ Từ), insiders (residents living in the area of UAHs), outsiders/visitors, experts, leaders/authority managers All respondents were randomly selected and are representive for age groups, gender groups and are chosen among the visitors every two hours within two days including working and work-off days Western Lake is a centre of the capital development and construction planning, Hoan Kiem Lake is the centre of culture, socio-economy and history Image Heritages surrounding two survey sites: Western lake (left) and Sword lake (right) (Source: Author) Image Two characteristic heritage areas of Hanoi - Two survey sites (Source: http://cinet.gov.vn/articledetail.aspx?articleid=880&sitepageid=423#sthash.bdhsszAC.dpbs) Image Community’s activities at Sword Lake and Western Lake: morning gymnastic, landscape drawing, photograph making, cheese playing, temple visiting, nostalgic story talking, dating, performing, tp://cinet.gov.vn/articledetail.aspx?articleid=18739&sitepageid=423#sthash.kaTlvwMM.dpbs) Image Some kinds of Urban architectural heritage surrounding two survey sites (left to right:Ngoc Son temple, Tran Quoc Pagoda, French colonial villa, Tube house) (Source: Internet2) http://m.kyluc.com.vn/De-cu-25-Den-Ngoc-Son-vao-Top-100-cong-trinh-noi-tieng-100-tuoi-o-VietNam_duan_D894.htm; http://www.khaidat.com.vn/ha-noi-con-206-biet-thu-co-thuoc-so-huu-nha-nuoc-585; http://dulichcauvong.com/tin-tuc-du-lich/chua-tran-quoc-ngoi-chua-co-nhat-ha-noi/; http://kentnek.deviantart.com/art/Ta-Hien-Street-355970138 3 Survey results 3.1 Role of UAH in the urbanization context To identify UAHs position and importance in the modern life and in urban space, roles of UAHs are listed for community's assessment: - Valuable historical message of culture, art and architecture from the past (correlative to the concept of heritage's value); - Contributing to urban landscape, consolidating and promoting city image (correlative to a role for a city space and creating an identity); - Being explored by tourists, service activities in accordance contributing to urban economy (correlative to a role in urban economy); - Attractive place of tourism (correlative to touristic role); - Attractive place of community connection, interaction and culture sharing (correlative to relationships between UAHs and community as well as how community uses and accepts to add functions to UAH) Chart Community’s perspective on the role of UAHs in the urban space and urban community’s living space based on five levels of importance The bar chart No illustrates community’s perspective on roles of UAHs in the urban context according to levels (very important, important, not important, no comment/neutral/not sure) As is observed from the chart, all these roles are mainly aware about the level of important to very important Generally, the largest majority of interviewees appreciate the role of the historical message of culture, art, architecture from the past, in which more than 60% interviewees consider it as very important while 35% consider it as important This role is followed by contributing to urban landscape then consolidating city image, with a similar proportion of 48% for both very important and important levels Standing at the third position group of important level, three remaining roles (c, d, e) show the similar rate for the level of very important around 30% and of important with about 60% There are only a few respondents having no comment/being not sure or neutral about these five roles The role with the highest doubt is to contribute to urban economy with 6% respondent thinking unimportant and 3% have no comments/are not sure/are neutral It is possible that community doesn’t pay attention much to whether heritage can contribute to urban economy or not On the contrary, not many people deny the role of tourism attracting, with nearly 2% Contributing to the urban landscape and being an attractive place for community connection are two roles which seem to be better known, with only 4% people thinking them unimportant and 1% belonging to the category no comments/ being not sure or neutral for the former; with 2% unimportant and 3% no comment/ being not sure or neutral, for the latter 3.2 The public’s purpose when they visit UAHs in Hanoi city Public's purposes of visiting heritage are identified through two types of questions: the public's purpose to visit heritage in general Public 's reasons to visit Hoan Kiem Lake and Western Lake Chart (left) Purpose of visit to UAHs Chart (right) Reasons of visit to Guom and Western lakes Chart shows the general purpose of the community when people access to UAHs of Hanoi Seven purposes have been identified It can be seen that, the main purposes of the community to usually come to the UAHs of the city are: “visit”, “spiritual activities”, and “social life experience”, with 62, 44, 31 respondents respectively Following purposes are “relax/ nostalgia/ find a peaceful feeling”, “events” and “community connection” Finally, only a few people (5) chose to visit heritage for “business” Interestingly, “spiritual activities” are the second purpose of accessing UAHs in Hanoi, after “visit” This probably suggests that the citizens mainly focus on traditional religious buildings, such as temples, pagodas, communal houses These results also reflect the people’s habits and their close relationships with spiritual heritages Beside spiritual purpose, the need of “social life experience” also stimulates community to come to the heritages This result may be affected by the fact that the surveyed sites are connected to two lively heritage complexes such as the AQ and the Colonial French quarter It could also reflect people's real needs If so, people might pay more and more attention to the “living value” of heritages In other words, they tend to want to interact with heritages with all value related to real life rather than just looking frozen buildings Chart shows the percentage of the reasons for which community accesses to two heritage clusters Hoan Kiem Lake and Western Lake Seven reasons have been identified “Gymnastic/ relaxing/ nostalgia” is the main reason why community accesses to the two above sites (33%) It is followed by “sighseeing” (29%), “social life” as taking photography, taking coffee, chatting (14%) and “community interaction” (14%) It is interesting to notice that Western Lake and Hoan Kiem Lake are heritage centres near many diverse surrounding heritages and connected to many different urban space functions such as shopping, entertainment, culture, but this advantage is not the main reason which can stimulate community's appearance at the two sites (selected by only 6% of the respondents) This may indicate that although being a heritage, a culture hub in the city centre, the connection between the two survey sites, other surrounding heritages and other urban space functions are not really wellestablished or supported by infrastructure, transportation, parking, information This may not only lead to fragmentation in heritage management but it may also be hard to promote UAHs to the community Additionally, uninterrupted connection between different function spaces in the city – a basic factor to encourage more visits – may encounter lots of difficulties 3.3 Interviewee’s belief of community’s engagement and by which way community can support UAHs conservation Given their knowledge on the community in their neighbourhood and in their city, interviewees were asked to answer questions related to their belief on involvement ways which community in general can follow to support UAHs conservation Nine (9) involvement ways are identified based on traditional ways, potential or expected ways Chart (left) Can community participate to Chart (right) By which way can community protect UAHs? (Do you think community can follow to protect UAHs in Hanoi (by which participation way you think that support to UAHs conservation in Hanoi?) community can support to UAHs conservation?) Two above pie charts show respondents’ belief on community’ engagement in UAH’s conservation The left one describes the opinion of people about the possibility of community to participate to protect UAHs (expected percentage of community’s participation) while the right one compares proposed participation ways Overall, interviewees think that most of the community will agree to participate in UAHs conservation “Donation” and “labour contribution” are two engagement ways which are believed to be community’s first priority, with a percentage of 18% and 16% respectively The most difficult ways to engage are believed as “supervision” (4%) and “making decision” (6%) It is possible that community may prefer participation ways which are associated with more freedom and independence while “supervision” and “decision-making” may make certain difficulties to be followed as they require much more responsibility, cooperation, and expertise skills Some ways accounting for similar engagement percentage are “encouraging and convincing others” (13%), “report of violence” (12%), “more visits” to UAHs (11%), “joining to UAHs events” (10%) and “joining UAH’s forum” (10%) Compared to chart which illustrates the willingness to support UAHs conservation by interviewees themselves, the percentage of engagement willingness is less than expected percentage (75% compared to 93%, respectively) However for both ways, “donation” and “labour contribution” are the most chosen ways while “supervision” and “making-decision3” are the least ones (compared between chart and chart 7) Chart (left) Results of the question “Are Chart (right) Results of the question “By you willing to participate to preserve UAHs which way could you monitor the in Hanoi”? preservation of UAHs in Hanoi”? Chart Results of the question “Which UAHs are you willing to support to protect?” Pie chart illustrates the percentage of involvement willingness of interviewees in preserving different kinds of UAHs Generally speaking, much more attention is paid to traditional religious buildings than to remains, with 35% respondents showing their willingness to support There is not much difference of community’s engagement for the three remaining heritage pieces although the characteristic heritage area (the AQ and the French Colonial Quarter) is likely to attract more people’s participation more than the two other heritages, with 24% compared to only 22% and 19%, respectively These results may reflect the different interaction between community and four kinds of UAHs Pagodas, communal houses, temples, etc are traditional heritages which respond to the need of spiritual life and community connection; thus the community is in favour to protect them like a support to their life and needs Whereas people normally ignore the value of houses of “making-decision”: local citizens, who well understand local context, situation, historic story and significant meanings of their own heritages, are involved participants in deciding about what’s solution for their heritage conservation, how to such as how to raise financial source, labour source etc., who are directly involved, responsibilities and rights and opportunities of engagement members? How solution influence their heritage surrounding context and their spiritual and material lives individuals and the value of state-owned public buildings, it may lead to limited knowledge and then influence the participation willingness 3.4 Motivation of public participation The aim of this question is to find the hidden stimulation for residents' engagement Seven motivations are identified based on a previous research on motivation of citizens living in the AQ in 2003 [To, (2003)] and on theory of community's participation [Bjaras et al., (1991)] as well as author's observation and expectation These motivations are driven by the direct benefits (represented in the below chart as the beneficiaries), participant’s responsibility (as sponsors), the psychological attachment (as sense of belonging, nostalgia), indirect benefits (as building identity, image and symbol for the city, maintaining for the next generations) “Others” is designed for other ideas from respondents Questionnaire is designed in multiple choices which help the respondents to feel more comfortable and confident in their answer Chart 10 (right) UAHs’ conservation motivation of the community living in the AQ and a typical urbanization village (Vong Thi) Chart (left) Community’s motivation in UAHs’ conservation in Hanoi Chart compares eight public's motivations taking part in UAHs conservation of Hanoi As can be seen, “maintaining for the next generations”, “building the urban image” and “keeping the place for community interaction” are the most chosen motivation group (with nearly 70%, 30%, 30%, respectively) This may refect a high appreciation of community on UAHs’ value in Hanoi While “sponsor” and “beneficiaries” are the least popular motivation group with only 5% and less than 10% respectively It is possible that community maybe not really confident with their role or limited awareness on their benefits related to UAHs conservation Chart 10 demonstrates different community's engagement motivations in UAHs conservation between two heritage neighbourhoods of the city: The AQ and an urbanized village along the Western Lake namely Vong Thi Similar to general trend in chart 9, “Preserving for the next generations” and “building the city’s image” are still the main respondents’ motivations This may indicate that these two areas own many valuable heritages Interestingly, these motivations are followed by “the beneficiaries”, and “sense of belonging” for residents living in AQ, by “sense of belonging”, “nostalgia” and “keeping place for community interaction” for those living in Vong Thi village “Donors” is chosen at very low rate by both communities This reflects rather clearly that the characteristic of heritage neighbourhoods may affect citizen’s engagement motivation AQ is an area which not only owns a huge number of valuable heritage pieces (from valuable tube houses, traditional religious buildings, morphology of network, spiritual value of life style, etc.) but has also opportunities or livelihood potential, economic benefits resulting from advantage position of historical, cutural centre of the city This creates high pressure for local residents who have to chose between preserving heritage and living in poor condition or transforming heritage and enjoying opportunities to improve living conditions and modernize their houses Therefore these people need supports or benefits to ensure their engagement Conversely, this situation is different in Vong Thi Although located in the city developed centre, the value of UAHs in this area does not refer to the value of land, earning potential and concerns privately-owned houses and the local residents not suffer the same pressure as in the AQ Moreover, this area owns not only the valuable traditional religious heritage pieces but also a “village close-knit” relationship (a coherent particular community's social fabric) which remains strong in the urbanization context nowadays Thanks to this traditional social relationship, local residents absolutely respect the heritage pieces of the village which reflect their spiritual beliefs, tie close public relations, show their images, their soul, pride and honour also All these things build up attachment (“sense of belonging”) which become a practical, strong intrinsic motivation Interestingly, whereas local villagers are major contributors for local UAHs conservation (informed by interviewees in-depth survey), but very few local respondents consider the role as “contributors” or “sponsors” as their motivation (in the survey question) It is possible that “sense of belonging” in the traditional village is so strong that it leads to responsibility, rights, pride and honour for the community engagement Conclusion Community, generally, highly appreciates the value of UAHs in Hanoi although people pay much more attention to traditional religious buildings as to local culture and customs Today, Hanoi’s UAHs values are not only limited to memory or pay respect to the past’s value but are also identified by their adaptability to the real life Therefore studying the adaptability of heritage and considering community's acceptance is necessary to explore, use and help UAHs live in the real life and become a part of community’s life in the urbanization context Although having high awareness of the value of UAHs in Hanoi, community engagement for UAHs conservation depends on external issues and characteristics of the community group Community is in general a volunteer to protect heritage but their engagement is rather freedom which is not base on a certain cooperation with specific organizations, professional groups, or scientific papers and approval of technical documents This participation is not really effective Hence, to improve heritage conservation, a series of measures in order to build community's capacity and skills should be required, such as broadcasting heritage information and supporting laws or regulations, raising public's awareness, building relationship between community and authority through intermediary organizations, improving social cohesion; promoting collective spirit then leads to the sense of place, sense of belonging and pride in one’s own place- a motivation of engagement Besides, it should implement participatory planning at region and neighbourhood levels, linked participatory planning to community development strategy and social-economy and cultural development plan Win-win solution that benefits both to public and Government is important to encourage community’s involvement, particularly in the case where heritage pieces value is beyond their normal value like “tube houses” in AQ and villas in the French Colonial Quarter References Gunilla Bjaras et al (1991), A new approach to community participation assessment Health Promotion International, Oxford Univestity Press Nik Farhanah, Nik Azhari and Embong Mohamedb (2012), Public Perception: Heritage Building Conservation in Kuala Lumpur 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Hanoi Chart compares eight public's motivations taking part in UAHs conservation of Hanoi As can be seen, “maintaining for the next generations”, “building the urban. .. Problem isues of participation in built -heritage conservation: Two controversial cases in Hongkong Elsevier Zhu Longbin (2007), Community Action Planning in Urban Conservation of the Old City... Social and Behavioral Sciences Hồng Đạo Kính (2010), Conservation and maintaining urban characteristic of Hanoi in the urbanization context Trần Hùng (2009), preserving cultural heritage in the