On December 20, the Historical Science Association of Thua Thien Hue province organized a scientific seminar on "Opportunities and challenges in managing heritage urban areas of Hue City under the Central Government", to identify opportunities for Hue urban development as well as difficulties and challenges when becoming a City under the Central Government.
Sharing at the seminar, Dr. Architect Nguyen Vu Minh (Faculty of Architecture) and Associate Professor Dr. Nguyen Van Manh (Faculty of History), University of Sciences, Hue University, commented that this is a special opportunity for Hue to effectively manage, preserve and promote urban heritage.
In particular, Hue people, with their introverted and contemplative lifestyle, are refined and quiet, introverted, nostalgic, and close to nature. Hue is a typical symbol of Vietnam in the mysterious harmony of culture and nature. That will be a favorable factor for the management, preservation and promotion of Hue heritage city.
Experts assess that Hue city has diverse, rich and unique ecological potential which will be products for sustainable tourism and cultural industry. Accordingly, cultural heritage will be applied to socio-economic development and then, economic revenue from heritage will return to contribute to better management, restoration and conservation of heritage values. This is also an opportunity for management, conservation and promotion of heritage of Hue city.
Besides the opportunities in managing, preserving and promoting the heritage city of Hue, there are still challenges.
Firstly, the trend of globalization and modernization has negatively impacted the management of heritage conservation. The expansion of industrialization and urban lifestyle will certainly affect the management of heritage protection belt areas.
In addition, heritage cities all affirm that they must consider the goal of heritage conservation as the core task; this task more or less affects economic development. The relationship between conservation and development is always a difficult problem to solve for regions in our country and other countries in the world.
Associate Professor, Dr. Nguyen Van Manh analyzed that if we only care about the conservation goal, it will affect and limit economic development and vice versa, focusing too much on economic development will certainly affect heritage conservation. The problem for this solution is a challenge for the management, conservation and promotion of Hue heritage city.
Another challenge mentioned is that the young generation of Hue is tending to move away from traditional houses and traditional customs of Hue families. This trend is placed in the context of a society affected by the market mechanism, modern and foreign lifestyles that are spreading into the lives of Hue residents every day and every hour, especially the young generation.
The next generation is somewhat neglecting the traditional arts of the royal court and folk arts of Hue, and the introverted, contemplative lifestyle of Hue people is also fading. Accordingly, the attitude and behavior of young people towards Hue cultural heritage will be more or less affected and distorted.
In addition to analyzing opportunities and challenges in heritage urban management, experts and researchers contributed opinions and discussed heritage cities. Opinions focused on the issue of focusing resources on preserving and promoting heritage values, perfecting technical infrastructure systems and upgrading service facilities and cultural institutions in a synchronous and worthy manner.
