Urban Heritage as Cultural Capital, District, and Commons: An Economic Perspective
This chapter aims at providing an economic perspective to the challenges characterizing integrated conservation and management approaches to urban heritage. Drawing from the cultural economist’s toolkit, this contribution introduces the notion of heritage
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Abstract
This chapter aims at providing an economic perspective to the challenges characterizing integrated conservation and management approaches to urban heritage. Drawing from the cultural economist’s toolkit, this contribution introduces the notion of heritage commons to extend and critically re-examine two established notions that have been often used to frame the nexus between cultural heritage and local development at the urban level, namely that of cultural capital and cultural districts.
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Introduction
With globalization and urbanization, development and tourism pressures are posing major challenges to cities all over the world featuring historic cores and distinctive cultural atmosphere. Mass tourism to major cultural destinations in urban areas risks to deplete the collective values and cultural practices traditionally shared by local communities. Similarly, in many metropolitan areas of developing and emerging countries the preservation of the cultural values of both tangible and intangible heritage is often deemed to hinder new development opportunities. Amid these threats and concerns, in the last decades scholars and international organizations have increasingly emphasized the role of heritage as a lever for local development and urban regeneration (Greffe 2011; Licciardi and Amirtahmasebi 2012). According to this view, historic buildings and cities represent an asset: E. E. Bertacchini (&) Department of Economics and Statistics “Cognetti de Martiis”, University of Turin, Turin, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 E. Macrì et al. (eds.), Cultural Commons and Urban Dynamics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54418-8_3
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resources embedding and potentially producing value, when properly and efficiently managed. By attracting visitors, entrepreneurs and businesses in search of distinctive places, enhancement of urban heritage can generate economic impact in the form of real estate appreciation, job creation and income growth in the activities related to heritage services. The attempts for integrating cultural heritage conservation in the process of urban development have often sought to safeguard the character and identity of the historic city as expressed by local culture and heritage. Identity and local character can become part of a city’s competitive edge, but are increasingly under threat or destroyed by globalizing processes of urban development. Heritage and local culture may thus become key determinants for the positioning of cities in the global scenario as well as of the quality of life and the well-being of local communities. With this perspective, in urban conservation and heritage policy circles a new paradigm is increasingly emerging that sets emphasis on integrated approaches to the conservation and management of urban heritage. One of the clearest illustrations is the UNESCO Historic Urban Landscape Recommendation (UNESCO 2011). The concept
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