This year’s SAVE [Alliance member] lecture is by architecture and design critic Oliver Wainwright entitled: ‘Just a certificate on the wall? UNESCO World Heritage status and the battle for the city’.
The lecture at London’s Courtauld Institute on 16 October 2017 will examine if we can balance World Heritage Site protection with the demands of a living, breathing city – or are the two hopelessly incompatible? Is World Heritage status an essential brake on steroidal development, or is it, in the words of the mayor of Liverpool, “just a certificate on the wall”? Variously attacked for leading to the “museumification” of sites, the mass influx of tourists, the displacement of local residents, and for being toothless to enforce protection anyhow, is UNESCO listing fit for purpose, or is it an outmoded hangover from another age?