RECOVERING THE REGAL SPLENDOR OF LIMA.

• Author: Elton, Catherine

An aggressive municipal initiative is revitalizing the center of this historic capital, preserving cultural sites and modeling future public spaces

About five years ago, the historic center of Lima was not a place anyone who valued the content of his pockets wanted to visit. The one-time South American seat of both the Spanish Empire and the Catholic Church was simply not the grand and elegant city center it had been for centuries. The sidewalks all over the center were jammed with a chaotic patchwork of improvised stands made of metal and blue plastic tarp or of beach umbrellas under which an endless sea of itinerant vendors sold their wares. The cacophony of the market transactions was pierced through every now and then by the horns of trucks that blocked the center's streets and blasted the air with thick clouds of jet-black smoke. The plazas were strewn with garbage and haunted by pickpockets and bands of piranhas, as the street kids who rob en masse are known here. Tourists coming to Peru from abroad often flew straight to Cuzco, Peru's biggest tourist attraction. Those who did come through Lima avoided the center. Tourists were not the only ones; countless limenos simply stopped visiting their own city center, which, like many of its historic monuments, seemed to be on the verge of collapse.

Today historic Lima is a far different place. Its streets are free of vendors, and its sidewalks are free of garbage. Its parks are impeccably manicured and safe. On Sundays the center is full of limenos who have flocked there from other parts of town. Children chase their balls through the plazas, while their parents sit back chatting on park benches. The faithful are returning to mass in the vaulted chapels of the area's colonial churches. Historic monuments are being rescued and protected. The center once again offers art exhibitions and top-notch productions in its theaters. Some of the hottest cafes in Lima are opening up sister establishments there, and on any given day, one can find upward-gazing, sun-burnt tourists snapping photos of landmarks.

Lima is one of the latest and most successful examples of a movement across Latin America to revitalize and appreciate historic city centers. Since the late 1980s cities like Quito, Ecuador; Mexico City; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and Salvador (Bahia), Brazil, to name a few, have undertaken aggressive efforts to rescue their long-neglected and deteriorated historic centers. Experts say that this recent tendency has been spurned on by the many changes globalization is bringing and is expected to bring to the region, a tendency that has city officials looking to the future and searching for ways to hold on to the past at the same time.

"Part of globalization," explains urban planner and city councilman Jorge Ruiz de Somocurcio, "is the process of competition among cities. Cities of the world become competitive, look for specialization, try to attract investment, and place themselves in this market of cities. In the process they begin to develop their comparative advantages, and one of the biggest comparative advantages a city has is its cultural heritage."

At the same time as rescuing and preserving the cultural heritage of a city helps attract tourism and investment, it helps cities face some of the dangers of globalization as well. "In the face of globalization and in a world where media have such a strong influence, cultural identity is threatened. I think that government leaders should be searching for ways to strengthen this identity," says Alberto Andrade, mayor of Lima.

As a third-generation resident of his city's center, Andrade came to love the...