Course: Cultural Heritage and the City

We would make a special thanks to the experts who contributed to our MOOC, and provided great insights into the issues we have talked about: Jasper Chalcraft, University of Sussex …

Congratulations for completing this course! It is now time to recap some of the key lessons we have learned over the past three weeks. Cultural heritage is central to how …

You have reached the end of Week 3: congratulations! In this video, we sum up what we have covered during this week. We started by discussing which components within the …

The European Capital of Culture projects are often criticized for being too elitist and not rooted enough in their city. This step shows how a grassroots initiative was able to …

Watch this video to learn how the European Capital of Culture evolved from a traditional arts festival to a complex programme tied to economic and social objectives. Since 1985, every …

In contrast with mega-events, which have a global scale but are highly standardized, smaller scale events such as festivals, carnivals, or biennials, can be more rooted in the city’s identity. …

Based on a study he conducted on festivals in Hungary, Peter Inkei tells us why such events are so important for cities.

Mega-events such as the football world cup, the Olympic Games and World Expositions are highly mediatized and reach a global audience. They have become major tools for cities to display …

All around the world, citizen movements have been increasingly rising up against urban transformation projects in order to protect their city’s heritage. Firstly, some movements mobilize against the demolition of …

Chiara de Cesari discusses the case of the Gezi Park uprising in late spring 2013 to illustrate how heritage can be a factor in popular resistance. In this interview, she …

Chiara de Cesari explains the article she wrote with Michael Herzfeld on heritage and social movements in Rome, Palestine, and Bangkok. She argues that various groups, in a given urban …

The term gentrification has been used to describe the settlement of upper and middle class households in working class neighbourhoods. This process is often associated with the transition in housing …

Nick Dines shows that lower class populations living in the historic centre of Naples have been viewed by the urban elites as an obstacle to promoting the area as cultural …

Nick Dines shows that until the 1980s, the historic centre of Naples was under threat of demolition. A shift takes places in the 1990’s, when cultural heritage starts being viewed …

In this step, we are going to take a look at the exceptional archaeological discovery made during the construction of a gigantic railway project connecting the European and Asian shores …