Summing up Week 3

Hi, welcome to the sum up of the last week of this book. This week we have discussed a wide range of issues related to the interaction between urban change and cultural heritage. We started by discussing which component within the city is to be considered as cultural heritage. We talked about infrastructures such as ports or train stations. And we have seen that in some contexts these have been heritagised. We asked the question together about where to draw the line of what is to be recognised as a cultural heritage. Afterwards, we discussed some of the key tensions between cultural heritage and Urban Development.

We started by discussing the tensions between archaeologists and urban planners with the case of the Yenikapi excavations in Istanbul. We read an article of The New Yorker that explained that these excavations had enabled great historical discoveries, and at the same time caused great delays to a metropolitan railway project. So this article showed well the problem of difference in time horizons between the archaeologists and the urban planners. Afterwards, we discussed another kind of tension, that opposing the promoters of cultural heritage policies, and the scholars or activists that have argued that in some cases these policies could be detrimental to the local populations.

You may remember, for example, Nick Dines explaining how the administration of the city of Naples criticised the local inhabitants of the historical centre for their lack of heritage consciousness. You may also remember [Chiara ?] de Cesari who explained that the ideological use of cultural heritage can sometimes trigger movements of resistance or protests like in the case of the Gezi Park uprising in Istanbul. Finally, we discussed the case of events and how they are being used by cities to accelerate their urban change and to promote their own cultural heritage. We started by talking about mega events such as the Olympics or the universal expositions.

We saw how these mega events have been used to construct major infrastructures, such as transportation networks, stadiums, or landmarks. But we also talked about smaller scale events, such as festivals. Which are also very important for cities to define their own identity and to project it to the world. I hope that you’ve enjoyed the programme of this week, and I’m looking forward to hearing your feedbacks. Thank you very much. Goodbye.