Assessing the cultural significance of World Heritage cities: Zanzibar as case study

This paper focuses on the World Heritage property ‘the Stone Town of Zanzibar’, located on the island
Zanzibar, in the United Republic of Tanzania. The Stone Town is a case study that is part of a larger research
program called: ‘Outstanding Universal Value, World Heritage cities and Sustainability: Surveying the rela-
tionship between the Outstanding Universal Value assessment practices and the sustainable development
of World Heritage cities’ lead by the Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands; and UNESCO
World Heritage Centre, France.
The aim of the research is to help stakeholders involved in policy, management, and development of the
Stone Town determine the adequacy of their current strategies towards sustainable development of the Stone
Town, without damaging its Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) as defined by the World Heritage Centre.
By assessing the OUV as stated in the official documents as well as the authenticity and integrity of the attrib-
utes representing the OUV apparent in the core zone, a comparison can be made.
The policy documents (the Decision Text, Recommendation File and the Nomination File) will be assessed
by means of revealing the dimensions of the cultural significance of the Stone Town in terms of cultural
values. To complement this, the cultural values represented by the attributes of the Stone Town as well as its
authenticity and integrity will be surveyed. This leads to a better insight into the (in-) consistencies between
the ascribed cultural values represented in the policy documents on the one hand and the physical attributes
on the other.