Balance between tourism and heritage: Glocal indicators for urban sustainability in the Historic Center of Cuenca

The recognized cities of World Heritage, such as the Historic Center of Cuenca, Ecuador, face important challenges to guarantee its conservation and at the same time its sustainable urban development. In this regard, recent contributions show their interrelation (conservation-development), and above all they emphasize the fundamental role of culture as a fourth pillar of sustainable development, thus surpassing limited conservation visions, which reduce their role and that of their assets to mainly motivated objects of consumption at the service of tourism, and that brill their potential, putting their continuity at risk. This research project seeks to contribute from this approach to four pillars to sustainable urban development, based on the co-creation of glaocal indicators to evaluate and monitor the balance between tourism and heritage, taking as a case study three public spaces of the Historic Center of Cuenca. The research will combine the most recent international scientific contributions in this area and enrich them with a mixed approach, which combines quantitative, qualitative and participatory methods. In addition, a phase of pilot application of the batteries of indicators and evaluation methods is contemplated, which will guarantee the result of appropriate indicators in a double sense: typical of the involvement of the actors in the process of co-creation and relevant to the glaocal challenges. Indeed, the proposed indicators will consider a holistic vision (multi -actor, multi -level, multidimensional) and integrated, which will allow the monitoring and making of informed and resilient decision making in always dynamic scenarios.

21st UNIVERSITY RESEARCH PROJECT COMPETITION