Arts and Economics in the City – New Cultural Maps

In a world that is becoming more and more globalized and urbanized, cities are gaining more and more importance as the first level where human interaction occurs. Designing arts-related policies, implementing arts-related actions and evaluating them to feed into new policies and actions are more and more being placed higher in the agenda of local governments. They also serve as tools at the hands of citizens and artists that interact with their environment. 

 

The book, published 2019 at transcript, brings together contributions related to heritage and urban management in multi-cultural metropolitan frameworks and how arts and culture contribute to urban revitalization, creative placemaking and place identity. The editors Caterina Benincasa, Giandranco Neri and Michele Triachi have compiled and edited for this book papers presented at the 2016 Innovative Heritage Conference hosted at the Department dArTe- Architecture and Territory of the University Mediterranea of Reggio Calabria. 

 

 

The connecting line of all articles is that they try to shed light on some of the many blind spots of how new social, cultural and economics dynamics are affecting the urban fabric and what the responses from an arts and culture perspective are. The book is structured into three main topics, each comprising of three to four articles by researchers from different disciplines. 

 

The book starts off tackling the topic of Urban Strategies and Urban Dynamics, with three contributions on how public art has been framed in urban strategies. Irene Litardi and Lavinia Pastore discuss the contribution of public artworks to social engagement through the examples of Triumps and Laments - a 90-meters long friese by William Kentridge along the Tiber River devoted to Roman history - and an intervention transforming the Superkilen park, situated in one of the most ethnically diverse neighborhoods in Copenhagen, through exhibiting stories and objects involving the communities around the park through peer-to-peer-design. Triumph and Laments is used as a case study in the article by Tom Rankin who examines it from the point of view of an architect taking into consideration the complex urban context of the city. Finally, Valeria Morea’s uses the examples of Triumps and Laments together with Christo’s installation of a three-kilometer grid of floating docks connecting three small towns at Lake Iseo in Northern Italy to showcase how (contemporary) public art can produce interaction among communities, while underlining the importance of overarching policies and strategies that accompany such interventions to bring up urban regeneration. 

 

The second topic covered in the book is Multiple Cultures for Urban Governance. Clarisa Pelino uses Mumbai as an example to make a case for the meaning of buildings for people and its influence on their conservation and development trajectories. Domenica Moscato connects the international debates on immigration and interculturality with urban transformation and planning. Ottavio Amaro and Marina Tornatora present their findings on new (mental) maps of the Italian region Calabria that reveal parallel territorial narratives and how they can be connected with different itineraries. Finally, in Arthur Clay and Monika Rut’s article, the reader will find a comprehensive introduction to how technology is enabling artistic practices that can be linked to virtual tourism offerings.

 

The last section covers cases that reveal The Urban Fabric between intuitions and conflict. Letteria Fassari tackles how digitalization introduces new media grammars and performance languages that affect the cultural planning of innovative spaces, while Federica Antonuci discusses the role of museums in offering new experiences in the contemporary (and forthcoming) sociocultural settings. The book closes with two articles that bring to the surface the influence of the commoning process in the urban fabric. Lidia Errante makes an introduction into the challenges of integrating urban commons (a participative co-creation process for public space and urban challenges, as an alternative or addition to public or private efforts) in urban planning while Verena Lenna and Michele Trimachi offer a taxonomy of urban commons after examining recent and varied commoning practices, performed as leisure activities, art or cultural projects in different European cities.  

 

 

The book adds to a substantial body of literature on the relationships between arts and the city and puts the spotlight on cases where cultural interventions, activities or policies have been in dialogue with urban policies and challenges. But primarily, the value of the book is that it is very contemporary. The new cultural maps revealed in each of the articles are not futuristic scenarios, but current responses from authorities, citizens, artists to conditions imposed on cities by social, economic, technological evolutions, putting arts and culture at the forefront. 

 

All articles demonstrate that new economic, social and economic paradigms turn cities into stages for experimentation, where the reclaim of the public space, the quest for urban commons and the advancements of technology will continuously reshape the way we position ourselves in the cities. This experimentation phase seems necessary before expecting (policy) interventions being fixed in any municipality’s hardware. 

 

 

Although it could more directly question the impact of artistic and cultural practices on cities, the book nonetheless offers critical insight into the current challenges cities face and how arts and culture are currently and will influence urban dynamics in the years to come. From my perspective, the strongest aspect of the book is that it is a helpful reference for those that are studying or working on the topic of cities and the arts and wish to go deeper into concrete examples and cases on how the arts have been framed in specific projects in cities around the world. 

 

Another strong asset is that the book brings together contributions from scholars from a range of disciplines, including sociology, economics, and the arts that reflect on topics related to contemporary cities and the role of arts and culture to urban revitalization and placemaking, but also in building communities and robust local economies. Almost all articles concentrate on specific situations to showcase their argument, which enriches the relevant arguments.

 

The case studies come from different geographical settings. However, there is a clear predominance of examples from Italian cities. This perhaps is the only downside of the book, which would have benefited from more international contributions and examples.

 

The book’s audience is perhaps primarily professional policymakers and municipal administrators. They would benefit a lot from learning from international practices and the critiques around them before putting into place projects that integrate arts and culture in the urban fabric. It is useful as well as for academics and researchers in the field and especially a good introduction for newcomers to the "arts and the city” debates since it is written in a way that puts the spotlight on cases one can learn from while framing them within academic discourses. Therefore, the book is also a great learning resource for arts and cultural managers as they are often positioned in the middle as interpreters between policy makers, researchers and creatives. In all cases, the book will help all readers navigate through the emerging new maps of our cities.