Integrated Area Management Action Plan for Icheri Sheher, Baku, Azerbaijan
The World Bank, 2006-2007
The Walled City of Baku (Icheri Sheher) together with the Shirvanshah’s Palace and the Maiden Tower, was selected as a UNESCO World Heritage site in December 2000 as representing “an outstanding and rate example of an historic urban ensemble and architecture with influence from Zoroastrian, Sassanian, Arabic, Persian, Shirvani, Ottoman and Russian cultures.” (Report of the 24th Session of the World Heritage Committee) Recent development pressures have been deemed by UNESCO to threaten the integrity of the site and Icheri Sheher was inscribed on the List of World Heritage in Danger in 2003.
The Institute completed a six-month contract for the preparation of the management plan for Baku’s old city, Icheri Sheher, financed by the World Bank. The project was to develop a strategy to safeguard and restore the site. IIUD partnered with a Danish architecture firm specialized in restoration and preservation (Alstrup & Avnby), a Russian expert on the cultural heritage of the region and several Azeri professionals who provided the team with the expertise in local legal and administrative aspects.
Strategies for Sustainable Development, Kars, Turkey
The Christensen Fund, 2006-2008
Following the completion of the technical assistance provided to the Municipality of Kars in November 2005, The Christensen Fund awarded the Institute a follow-up grant to assist Kars Municipality and the Provincial Government in strengthening local institutions, formulating strategies and defining programs to promote environmentally sustainable development, taking into consideration the strategic planning and management functions and the participatory dimension mandated by the new Municipal Law. These strategies and programs are meant to mainstream conservation of the cultural and natural heritage and the protection of biodiversity in all aspects of development. This phase of the project was completed in September 2006.
Supplementary funding has been provided by The Christensen Fund to continue and expand the project over the next 18 months. This third phase focuses on:
- Promoting sustainable development,
- Safeguarding the region’s bio-diversity and preserve its cultural and natural heritage;
- Fostering rural development focusing on biodiverse agriculture to enhance incomes and living conditions in the villages;
- Promoting eco-tourism and create mutually reinforcing links between cultural and eco-tourism routes;
- Redefining the public interface with the residents in urban and rural communities and investors interested in the city and the region.
- Developing a management plan for a support center for community initiatives and CBOs
Municipal Institutional Assessment, Kars, Turkey
The Christensen Fund, 2005
Located near the borders of
In 2004-05, The Christensen Fund funded a study that was started by the Institute’s team in their previous home at the Center for Urban Development Studies at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and completed at the Institute. It provided
Key components of this project were:
- Institutional restructuring at the senior managerial level;
- The establishment of a strategic planning function to meet the mandate of the 2005 Municipal Law decentralizing urban planning and management;
- A proposed one-stop support center for community initiatives;
- The initiation of participatory processes with civil society groups, residents of communities affected by the renovation projects and an outreach to women and youths.
