Since 1976, I treated Historic city as a learning laboratory in my courses, first in my under-graduate architecture courses and then more importantly in the post-graduate course in Conservation Studies which I began in 2007. CEPT Faculty has motivated many students to take up their final dissertations on various aspects of Historic city. The faculty of CEPT also, depending on their interest in various aspects of historic city, conducted Seminars on heritage conservation involving international experts which really increased awareness on important architectural heritage of city. The CEPT Archives today has a huge collection of studies on Ahmedabad on its various aspects. 

Ahmedabad's history mentioning its cultural history is recorded since 16th century onwards by number of writers, travellers, and chroniclers at various times in past centuries. In 19th century British officers, surveyors and Archaeologists have recorded this methodically. In early 20th century local writers have also published history of city and directories in Gujarati language. But the most important record of historic city is documented in two Census Publications of early 1960s by R K Trivedi with very detailed record of wooden architecture and the various aspects of its environment. More recently there are new publications on Ahmedabad by several authors including two important publications on city and its culture from Gujarat Vidyapith and MARG focusing on culture and historic architecture of the city. 

I got first opportunity to formally work on documentation of Historic city in 1978 when UNESCO offered a research grant to School of Architecture, Ahmedabad to study ' Cultural Influence on Architecture '. I was assigned by the then Director to prepare a Monograph on Traditional House Forms of Ahmedabad which was submitted to UNESCO Paris in 1980. This resulted in Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation getting a grant in 1984 from Ford Foundation to prepare a Report on Urban Conservation of the Historic city which again included my documentation of important traditional houses as part of documentation. This Report was prepared by the then Director of School of Architecture Prof Kulbhushan Jain and his team. 

With these activities where I was involved, my informal involvement in heritage matters with Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation  has continued ever since and in mid 90s the then AMC Commissioner Mr Ghosh, IAS involved me in starting formal activities on heritage awareness within the historic city focussing on raising public awareness about heritage. He selected a Calcutta based agency known to him as an NGO to start such activities. I helped this agency during the following years and AMC set up a formal Heritage Cell in July 1996 with a small office in the AMC Headquarter for this NGO to provide them a space. This was replaced by a full-fledged   Heritage Department as AMC took over the cell activities under a Deputy General Manager working directly under a Deputy Municipal commissioner for its proper administration with an annual budget. Ahmedabad has always been in fore front of modern architectural development and on its historic importance as well. Indian National Trust for Arts and Cultural Heritage also organised several conferences here during late 80s and 90s which were called SAMBHAV. Two conferences were organised involving local institutions to highlight the heritage of the city.

In 1997, at the time of celebration of 50th year of Independence of India, French Government expressed their interest in establishing a project in area of urban heritage revitalisation of a historic city in India and selected Ahmedabad for this. Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation thus became the beneficiary to work much more systematically for next five years. I was an Adviser on this project. The project contributed immensely the documentation work with the help of the French team of experts and field architects working in Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation. This documentation included upgradation of maps of the historic city and also survey of various pol and houses within the historic city which were all systematically documented. With the help of French experts, a survey of earthquake damage was also conducted by us with French Expert Engineers and Reports were prepared for the repairs. SAMBHAV 3 was organised by the French Government and the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation to present the works done under the French Cooperation Project with Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation. A publication on this was also brought out by them on this last conference.  The Report of the French Project is an important document concerning the Urban Revitalization of the walled city of Ahmedabad. This project ended in 2002 after five years of the cooperation. 

After this after establishing a Post Graduate programme in Conservation at the invitation of CEPT Authorities, I once again got an opportunity to work with UNESCO India office Programme Director Ms Nicole Bolomey and with the help of  UNESCO in 2009 we mooted an idea from CEPT to the then Ahmedabad Municipal Commissioner Sri I P Gautam ( I A S) to apply for World Heritage Status for the Historic City of Ahmedabad and apply for the same in the following year as mark of celebration of 600 ^th year of founding of the city by Ahmad Shah in 1411. The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation and UNESCO Delhi office accepted the idea and the preparation were on for submitting the application to the UNESCO Paris through ASI Delhi was handed over by the then Chief Minister of Gujarat Sri Narendra Modi to the Director General ASI Sri Sengupta, in presence of the UNESCO Delhi officials on 18 ^th April 2010, as part of the World Heritage Day celebration. The Ahmedabad Municipal Commissioner announced at the time of this ceremony on that day that the World Heritage Nomination processes would be followed under my guidance. An International Conference on World Heritage was also organised from that day by the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation, where delegates from South Asian countries participated, besides Indian Experts. 

Following this, the Tentative List Nomination was prepared by me with my colleagues in following months in 2010 and was submitted to UNESCO in Paris through Archaeological Survey of India Delhi. The Historic City was on the Tentative List of the World Heritage Convention in March 2011.

Once this was done we were charged to prepare the World Heritage Dossier in following years. I was appointed by the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation as the Head of the Technical Committee for Dossier. As Head of the Centre for Conservation Studies at CEPT University, I decided to take up this work under that and a Memorandum of Understanding was signed by the Centre for Conservation Studies, CEPT University and the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation to carry out this work under the CEPT Research and Development Unit as an ongoing Research Project. The Draft Dossier was submitted to the ASI for review during the process of its work and finally the final Dossier was submitted to UNESCO by ASI in February 2016. Through the processes outlined by the Operational Guidelines 2013, the Dossier went through all the stages of Inspection and reviews and finally was accepted by UNESCO for Inscription in February 2017 and was scheduled for inclusion in the 41 ^st Session of World Heritage Committee’s convention in Krakow in Poland. The city was unanimously accepted by the World Heritage Committee and finally inscribed on 8 ^th July 2017. 

On September 1 ^st  2017, the Director General of UNESCO is visiting Ahmedabad to hand over the World Heritage LOGO and the Certificate for Inscription to the Chief Minister of Gujarat ending the entire process of World Heritage City Inscription. The Historic City of Ahmedabad thus has the distinction of becoming the first Indian World Heritage City.

R J Vasavada, Architect