CONSERVATION AND CHANGE IN THE CITY

Rapid unplanned urbanisation has been the outstanding characteristic of the developing world for much of this century whilst governments have wrestled manfully, but with a few notable exceptions, unsuccessfully, to meet housing, health and other development requirements with inadequate resources and insufficient staff. Now the pressures for building and the urban conservation that have been increasingly evident in Europe and America during recent decades are becoming significant amongst even the poorest nations of the Third World. Whilst in part this arises from pride in a nation's heritage, it is nowhere more important than in those countries anxious to develop international tourism as a source of foreign currency. The problems of balancing preservation and utilisation, conservation and construction are considered here with reference to some examples in a range of circumstances, so that a proper balance may be developed between old and new in the changing form and structure of a city.