Mapping economic landscapes of built cultural heritage at the historic city centre of Cuenca, Ecuador

Abstract

Studies about the role of Cultural Heritage in development process has gained attention on international forums in the ultimate decades. In this context, experts from the economic field, have contributed to estimate the economic benefits of immovable heritage conservation. At international level, one of the domains long studied, is the relationship between Immovable Cultural Heritage & Tourism, reveling it can imply benefits or adverse impacts for conservation. Therefore, the need to develop or to improve monitoring tools, has been emphasized. In this regard, cultural mapping technique have contributed to identifying, recording, and classifying cultural elements in a geographical site. Moreover, linked to inventory data-bases, cultural mapping tool allows to monitor different attributes of built cultural heritage, in a systematic way. At the same time, it reveals spatial relationships with economic activities around cultural heritage properties, providing better insight into the cultural heritage performance of the site. The present article summarizes the findings of cultural mapping technique applied to reveal Economic Landscapes of built cultural heritage at the Historic City Centre of Cuenca, Ecuador. For the present analysis, two databases, were used. The first one, related to the built heritage inventory and, the second one, corresponds to cadastral information about touristic goods and services. Besides, field-work was required to confirm missing information. Thematic maps were built to assess the relationship between touristic services and built heritage environment. A base-line, has been built and, relevant findings between values, functions, state of conservation and spatial location, has been revealed.