Historic Urban Landscape Case Study

In order to understand a historic urban landscape and its elements, three historic cities around the globe where an integrated approach to revitalise old communities is undertaken, are studied. These cities are Jacksonville in United States, Stralsund in North East Germany and Walled city of Nicosia in Cyprus. Each of these case studies is unique in their approach and strategies to revitalise their old historic districts. The following section discusses these old historic districts in brief (figure 2).
Figure 2

Core of Jacksonville in state of Florida is enriched with unique historic neighbourhoods, compact urban pattern and downtown area with contrasting low-density surrounding development and strong urban fabric with historic structures
It is characterized by a transformed community with transformed socio-economic and spatial pattern showing signs of urban decline. In 1974, the conflicts between Turkish and Greek Cypriot communities led to physical disintegration and segmentation of the core city and development of a buffer zone. It also forced local residents to leave and Turkish migrants to settle there. However, in 1979, common Nicosia Master Plan came up when these two communities joined hands together with major thrust on Urban Renewal & Housing Rehabilitation under UNDP & UNOPS. The funding was majorly made by USAID, World Bank and EU. The old walled city core had 23 old neighborhoods and dominant mixed land use. Historic neighborhoods are important micro level planning units to implement urban rehabilitation policy. Nicosia Master Plan focused on integrated rehabilitation policy focusing on walled city revitalization, CBD revitalization, Land use policies, green and open spaces improvisation, rehabilitation of old neighborhoods. The policy spans over social (old community development), economic (better employment opportunities), architectural (preservation and restoration of historic monuments and sites), circulation (pedestrianization schemes) and planning (balanced distribution of land use and density) objectives. The buffer zone was considered as the most important “gluing
It has a rich architectural, archaeological and cultural heritage. The walled city of Alwar was laid out in 17th century A.D. based on ancient town planning principles in the form of a gated community with intricate and compact social fabric. The surrounding contiguous development of the city is less dense and is planned on the basis of modern town planning principles. The central core serves as CBD of the city with traditional economic activities such as wholesale businesses, textiles, jewellery, handicrafts and art industries. Historic neighborhoods of the city portray rich Rajputana style of architectural elements like Jalis, Jharokhas, brackets and courtyard system of planning which is unique to only the old city area. Above mentioned facts makes it necessary to study the historic city of Alwar and its core elements in order to revive and bring forth its old and rich character and redirect it towards smart cities programme of Government of India (Figure 3). Greenfield development is quite difficult to implement on large scale in India because of its much debatable land acquisition bill. Hence, primarily focus of urban development of GoI is on brown field development. This study is an attempt to explore possibilities to renew their heritage and flourish their potential to make them socio-economically as well as