Reconciling Conservation and Development: The Case of Cairo

The Graduate Program in Historic Preservation is pleased to present a lecture by Francesco Siravo, Architect & Planner and Senior Planning Consultant with the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, Historic Cities Programme.

For over a decade, from 1999 to 2011, the Aga Khan Trust for Culture implemented the conversion of a 33 hectare former dumping ground located in the core of Islamic Cairo into a green park. The initiative was closely associated with a comprehensive urban conservation and development plan centered on the historic district of Darb al-Ahmar (DAA), the densely built-up, low-income area that borders the western edge of the newly-built al-Azhar Park. The strategy of intervention for the area combined socio-economic and physical improvement initiatives, including the upgrading of open spaces and infrastructure, housing rehabilitation and the restoration of monuments.

The presentation will describe the programmes and activities carried out during the life of the project to outline a model of urban rehabilitation that is radically different from conventional planning approaches, often based on grand and impractical schemes, which call for the demolition of the historic fabric, the displacement of residents and their economic activities, and their substitution with new functions and automobile oriented modern developments. Contrary to these examples, the Cairo experience shows that combining conservation with appropriate development in an historic setting can offer a sustainable and socially responsible alternative to the haphazard and wholesale transformation of economically depressed historic areas.

Francesco Siravo is an Italian architect specialized in historic preservation and town planning. He received his professional degrees from the University of Rome, ‘La Sapienza’, and studied historic preservation at the College of Europe, Bruges and Columbia University, New York. Since 1991, he has worked for the Historic Cities Programme of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture and has been responsible  for planning and building projects in various cities, including Cairo, Lahore, Mopti (Mali), Mostar (Bosnia),  Penang (Malaysia), Samarkand and Zanzibar. Before joining the Historic Cities Programme, he consulted for local municipalities as well as governmental and international organizations, including UNESCO, UNDP and ICCROM, and in projects financed by the World Bank. Previous work includes participation in the preparation of conservation plans for the historical areas of Rome, Lucca, Urbino and Anagni in Italy, and for the old town of Lamu in Kenya. He has been visiting lecturer at ICCROM, the University of Rome and Cassino, and the University of Pennsylvania, as well as written books, articles and papers on various architectural conservation and town planning subjects, including Zanzibar: A Plan for the Historic Stone Town (1996) and Planning Lamu: Conservation of an East African Seaport (1986).