How to feed a culturally sustainable development plan over time: evidence from the Tuscan Mining UNESCO Global Geopark

Abstract

PurposeThis research explores the community's role in feeding a culturally sustainable development project over time and the practices which operationally allow the bridging of cultural heritage management and sustainable development according to the approach of “culture as sustainability”.Design/methodology/approachThe primary and secondary sources relate to nearly 20 years of life of the Tuscan Mining Geopark case belonging to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) European and Global Geopark Networks. Textual analysis was applied to the dataset. The interpretative approach was aligned with other investigations within this research field.FindingsThe results highlight how a bold project in an uncertain context harnessed bottom-up mobilisation and accountability to stimulate a sustainable community empowerment. The ability to experiment and learn from experience depicts an organisational logic far from the top-down and predefined design practice widely contested in the literature.Research limitations/implicationsDespite a single case study was analysed, it enables researchers to craft a conceptual model for culturally sustainable development projects, and it fills the literature gap on how to operationalise culture as sustainability under the managerial perspective.Practical implicationsThe model assembles an organisational process view and practices that can be tailored to a cultural context with insights for developing culturally sustainable projects.Originality/valueThe research increases the observations of community empowerment within culturally sustainable development projects. It demonstrates how the “incompleteness of the design” was not a weakness but rather a trigger of effective organisational practices.