Ahmed Hassan Moustafa

Vita

Ahmed Hassan Moustafa is a doctoral candidate at the Chair of Urban Studies and Social Research. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture and a Master’s degree in Urban design from Alexandria University in Egypt. Parallel to his academic teaching and research, he has continued to be involved in professional architectural/urban practice as well as voluntary community actions. Notably, he co-founded ‘SAVE ALEX’: a local-based research & advocacy urban initiative committed to the safeguarding and development of Alexandria’s urban heritage—advocating an integrated, participatory approach. This experience had a great influence on shaping his subsequent research interests, which have since then evolved to be more concerned with the crossroads of urban and heritage studies—including urban design, planning theory, urban heritage conservation as well as urban development, governance and policy—with a special focus on sustainable development, and a growing interest in critical heritage studies and innovative interdisciplinary research. In line with these interests, he is currently doing his doctoral studies at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar—supported by a DAAD scholarship. Commenced in 2018, his doctoral research project critically examines the localization of the emerging ‘Historic Urban Landscape’ approach in Alexandria/Egypt.

Abstract

His research critically examines the local implementation of the 2011 UNESCO Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape’ (HUL) in Alexandria, Egypt. It investigates the potential it holds to address the urgent need for innovative methods to protect Alexandria’s historic values and livability by questioning the conceptual and operational suitability of the approach and the readiness of the current framework to accommodate it. Through a pluralistic approach guided by the theoretical lens of Critical realism and Norm Localization theory, and by means of multi-method qualitative inquiry, this interdisciplinary study aims to provide insights on the ‘localization’ of such a global normative concept. The aim is to evaluate its adequacy and develop a new ‘adapted’ urban conservation model, which would work as a policy reference to guide a sustainable development of Alexandria’s historic urban landscape, and would make a solid case for the local HUL implementation in Egypt. This is a crucial foundational step to determine its application, this study argues.

Keywords

Urban heritage

Historic Urban Landscape

Norm localization

HUL approach

Egypt