Cultural Heritage and Urban Revitalization: A Meta-Analytic Approach to Urban Sustainability

Abstract

This paper will address the issue of cultural heritage and urban revitalization based on a comparative meta-analytic approach regarding European urban policy experiences. Cultural heritage of historical urban centres assumes a central role in sustainability strategies, focussing on a long-term (past and future) perspective in order to recognize the variety of values, objectives, interest groups and aiming at socio-economic and cultural development, conflict resolution and inter-generational equity goals. From a policy-analytical perspective, it is important to focus on several issues of strategic importance, in particular: (i) linkages between conservation and socioeconomic opportunities from a sustainability perspective, (ii) strategies for building a multi-faceted portfolio of policy options for cultural built heritage (CBH), (iii) financial and managerial mechanisms stimulating incentives for public-private partnership (e.g., a leverage perspective), and (iv) conflict management via the application of integrative bargaining principles. Following a meta-analytic sustainability approach, we will in this paper try to identify common elements, success factors and impediments in prevailing policies, practical strategies and policy measures regarding urban conservation plans. This will be done by comparing, through the application of rough set method, interesting European CBH policy cases in order to identify political, social, physical, cultural and economic conditions that generated the success of a sustainable revitalization policy.