title: Arial 12 bold 

subtitle: Arial 11 bold 

body :Arial 10 
caption: Arial 9/use the figure number and description 
notenumber after the period. Footnote: Name, title in italice, city of publication, year: pagenumber. Ex.
Isabelle ALLENDE, Paula[italic], Santiago, 1999: 146.

Policy Making and Character of evolved Historic Centres

1. Comparison of the cities in Europe and India

2. The concept of Heritage and valuing it comparatively older in Europe, India still getting
accustomed to the idea of urban conservation. good enough for religious architecture.
3. In Europe, particularly looking at the cities visited, the historic city centres have been well
preserved and regulated more so in Brugge where the regulations were put long, first
structure plan in 1972 and listed as a world heritage site in 2000 so the evolution since then
has been controlled and regulated and the Medieval character maintained. Even though the
structure plan suggests everything I am mentioning, it still doesn’t feel that those aspects
have been taken care of.
4. Is that character the real character? As cities evolve all the time because of the different
aspects, social, cultural, political, economical etc the structure, demography changes. But
somewhere like Brugge where everything is controlled how is the city evolving? Is it even
evolving? By whatever we saw it can be seen that it is a tourist town where we were tourists
as well, filled with facilities and amenities catering to the tourists. And this is the case when
such issues have been taken care of in the structure plan. Imagine a situation when it is not.
5. Cities are breathing machines
6. If they are not evolving and every brick that is moved is controlled and every new banner or
billboard monitored, is it even a liveable or inhabited city? Or more like a movie set where
moving anything will spoil the image of the city perceived by the makers?
7. Analogy of movie set and “Heritage” cities. Movie is a personal thing, it is art where people
can watch it and have an opinion, it is entertainment. But what about cities? They are
inhabited by people and people tend to make changes. Moreover, who is the boss? Who
decides the rules and regulations? Here in Europe there are specific departments to read,
understand and make decisions, but still there are things happening not in sync where
something really out of place comes up in the urban fabric or a case like Brugge. So where
are the loopholes in the system?
8. The decision makers are they not able to understand or what? It can’t be possible that
they’re incompetent. So, what is holding them back? Or is it just impossible to achieve a
proper result by top down method? Having a bottom up approach might seem naïve in this
case but as inhabitants are the main members of the city, even before the tourists, they
should be an integral part of the system (which is true in some cases).
9. Is there a better solution for controlled evolution than freezing everything?
10. Buffer zones. Having buffer zones or even if not buffer zones, just protected areas leads to a
somewhat strange kind of development. A large number of medium to high rise buildings
are at the periphery. So even if the regulations are made to give the feel of a Medieval town,
the buildings at the periphery can be spotted in the skyline which gives a reality check even
though the administration tries to escape it. Change and more development is inevitable, so
 instead of aspiring to make something frozen in time, should the aim of regulations be
changed? How should the development be regulated to not lose the essence of the city and
not making it a movie set? These are things to be pondered on.
11. Back side of other villages, point where it meets Brugge, an area of conflict and discussion.
12. Trying to relate these things to back in india. Looking at the coherence of the whole fabric
here in the historic centres and relating to the chaotic character there- as India got its first
city inscribed in the World Heritage Cities list, it won’t be wrong to say that the concept of
urban conservation hardly exists there because of which the regulations to maintain Urban
beauty are not present. As urban conservation is slowly coming into picture with different
initiatives and programs started by the government, the issue that needs to be taken into
consideration is the character that has to be preserved. In the case of Brugge as the idea of
restoration existed since the late 19th century, the character was more or less evolved in a
controlled manner. Whereas in Indian cities there has always been uncontrolled
development in terms of character. People built in any way they wanted without paying
heed to what was around and this has led to a different kind of feel to the cities where
structures of historic value and importance coexist with new developments. So, the question
is, which character should be preserved? What should be the starting point? And should
cities be considered as individual buildings where while restoring them the heyday is aimed
to be achieved, in most cases. How to decide when was the heyday of the city? Buildings
create an environment but activities and use add value to that character. As there can be
many golden ages for the city and only the one related to the historical value cannot be
considered the most important. Should there even be any regulations? What kind of
regulations?
13. The old cities are studied and researched upon, the urban planning theories taught in
architecture schools, but they are not used when new satellite towns are planned and are
made as a grid conforming to a different shape. A vision of programming is required as we
need to understand the culture we are building for.
14. Urban landscape plan, too late to implement? When is the right time to do it for a city?
15. These are a series of personal thoughts and questions that need to be pondered upon.

is anthropological in that it tells the story of how lives are shaped by the city in which they are lived, and how
those lives shape the city in turn. (Monrovia modern, 2..)

The first is that there is no natural or authentic way to live in the urban spaces of the modern world.

But I would like to consider the argument that

historical trajectories are becoming less and less important in the changing
urban forms that we are seeing in most of the world at the beginning of the
twenty-first century. (partha right to city)
It is one such historical genealogy of a contemporary
twenty-first-century urban strategy that I discuss here. This genealogy
involves the transition from embryonic forms of early modernity, quickly
aborted, to a specifically colonial form of modernity, moving further into
a post-colonial nation state formation that is now struggling to emerge out
of the crisis precipitated by the latest waves of globalized production and
exchange.