La città creativa.Politiche culturali e riqualificazione urbana tra conservazione e sviluppo

In the last two decades territorial competitiveness has profoundly changed the objectives of government intervention in the field of culture. No longer seen as a tool of social integration, Culture is now considered a tool for the economic revitalization of the city, especially in relation to chronic deficit of public finances. This depends mainly on the fact that the cultural heritage, as a scarce and irreproducible resource, is now the only economic good capable of competing on the global market, conquering niches in the "new new economy" and, at the same time, ensuring new forms of development, sustainable and able to unleashing positive processes at the micro-scale. Scientific literature on protection, conservation, enhancement and management of Cultural and Environmental Heritage, gives reason for these large-scale dynamics, exhorting to a general renovation of the sector. Researches carried out in order to respond to this instance often aim to the identification of physical, economic and human resources already present in a given region in the attempt to create a 'local cultural chain' functional and working. In Italy, the reference model for networking is Third Italy's industrial district, whose success is due to the close correlation between production, territory and local knowledge. The application of industrial district's organizational principles to cultural and environmental heritage has given rise to the 'advanced cultural district', now also applied to the more technical aspects of conservation, as demonstrated by the Regional Technology Districts for Cultural Heritage and Activities of Lazio and Tuscany. The identification of physical, economic and human resources already present in a region and necessary for the cultural district operation is, as in the industrial field, based on the analysis of cultural and creative clusters, i.e. the measure of the geographic concentration of businesses, suppliers, and institutions networks which operate in the fields of culture and creativity. The analyses developed in Anglo-Saxon countries in relation to the theme of the creative city, have had a wide spread, especially thanks to the works of Charles Landry and Richard Florida where creativity and culture are read as the principal agents of the economic transformation processes and, in some cases, as the ideal solution to all the contradictions and issues of urban. This, however, leads to a reductive and distorted view of the two concepts which, in their original meaning, have instead strong implications from ethical and civic point of view, so much important as to suggest possible links with the theme of the common goods and the historic urban landscape (as palimpsest of human-nature interactions in a given geographical area). The PhD thesis, entitled “The creative city. Cultural policies and urban regeneration between conservation and development”, focused on these relationships between creative city principles and landscape approach outlined by the European Landscape Convention in order to identify best practices for the development of innovative cultural policies and new urban regeneration tools. The research is characterized by a cross-cutting approach to cultural heritage which involves conservation technologies, cultural planning, urban studies and creative economy. In particular, the thesis faces and deepens many questions related to creative city and cultural districts in Italy leading to a theoretical model for the design of advanced cultural districts, consisting of: a benchmark methodology which explains, step by step, how to built an advanced cultural district, i.e. a district focused on cultural heritage, based on urban policies inspired to “creative city” theories and included in landscape planning framework; a "toolbox" of spatial, economic and social analysis and indicators that can be used to build the necessary knowledge on the future district’s territory as to draw a feasibility study. Finally, having Sardinia region as reference, the thesis offers a picture of programs and plans to which the methodology and toolbox can be applied, outlining potential impacts of the proposed theoretical model within regional programming and landscape planning.