Cultural Heritage, Creativity, and Local Development …
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measurement of these resources on a small territorial scale. The role of cultural
heritage on local development was also measured;
2. creativity as a mediator of the economic impact of cultural heritage. A further
element which is assumed to foster the economic role of culture is created. While
creativity itself is not an element of culture, the two concepts are strictly related,
being culture an expression of human creativity. Similarly to culture, creativity is
also a rather vague concept, treated in the literature in several different ways, often
without a conceptual framework on which a research hypothesis can be founded.
The goals of this part of the project are therefore to conceptualize creativity and
its connection with cultural heritage and to empirically test a set of assumptions
on the mechanisms through which creativity can reinforce the effect of cultural
heritage on local development.
The following sections review the two steps of the research program, pointing out
the results achieved.
2 Culture as a Multidimensional Territorial Asset:
Definition and Empirical Evidence
The recognition of a multidimensional nature of culture calls for a conceptual systematization of the different cultural elements. Inspiration came from the work by
Camagni (2008), who systematized the elements constituting the territorial capital of
places along two dimensions: materiality and rivalry. This approach is well suited for
culture. The latter, in fact, is made up of both tangible and intangible components. At
the same time, a number of cultural elements are close to public goods and therefore
present a low level of rivalry, while others are comparable to private goods, as is the
case of the cultural industry.
Taken together, these elements define the cultural capital of places. Figure 1 shows
the taxonomy developed in Capello and Perucca (2017).
Cultural heritage is represented in boxes a and b. On both cases, the level of
materiality is high, because monuments, galleries but also landscapes and aggregate
tangible heritage have a material nature. On the other hand, these two elements differ
in terms of rivalry. While aggregate tangible heritage (as for instance, the historical
center of a city) is a public good, single goods (a monument, a museum) can be
subject to congestion effects and are, therefore, characterized by an intermediate
level of rivalry.
Empirically, the measurement of the elements of the taxonomy for Italian NUTS3
regions allowed for the identification of the different typologies of intangible cultural
environments. In a nutshell, the variation across regions of the intangible elements
of cultural capital was analyzed, with the aim of identifying groups of regions that
were similar in their characteristics. Three were identified: areas endowed with intangible cultural elements embedded within individual behavior, areas endowed with
intangible cultural elements embedded within institutional behavior and areas which
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measurement of these resources on a small territorial scale. The role of cultural
heritage on local development was also measured;
2. creativity as a mediator of the economic impact of cultural heritage. A further
element which is assumed to foster the economic role of culture is created. While
creativity itself is not an element of culture, the two concepts are strictly related,
being culture an expression of human creativity. Similarly to culture, creativity is
also a rather vague concept, treated in the literature in several different ways, often
without a conceptual framework on which a research hypothesis can be founded.
The goals of this part of the project are therefore to conceptualize creativity and
its connection with cultural heritage and to empirically test a set of assumptions
on the mechanisms through which creativity can reinforce the effect of cultural
heritage on local development.
The following sections review the two steps of the research program, pointing out
the results achieved.
2 Culture as a Multidimensional Territorial Asset:
Definition and Empirical Evidence
The recognition of a multidimensional nature of culture calls for a conceptual systematization of the different cultural elements. Inspiration came from the work by
Camagni (2008), who systematized the elements constituting the territorial capital of
places along two dimensions: materiality and rivalry. This approach is well suited for
culture. The latter, in fact, is made up of both tangible and intangible components. At
the same time, a number of cultural elements are close to public goods and therefore
present a low level of rivalry, while others are comparable to private goods, as is the
case of the cultural industry.
Taken together, these elements define the cultural capital of places. Figure 1 shows
the taxonomy developed in Capello and Perucca (2017).
Cultural heritage is represented in boxes a and b. On both cases, the level of
materiality is high, because monuments, galleries but also landscapes and aggregate
tangible heritage have a material nature. On the other hand, these two elements differ
in terms of rivalry. While aggregate tangible heritage (as for instance, the historical
center of a city) is a public good, single goods (a monument, a museum) can be
subject to congestion effects and are, therefore, characterized by an intermediate
level of rivalry.
Empirically, the measurement of the elements of the taxonomy for Italian NUTS3
regions allowed for the identification of the different typologies of intangible cultural
environments. In a nutshell, the variation across regions of the intangible elements
of cultural capital was analyzed, with the aim of identifying groups of regions that
were similar in their characteristics. Three were identified: areas endowed with intangible cultural elements embedded within individual behavior, areas endowed with
intangible cultural elements embedded within institutional behavior and areas which