VIRTUAL: Prague Heritages

Abstract

With a view to ensuring policy coherence with the UN Sustainable Development Agenda 2030, the General Assembly of the States Parties to the UNESCO 1972 World Heritage Convention in 2015 adopted the ‘Policy for the Integration of a Sustainable Development Perspective into the Processes of the World Heritage Convention’. This recognized that the 1972 Convention and UNESCO Convention on Cultural Heritage as well as Recommendations such as the Historic Urban Landscape, are integral parts of UNESCO’s overarching mandate to foster equitable sustainable development. In this backdrop, the paper focuses on ‘placemaking’ of the Central Vista at the political heart of Delhi, the capital city of India, in a move towards making Delhi a ‘grand’ city. As per the Master Plan of Delhi with perspective year 2041, the Central Vista is part of the Lutyen’s Bungalow Zone, and is defined as a heritage zone, and was part of the Tentative List of UNESCO World Heritage List before it was withdrawn in 2015. The objective of the paper is to understand the process of ‘placemaking of Central Vista’ in the light of ‘decolonization’ of heritage and building of a new ‘grand’ narrative vis-à-vis Sustainable Development Goals and especially SDG 11.4, safeguarding of heritage. The paper concludes that to truly implement an equitable sustainable development, a move away from the ‘grand’ narrative needs to be made for localisation of the SDGs. The paper is based on systematic, comprehensive, and logical analysis of qualitative as well as quantitative data from secondary and primary resources.