Historic Urban Landscape Implementation: A Case Study of Madhya Pradesh

Introducing the HUL: Heritage Urban Landscape

Urban heritage isn’t just about monuments and mortar, it is the living soul of a space, shaped by its people, their practices, and their reminiscences. Honoring this, UNESCO took up the major Urban Landscape( HUL) Recommendation in 2011, prompting metropolises to go beyond monument-centric preservation. Rather, it promotes integrating heritage into urban planning, environmental sustainability, and socio-economic development.

Madhya Pradesh’s monumental cities — Gwalior and Orchha have become laboratories for this progressive conservation model. But as we celebrate this shift, it’s essential to critically examine who defines heritage, whose voices are included, and how we balance tourism and authenticity.

Understanding the HUL Approach

The HUL Recommendation emphasizes a layered approach to heritage, blending physical structures, social practices, and local ecosystems. Its guiding principles are an integration of heritage with development, ensuring conservation supports contemporary public requirements.

1. Inclusive governance involves all stakeholders, from policymakers to regional craftsmen. 
2. Contextual adaptation honors that every regional heritage setting is unique. 
3. Sustainability aligns heritage management with environmental and profitable objectives.

This approach is particularly applicable in Indian metropolises, where uncontrolled urbanization threatens not just architecture but also livelihoods, memory, and cultural practices.

India’s Urban Landscape Progress and Risks

India’s historic metropolises are complex mosaics. Their growth is interspersed with ancient temples, colonial bungalows, bazaars, and contemporary towers. While heritage presents openings for tourism, employment, and identity, several challenges remain.

1. Encroachment and gentrification threaten low-income occupants in historic cores. 
2. Cultural commodification can reduce heritage to a mere spectacle for tourists. 
3. Intangible heritage — like vocabularies, rituals, and traditional music threats being sidelined.

Critically, who decides what’s conserved? In numerous metropolises, conservation tends to be top-down. Regional traditions, especially of marginalized communities( similar to informal workers or slum occupants), frequently don’t make it into sanctioned heritage narratives.

Case Study Gwalior and Orchha

With UNESCO’s support and sponsorship from the Indian Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Gwalior and Orchha were chosen for HUL pilot schemes in 2021. This action included detailed mapping, stakeholder mills, and heritage-grounded regional strategies. 

Gwalior: Sound, Stone, and Social Memory

Gwalior, known for its majestic fortress and as the cradle of Hindustani classical music, is a city where culture is rooted in day-to-day life. The HUL scheme now concentrates on:

1. Mapping Cultural Assets from monuments to music academies and craft shops. 
2. Community Consultations shops invited locals to participate in their requirements and visions.
3. Tourism– Urbanism Balance, there are threats of over-commercializing Gwalior’s musical heritage as a traveler product, rather than nurturing it as a living tradition.

While mapping identifies where the heritage is, it’s equally vital to ask whose heritage counts. For example, numerous traditional musicians live in modest housing that lacks protection — what is being done to conserve their way of life?

Orchha: The Living Temple Town

Orchha, with its palaces and temples, is less urbanized but rich in intangible practices — religious processions, folk songs, and seasonal festivities. HUL perpetration then emphasized

1. Sustainable Tourism: Avoiding over-tourism by promoting eco-cultural experiences. 
2. Conserving regional Identity, honoring that heritage isn’t just a fabricated form but also stories, spiritual rhythms, and seasonal exhibitions. 
3. Training regional Stakeholders, from guides to civic staff, capacity-building workshops were held.

But indeed in Orchha, challenges persist. Locals report rising real estate prices and fears of being pushed out. Are we inadvertently turning heritage metropolises into heritage zones, fascinating for guests but unsympathetic to long-time occupants?

Interrogating Inclusivity and Commodification

Both schemes aimed for inclusivity, but participation needs to go beyond formal consultations. As scholar Ashish Ganju formerly asked,“ Are we listening to the city’s memory-keepers, or just its architects? ” But the important questions remain: How are artisans and temple custodians being empowered, not just consulted? Are conservation resources serving elite regional areas, or also informal settlements within the heritage core? Is there space in policy for living traditions like community cuisine, folk music, and festivities?

UNESCO encourages a “people-centered approach, ” but execution frequently needs strong political will,inter-departmental collaboration, and long-term investment, not just annuities or master plans.

Lessons and Recommendations

Gwalior and Orchha offer priceless takeaways for upcoming HUL schemes:

1. Go Beyond Tourism Heritage should serve occupants first. 
2. Policies must prioritize housing, livelihoods, and public spaces. 
3. Safeguard Intangible Heritage Urban planning must root cultural practices like music, oral folklores, and crafts, not just conserve physical milestones. 
4. Democratize Heritage Narratives: Encourage participatory mapping and documentation by academies, regional historians, and youth. 
5. Address Equity: Include marginalized voices in heritage decision-making, and guarantee benefit-sharing mechanisms in tourism renumeration.

The Historic Urban Landscape structure offers a timely, hopeful reevaluation of how we relate to our regional history. But as the Madhya Pradesh case shows, the real impact lies in how deeply we involve people, not just conserve structures.

Heritage shouldn’t be a curated exhibition for tourists, but a participatory inheritance that nurtures dignity, identity, and belonging for all. For India’s upcoming metropolises to be resilient, their roots must remain alive — sung in roads, flashed back in stories, and lived every day.

References: 

1. UNESCO. (2011). Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape.
2. UNESCO. (2019). Consolidated Report on the Implementation of the 2011 Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape.
3. UNESCO. (2021). Heritage-based Urban Planning for Sustainable Development in Gwalior and Orchha.
4. UNESCO. (2011). New Life for Historic Cities: The Historic Urban Landscape Approach Explained.
5. https://travellersworldonline.com/unescos-hul-initiative-drives-heritage-conservation-and-tourism-growth-in-orchha/ 
6. https://www.theweek.in/news/india/2020/12/07/gwalior-orchha-included-for-historic-urban-landscape-based-planning-by-unesco.html 
7. UNESCO. (2021). Urban Heritage for Resilience and Sustainability in Gwalior and Orchha. https://whc.unesco.org/en/activities/1115
8. Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA), India. https://mohua.gov.in
9. Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH). https://www.intach.org
10. The Week: Gwalior, Orchha included for ‘Historic Urban Landscape’ based planning by UNESCO, Sravani Sarkar https://www.theweek.in/news/india/2020/12/07/gwalior-orchha-included-for-historic-urban-landscape-based-planning-by-unesco.html