A Referendum for Cultural Mediocrity

Hey there.

No, I didn’t stop writing and sending the newsletter.

But, vacation days… first weeks of work.. You get it.

This one’s been in drafts from then so I might as well send it to you. Procrastinating, yes, but I like to lay out my thoughts as clear as I can for the Special Issue.

So, my last newsletter had a somewhat controversial intro.

It was about the public statements of official representatives of Montenegro, regarding the UNESCO status of the Natural and Culturo-historical Region of Kotor.

So, as you requested, I decided to dedicate the Special Issue to this topic.

It’s been a while since I wrote one, eh.

And, this one, I believe, deserves a deep dive. Probably even deeper than I can manage to do right now, but I’ll try to convey what instantly comes to mind.

The bay.

The ramparts.

The culture.

Minister proposing a local referendum for its UNESCO World Heritage Site status...

As if heritage was just another policy preference.

What They Said (And What They Really Meant)

Montenegro's Minister of Spatial Planning, Urbanism, and State Property dropped this bombshell couple of weeks ago: “let Boka Bay residents vote on whether Kotor should keep its UNESCO World Heritage status”.

His reasoning?

UNESCO's moratorium on new construction is "difficult" to meet in six months, and maybe locals should decide if UNESCO brings more benefit than the "freedom to build".

Well..

Is it really?

Kotor's Mayor fired back that UNESCO protection isn't up for referendum, it's about civilizational values, promising to meet UNESCO's conditions.

When politicians frame heritage protection as a constraint of "development", they're not just misunderstanding heritage, they're weaponizing democratic language to disguise a land grab.

If you wonder why I specifically use heritage instead of UNESCO, I’ll tell you why.

It bothers me that it is a general thought that UNESCO somehow means more than heritage itself. It is, after all, a list.

Sure, outstanding universal values, and respected authority, but still, it’s heritage.

Of course, there are different types of protection even within the country, but my point is that we should address all heritage appropriately, regardless of its inscription in any list.

Nomination dossiers are now thousands of pages long, while just a decade or two ago it was rather an Elaborate of 10-20 pages.

I could argue for pages and pages that certain localities have universal values regardless of not being in UNESCO list.

Heritage has become so fragmented that we’re not sure what more to dissect in order to highlight it.

For me, the comprehension of heritage is quite logical, with its all little intricacies. But, hey, it does take some time to get to understand the fragments and the whole.

That reminds me of my paper (unpublished) for the Deleuze and Guattari Conference 2023 and my exploration of the National Park Skadar Lake through the concepts of space, control, and resistance.

In order to understand the whole, one must understand the fragments first.

The same goes for Kotor’s current case.

I wouldn’t even call it a case, really. It’s a mere politization of the important topics in order to stir the pot; to get the people raging and raving about it.

While for some, it’s very convenient. Developers do develop there, get premium prices, and it’s usually not great architecture. We’ve seen a number of mastodon-like buildings emerge on bay’s hills.

There are quite a few hotels in development that we might be better without, from the heritage angle. Box-architecture, as I call it. And this box architecture is suddenly everywhere. It’s spread across every place every studio, project, competition.

You take a box a you play with it for a bit. …move it here, no, here… and put it here too on top of this other box that you forgot to move…

It’s child’s play, really.

Architecture is far more than that.

Citizens deserve better. Cities deserve better.

But, it’s only part of the problem.

There are many constraints and many manipulations in UNESCO sites. I’ve collaborated on some fantastic projects, done with comprehensive HIA (heritage impact assessment) but due to corrupted integrity these were not approved with the excuse of site constraints. Which would be fine if all the other surrounding plots, meanwhile and after, weren’t built with trashy architecture.

It also doesn’t help that our national UNESCO commission which is constructed of public officials and politically-ideal professionals. Maybe one or two heritage specialists in the commission, and none who are both architect and conservator, so they can be relevant judge when it comes to deciding about meaningful urban-architectural interventions in protected sites.

The infrastructure is a joke.

It wasn’t meant for mass tourism which all hope for.

But it cannot be a museum too, as it’s a living city.

So, that’s the main issue.

We have two (mainly) strong opposing sides.

One who understand heritage, know that it should be preserved, and is usually knowledgeable. But doesn’t understand future, development, living. Doesn’t understand that a city cannot be the same as when they were a kid as it’s not normal.

Those who strongly believe that and want to constrain every development shall be cut off electricity, phone service, or any other modern amenity, but shall be allowed only what they had when they were a kid. This seems only fair and logical to me.

The other side, however, rarely possesses any knowledge of culture, let alone heritage. They’d destroy everything so they can profit, and they usually do it in a place that’s not theirs. If it was their village or city, they’d be the loudest for how it should be intact.

Dresden Case

I mentioned Dresden earlier. In 2004, Dresden's Elbe Valley became a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and by 2009, it was gone. Deleted for building a bridge that marred the view. A local referendum supported the bridge with some 67% votes in favor. UNESCO removed the site anyway.

Democratic approval doesn't shield heritage from international consequences. Once you compromise Outstanding Universal Value, the damage is permanent.

Well, I guess that’s fair. UNESCO did threat to remove Dresden from the list and the residents still wanted a bridge that would allow for more convenient everyday life.

I haven’t been to Dresden though, so I can’t claim anything, but I doubt that I’d be so focused on this bridge that the impression would diminish its cultural values.

I Used to Think Tourism Was Always Good

Ten years ago, when I started working on heritage projects, I believed the tourism industry line.

More visitors equals more prosperity equals better preservation. Right?

Well, I was wrong.

Standing in Kotor's Old Town during peak cruise season, watching 5,000 day-trippers flood through streets built for 300 residents, I realized I'd been sold a myth. The economic benefits were flowing upward—to ship operators, international hotel chains, import retailers, while the cultural costs were accumulating downward, in every cracked facade and every local family priced out of their ancestral home.

Mass tourism and heritage preservation aren't natural allies. They're often direct competitors for the same finite resource—authentic place.

The Real Economics of Cruise Tourism (Spoiler: They Don't Add Up)

The cruise industry won't tell you that those massive ships are floating cities designed to keep spending onboard. When 536,444 passengers visited Kotor in 2016, most of their money never touched Montenegrin soil.

Research consistently shows cruise passengers spend less per capita than stay-over tourists, often under €25 per person in comparable ports. Meanwhile, the externalities—port infrastructure costs, environmental damage, crowd management—are borne entirely by locals.

The math was brutal: 487 cruise ship calls in 2016 brought massive disruption for minimal economic benefit.

Yet politicians still frame cruise growth as economic development.

This is extraction masquerading as prosperity.

I’ll digress, though, that this can be prosperous if managed properly.

For example, big cruisers stay out of the Bay. Have them anchored outside of the Bay and drive the visitors in municipal-owned and privately-owned boats, boosting the economy.

This 3-hour-ride is a unique experience too, as the whole bay is of outstanding beauty. And the math is rather simple. The length of the round-trip and time spent in the City can promise the much bigger spend of the visitors. One cannot bring that much sandwiches from the buffet breakfast.

By having them anchored right in front of the Old Town, it’s quite rare to have them over for lunch or dinner, as they have all-inclusive deals on board. Maybe in some percentage, in case they are curious or just bored of the cruise food, but from what I know, it’s quite insignificant.

Billboardization or When Landscape is a Commodity

[Drawing from my research on billboardization of city entrances]

In my published research, I documented how billboard proliferation at city entrances doesn't just create visual clutter, but systematically reframes collective identity by inserting commercial noise at psychological thresholds where visitors form first impressions.

This process—billboardization—is cultural erasure in real time. Each oversized advertisement at Kotor's gateways chips away at the narrative coherence that makes the Bay special. Visitors expect UNESCO-quality cultural landscape and encounter generic commercial messaging instead.

When landscapes become advertising surfaces, Outstanding Universal Values become background noise.

The Turkish Bazaar Problem

Walk through Kotor's small bazaar today and you'll encounter stalls selling exclusively Turkish manufactured goods to tourists who assume they're experiencing Montenegrin culture.

Maybe it’s me. Wherever I go, I seek the experience of the local culture in all of its aspects. If I’m in Australia, I couldn’t care less for Italian, French, or Balkan corner. If there’s some context to it, sure, otherwise I’d stick with the local culture. It’s how you immerse in the context and take the most valuable lessons with you.

But, this too is a pattern. When rental prices spike and day-trip demand dominates, authentic local production gets displaced by import retail optimized for volume sales to time-constrained visitors.

The result? Cultural misrepresentation at the most visible, accessible level.

Heritage cores need tenancy curation, not just preservation ordinances.

Why I'm Telling You This Story

Because Kotor's crisis reveals the playbook that's being deployed against heritage sites worldwide:

• Frame protection as constraint (not stewardship)

• Weaponize democratic language ("let locals decide")

• Promise economic benefits that flow elsewhere

• Capture governance systems with conflicted interests

• Import substitute cultures to fill tourist-facing spaces

• Degrade slowly until integrity collapse becomes irreversible

This pattern has a name: heritage extraction. And it's accelerating.

The Future Heritage Response

Here's how you fight back:

Immediate: Reject the referendum framing. UNESCO status isn't negotiable public preference—it's a treaty obligation Montenegro sought and benefits from.

Systemic: Implement Heritage DNA Extraction across all project approvals. Spatial, material, contextual, and functional DNA must govern transformation decisions.

Strategic: Deploy anti-billboardization at landscape scale. Protect approach corridors and view cones with enforceable scenic easements.

Governance: Reconstitute the UNESCO committee with expertise requirements, conflict-of-interest firewalls, and transparent decision-making.

Economic: Rebalance tourism toward fewer, longer-stay, higher-yield visitors. Cap cruise capacity and price externalities through conservation fees.

Cultural: Curate Old Town tenancy for authentic local production. Require provenance standards and cultural interpretation.

Montenegro doesn't have to choose between development and heritage. It has to choose between extraction and stewardship.

The question isn't whether UNESCO matters. The question is whether we'll let short-term thinking destroy irreplaceable value while calling it democracy.

What’s New

I almost forgot to tell you.

I am building a product that helps you develop contextual intelligence.

It’s meant for early and mid-career architects and it’ll be limited spots (10-12 max).

As it revolves around my passion—context (which accidentally happens to be something I’m quite skilled at)—I want to nail it for you.

You’re the first to know so if this sounds like something you’d like to participate in, drop me a message.

More on that soon.

~ David

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