Adaptive Reuse of Urban Heritage in Contested Urban Contexts: The Case of Acre in Israel

The Case of Acre in Israel

Abstract

The world is facing global challenges that are dramatically changing the social and physical environments, resulting in cultural confrontation and conflict. Rapid urban growth, displacement, and gentrification increase urban pressure while jeopardizing social cohesion, multicultural values and local economies. In addition, environmental factors associated with climate change challenge the way cities respond and adapt, as their assets have to be re-designed to meet the current and future generation needs and demands.

One response to these challenges is adaptive reuse, which is the transformation of the function of an underused structure into a new use. This process turns the cities’ elements in decline into development catalysers (Pereira Roders and van Oers 2011). The adaptation to these changes is often a source of conflict, as urban policies lack citizen engagement in the redefinition of public space, resulting in more disagreement and inefficient use of resources. This issue is particularly acute when addressing contested communities, as their continuous evolution and emergence directly influence the adaptation of cultural heritage, being under constant threat and need for repair (Berlin and Hardy 2000).

Considering these aspects, this thesis poses the following research question: ‘How can socio-spatial conflicts that result from contested identities be mitigated through the adaptive reuse of urban heritage?’ To respond to it, the relations between the concepts of Adaptive Reuse (the process), Urban Heritage (the place) and Contested Identities (the communities) are explored through diverse methods:

• Literature review, historic analysis, and multi-media analysis
• Cultural mapping
• Citizen survey and semi-structured interviews to the communities and stakeholders
• Research by design (scenario building and evaluation by stakeholders)

The combination of these methods results in the objective of the research: to develop an integrative methodology to evaluate urban heritage adaptive reuse alternatives in contested urban contexts. This final outcome, is proposed as a tool for decisionmakers and urban planners that provides information-based results to be applied in urban design practice, aiming to translate the theory into practice, and to bridge the gap between global goals and local issues.