Why is preserving heritage important in contemporary cities? — by May al-Ibrashy
By | 2025
Historic heritage and culture are essential foundations for resilient, cohesive, and sustainable urban communities. In a world facing rapid change, social, environmental, and technological heritage offers not just a link to the past, but tools to navigate the future.
To explore this topic, we speak with May al-Ibrashy, founder of Megawra – Built Environment Collective. With her, we discuss the importance of community ownership of historic heritage in cities, and her work in historic Cairo.
#ExpertVoices | 2025 x E03
Preserving heritage in today’s cities
— by May al-Ibrashy —
What functions does historical heritage serve in contemporary cities?
Heritage is the foundation for resilience in cities, and it’s also right now the best way to provide housing and services for people without being extractive with the environment. It teach us a lot also, especially at the time of climate change, about how people historically dealt with climate change. And they are the places where the most rooted communities live. And that’s very important for cities. We now have a very different understanding of heritage that we did 30 years ago. Now it is an integrated kind of inheritance from the past that includes tangible and intangible heritage, customs, living heritage and so forth, which means that the communities that are rooted in these places, in these cities, are very much part of heritage. They are heritage in the making, if you will. To bring them into the process of becoming custodians of their own heritage, they have to feel that they benefit from it. So you only feel a sense of ownership and you only take care of something if you feel that you benefit from it.
What challenges do urban realities face in preserving heritage?
Is the fact that people think that heritage is static and that it is anti future and anti change. But actually heritage is kind of the tool that takes us, the vehicle that takes us to the future. And the fact that people think that it is static and anti change, means that they don’t invest in it, and that they don’t really include it in their policies in the manner that they should. The other issue related to heritage is that if governments are interested in heritage, it is for tourism, it is for heritage industries and it is not for the communities that live with this heritage.
We work in historic Cairo on a project called Athar Lina, which translates as heritage as ours. And the idea is to promote the sense of ownership of heritage through having communities benefit from their heritage.
Community ownership and heritage preservation: a win-win solution for the historic center of Cairo
We work on preservation of historic buildings and adaptive reuse, and making them accessible and having them speak for communities. We also work on heritage education and heritage industries, vocational training to get people to use their historical knowledge to actually benefit economically. And we also work on an urban level to improve historic cities, but more importantly to link it to the environment. So, for example, one of our most innovative projects involves extracting groundwater from under historic buildings and using it for green spaces to provide water in Egypt, which is a water poor country.
In 10 years, how would you like cities to be?
I would like cities to be just and equitable. Humane for their communities. And I would like them to keep their memory of the past and to pass it on to the future.
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Interview and edition by Sergio García i Rodríguez,
Head of Communication at Anteverti & CitiesToBe Executive Editor, and Laura Madrigal Fernández, Comms specialist at Anteverti.
Video by Cristóbal Sarría Chitty and Alexis Rivas
About the authors
May al-Ibrashy is a licensed architectural engineer with more than 30 years of field experience in conservation and heritage management in Historic Cairo. She is a 2022 recipient of the Prince Claus Fund Impact Award, a runner-up for the Divia Award 2023.
She holds a BSc in Architectural Engineering from Ain Shams University, an MA in Art, Architecture and Archaeology and a PhD in Archaeology from the University of London.
She is currently founder and chair of Megawra-Built Environment Collective, a twin institution consisting of Egyptian NGO and consultancy working on issues of the built environment, and editor of its occasional publication, Megawra Papers.
She coordinates Athar Lina, an initiative run by Megawra-BEC in partnership with the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities and Cairo Governorate that conserves the heritage of al-Khalifa in Historic Cairo and conceives of it as a driver for community development. So far, through Athar Lina, she has conserved seven monuments from the Islamic period, the most significant being the conservation of the Mausoleum of al-Imam al-Shafi’i and the design and implementation of its visitors’ centre. Other projects include Heritage Works, Athar Lina’s heritage education and industries program, ERTH, a program focusing on heritage and climate change, and Khalifa Heritage Greens, a program for greening and urban farming using harvested groundwater.
