Abstract
The international debate on cultural heritage enhancement and cultural cross-overs, highlights the need to rethink the relationship between economy, society and territory by working on innovative urban planning and evaluation approaches. In recent times, the concept of “place branding” has become widespread in strategic urban plans, linking marketing approaches to the attractive features of places. The purpose of this study is to outline a holistic approach to cultural heritage enhancement for urban regeneration based on creative and collaborative place branding: “Community branding”. The methodology was tested in Pisticci—near Matera (Basilicata region, Italy)—starting from its historic center. As a multi-methodological decision-making process, Community branding combines approaches and tools derived from Place Branding, Community Planning, Community Impact Evaluation and Place Marketing. The main results achieved include: an innovative approach that combines both management and planning aspects and empowers communities and skills in network; the co-evaluation of cultural, social and economic impacts for the Pisticci Sustainable Urban Lab (PLUS); the writing and signing of an “urban contract” with local Municipality, research centers and PLUS hub association.
Highlights
Against the background of current research and policy guidelines on the enhancement of cultural heritage in Europe [1,2,3,4], which is interpreted here as a shared resource conducive to an increased awareness of European values and a broader sense of community [5], research on “cultural cross-overs” constitute a crucial element to evaluate the effects of material and immaterial heritage such as health and well-being [6]
If it is necessary to rethink the relationships among economy, society and the territory, we could define the need to experiment with hybrid approaches [43] that mix different disciplines in a collaborative, creative and productive way. In line with this perspective, this paper proposes a multi-methodological community planning/evaluation approach [44] based on creative and collaborative tools and aimed at the cultural heritage enhancement [45,46] for urban regeneration, simultaneously creating new added value to community development
The phrase “community branding” [44] would define a creative and collaborative multimethodological decision-making process which utilizes the place branding process [23] to plan a territorial offer of attractions, services and amenities, place marketing to plan the demand, community planning and creative cultural enterprises to plan the productivity of the territory, the Community Impact Evaluation for the selection of cultural heritage enhancement alternatives and impact assessment
Summary
Against the background of current research and policy guidelines on the enhancement of cultural heritage in Europe [1,2,3,4], which is interpreted here as a shared resource conducive to an increased awareness of European values and a broader sense of community [5], research on “cultural cross-overs” constitute a crucial element to evaluate the effects of material and immaterial heritage such as health and well-being [6] This reveals that such cultural exchanges are directly related to social sustainability goals.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
