VIRTUAL Barcelona

Abstract

Today, under pressures that oscillate between global and local, the city experiences a process of ever-increasing ‘implosion-explosion’. In reflecting, therefore, on the urban future, it is necessary to broaden our gaze beyond the historically delimited and circumscribed idea of the city towards a territorial dimension. The dichotomy between city/countryside, in fact, implies the cultural predominance of the urban at the expense of non-urban territories, which are marginalized and under-represented. On the other hand, the cultural offer of the city itself is impoverished by an increasingly higher experiential density, characterized by hyper-production and consumption of homologated cultural products. Today, in various territories, far from the city or rural, which appear culturally marginalized, original and cross-scale cultural practices are taking shape. We’re looking at some kind of a cultural production based on new forms of narration that look at the specificities of territories, their historical landscapes and local production but also at embryonic forms of future generating in these areas. In the proposed paper, some of these undergoing practices, taking place in these territories, will be investigated: new spaces of cultural production, bridges between city and lands, in which local and global, memory and contemporary languages can merge. Through the analysis of case studies, set in particular in Mediterranean European countries, we discuss on how cultural heritage and creative lands can generate an “economy of experiences”, with effective participatory governance and community engagement. These could represent the tools to guide the development process of territories toward new form of future that combines cultural heritage, social innovation and creativity.