ECONOMICS UNIQUENESS

ECONOMIC VALUATION OF CULTURAL HERITAGE ■ 77
purposes through production externalities. Th e same holds true for a subcategory
of environmental capital, cultural heritage, which generate also in principle
a variety of economic benefi ts that accrue to socioeconomic well-being through
consumption and production externalities.
Cultural heritage should not be defi ned as a “soft ” or “qualitative” good. It is
observable, visible, and measurable in nature and should essentially be treated in
the same way as “normal” economic goods. Th ere is, however, in most cases an
important diff erence with respect to normal goods on the market: cultural heritage
is not strictly reproducible, as it refers to particular—sometimes unique—
historic, cultural, political, or socio-economic events or goods. In many cases, it
also refers to a common socio-cultural past. Since such unique commodity is not
freely available on the market—and in many cases not traded at all; for instance,
because of legal reasons—and yet because it is to be shared and used by many
people, it usually belongs to the category of public goods. In light of the externalities
involved—for instance, people watching the majestic view of the Acropolis
from downtown Athens, or people in awe from having experienced the unforgettable
beauty of the Taj Mahal complex in India—the economic meaning of such
cultural heritage assets merits careful attention in both scientifi c research and
policy making. It is noteworthy that cultural heritage may also promote many
market benefi ts—such as an increase in tourism revenues, and spillovers to the
hospitality and service sector—as well as non-market benefi ts—through externalities
that bring benefi ts to an appreciative society in the form of livability, local
attraction of investments and creative minds, self-esteem, and open-mindedness
of the local population (Navrud and Ready 2002).
Frameworks for protecting cultural heritage have signifi cantly improved over
the past decades in scope, scale, and orientation. In many countries, they started
as preservation planning, later on followed by conservation and adaptive reuse
planning; witness, for instance, the recovery eff orts for the historic city centers of
European cities. However, the management of cultural heritage today goes much
further, as cultural capital has to be positioned in the context of development
planning of urban areas. Most metropolitan centers are currently going through
a rapid transformation, in terms of urban regeneration and restructuring plans as
well as urban expansion, especially in developing countries, and notably in Africa
and Asia. Consequently, there is a risk that cultural heritage capital can turn into
isolated islands of the past in wild seas of urban dynamics.
Even ancient “extramural” or rural cultural heritage amenities tend to become
more and more encompassed by fast urban development. For example, the historic
Giza pyramid complex in Egypt is increasingly becoming part of a dense
and congested urban agglomeration, where a quiet and refl ective atmosphere of
these traditional holy places becomes illusory. Developmental planning for cultural
heritage with a view to safeguarding historic-cultural and socioeconomic