Assessing the cultural significance of world heritage cities : Zanzibar as a case study

This paper focuses on the World Heritage property ‘the Stone Town of Zanzibar’, located on the island Zanzibar, United Republic of Tanzania. The Stone Town is a case study that is part of a larger research program called: "Outstanding Universal Value, World Heritage cities and Sustainability: Surveying the relationship between the Outstanding Universal Value assessment practices and the sustainable development of World Heritage cities" lead by the Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands; and UNESCO World Heritage Centre, France. The aim of the research is to help stakeholders involved in policy, management, and development of the Stone Town determine the adequacy of their current strategies towards sustainable development of the Stone Town, without damaging its Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) as defined by the World Heritage Centre. By assessing the OUV as stated in the official documents as well as the authenticity and integrity of the attributes representing the OUV apparent in the core zone, a comparison can be made. The policy documents (the Decision Text, Advisory Body Evaluation and the Nomination File) will be assessed by means of revealing the dimensions of the cultural significance of the Stone Town in terms of cultural values. Complementary, the cultural values represented by the attributes of the Stone Town as well as the authenticity and the integrity will be surveyed. This leads to a better insight of the (in)consistencies between the ascribed cultural values found represented in the policy documents on the one hand and the physical attributes on the other.