Dipartimento
Città e Territorio |
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CULTURAL IDENTITY AS SECOND LIGHT OF LOCAL DEVELOPMENT
Urban Renewal, cultural sustainability and social participation
by Maurizio Carta
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Today, the globalisation transforms itself from a cloudy prophecy of de-localised development to a shiny opportunity for networking local development. Peter Marcuse (1999) has affirmed the existence of the so-called "glossy globalisation", as a new light for the global development, a favourable light able to promote technological progress, to stimulate capital investment, to increase the productivity of labour and to activate and diffuse wide network of local answer to global questions. This network configures itself as a bottom-up globalisation founded on local identities against a top-down globalisation based on the homologation.
In 1997, the European Commission has financed a research network on cultural identity, named "CIED, Cultural Innovation and Economic Development", formed by the Municipality of Palermo (Italy), the Volos Municipal Enterprise (Greece), the Cardiff Bay Corporation (Great Britain), the Galway Corporation (Ireland) and the Aufbauwerk Regierungsbezirk Leipzig (Germany), under the scientific co-ordination of Hatto Fischer (Berlin). The Cied Project, analysing the opportunities offered by the cultural policies for the economic development, assumes as general objectives:
- learn to use, but not abuse cultural heritage and culture for economic development;
- encourage representation of cultures in peripheral regions;
- make consensus become the basis for decision-making;
- re-evaluate the role of culture in planning through cultural impact studies;
- relate concrete needs to real constraints, editing a Good Practice Manual.
The Project queries about which cultural innovation can be initiated for future economic development and implemented thanks to cultural consensus measures as part of planning decisions, in order to safeguard cultural heritage and to enhance cultural articulation of peripheral regions in Europe.
| Palermo Principles towards a Charter of Cultural Rights of Development |
One of the most important results at European level has been a Cultural Local Agenda 21, named Palermo Principles towards a Charter of Cultural Rights of Development (April 1999), which offered themselves as an action plan deriving from the items of Aalborg (1994) and Lisbona (1996). The Palermo Principles are:
1. Re-thinking the cultural governance: we will enhance the role of European cities and towns in diffusing the notion and principles of cultural sustainability, we will therefore adopt local strategies towards a culture-oriented sustainability. The principles of culture appreciation must be brought to the core of public administration, building up as many multiple interactions as possible between culture and aspects of economic, social and educational development. Local authorities must introduce in their statutes and internal regulations the rule of Cultural Evaluation of city administration's acts.
2. Enhancing the cultural government: the local self-governance is a pre-condition for a more cultural-centred development based on specific instruments and tools for cities and towns management towards sustainability. Local authorities should review their decision-making processes with regards to heritage and culture regularly so as to ensure the effectiveness of actions. Local authorities must enhance the capacity to extract some specific cultural indicators that are able to represent a specific way towards a culture-based development.
3. Promoting and diffusing the cultural education and animation: sustainability has to been considered as a creative, local, balance-seeking process. A more holistic approach to education is needed by transforming schools into culture-centred environments and enabling them to become foci of cultural life in their local communities.
4. Building a culture-based empowerment: social equity has to be an aim for cultural sustainability and citizens have to be considered as key actors for the involvement of the community. We shall gain strength through inter-authority local and interregional alliances: associations, networks and campaigns. A new social ethic obliging cultural organisations and authorities to adopt inclusive rather than exclusive policies in order to ensure access to – and participation in – culture for all.
5. Enhancing the cultural economics: economy has to go towards the cultural sustainability of decision and investments. The aim is to make effective use of public sector finance to stimulate a weak market and to release a greater volume of private sector investment oriented by the cultural rights. The culture-based cities have to attract a cluster of creative businesses involved in cultural heritage and innovation and to develop some centres of excellence which will in turn be able to form a culture-based network.
6. Improving the cultural management: local authorities need to elaborate some more sustainable "culturscape" patterns. We shall integrate cultural with social and economic development so as to improve the identity and the quality of life for our citizens. The culture-based projects for cultural sustainability are able to provide a store of information for future cultural development practitioners.
| The European Network of Culture-based Cities |
The above exposed Principles has been applied by each partner in different ways and contexts. Cardiff, through benchmarking exercises and user group, has established user concept for a multi-media production site for different firms within a Cultural Quarter idea to be implemented in the former Coal Exchange building of Cardiff Bay. Galway has worked out a heritage plan for the city with a local committee led by the organisation responsible for the promotion of the Gaelic language and culture in Ireland. Leipzig, through a case study of the planning and implementation process for a museum of industry and work, has attempted to show how comparative advantages gained through European co-operation can make different measures be applicable for the benefit of better cultural impacts of decisions made. Volos has focused upon these developments within its own borders so as to attain a new profile, in order to have not only an ancient, but also a recent past usually not associated with Greece, that is as having also an industrial past.
Palermo, has worked through its Pilot Project (Zisa Cultural Factory) on problems which have stopped until now decisions for such economic development which is compatible with the restoration of the historic heritage. Palermo experimentation has proposed a different discussion about culture, planning and economic development with the aim of making possible innovation, that is a culturally recognised adaptation process linking culture and technology.
In a second phase, the Palermo Project has analysed the opportunities, the actions and the actors of the industrial areas rehabilitation, viewed as nodes of a cultural network for the urban development. The rehabilitation of industrial heritage finds in Palermo Master Plan an important occasion, because the new Master Plan declares that only a rehabilitation of the disused areas for collective function could protect them from speculation. These areas, called "resource areas", could become a strategic tool of the urban renewal, in the sense that these areas offer some opportunities for modification of their use toward more sustainable city's uses. These areas are able to constitute some "culture-based proximity areas" where it would be possible to improve upon social sharing, people's participation and therefore upon the exercise of a real democracy; so that they can become themselves the basis for a culture-based empowerment based on knowledge democracy. The political option for the Palermo's industrial heritage rehabilitation are:
- including the protection of the industrial heritage as an essential town planning objective and ensure that this requirement is taken into account at all stages both in the drawing up of development plans and in the procedures for authorising work;
- promoting programmes for the restoration and maintenance of the industrial heritage;
- making the conservation, promotion and enhancement of the industrial heritage a major feature of cultural, environmental and planning policies;
- facilitating, whenever possible, in the town planning process the conservation and use of certain buildings which are of interest from the point of view of their setting in the urban environment and of the quality of life;
- fostering, as being essential to the future of the architectural heritage, the application and development of traditional skills and activities.
Having as background the above mentioned Principles, the Municipality of Palermo has sketched a Framework for Action, articulated by:
a) Political objectives, able to contribute to good urban governance and local empowerment.
b) Social objectives, able to promote equality, social inclusion and regeneration in urban areas.
c) Cultural objectives, able to protect and improve the urban environment: towards local and global sustainability.
d) Economic objectives, able to strengthen economic prosperity and employment in towns and cities.
The experiences and the results of the whole Cied Projects have produced an Action Plan to enhance the cultural dimension of development, named Leipzig Initiative (June 1999). In the framework of the Palermo Principles, the Leipzig Initiative affirms that, in the interest of European citizens, local and authorities must ensure the development and promotion of culturally-oriented sustainability, enhancing the role of European communities and local self governance; they must promote access to knowledge through education and life-long learning so as to ensure inclusion in the cultural field for all.
Starting from these tasks, the Initiative will develop, promote and organise a broad dissemination and exchange of experience of local strategies for a culture oriented sustainability. Together with the citizens and other cultural initiatives, associations, institutions all over Europe, the Initiative will:
1. establish a network working for "European Cities and towns as cultural based facilities for development";
2. work on a European Greenbook about culture and development based on the "Cied Good Practice Manual" and will also keep on exploring the relationships between cultural heritage, innovation and sustainable development;
3. seek opportunities for investments in the cultural fields of economic development;
4. hold annual meetings of the Initiative on different topics in cultural based European Cities and Towns and those which consider culture an essential part of economic development;
5. organise the propagation and exchange of experience and best practice on cultural-oriented sustainability;
6. promote the creation of a European Culture Fund to assist communities in rehabilitating cultural heritage and to assist in generating public/private partnership;
7. work on political advocacy at local, regional, federal and European level to adopt and implement the cultural rights of development for a more peaceful, democratic, sustainable development;
8. promote the central place of education and knowledge in the development of Cities, towns and localities;
Finally, the Initiative would ensure that the action plan and the political declaration are transmitted and incorporated into activities, undertaken by Unesco, the Council of Europe, the European Parliament and Commission and other international organisations and it would assist in the optimal use of their programmes. Under this task, the Cied partnership is going to launch a European Campaign for the cultural-centred sustainable cities, as a "lobbying" network to enhance the cultural dimension of development.
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e-mail: mcarta@unipa.it
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© 1998 Prof. Maurizio Carta, architetto urbanista. Tutti i diritti riservati.
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