The Historic Cities Support Programme

This programme, formalised in 1992, undertakes specific, direct interventions focused on physical, social, and economic revitalisation of historic sites in the Muslim world. The challenge taken up by the Historic Cities Support Programme (HCSP) is to demonstrate that cultural concerns and socio-economic needs can be mutually supportive. Accordingly, the programme tests new strategies which combine state-of-the-art restoration, conservation, and urban development principles with community based institution-building and fresh entrepreneurial initiatives designed to make local resources self-sustaining for the future.

Typically, HCSP plans and executes projects with funding from the Aga Khan Trust for Culture and other donors. The Getty Grant Program, the Ford Foundation, the World Monuments Fund, NORAD, SIDA, SDC and other bilateral donors have contributed funding to current HCSP projects. Where necessary, HCSP establishes local service companies as partners in implementation and prepares them for autonomous operation as self-sustaining community organisations. In operational terms, HCSP fits its role to the needs of each project and community, and works in any combination of the following capacities:

• Identifying projects and providing planning assistance to government and local bodies that have recognised conservation potentials. HCSP provides technical expertise, defines opportunities and approaches, prepares feasibility studies, and shapes proposals for submission to local investors or international agencies, including the Trust itself.
• Planning for conservation and appropriate redevelopment. HCSP undertakes urban conservation and development projects which may include a cluster of buildings, public open spaces between and around buildings, a district, or a complete plan for a historic town. These efforts can move from study and planning through funding and implementation with the help of local institutions, governments, and other funding partners. All such projects aim at restoring and maintaining the socio-economic and cultural fabric of a designated area.
• Undertaking selected conservation and restoration projects. HCSP periodically engages in restoring specific historic sites and buildings. These may be elements of urban landscape or single structures, for which appropriate new functions are developed to meet the social and economic needs of the respective communities.
• Engaging in associated cultural initiatives in existing project sites to support the long-term viability of conservation projects. This is achieved through the re-animation of historic structures in a context of ongoing social and economic change, rather than as an isolated process. All enabling development factors - community support, innovative institutional structures, and commercial potential - are harnessed, whenever possible, to make conservation sustainable.

To date, HCSP has undertaken restoration, urban conservation, and development projects in the Hunza Valley and Baltistan (Northern Areas of Pakistan), Zanzibar, Cairo, Samarkand, and Mostar. New conservation and training projects are now being implemented in various sites of Syria.

Restoration of the Zafra House in Granada was completed in 1991 by the Trust. In 1996, HCSP completed the conservation of the Baltit Fort and the rehabilitation of the historic core of the settlement of Karimabad in the Hunza Valley. Subsequent restoration works in Ganesh and Shigar (Baltistan) were completed in 1998. The restoration of the Old Dispensary in Zanzibar as the new Stone Town Cultural Centre was completed in early 1997. The Azhar Park in Cairo, currently under construction, is expected to open in 2001. Major parts of the adjacent 13th century city wall are being restored in parallel, and a number of rehabilitation and conservation projects have been prepared in the adjacent Darb al-Ahmar district. More detailed material on individual HCSP projects will be added to this website in the near future.