Terje Nipan (Norway), Natalia Dushkina (Moscow, historian of architecture, professor of Moscow Architectural Institute) and Alexey Novikov (Moscow, economist, head of the Russian office Standard & Poor's). The main part of the program was a presentation by Terje Nipan, a Norwegian expert in the field of heritage conservation economics and contemporary restoration. In his speech, the expert criticized the prevailing point of view in our country that economic benefits and careful restoration of architectural monuments are incompatible, and demonstrated through numerous examples what benefits the heritage can bring to the country's economy.
According to Mr. Nipan, even from such well-known sites as the Eiffel Tower and the Alhambra Palace, it is clear what potential attractions have. They attract a huge number of tourists who not only leave their money in these countries, but also provide residents with jobs. The total annual income of the European Union from tourism is 404 billion euros, in addition, this area provides jobs for 8 million people. In other words, tourism brings the state much more income than real estate, and, accordingly, it is much more profitable to use architectural monuments as cultural objects. Separately, in his report, Terje Nipan touched upon the topic of assessing monuments as real estate objects and suggested taking the highest value that can be offered for it on the market today as an assessment of historical buildings.
When talking about the preservation of the architectural heritage, Terje Nipan made a convincing case that the restoration of historical buildings is much more beneficial and less expensive than the construction of new buildings. From an economic point of view, investing money in restoration is much more profitable, because in this case the money remains in the country - more labor and less materials are required. Moreover, all the necessary materials, as a rule, are local, which means that in this sense there is a certain saving. Thus, all the money spent on restoration remains in the country, and does not go, for example, to China, as is the case when buying cheap materials and tools for the construction of new buildings. “1 euro investment in restoration brings 10 euro income,” summed up Terje Nipan.
Natalya Dushkina, professor at Moscow Architectural Institute, commented on this speech: “We heard the report of a person from another reality, who came from a country where legislation is observed and where a special attitude to cultural heritage is widespread. In Norway, it is preserved with maximum authenticity. We don’t even know how to look after monuments”. According to Natalia Dushkina, Russia needs to develop such a scientific discipline as conservation economics, because in the West it has long been studied by special scientific committees and entire institutes. “It seems to me that it is worth thinking about introducing such a specialty, for example, at the Higher School of Economics. In addition, I think that Terje Nipan's report should be shown at the mayor's office, because there were simply deadly figures that prove that half of the historic city cannot be destroyed, as is done in Moscow. It's time to understand that reconstruction is not a panacea for preserving the architectural heritage. Although, of course, for investors working in the fast money mode, when in 5 years they need to make a profit of 300%, reconstruction is much more profitable than restoration."
Economist Alexei Novikov in his speech also paid great attention to the underdevelopment of the conservation economy in Russia. The question of whether cultural heritage can have economic value, he called rhetorical. But he added that it makes no sense at all to say that architectural monuments have a negative value and bring only costs. Of course, in relation to GDP, the architectural heritage index is very low, because GDP takes into account only the estimated rental cost of the secondary real estate market, and that is why, in order to find out the true cost of architectural monuments, the earliest possible development of other methods for assessing such objects.
Thus, the main result of the first discussion of the new cycle of meetings was the recognition of the high economic potential of the cultural heritage. However, all experts agreed that in order to change the existing system of protection of monuments, it is first necessary to change the attitude of society towards objects of history and culture, since the economy, like all other spheres of life, primarily depends on the mentality.
