Retail strategist Roksolana Pyrtko has published a new analytical piece arguing that the regulatory systems protecting Europe’s and Latin America’s historic city centers have become a structural barrier to commercial investment — and that the solution is not less protection, but smarter governance.

In her blog The Developer’s Dilemma, Roksolana Pyrtko maps a problem that many in real estate recognize but few have analyzed with this level of precision. A developer entering a UNESCO-listed or nationally protected historic district faces not one authority but a cascade of them — municipal, regional, federal — each with independent veto power and no obligation to coordinate. The result, as Roksolana Pyrtko describes it, is “approval fragmentation”: timelines of 18 months to three years where comparable non-heritage locations take 60 to 90 days, with no guaranteed outcome at the end.

“Delays rarely arise because projects pose a genuine threat to heritage. Most often, the cause is a lack of institutional capacity to review them,” Mrs. Pyrtko writes.

The consequences are concrete. Premium and luxury brands — the tenants who anchor these districts economically — are redirecting flagship investment to purpose-built complexes outside historic cores. Prague’s Staré Město, Cartagena de Indias, Mexico City’s Centro Histórico: Mrs. Pyrtko uses all three to show how the same regulatory environment produces different outcomes depending on one variable — whether heritage authorities are willing to engage proactively with investors.

What makes the piece stand out is its refusal to frame conservation as the villain. Roksolana Pyrtko acknowledges that heritage frameworks exist for legitimate reasons and that deregulation would ultimately destroy the very character that makes these locations commercially desirable. Her argument is narrower and more actionable: pre-approve standard retail interventions, consolidate review into a single application process, and build technical expertise inside conservation offices.

“Empty buildings deteriorate. Declining commercial districts attract lower-value tenants and informal uses — exactly the kind of environmental degradation that heritage frameworks are meant to prevent,” she concludes.

For business leaders, developers, and urban policymakers, it is a rare piece of analysis that holds both sides of the argument without flinching — and lands on a position that neither camp will find entirely comfortable.

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