Creative Small Settlements
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
CREATIVE SMALL SETTLEMENTS CULTURE-BASED SOLUTIONS FOR LOCAL SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH REPORT Coordinated by: University of Westminster (UK) UNESCO Chair in Urban and Regional Planning for Local Sustainable Development, ILAUD & University of Ferrara (ITALY) Cité de l'Architecture & du Patrimoine (FRANCE) Research Institute of Urbanisation - Xi'an Jiaotong - Liverpool University (CHINA) Research Report in support of the Chapter 10 'Culture as a tool for harmoniuos territorial development' of the UNESCO GLOBAL REPORT 'Culture: Urban Future. Culture for Sustainable Urban Development' presented at the UN-HABITAT III Conference in Quito, October 2016. i Editors: Giulio Verdini & Paolo Ceccarelli Main Contributors: Karina Borja, Paola Ferrari, Françoise Ged, Pilar Maria Guerrieri, Alain Marinos, Maria da Graça Moreira, Etra Connie Occhialini, Min Zhang, Li Zhen. With the contribution of: Guirec Arhant, Vincent Bradel, Collectif Circumpat, Francesca Frassoldati, Bruno Hubert, Mireille Grubert, Patrick Toularastel, Marc Verdier. Suggested citation: Verdini, G., Ceccarelli, P. (Eds.) (2017), Creative small settlements. Culture-based solutions for local sustainable development, Research Report, London: University of Westminster. Editorial assistance: Xiangyi Wang, Emilie Rousseau. Design: Xiangyi Wang Photographic images: Authors & Contributors Cover image: A village in Tai Hu Lake, Jiangsu (China) - Giulio Verdini Copyright 2017 © University of Westminster All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission from the publishers. ii CREATIVE SMALL SETTLEMENTS Culture-based solutions for local sustainable development Edited by: Giulio Verdini and Paolo Ceccarelli 2017 iii iv CONTENTS Foreword Creative Small Settlements, Giulio Verdini 01 PART 1: Case Studies Jianshui, Yunnan (China), Zhang Min & Li Zhen 11 Shuang Wan Cun, Jiangsu, (China), Giulio Verdini 21 Zengchong, Guizhou (China), Collectif Circumpat & Françoise Ged 31 Cotogchoa, Rumiñahui (Ecuador), Karina Borja 43 Tréguier, Bretagne (France), Guirec Arhant, Alain Marinos & Patrick Toularastel 55 Hauz Khas, Delhi (India), Pilar Maria Guerrieri 67 Rakhigarhi, Haryana (India), Pilar Maria Guerrieri 77 Castroreale, Siclia (Italy), Paolo Ceccarelli & Etra Connie Occhialini 85 Gagliato, Calabria, (Italy), Paola Ferrari 91 Gerfalco, Toscana (Italy), Paolo Ceccarelli & Etra Connie Occhialini 101 Novara di Sicilia, Sicilia (Italy), Paolo Ceccarelli & Etra Connie Occhialini 107 Tereglio, Toscana (Italy), Paolo Ceccarelli & Etra Connie Occhialini 115 Santarém, Leziria do Tejo (Portugal), Maria da Graça Moreira 121 v PART 2: Action-research and educational challenges Small settlements: a setting for testing interdisciplinary action-research, Giulio Verdini 135 CASES The value of territory and landscape reinstated via a workshop project, Vincent Bradel & Marc Verdier 139 Pearl River Delta Workshop: territorial management and resiliency, Francesca Frassoldati 141 A network of creative villages in India: workshops and capacity building, Pilar Maria Guerrieri 145 New training process on small settlements with heritage, Mireille Grubert 151 Learning from China: City and villages, shared resources, Bruno Hubert 153 ILAUD goes global: from Urbino to the Global South, Etra Connie Occhialini 157 POINT OF VIEW Shifting paradigms: small towns and rural areas, their assets and cultural richness, and the added value of partnerships, Françoise Ged & Alain Marinos 163 Final Remarks and Policy Recommendations, Giulio Verdini 173 Afterword, Paolo Ceccarelli 177 References 181 Editors & Contributors 185 Acnowledgement 187 vi vii viii FOREWORD Culture can play a fundamental role in fostering sustainable patterns of urban and regional development. This is the message of the Global Report ‘Culture for Sustainable Urban Development’, which UNESCO has coordinated for the UN-HABITAT III Conference (Quito, October 2016). The Global Report shows that a promising culture-based vision of urban development is flourishing in different forms in several cities across the world. Even small and medium settlements located at the periphery of large cities or within their metropolitan areas, and normally associated with marginalisation or deprivation, have the potential to fully utilise their cultural resources, in both tangible (urban and architectural heritage, cultural infrastructure, etc.) and intangible form (skills, knowledge, competencies). However these small settlements, and their respective communities, require different analytical tools in order to understand their complexity and ad hoc policies to manage their assets in sustainable forms. This research report aims to show ways to understand culture and creativity in small settlements, by collecting a series of international case studies that form the backbone of the chapter 10 of the UNESCO Global Report on urban-rural linkages and titled 'Culture as a tool to achieve harmonious territorial development'. This can allow a wider dissemination of the theoretical underpinnings and the comparative findings of a research conducted during 2015 and 2016 by several research units all over the world. ix x CREATIVE SMALL SETTLEMENTS: A RESEARCH INTERNATIONALLY RELEVANT Giulio Verdini, University of Westminster THE CONTEXT OF THE RESEARCH The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development has acknowledged the central role of cities, towns and villages as a potential driver for achieving sustainable development. Among the seventeen SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) approved by the United Nations General Assembly in September 2015, Goal n.11 advocates for making cities more inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. At the same time, UNESCO has played an important role in recent years in placing culture at the centre of policies aiming to achieve sustainable patterns of urban development. This has materialised in the organisation of two International Conferences in Hangzhou, China, in 2013 and 2015, on the topic of 'Culture for Sustainable Cities', and the contextual preparation of the UNESCO Global Report 'Culture: Urban Future' for the United Nations HABITAT III Conference recently held in Quito, Ecuador, in October 2016, where the 'New Urban Agenda' (2016-2036) has been launched. The 'New Urban Agenda', which is the strategic document that will guide the urbanisation process of the next two decades, recognises the importance of culture and cultural heritage for the regeneration of cities and human settlements and for strengthening social participation and the exercise of citizenship (art. 38), with the explicit commitment to 'protect them from potential disruptive impacts of urban development' (art.124) (UN, 2016). During the implementation of the UNESCO Global Report, between 2013 and 2015, the discussions which took place among different research units involved have been particularly useful to redefine some of the concepts widely utilised in the international arena. Particularly important was the contribution of the Asia-Pacific and South American units, where the two editors of this research report were respectively involved in. In summary, the relevance of their contribution was primarily on challenging western notions of heritage, culture and creativity when applied to non-western contexts and, at the same time, on acknowledging the importance and the specificity of small settlements and marginal/rural regions in the global discourse of the creative cities. As a matter of fact, while the complex notion of culture reveals its huge potential when applied to urban studies, it shows also many contradictions for a variety of urban formations. On one hand, it is unquestionable that a new promising culture-based vision of urban development is flourishing in different forms in several cities across the world. However, some questions have arisen in the implementation of the Global Report mainly regarding the unilateral vision of city, which has been assumed for long time as representative of many heterogeneous areas of the world. The risk was to reiterate an urban-centred (and western- centred) vision of creative and culture-based development, overlooking many innovative initiatives happening at the micro-level territorial scale and/or in small settlements, which are normally located at the periphery of the most developed urban areas. The risk was also to endorse a naive vision of culture in less developed urban and rural areas (no matter if in Europe, USA or emerging countries), which is in the best scenario purely associated with traditional and therefore nostalgic manifestations of the past. 1 The rich discussion that predates the final conference in Hangzhou, in December 2015, have resulted in a concrete draft document eventually presented during the same conference (Verdini and Ceccarelli, 2015). As a result, the topic of culture in relationship to rural-urban linkages has been highlighted as one the priority outcomes of the Conference in the final declaration. Point 8 of the 'Hangzhou Outcomes' states that culture should contribute to the 'New Urban Agenda' through 'Enhanced rural-urban linkages: Fostering respect for the cultural value of small settlements and landscapes, and strengthening their relationship with cities (UNESCO, 2015). Small settlements have therefore gained momentum and this has generated the need to further enrich the Global Report with a dedicated report on this topic. This research report complements the Global Report and in particular the Chapter 10 on 'Enhanced