In a breathtaking new video released yesterday by the BBC, heritage preservation professionals explain how they are working to make Yangon more livable and green while bringing its crumbling heritage edifices back to meaningful life.
In the video, Thant Myint-U from the Yangon Heritage Trust explains how decades of isolation under military dictatorship kept the city’s antique buildings frozen in time – a feature almost no other city in the region has left. In the 1990s and 2000s, a third of these were destroyed amid rapid, sloppy development.
He also discusses the Trust’s plans to extend, connect and open Yangon’s green spaces.
Harry Wardill from Turquoise Mountain, a charity founded at the behest of the UK’s Prince Charles, describes plans to renovate the former Ministry of Hotels and Tourism building in downtown Yangon.
He says the building’s spacious rooms and windows can make it more functional than it is in its current, decaying state.
Preserving Yangon’s heritage sites, Thant Myint-U says, can give the city a multi-billion-dollar industry and make it a global tourist destination.
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