The residents of Djenne, Mali, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, struggle to find a compromise between preserving their traditional mud architecture and modernizing their buildings, all while working within the restrictions of their town’s designation and dealing with crowds of tourists.
This video from the New York Times briefly explores how these issues are playing out in Djenne, and highlights many of the same questions that Public Historians in the U.S. and elsewhere struggle to answer daily.
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2011/01/09/world/africa/1248069543637/the-great-mosque-of-djenn.html