From culture to capital... a3-part model for Oman

The Sultanate of Oman does not suffer from a lack of heritage or cultural assets. It suffers, at times, from lack of structured conversion. If we want our cultural and heritage assets to become productive forms of national capital, we need a clearer method: creation, valuation and sustainability.
Oman has reached a point at which heritage and culture can no longer be treated as a beautiful side note to development. It must be treated as part of development itself.
This is not a call to commercialise everything sacred, old or local. Nor is it an invitation to reduce heritage to ticket sales and souvenir shops. It is a call to think more seriously, and more strategically, about how inherited cultural assets become living assets: assets that generate value, deepen identity, create livelihoods and strengthen place.
The starting point is simple. Heritage becomes capital not by existing, but by being activated. That activation, I would argue, requires a three-part paradigm: creation, valuation and sustainability.
Creation comes first because not every heritage asset is automatically capital. A site, practice, landscape or institution may have historical significance, but still remain economically and socially dormant. Creation, in this context, does not mean inventing heritage or culture. It means creating the pathways through which heritage or culture begins to produce value. That may include interpretation, adaptive reuse, design development, educational programming, cultural events, craft revival, digital access, branded experiences, scholarly production and place-based entrepreneurship.
This matters greatly in Oman, where the raw material is exceptionally strong. The Sultanate of Oman has five Unesco World Heritage properties, including Bahla Fort and the Aflaj Irrigation Systems of Oman, while the Ministry of Heritage and Tourism’s open-data platform lists large inventories of heritage and tourism assets across the country. In other words, Oman already possesses a substantial stock of cultural assets. The question is whether those assets are being turned into structured and renewable value.
The second part is valuation. This is where many heritage discussions in our region remain weak. We either praise heritage sentimentally or fund it defensively, without a robust account of what value it actually generates. Yet international practice is moving in a different direction. The United Kingdom’s Culture and Heritage Capital programme explicitly seeks methods for valuing the wider benefits of culture and heritage, including social and non-use values, rather than limiting assessment to narrow market returns. Historic England’s work similarly shows that the heritage sector contributes materially to the economy and employment.
That shift is important. Once valuation becomes more intelligent, heritage stops appearing as a cost centre and starts being seen as an asset class. One does not need to copy foreign models wholesale to understand the lesson.
If a restored historic quarter raises nearby business activity, strengthens local identity, increases length of stay, supports craftspeople, enriches education and improves the image of a city, then its value is clearly larger than the entrance fee at its gate.
The third part is sustainability. This is the decisive test. A heritage asset may be activated and even valued, but still fail if its model is extractive, shallow or socially alienating.
There are instructive examples elsewhere. In England, the High Streets Heritage Action Zones programme worked across 67 historic high streets and, according to Historic England’s evaluation, repaired 723 historic buildings, reinstated 462 shopfronts and helped create or bring back into use 224 homes. The wider programme benefits were valued at more than £245 million.
AlUla offers another lesson from the region. Its official long-term targets link heritage with employment, GDP contribution and sectoral diversification, including arts and crafts, agriculture, film, research and education.
Whatever one thinks of scale or style, the strategic insight is sound: heritage becomes capital when it is connected to multiple sectors, not isolated in a preservation silo.
Oman should now apply this three-part lens to its own assets with confidence and discipline. Take the aflaj. They are not merely historic irrigation channels, but fully formed heritage economies in waiting: systems of engineering, ecology, customary governance, agricultural practice, seasonal rhythm and landscape meaning.
If approached through the lens of creation, the aflaj could become revenue-earning yet culturally grounded assets by generating value around the water system rather than extracting value from it directly. Oman could develop curated visitor experiences, agro-heritage trails, field schools, interpretation hubs, educational programmes, branded farm products, digital storytelling platforms and community-led enterprises linked to the aflaj.
In this way, the falaj would cease to be treated as a static monument and instead become the centre of a wider productive ecosystem that creates income, knowledge, employment and territorial identity while preserving its integrity.
Through valuation, it could begin measuring not only visitor interest but educational, agricultural and territorial value. Through sustainability, it could ensure that conservation, local farming and cultural continuity reinforce one another rather than compete. Unesco already recognises the aflaj as World Heritage; Oman should now build a more ambitious national model around them.
What Oman needs next is not another abstract celebration of heritage. It needs pilot projects built on method. Choose a small number of assets, e,g. the five aflaj listed as a World Heritage Site. Apply the three-part paradigm rigorously. Ask, in each case: what value can be created here, how will we value it properly, and what institutional model will sustain it?
That is how heritage becomes capital.
And that is how a country as rich in memory as Oman begins to convert inheritance into future strength.