SANTO DOMINGO– The Dominican ICOMOS Committee and the Pedro Henríquez Ureña National University (UNPHU) will inaugurate a seminar today, Thursday the 24th, and tomorrow, Friday the 25th, to address the transformation due to changes in land use occurring in historic centers around the world and to propose viable solutions.
The “XLI National Seminar on Conservation and Restoration of Monuments: Gentrification, Transformation and Development: the destiny of historic centers”, will take place in the north hall of the Auditorium of that university, starting at 6:00 PM today.
The reality of the Historic Center of Santo Domingo will be analyzed, and the situation in other areas of the Caribbean will be presented, specifically San Juan, Puerto Rico, Havana, and Cartagena de Indias.
The literature promoting the activity explains the transformation by change of uses that is taking place in the historic centers of the world, a product, above all, of gentrification, understood as the displacement of the inhabitants of an urban area by a group of inhabitants with higher incomes.
He adds that changes in land use due to tourism have led to a rethinking of the policies and strategies for planning and developing these centers.
“The realization by the tourism and real estate sectors of the economic value of historic centers has accelerated their transformation. The success of room listings within the Airbnb system has galvanized this process.”.
The organizers argue that this accelerated transformation process has not been accompanied by a counterpart in planning and governance, as demonstrated, in the case of Santo Domingo, by the debate "The Colonial City of Santo Domingo: Planning and Governance" held at UNPHU last June.
The program indicates that at the opening ceremony today at 6:00 PM, the Rector of the Faculty of Architecture and Art, architect Miguel Fiallo, and the President of ICOMOS Dominican Republic, engineer Amaury Cestari, will speak. At the opening, architect Omar Rancier will deliver the lecture “Yes, Gentrification.”.
For tomorrow, Friday, the first conference, “Santo Domingo”, will be led by architect Martha González Pons, and architect Pedro Cardona from the University of Puerto Rico will speak about San Juan, Puerto Rico.
“Cartagena” will be presented by Museographer Sandra Mendoza Lafaurie, while Havana will be discussed by architect Patricia Rodríguez Aloma, director of the Havana Master Plan; at the end there will be a panel with all the speakers.
The event is sponsored by the Fund for the Protection of the Colonial City of Santo Domingo, the College of Architects, Engineers and Surveyors (CODIA), Pinturas Popular, Tu Ciudad Colonial, Novus Plaza Hodelpa and Simples Arquitectura.
Registration fees include RD$500.00 for students, RD$1,500.00 for professionals, and ICOMOS members RD$1,000.00.
