The historic urban landscape practice in Latin America, Cuenca as a case study

Abstract

Nowadays, based on the 2011 UNESCO Recommendation on Historic Urban Landscapes (HUL), the need to implement efficient tools to ensure urban conservation, is crucial in the heritage agenda. In Latin America the change of millennium brought about a dramatic urban expansion that exceeds the capacity of historic centres, especially those included on the World Heritage List (WHL) bear values that can be threatened. The HUL notion which is raised in light of new architecture inserted in historic contexts, tackles a broad understanding of urban heritage and encourages the use of four groups of tools and a six-step action plan. Cuenca in Ecuador provides a framework on the use of such tools through meetings, projects and publications, while initiatives in Latin America manifest implementation processes. This study reports the results of a comparative analysis between the methodology used in Cuenca and the rest of cities in Latin America. This provides insights of a first evaluation of case studies in this region and their input for further application. © 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London.