OECD Culture and Local Development.pdf - PACA

4. THE CULTURAL FABRIC OF CITIES
To carry out this strategy and see the projects through to completion, a special
research centre was set up – the Creative City of Culture and Art Promotion Headquarters,
thereby constituting a new way for the local administration to work (Axis, 2004).
An example where culture provided a potential basis for urban renewal without
closing the door to other activities (and even if the initiative has not been fully carried
through), can be seen in the reuse of port facilities at Athens and the establishment
of a maritime museum (2004). The city of Piraeus was at the forefront of Greece’s economic
development, as a port of entry and a manufacturing and trading centre. Successive
waves of industrialisation had produced a setting that was in glaring need of renovation.
The Piraeus authorities found themselves torn between the need to modernise the
port facilities so they could handle new forms of shipping traffic, and the need to preserve
a precious architectural heritage. But conflicts over land use and ownership became
increasingly violent, and it took a major event, namely the Olympic Games, for which
preparations began in 1998, before decisions were finally taken. The result was the
adoption of an archaeological heritage conservation plan that calls for reuse of the
old warehouses and industrial sites located along the seafront, in particular the Stone
Loft located near the Vassiliades shipyard. A maritime museum had been established
there in 1992, bringing together private collections illustrating the different ages of
Greece’s maritime heritage. It was now time to expand that museum by making
available to it other spaces where uses had to be redefined.
The project has now run into a number of problems that have also cropped up
in other restructuring attempts of this kind:
- too many stakeholders and intense conflicts over land-use;
- an increasingly diverse local population, with the attendant concentration of
social problems;
- efforts to upgrade the area through culture clash with a strictly commercial
focus;
- “modern” opinion is hostile to heritage conservation.
Generally speaking, American cities provide good illustrations of this willingness
to enlist culture in broad-based development strategies.
The cities of Pennsylvania, for example, stand in the midst of a region that has
seen its traditional industries wither and collapse (Kresl, 2004)
• Harrisburg, the state capital, enjoys a degree of stability in its civil service
employment, but has nonetheless sought to attract young people to offset the
aging of the local population. It has gambled on the cultural dimension as a
means to this end: a number of theatres and museums have been developed,
and 3rd Street would be renamed “Arts Street”;
136 CULTURE AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT - ISBN 92-64-00990-6 - © OECD 2005