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Revitalizing Cultural Heritage
Peer Review of Urban Renewal in Kota Tua Key Concepts During his keynote speech in the workshop, Dr Munzinger, from the German Association of Municipalities, introduced a number of urban renewal policy cases from Europe and Germany. Europe has adopted the Leipzig Charter, an agreement for common principles and strategies for urban development policy in EU Member States. Over the last 10 years, it has encouraged its cities to apply an integrated approach to urban renewal policies. As a result, EU member cities and states are now committed to establishing policies that converge at different levels of national, regional and local development. In the German case studies, the cities are all focused on promoting greater social cohesion among local inhabitants by limiting spatial segregation. Integrated approaches, with the cooperation of different departments, have also been applied to ensure that projects and initiatives focus on the city as a whole and consider all sectors of society. To help cities to cope with the tasks before them, the German Federal Government supports each city’s urban development promotion programmes, providing relevant financial assistance. This funding includes money from federal, state and city sources, with each covering 1/3 of the costs and the funds being used for education, social cohesion and energy facilities etc. On top of this, the funding is used to support integrated urban development, which encourages collaboration between different ministries and departments. Tamalia Alisjahbana, an expert on Kota Tua, was the second keynote speaker and underlined the importance of Kota Tua as a valuable cultural heritage site, as well as the major challenges for registration as a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site, despite other Asian cities, such as Malaka and Penang, having already attained this status.