Uwarunkowania społeczne utrzymania historycznych struktur miast w Polsce

• Authors: Michałowski Andrzej

Title variants

EN

SOCIAL CONDITIONS OF THE MAINTENANCE OF HISTORIC STRUCTURES OF POLISH TOWNS

• Languages of publication: PL EN

Abstracts

EN

Events of the last year in Poland have once again confirmed a sociological regularity that every serious crisis experienced by the society makes the past actual and compels one to its new evaluation; it often polarizes the attitude to a common cultural heritage. It may even be said that ardent disputes on the heritage and the temperature of discussions around it are a measure of the depth of the crisis. In this particular case it applies to both views and methods as w e ll as to the practice adopted in the field of the protection of cultural heritage. And it is just this creative discussion revealing and removing the causes of the crisis from our social life that is required for hitherto town-planning, as land planning and urban conservation activities have got alienated — the man and his cultural environment have become lost as a subject. One should give some thoughts to the problem of what determines a proper maintenance of the towns, what are specific features of historic towns and consistently, despite permanent trans formations in the historic process, it preserves a homogeneity of the complex, its specific climate, picturesqueness and individuality. The answer should be looked for in a symbiosis of the scale of urban forms and structures with the natural environment. When assessing retrospectively historic processes controlling a development and transformations of towns, the role of numerous structures participating in the process should be studied, because it is here that we might find the answer to our question, as a constant interdependent arrangement of the structures, providing a mechanism of transformations of the town complex has been noticed to exist over centuries. An outlet for a revival process conceived in this way is a new housing policy proclaimed recently and comprehended, i.a., as: — an extensive inclusion of means and people’s efforts into the satisfaction of their housing needs through, in the first place, a marked in crease in the number of detached houses and the adjustment of rents to the lev el of maintenance costs, and — increased social intiatives aimed at more e x tensive house building through, La., increased material and performance possibilities. Therefore, it is now necessary for town-planners, architects and conservators to cooperate harmonously with administrative authorities in order to create conditions for the development of social initiatives in historic towns. This, in turn, calls for undertaking the measures which would neutralize the hitherto restraints and create incentives for economic and organisational involvement of the inhabitants in raising the quality of life in the towns, restoring the proper meaning to the word ’’r ev iv a l”. What sort of measures are these to be? — the author asks this question and answers it at the same time. They must be of legal, administrative, economic, technical, spatial and sociological nature and when combined together they should guarantee success in the actions taken. One might wonder whether the role of a transmitter between administrative authorities, professional bodies involved in development and preservation and the inhabitants of specific regions and zones could not be played by emerging self-governments of inhabitants or voluntarily created citizens, committees, cooperatives or other unions. Attention should be also paid to the role of regional societies and other organisations looking after monuments ex officio. Non-lived-in house's should also be the subject of their concern. Summing up, tihe author postulates that legal regulations should offer the possibility for town inhabitants to get associated in order to undertake revival tasks and oblige the authorities to cooperation and assistance in this respect. The law on the protection of cultural property and museums, being just updated, should have an entry that would authorize conservation services to social initiatives in various organisational forms in order to rescue historic substance and historic land arrangement as well as to perform a substantial surveillance over their activ ity and help in eliminating the difficulties. We should ’’revive” conservation services and base their activ ity on broad social foundations.

Keywords

PL

utrzymanie historycznych struktur miast; zagospodarowanie przestrzeni staromiejskiej; rewaloryzacja historycznych ośrodków; ratowanie zabytkowych układów przestrzennych

• Publisher: Narodowy Instytut Dziedzictwa
• Journal: Ochrona Zabytków
• Year: 1983
• Issue: 1-2
• Pages: 9-12

Dates

published

1983

Contributors

author

Michałowski Andrzej

• mgr, sekretarz Polskiego Komitetu Narodowego ICOMOS

Identifiers

ISSN

0029-8247