Srinagar’s old city has a problem that goes beyond ageing buildings.
The city is beginning to treat historic neighbourhoods as attractions while the people who give them life receive less attention.
The scale of Srinagar’s built heritage is considerable.
The city’s current Master Plan records about 1,000 heritage buildings and historically important sites mapped with geographic coordinates and other details during planning work.
The plan says this inventory should expand and recommends legal protection for listed buildings, precincts and historic places.
That is a useful start, but it also reveals the larger challenge.
A list can record a building, while it cannot by itself record the family that has lived there for generations, the craftsman working nearby or the market that has served the neighbourhood for decades.
Srinagar’s old quarters remain living places. Their wooden houses, mosques, shrines, markets, workshops and narrow streets form part of an urban culture that visitors now increasingly seek out.
Tourism can bring money into these areas and create a reason to repair old structures. The Master Plan itself links heritage conservation with tourism, leisure and economic development.
The economics can also push the other way.
A residential house can become more attractive as a shop, café, guesthouse or commercial property. A traditional business can shift toward visitors with greater spending power.
Rising commercial activity can bring congestion, waste and pressure on public space. Over time, the neighbourhood can retain its old appearance while its daily life changes.
UNESCO has spent years making this distinction in its approach to historic cities. Its Historic Urban Landscape framework treats buildings, public spaces, local communities, cultural practices and economic life as parts of one system. Its 2011 recommendation specifically asks cities to combine heritage conservation with social and economic development rather than treat historic buildings as isolated objects.
Srinagar can apply that principle in practical ways.
Building owners should receive technical and financial help to repair historic homes and shops. Adaptive reuse should make old structures economically useful while keeping local residents and businesses in the area. Tourism revenue can support sanitation, roads, public spaces and conservation. Heritage surveys should record crafts, markets, religious practices, oral histories and traditional occupations alongside buildings.
The city also needs a simple measure of success.
After a heritage project is completed, can local families still live there? Can traditional businesses continue? Can residents still use the streets, markets and public spaces for ordinary life?
A restored façade gives visitors something to see, but a functioning neighbourhood gives heritage its meaning.
Srinagar has already mapped about thousand historic buildings and sites. The next task is to make sure the people living among them remain part of the map.
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