PHT Newsletter Issue 94

UNESCO World Heritage Listing
Never Forget the Heritage Lost

by Himanshu Bhatt


While thousands of Penangites turn merry this weekend to revel over the recent induction of Melaka and George Town by Unesco as world heritage sites, most will remain oblivious that an equally distinctive, though ignominious, recognition had been given to George Town some years back.

In 2000, the New York-based World Monuments Fund (WMF) listed the entire inner city - described as a "historic enclave" - as one of the world's 100 most endangered sites. The unprecedented listing effectively placed inner George Town, spanning some 172ha, in the same breath as such historic monuments as the ancient Incan ruins of Machu Pichu in Peru, the remains of Pompeii in Naples, and Egypt's famous tomb of pharaohs, the Valley of the Kings.

What on earth precipitated the city to be placed in such a list?

On New Year's Day of 2000, a highly publicised repeal of the Rent Control Act was made effective by the Malaysian government. The act had been widely considered to be an obsolete piece of legislation inherited from the old British rule. Its abolition has long been imminent and deemed necessary by many quarters.

But the manner in which the repeal was imposed threatened and displaced age-old tenants from the inner city enclaves.

Penang had the highest concentration of rent control affected pre-war buildings in Malaysia. And most of these 12,577 premises, housing more than 60,000 people, are located within the inner city.

After decades of fashioning one of the most unique socio-cultural melting pots in the world, George Town was suddenly placed in the centre of brewing tensions over its future. Many feared that its famous inner city area would lose its very life pulse.

Their concerns were not misplaced. Over the next few years, George Town experienced a steady exodus of its communities from the intriguing inner city. Living in George Town had long been traditional. Most of the people in the neighbourhood had been around for ages with strong community spirit stretching back a hundred years.

So now, when the partying over the Unesco listing is done with after this weekend, hopefully people will made aware of what George Town has already lost over the last decade. For it is in understanding this loss that we can garner the practical resolve to conserve what is left.

The Penang Heritage Trust has already expressed unease that, in spite of the listing, the survival of residents and trades is in critical condition. It has called for policies to support and promote existing traditional trades to prevent further loss by gentrification and high rentals.

The Badan Warisan Malaysia (BWM) wants the government to impose Cultural Impact Assessment as a pre-condition for approval of development projects in heritage areas. There have also been calls for "cultural mapping" to identify all facets of living culture that we still have, and which need to be protected.

"Even as we speak," said BWM deputy president Laurence Loh, "many of our traditional trades are being threatened by eviction and the presence of illegal swiftlet houses."

The issue at hand is adaptation. Indeed, the city's surviving traditional trades are unique because most continue to operate within a modern scenario. And so it is particularly urgent for authorities to facilitate these trades and lifestyles to exist within an ever-changing contemporary framework. For without the pulse of their original inhabitants, the ornate buildings and pretty streets of George Town would become but barren shells bereft of their soul.

"In the early days, every immigrant group had an occupational niche in the city's economic system," heritage writer Khoo Salma Nasution said. "Different communities were dependent on each other. This is no longer the case.... Many trades are dying."

The ideal then is to see these old trades survive into the 21st century just as, says, the New York deli has done. As Khoo says: "It comes from an old tradition and is still competitive in the modern market."

Heritage conservation is not about stopping change. It is about managing it.

And if the new recognition by Unesco is not complemented with pragmatic effort to manage our historic lifestyle's survival amid the pressures of the 21st century, we may find the listing to be of little avail.

We may then yet see George Town slide back into the embarrassing registry of the most endangered places on Earth.