Heritage, Heterotopies and Urban Space Reconfigurations
Chairs: Valentina Albanese; Elisa Magnani; Matteo Proto; Andrea Zinzani (University of Bologna)
Our contribution seeks to advance the reflection on the concept of heterotopies applied to urbanscapes. In this framework, heterotopies could be defined as specific portions of urbanscapes shaped by urban reconfiguration and regeneration processes connected to cultural heritage valorization and oriented towards economic growth, real estate and tourism development. The role played by these extra-configuratives urban spaces questions and redefines socio-spatial relations: despite these heterotopies lie in the urban context, they challenge local communities interactions and could lead to urban space fragmentation. Today, urban tourism development, supported by current global capital dynamics, is shaped by policies and initiatives which move towards cultural heritage capitalization. This reconfiguration is based on the promotion of individual urban experiences and local culture valorization strengthened by a marketing discourse that includes buzzwords such as smartness and slowness. Cultural heritage expressions, reshaped by tourism marketing, are attractive as well as authentic local traditions and historical, artistic and architectural heritage. However, tourist and speculative reinterpretation simplifies and alters the value of cultural heritage and may deprive it of its true meaning, thus leading to the paradox in which the commodification of culture alters the cultural heritage of a territory.
Recent examples of urbanscapes revitalization, connected to the recovery and invention of cultural heritage, have determined the growth of segregated spaces which may bring back to the idea of heterotopy, i.e, those experiences of food spectacularization or valorization of artisticmusicalphenomena, aimed at promoting the development of tourism or real estate speculation.
Researchers are invited to present papers on the following issues:
- Relationships between urban regeneration and cultural heritage
- Capital accumulation and cultural heritage
- Examples of urban heterotopies connected to a revitalization of
heritage in tourist perspective
- Transformation of urban districts in connection to cultural tourism
- Spectacularization of the "belle epoque" heritage
- Space created from the global tourist industry, and how it affects
Essential bibliography
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Foucault M., Des espaces autres, conférence au Cercle d'études architecturales, 14 mars 1967, Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité, 5, 46-49, 1984.
Heynen, N., M. Kaika, Swyngedouw, E., In the nature of cities: Urban political ecology and the politics of urban metabolism, New York, Routledge, 2006.
Minca C., The Bali Syndrome: the explosion and implosion of 'exotic' tourist space, in Tourism Geographies, 2: 389-403, 2000.
Smith N., Uneven Development: Nature, Capital and the Productionof Space, Athens, University of Georgia Press, 2008.