OECD Culture and Local Development.pdf - PACA

4. THE CULTURAL FABRIC OF CITIES
that would function as a combined archives, documentation and information centre.
Following public tenders, the City of Pantin agreed to provide the Centre home, and
in so doing it was able to convert a downtown architectural site of the “brutalist” school,
a now-disparaged vestige of the time when the city was ruled by Communist Party.
Thus, the initial effort amounted to grafting an especially “recherché” form of artistic
expression onto a population with virtually no cultural pretensions.
The team in charge of the new facility was careful to cultivate the local ground as
assiduously it promoted the Centre nationally. Local people were invited to the
project’s launch, and urged to take part in performances and make use of its services,
including the audiovisual library. The Centre’s managers used every tool at their
disposal to mobilise the neighbours: they provided information through the schools,
they placed posters in doctors’ offices, they held meetings with associations. In the
end, the renovated site became a real emblem for the City of Pantin, replacing the
old city hall that had long been its only symbol. While it was not exactly a lever for
development, culture brought about a very positive change in the city’s image. (Greffe
& Pflieger, 2004).
Cultural quarters
Cultural quarters offer development opportunities as well as an alternative
approach to urban planning. In the place of cumbersome, top-down programming,
they introduce a more flexible and independent perspective, one that can directly
engage the energies of consumers and producers. In any urban redevelopment
programme, there are two possible sets of linkages: there is the vertical chain, that
of the official public sector, and there is the horizontal chain, made up of small,
interdependent units generating, and benefiting from, external economies. When flagship
cultural projects are undertaken, the vertical chain wins out over the horizontal. When
strategies for rehabilitating or creating cultural quarters (generally of the audiovisual
type) are implemented, the two chains intersect, and the project’s success will depend
on their ability to create proper synergy.
The purposes of cultural quarters
Cultural quarters are seen as serving many purposes:
• Reinforcing a city’s identity, attractiveness and competitiveness. But in this field
no success is permanent, and it must constantly be renewed, for example by
seeking to attract cultural tourists in the wake of more traditional tourists
(Richards, 2001). Moreover, as the authorities seek to extract themselves from
cultural or intangible investments, this capacity will come to rely increasingly
on private sector players, commercial or not.
138 CULTURE AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT - ISBN 92-64-00990-6 - © OECD 2005