Ever since HABITAT II, held in June 1996, UNESCO has initiated or reinforced specific activities intended to ‘humanize cities’ and develop the urban environment.

Cities, the scenes of civic and urban responsibility, of civilization and democracy, should also remain places of solidarity and social bonding, where everyone can contribute to the struggle against pollution, social breakdown and the fragmentation of cultural identity. Our cities should facilitate the linking of human rights with citizen participation, and guarantee equal access to drinking water. Provision should be made to pass on, to future generations, a natural and cultural environment that has been properly developed and safeguarded.

In 2025, 75% of the world’s population will live within 60 km of the sea… UNESCO’s intersectoral project on ‘Sustainable Urban Development of Small Historical Coastal Cities’ was created in 1996 to aid in the search for responses to the above concerns. This project was launched by the two international programmes: Management of Social Transformations (MOST) and the International Hydrological Programme (IHP), collaborating on the platform for Environment and Development in Coastal Regions and in Small Islands (CSI).

The network of small historical coastal cities in the Mediterranean, which came into being in November 1997 as a result of the International Seminar on Essaouira, serves as a framework, amongst the municipalities, for the exchange of experience and expertise and for the formulation of requests to UNESCO to evaluate certain problems, launch scientific studies or seek partnerships.

The main objective of the Saida seminar falls within the research programmes of MOST (Management of Social Transformations) concerning urban issues and, more specifically, the sustainable urban development of the coastal zone. Such is the focus of the intersectoral project: ‘Sustainable Urban Development of Small Historical Coastal Cities’, which studies the interrelationships among the protection of the coastal environment, ensuring of everlasting natural resources, and the integration of archaeology and cultural heritage in the planning for urban, social and economic development of multicultural societies.

Other UNESCO programmes have joined the above three programmes (MOST, CSI, IHP) in this effort, thus contributing to the interdisciplinarity of the project. They are the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) and the Division of Cultural Heritage.

This seminar aims to stimulate reflection on the orientation and direction to be given to the urban development of Saida, taking into consideration its overall historical value, the urban projects foreseen by the national and local authorities, and the aspirations of the present and future populations; all of this in a very specific geopolitical context.

Thanks to the participation of the cities involved in the UNESCO networks of ‘Small Historical Coastal Cities’ and ‘Mediterranean Cities and Territories’, concrete experience can be presented.

Following the exposés presented by national and international experts, methodologies and concepts relevant to the seminar theme will be proposed.

This activity is being held in the framework within which the four pilot cities, Essaouira (Morocco), Mahdia (Tunisia), Omisalj (Croatia) and Saida (Lebanon) cooperate with UNESCO.

In January 1998, Saida’s parliamentary representative and mayor made a request to UNESCO to consider Saida as one of the pilot cities of the project. In June 1999, these same officials invited UNESCO to organize an international seminar on the theme ‘Small Historical Coastal Cities’, which took place in Saida, 28–31 May 2001.

Click here to read the synthesis report and the specific recommendations of the seminar.