The overall aim of this research is to investigate the cultural dimension of sustainable development. To this aim, the project highlights the critical role of culture in socio-economic post-pandemic recovery and its potential in driving change to build a high quality, socially integrated and sustainable environment. The focus is on the recent concept of Baukultur, a German expression that places culture at the centre of a path of construction and reconstruction of the physical city and community. Baukultur is intended as a strategy and collective action to activate growth processes, promote development strategies, pursue the common good, and ensure a high quality of urban life. Based on these considerations, this research analyses, from an international and comparative perspective, how European cities are generating new approaches to these processes. It investigates through the analysis of specific case studies in Rome, Berlin and Paris, representing a variety of territorial specific cultural models, how participative culture, cultural heritage, and more generally, creativity can contribute to sustainable urban development. The research investigates strategies and practices realized with the involvement of different actors and the implementation of small-scale interventions that can successfully transform public spaces into catalysts of new processes of urban regeneration. Their effects range from tangible economic and environmental benefits to intangible benefits, such as place identity and social cohesion. Reshaping and planning the contemporary city with a culture-centred approach seems to be an effective way to give meaning and function to the existent, acting on the present, to develop a better future.
This project offers a contribution to the recent literature on the cultural dimension of sustainable development, both in terms of analysis methods and research content.
As for the methods, the project will gather critical competencies in different disciplinary fields: sociology, economics, law, politics. This multidisciplinary perspective will assure a more comprehensive interpretation of the phenomena under investigation. Besides, we refer to the concept of social innovation and the Integrated Area Development (IAD) approach, to analyse heritage, as an alternative narrative that can animate social change (van den Broeck et al. 2019). Therefore heritage is institutionally embedded and territorially reproduced (Moulaert, 2009). As social innovation is considered both a normative and analytical concept, each social innovation process is specific to the context and the multi-scalar socio-political dynamics in which it occurs (Moulaert and Mehmood 2017).
Using social innovation methodology "for" and "through" social innovation implies a change in the relationships among social actors from different contexts. As social innovation aims to satisfy unmet human needs and create or improve relationships between individuals and groups, the research approach will not be excessively technical. The "sociability" aspects of social innovation involve practices of communication, mobilisation, collective decision making for reconstitution and redefinition of political communities. Furthermore, following this model, innovation research itself will be organised with socially innovative methods. This innovation means, for example, fostering collaboration between researchers and social innovation actors; or even interacting with the actors on field for checking the relevance and quality of research results (Moulaert e Van Dyck, 2013).
Regarding the content, we focus on the recent concept of Baukultur, an integrated approach to the urban environment, emphasizing the central role of cultural diversity and traditional knowledge and addressing historical layers of a city and contemporary development. Based on the Davos Declaration 2018, culture is at the heart of urban sustainable development aimed not only at environmental issues and physical spaces but also at social cohesion.
Baukultur's idea includes those human activities that modify the natural environment and those relational aspects that promote dialogue between places, needs and aspirations of people who every day live or travel through those places. As a consequence of Davos declaration, interest in quality, responsibility, sustainability and, in particular, social cohesion are the subject of scientific reflection that involves different skills and disciplines. The research project aims to analyse theories and practices on this subject and stimulate an in-depth discussion that can concretely contribute to the spread of interest in these issues and awareness for identifying appropriate solutions.
Baukultur is a cultural approach that recognises and protects the value of memory but looks at the present and finalise its actions to the production of a better city. These research activities could have crucial policy implications since they provide an assessment of the effective implementation of concrete experiences of regeneration and management of urban spaces in Rome, Berlin and Paris. This fosters the mission of Sapienza University as an incubator for new thinking and practices for the benefit of private and public, local stakeholders.
In this perspective, the project also fosters the activities already in place in the "Comune Condiviso" Laboratory, which has been created in the Political Science Department in 2018; in Urban Regeneration Lab with Berlin Technical University; and the actions included in the recent cooperation agreement with Sorbonne University in Paris.
Additional spillovers of the research project are the following:
1) the creation of a report to present the research findings, which will be available open access for scholars and stakeholders;
2) the adoption of specific dissemination activities - carried out by Sapienza laboratories aimed at fostering the exchange of best practices among different stakeholders as well as awareness among local authorities and citizens.
The research addresses this final question: How can the management of change in cultural heritage be considered as closer integration of economic, environmental and social values contribute to democracy?
For e a new culturally sensitive urban development model, cultural strategies and practices in sustainable development must be fully supported and integrated into planning and policy.
Further research is, therefore, needed.
Moulaert F. , Mehmood A. et al. 2017, International handbook on social innovation: collective action, social learning and transdisciplinary research, Elgar's Editors.