The analysis and evaluation of the state of the property and of the policy for its conservation, use and management were carried out to the basic year 2011. They were executed following the mentioned cotemporary tendencies of approach to the historic urban landscape, as stated in the Recommendation of UNESCO, namely:
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The full extent of the integral cultural heritage of “The Ancient City of Nessebar”, in the pointed out broader sense of this concept, is analysed and evaluated;
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The analysis and evaluation cover the broader urban context of the property: the state of the natural and built environments, the urban functional systems and tourism, the technical infrastructure, the planning development and management, as well as the state of the broader territorial context around the property.
An important feature of the analysis and evaluation is that the present state is always subject to juxtaposition to the characteristics of the outstanding universal value of the property, as defined in its inscription in 1983. During the informal meetings and the Public Discussion with the residents of Nessebar it was found out that this approach is not always comprehensible for the people – they do not understand why we should look back to 1983; does it mean that Nessebar should linger in its development on the level of this distant year? It was important to understand that the MP is not interested in the year but in the outstanding universal value recognised in this year – it is what must be preserved. The city must constantly develop, the well-being of its residents must grow, while the outstanding universal value must be permanently preserved unimpaired. If it is lost, the property will be excluded from the World Heritage List. Such is the logic of the World Heritage Convention. Therefore, the aim of the analysis and evaluation is to find out if the grounds for the inscription continue to be valid until today and if there are changes threatening the outstanding universal value. This mechanism of analysis and evaluation is applied by each monitoring executed by the World Heritage Committee, the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, and ICOMOS, hence it should be applied in the MP regarding “The Ancient City of Nessebar”.
Analysed and evaluated are: the effectiveness of legislative protection; the state of the property and of its territorial context; the quality of actual policy for conservation, use and management. For that purpose, the MP team held monitoring throughout the whole working period of the Plan. The evaluations are differentiated in two groups: positive assessment (strengths of the actual situation) and negative assessment (weaknesses) – this allows to objectively take into account all aspects of the current situation. In fact, it is the principle of the SWOT analysis that is used, albeit not in the traditional table format.
The results of the analysis and evaluations made within the MP are juxtaposed to the evaluation of the monitoring international organisations in the period 2009-2011. In conclusion are determined the factors, influencing the property and is defined the problem situation in it.