Neil Fraser
September 27, 2004
A CITY that does not support the imagination is a dead environment.
Last Saturday I went on a Turisme de Barcelona walking tour of the Gothic area of the city. Barcelona's origins go back more than 2 500 years when Phoenicians and Carthaginians settled in the area. In the first century BC they were replaced by the Romans; the Visigoths then occupied the settlement from 415 AD; the Moors conquered what was by then a city at the beginning of the 8th century; a century later the Franks occupied the city.
A gentleman with the illustrious name of Wilfred the Hairy (aka the Count of Barcelona) established a hereditary system of succession when the Carolingian Empire was established and Barcelona became the dominant political and military force in the region, later known as Catalonia. Constant growth was recorded up to the 17th century before wars with France, Spain and Austria intervened.
After the Spanish revolution in 1868, the city again enjoyed great prosperity and was referred to as a city of cafes and terraces with flamboyant bourgeoisie. Major political unrest occurred between 1900 and 1909 and then the Spanish Civil War from 1936 saw the Catalonian identity totally repressed; a situation which lasted until the new Spanish constitution was adopted in 1977, from which time the city has flourished.
A great deal of the history of the city is still visible today through its built environment. My walking tour took in 4th century remains of the Roman walls and gateway but concentrated on the many Gothic buildings clustered in the old city. While providing stark backdrops to some of the city's tragedies, these landmarks provided amusing stories from the city's past.
Like the 11th Century Palau Reial Major with its tall watchtower, which provided the king with a vantage point from which to survey and control the whole city, because he was too fat to move from the tower. A marble letterbox of one of the grand residences decorated with swallows illustrated the performance aspirations of the postal service, in contrast to the tortoise it actually was. Another atmospheric landmark was the little square, Placa de Sant Felip Neri, where a bomb killed 30 schoolchildren during the Spanish Civil War and whose surrounding walls are pockmarked with bullet holes from firing squads.
Besides this, I did my own walking tour of the city's Modernist buildings, many of which were lined with queues of visitors. The 50-year period 1880 to 1930 produced some remarkable architecture in this city, and the buildings today are all beautifully preserved, mostly in daily use, a number of which are Unesco World Heritage sites.
I also spent a good few hours at the Sagrada Familia, the cathedral designed by Antoni Gaudi. Started in 1882, four years before gold was discovered on the Witwatersrand, it is still under construction and due for completion in 2022. I first visited the cathedral a few years back and on both occasions I came away gob-smacked by the inspiration, vision and brilliance of the architect.
Barcelona is a city that is just layered in history and all of it - good, bad and indifferent - is celebrated as a part of the city's heritage as a living museum. Our 118 years, although covering everything from colonialism through apartheid to democracy, pales into insignificance by comparison - Barcelona started preserving its heritage centuries before the first corrugated iron shed was erected on the Reef!
So, how have we done in comparison?
Well, we actually have some excellent heritage policy and legislation. Full stop. The tragedy is that it might be better if we had nothing at all, as the government on the one hand has passed the legislation but on the other has not voted the funds to operationalise it, leaving the whole heritage situation in a total shambles.
Following an extremely long delay, the Provincial Heritage Resource Agency (PHRA) was established in terms of the legislation but well outside of the period provided for its establishment, leaving a huge vacuum which resulted in major backlogs. To their credit, the PHRA plans committee has been able to almost wipe out that backlog. But, because of no funds, it has no dedicated staff to administer the bureaucracy. Responsible developers and professionals play by the rules and submit applications for alterations or demolitions.
Often PHRA approvals are subject to conditions but there are no staff to check whether the conditions are met or not. In the majority of cases, however, the developer and/or professional acts totally outside of the legislation and valuable heritage is being destroyed (I wrote in some detail about this in Citichat 9/2004).
In fact, the current scramble for wealth that seems to have gripped our country is manifesting itself in redevelopment at any cost. I have heard of some professionals having their lives threatened should they stand in the way of what is in fact illegal redevelopment. It also appears as if the Council is turning a blind eye: alterations to famous inner city landmarks are proceeding openly in the complete absence of plans or permission. Is the City so hungry for investment that they are prepared to ignore wilful destruction of the heritage of future generations?
The city is littered with wrecks of neglected buildings, yet no one appears to be doing anything to ensure that their owners comply with the law. We have, very progressively, adopted an inner-city urban renewal strategy that calls for the elimination of sinkholes and the development of ripple ponds. We see no action being taken.
Then there is the erroneous age limitation. Legislation provides that where buildings are older than 60 years, developers must apply for permission for any work to be carried out, whether alterations to or demolition of. This rule was evidently only put in place to allow the authorities sufficient time to develop criteria that would lead to a proper set of classifications for heritage retention. The requirement is such that no permission has to be sought regarding a building erected since 1950, which is crazy, as age is certainly not the only heritage criteria. As a result, buildings under 60 are being torn down or altered even though many of these are of enormous potential heritage value to the city.
The provincial authority is supposed to develop these criteria but has not done so - probably through lack of resources. Yet the national authority has recently called for the identification of all buildings of heritage value within Gauteng! How does one do that when there are no criteria? In addition, this work is evidently to be undertaken - through a lotto grant as an employment exercise for students. Gauteng's heritage buildings are going to be determined through the subjective judgment of students with no yardstick to measure against! Talk about cloud cuckoo land!
The real tragedy, on this Heritage Day, is that the preservation of our built environment appears not to be seen by the South African authorities, at all levels, as of any value or consequence. This even in the face of overwhelming international evidence to the contrary. In a recent book, "The Economics of Historic Preservation", American preservationist Donovan Rypkema, (an old friend who actually gave me a copy at the World Urban Forum) quotes the executive director of a US-based Trust for Historic Preservation as saying, "The economic benefits of historic preservation are enormous. The knowledge of the economic benefits of preservation is minuscule." How true.
Donovan hones in on some core issues - If there is a single glaring misconception about preservationists, it is that they are opposed to change. Nothing could be further from the truth. Preservationists understand best of all that history is an evolution, not a fixed point in time. Preservationists, in fact, welcome change. We only want to ensure that our community is adequately prepared to meet the challenges of tomorrow by being firmly grounded in the physical history of yesterday.
If we are serious about world-class city status, and I believe that we are, then we must realise that we need historic preservation as part of our strategy.
