Citation: Ali, S.H.; Sherzad, M.F.; Alomairi, A.H. Managing Strategies to Revitalize Urban Cultural Heritage after Wars: The Center of the Old City of Mosul as a Case Study. Buildings 2022, 12, 1298. https:// doi.org/10.3390/buildings12091298 Academic Editor: Antonio Formisano Received: 1 July 2022 Accepted: 17 August 2022 Published: 24 August 2022 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). buildings Article Managing Strategies to Revitalize Urban Cultural Heritage after Wars: The Center of the Old City of Mosul as a Case Study Safaaaldeen Hussein Ali 1 , Mohammed Fareed Sherzad 2, * and Ahmed Hameed Alomairi 1 1 Department of Architectural Engineering, University of Technology, Baghdad 10063, Iraq 2 Department of Architecture, Ajman University, Ajman P.O. Box 346, United Arab Emirates * Correspondence: msherzad@ajman.ac.ae Abstract: This research deals with the process of reviving urban heritage, especially in old cities after the war, due to their symbolic and moral values in society. By studying the reality of the city and its destructed heritage features, there was a local need to study the integrated strategies of the urban heritage revival process to reach indicators that are drawn from international experiences and the curricula and studies of international organizations (ICOMOS, World Bank, UN-Habitat, IOM) that interested in cultural heritage and to use these indicators in evaluating local projects in the center of the old city of Mosul which was chosen as a case study for this research, due to its historical and civilizational importance, which has contributed greatly to the formation of the city of Mosul through the ages, and as this city has witnessed deliberate sabotage of its urban heritage due to the terrorist acts witnessed before its liberation. Keywords: built heritage; cultural heritage; cultural legacy; reviving 1. Introduction Many studies have dealt with the importance of cultural heritage. Despite this, we note that cultural heritage—especially urban—is always subject to systematic and deliberate destruction and sabotage during wars and armed conflicts, due to its great value, as it represents the history and civilization of nations. Therefore, it becomes vulnerable to sabotage, in order to erase the identity of peoples and their history. As such sabotage acts have a negative and moral impact, considering the recent events that Iraq has been subjected to—in particular, with regard to the center of the old city of Mosul—and from what has been previously mentioned, this research aims to propose a strategy for managing the process of reviving urban cultural heritage through the integration of urban dimensions (economic, social, and cultural) in a manner suitable to reality while leading to the achievement of community interaction and participation, as well as sustainable economic and urban development, benefiting from similar experiences in the field of revitalizing urban heritage. To achieve the goal of this research, several international and Arab examples are studied, such as the case of the city of Warsaw after World War II and the Lebanese experience in the reconstruction of downtown Beirut after the civil war. We extract important indicators from the study of each case, and then use them to create a new strategy for the revitalization of urban heritage, which can be applied to the local reality of the old city of Mosul, taking into account the special circumstances of the city and the social, economic, and urban dimensions affecting it. 1.1. Cultural Legacy Cultural legacy is defined as an integrated group of physical (symbolic or artistic) or intangible (moral) heritage features that are transmitted from the past to the present, which are characterized as being of exceptional cultural or heritage value; these features are an essential part of confirming and enriching cultural identities, considered as heritage Buildings 2022, 12, 1298. https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings12091298 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/buildings