The Future of the Past: Paths towards Participatory Governance for Cultural Heritage

Gabriela García, Aziliz Vandesande, Fausto Cardoso, Koen Van Balen, Gabriela García, Aziliz Vandesande, Fausto Cardoso, Koen Van Balen

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000401301
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

The Future of the Past is a biennial conference generally carried out during the commemoration date of the incorporation of Santa Ana de Los Ríos de Cuenca Ecuador as a World Heritage Site (WHS). It initiated in 2014, organized by the City Preservation Management research project (CPM) of the University of Cuenca, to create a space for dialoguing among interested actors in the cultural heritage field. Since then, this space has served to exchange initiatives and to promote coordinated actions based on shared responsibility, in the local context. The third edition of this conference took place in the context of the 20th anniversary of being listed as WHS and a decade of CPM as the Southern host of the PRECOM³OS UNESCO Chair (Preventive Conservation, Maintenance and Monitoring of Monuments and Sites). For the very first time, and thanks to the collaboration with the Raymond Lemaire International Centre for Conservation of the University of Leuven (Belgium), the conference expanded its local scope. On this occasion, contributions reflected round a worldwide challenge in the cultural field: revealing the paths towards participatory governance of cultural heritage. Participatory governance is understood as institutional decision-making structures supported by shared responsibilities and rights among diverse actors.

Lessons from territorial participatory management for effective participatory governance systems in the cultural heritage

Smart specialisation strategies and governance on cultural heritage

J. Farinós

Departamento de Geografía e Instituto Interuniversitario de Desarrollo Local, Universitat de València, Valencia, Spain

DOI 10.1201/9781003182016-10

ABSTRACT: This paper presents arguments and proposals on how to make cultural heritage, understood from a territorial perspective in relation to cultural landscape concept, as asset on which to base Smart Specialization Strategies. These should be adapted to each context according to their own cultural and heritage, whose most common identification are tourist destinations. It is organized in four sections. First presents arguments on how and why territorial heritage is a key vector for regional and local development. Also why it should be handled with unity of criteria in planning instruments. In the second one, it is presented as part of the available territorial capital, and as key issue for socio-territorial resilience; based on new forms of governance and innovative methods of citizen participation. It the third relations between cultural heritage and territorial intelligence, social innovation and a new strategic territorial planning are addressed. It closes with a final fourth section of synthesis of main ideas, arguments and examples presented.¹

¹ This paper has been prepared on the basis of author’ previous works (FARINÓS, 2016, 2017a, 2017b, 2019a).

1 Territorial Heritage, a Transversal Vector of Development

The possibilities of territorial heritage as energizer of resources and promoter of a new sustainable development (based on activities such as leisure, tourism and the improvement of the quality of life of citizens …) are beginning to be explored (Montufo 2017). In order to move forward in this direction (and aspire to another development model) it is necessary to understand the heritage in a unitary way, planning and managing it as complete (integrated) “Territorial Heritage System”.

In view of the social valorization of the territory and development projects, the natural, cultural and landscape heritage must be managed with a single criterion unit (OSE 2009). However, in this task a series of difficulties and conflicts arise. One of them is what is considered as territorial heritage and how it is being used in planning instruments (Troitiño 2019).

When talking about heritage we refer to those elements of diverse nature to which society recognizes a relevant value; both material and intangible, as advocated by the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (UNESCO 2003).

Heritage assets are ‘the soul’ of each territory, through which to grant new functionalities (tourist and leisure, cultural, landscape or environmental) and to assign economic value. For example, in the form of differentiated heritage services on which to achieve higher-order competitive advantages, in order to face the progressive processes of standardization and banalization (towards a unique model of modernization, production and consumption) caused by economic globalization (that increases both social inequalities and environmental risks).

As a reaction, and in the face of the threat of losing the value of places, globalization has led to wanting to strengthen them. For a sense of resistance (resilience), but also because economic globalization needs territorial ‘anchors’. They serve and support globalisation on places, according with their own and useful characteristics (‘territorial capital’, ‘attractiveness’), that limit the hypermobility of capital (Brenner 1999; Cox 1997; Keating 1997).

Hence the coined concept of ‘glocalization’ (Swyngedouw 2004). Hence, also, the need for new forms of government (of territories) and management (of policies aimed at facilitating their development); in sume, of new forms of governance. Both multilevel governance (Hooghe & Marks 2001; Marks & Hooghe 2004), to which more attention has to be paid, as well as horizontal, looking for cros-sectoral coordination to improve coherence of actions. And all that with a marked participatory/deliberative approach, to recover democratic values and make possible the desired territorial governance (a true rule of law) (see Farinós 2015; Romero & Farinós 2011).

In all this context, the formulation of territorial projects from a patrimonial perspective (based on environmental and cultural values) cannot avoid the interdependencies between economy, culture and nature. The reading of cultural heritage as a source of wealth generation has opened new possibilities to explore, but it must be done with caution (see the Brussels Charter (2009) on the role of Heritage in the Economy).

The aforementioned 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage aims to preserve it, but also aims to ensure its viability and optimize its potential for sustainable development. UNESCO provides support in this area to Member States by promoting international cooperation for safeguarding, and establishing institutional and professional frameworks favorable to the sustainable preservation of this living heritage.

This can have impact on the territory and on the cities, for example by creating a system of protected sites. In the case of cities, it is worth highlighting the debates that the Vienna Memorandum on “World Heritage and Contemporary Architecture – Ordering the Urban Urban Landscape” (2005), as well as UNESCO Recommendations on the Historic Urban Landscape (2011). In that case, as Troitiño (2019) points out, one can wonder: What role should the heritage system play in spatial and urban structures? It is important to locate the landscape, and in particular heritage landscapes of special interest (because their intrinsic values and for their social appropriation), in the axis of the spatial and urban planning.

From the point of view of the Smart Specialization Strategies (S3), special relevance acquires the intangible cultural heritage or “living heritage” (those practices, expressions, knowledge or techniques that each community transmits to its later generations). Intangible heritage provides communities with a sense of identity and continuity: it favors creativity and social welfare, contributes to the management of the natural and social environment and generates economic income. Numerous traditional or indigenous knowledge are integrated, or can be integrated, in health policies, education or management of natural resources, as well as in other products and services (in line with the ‘Cultural economics’ idea).

In sum, without prejudice to preventive initiatives, usual and necessary inventories and catalogs of heritage policies, it is the approach and priorities of landscapes of high cultural interest the one that best places itself in the path of “territorial development strategies in a heritage key” (Troitiño 2011). Usually, the use of cultural heritage has been focused on a sectoral and micro-scale (cultural objects or spaces) way, but not as an integrated perspective of such territory to be administered. However, heritage, material and intangible has to be managed in a unitary (integrated) way, in a “Territorial Heritage System” perspective, as basis for S3 and a new sustainable model of development where territorial intelligence and social innovation play a key role. The challenge then is to get in tune with economic interests through Strategic Spatial Planning and the definition of spatial visions, leading to more participatory decision making process, when choosing, applying and making an evaluation of the results/impacts of selected alternatives (Serrano 2017).

2 The Value of Culture and Heritage as Factor of Socio-Territorial Resilience

In modernity, individuals are homogenized and tend to isolate themselves, thus reducing their autonomy and giving rise to passive territoriality. Urban space ceases to be a public (or community produced) space for socialization, and starts to be produced according most powerful groups particular interests, through interventions and projects that can escape democratic control (Pinson 2011). Then it becomes banal or transit space (what Augé (1993) calls ‘no-places’ or spaces of anonymity), for which citizens do not feel rooted and losing their ownership.

Through the usual undifferentiated development mechanisms and models, based on standardization and homogenization, there is a risk of de-territorializing the population from their environment and, consequently, losing heritage stock on which to base competitive higher-order advantages. That negatively affects local development possibilities (Farinós 2014). Just the opposite of what looks for the ‘Smart Specialization Strategies’ (Farinós 2016). This Smart character does not only refer to technological elements (e.g. R&D from the point of view of ’learning regions’ to compete better, or new information and communication technologies in the case of the new urban model of Smart Cities); but now also, in a more ambitious and strategic way, to social innovation (vid. Moulaert 2010) and to collective intelligence (Farinós 2017b and 2019).

However, fragmentation and de-territorialisation (or passive territorialisation) have their own limit (Castells 1997). Since the territory is a public and collective good, resistance movements are produced by an active citizenship seeking to regain local autonomy. This results in a territoriality that ceases to be latent (heritage and tradition, the culture itself) to become active (it pursues empowerment and can take different forms to claim that is own and differential, sometimes giving rise to identit...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Committees
• Introduction
• Participatory management of private and public cultural heritage
• Cultural heritage as a source of inspiration for new participatory management approaches
• Lessons from territorial participatory management for effective participatory governance systems in the cultural heritage
• Author index