Metropolitan Heritage – Heritopolis
The metropolis as a heritage – The heritage that shapes the metropolis

Heritopolis is an international initiative linking heritage and metropolitan issues towards sustainable urban development. It is an open-ended partnership framed under the UNHabitat Universities Network Initiative (UNI) and, specifically, the UNI Hub on Metropolitan Management. Heritopolis currently comprises more than 20 well-known universities, research and academic centres, planning agencies, and independent experts working on urban heritage subjects and includes 7 UNESCO Chairs, Category II Centres and a World Heritage Studies programme.

With the metropolis becoming by 2035 the urban category with the largest population worldwide, Heritopolis is guided by these research questions:

• What specific role can heritage play in the sustainable development of 21st century metropolises?
• How can the metropolitan dimension renew the concept of heritage?
• What is distinctive about metropolitan heritage?
• Can the metropolis be considered a heritage and how?

Initially, we explored how the 2011 UNESCO Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) could be applied at the metropolitan scale beyond the city and the initial concept of the historical monument that included historic urban areas, with community engagement, their memory places, cultural landscapes, and green, blue and grey systems.
Preliminary Heritopolis multi-disciplinary research has already demonstrated that the original concept of heritage may have to be adapted, if not reviewed, in situations where the territorial dynamics and socio-political contexts become fluid, multicultural, and multi-ethnic. In a world where classic ‘integration’ or ‘assimilation’ policies are no longer straightforward processes, due to the ease of communication between communities beyond their original contexts, Heritopolis has already demonstrated how the concept of metropolitan heritage goes beyond the classical model.

Metropolitan heritage implies several key questions that integrate the natural and cultural heritage components that supersede the classical heritage approach. The cosmopolitan characteristics of the metropolis require an equal focus on the culture of the metropolis and on its multiple identities, ultimately addressing the question of the value of the metropolis as a distinctive form of heritage. Heritopolis asks for the qualification of policies, plans and processes, not only those related to heritage but those that may provide added value of the metropolis. It is a way to reconsider metropolitan governance, placing the question of the legacies transmitted to the next generation as a critical entry point.

Heritopolis will engage the viewpoints of diverse disciplines and thinkers that can help shape a clear and forward-looking paradigm outside common silos as part of a triple helix approach integrating academia, governance, and industry.

Current activities are leading up to the June 2023 UN-Habitat General Assembly in Nairobi, with the aim to mainstream Heritopolis on the global habitat agenda and subsequently at the 2024 WUF12 in Cairo, the proposed 2025 UNESCO Mondiacult conference and strategic directions beyond the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.

Updated 15 March 2023