Heritage responsive city development in India post pandemic: A case of walled city of Jaipur

Abstract

Indian heritage cities have evolved and undergone various planning interventions both in terms of theory and practice. Although, many cities are practicing the Heritage Management concept, are still lacking behind conserving urban heritage assets and managing their urban fabric. The heritage cities like Delhi, Varanasi, Agra, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Jaipur, are either inscribed or trying to get inscribed in the UNESCO World Heritage Site to preserve their heritage assets; where the implications and repercussions of WHS, be it economic or social are often not thought about. In this Research, the Walled city of Jaipur is selected as a case study – is a “UNESCO inscribed WHS” after Ahmedabad. These cities are under tremendous pressure from modern development. Perhaps, how a city should function dwindles because its capacity to cater to a particular percentage of the population exceeds. The heritage cities witness the terrific problems of COVID-19 Pandemic due to the densely packed urban environment and poor infrastructure facilities, insufficient health and sanitation facilities, civic sense, the attitude of people towards serving the urban situation rising the spread of the contagious diseases. Such conditions prevailing in cities might trigger the epidemics to take place in the coming future. With the need to recognize such issues and challenges, the research thus focuses on developing planning measures for conserving the Heritage precincts post-pandemic. The study addresses to bring the historic structures back to its citizen and local requirements, characterizing the heritage city with the revised land-use plan. Furthermore, the outcome of this research is to assess the socio-economic impacts of WHS and Tourism post-pandemic by determining the issues and the challenges, cost-benefits analysis associated with the urban heritage.