Heritage Place Making in Historic Cairo, a Balanced Approach between the Community and Visitor Service Needs

Ahmed Ouf (Urban Edge Consultants LLC)
Heba Mansour (Cairo University)

Historic Cairo was inscribed on the World Heritage List since 1979, a larger influx of tourists has been steadily targeting the Historic Cairo quarter within the city of Cairo despite the fact that other forms of tourism to Egyptdeclined during the last 10 years. For the sake of creating responsible tourism to the World Heritage Property of Historic Cairo (WHPHC); there is a need to balance the provision of tourism services with that of the local community needs. The provision of services within WHPHC is somehow restricted by the limited building stock of that urban quarter that has 602 registered monuments and double that number of buildings registered as heritage buildings in need of protection and conservation without alteration or redevelopment to fit the necessary services. A good approach for the provision of balanced services in the area is the adaptive re-use of some of the monuments and heritage buildings to be used for services, in addition to the utilization of some vacant plots of land, other existing buildings and even public realm areas for service provision.

More than one research issue exists for the provision of that balanced service approach and to create a good methodology by which adaptive re- use of buildings might be determined, methodology for creating infill buildings on vacant plots of land and methodology for the utilization of public realm areas for satisfying the required community and visitor services. This research is based on a Master degree research work for the provision of services in "Beit al-Qady" area within WHPHC and was developed further to accommodate the services of a wider area within the historic city. the research ends with a proposal for the provision of a balanced service scheme for WHPHC and guidelines for applying a similar approach to other historic areas.