The World Bank’s View

City-Wide Benefits from Heritage-Related Projects

They contribute to urban livability, attracting talent, and providing an

enabling environment for job creation.

The cities that will be most successful at meeting the jobs and growth aspi-

rations of their inhabitants, while alleviating poverty and working toward

inclusion, will be those that leverage all of their resources to do so.

Among the resources that these cities need to harness are their heritage assets, which

are unique features that diff erentiate them from other cities. Investing in historic

city cores and underutilized land in central locations can attract investment for

job creation. As chapter 1 shows, heritage is a diff erentiator that attracts talent to

cities. Furthermore, the linkage between a livable historic core and a city’s ability

to attract business is not confined to businesses that locate in or near the core: proximity to a livable historic core is also important for companies located on the periphery, especially for innovative, knowledge-intensive fi rms whose employees look for vibrant and unique places to live in.

Evidence shows that there is a correlation between projects aiming at

regenerating historic city cores and underutilized land and a city’s ability to

attract talent and business investment. A number of cities in developed and

developing countries have already successfully leveraged their historic cores

and underutilized land creating powerful talent hubs, attracting world leaders

in knowledge industries and foreign direct investment, while at the same time

becoming hotspots for local business development.

What Is the Relation between Heritage Investment and

Tourism?

Heritage investment develops tourism, a labor intensive

industry that provides proportionally more income opportunities for

the cities low-skilled laborers and the poor.

Tourism has emerged as one of the fastest-growing sectors of the world econ-

omy. The average growth of tourism arrivals, as the world economy recovers, is

likely to continue to grow in the decades to come. Th is is especially due to grow-

ing interest in visiting and enjoying vibrant cities and heritage assets. Indeed,

inspired by a number of success stories attributed to tourism specialization, more

and more developing countries are contemplating such a strategy, supporting

museums, conference centers, exhibition areas, parks, attractions in general,

hotels, and infrastructure, as chapters 1 and 9 illustrate.

Tourism, by virtue of being a labor intensive activity, can allow the large

pool of unemployed and underemployed individuals in developing countries

to get jobs and in turn create the conditions for a sustained and broad-based

growth. Indeed, there is a well recognized positive relationship between the

extent of specialization in tourism and long-term GDP growth. Data show a posi-

tive correlation between tourism receipts (as a share of exports) and growth and

that countries that have specialized in tourism have experienced better economic

growth than countries that have not, all other factors being equal.

Tourism has spillover effects in other economic sectors: the foreign direct

investment associated with it can in fact bring managerial skills and tech-

nology with potential benefi ts to other sectors.