Synergies and Frictions between Mega-events and Local Urban Heritage

Abstract

Increasingly, cities have turned to mega-events as part of strategies to secure much desired global recognition and attract future economic investment. These events have a broad range of physical effects on the city and can also introduce new concepts of the city. For historic cities, mega-events can potentially have a profound influence on the city's urban heritage, both physically and how heritage comes to be understood and defined. Recent changing trends in mega-events could come to see them more closely integrated into the existing city fabric, making the potential impact of mega-events on built heritage more pronounced. One long-standing event embedded within the city fabric that serves as a noteworthy example is the European Capital of Culture (ECoC), operating for 30 years and travelling between more than 50 cities. The paper presents the European Capital of Cultures of Genoa 2004, Liverpool 2008 and Istanbul 2010 as three diverse cases with differing themes and roles for heritage in order to review the potential synergy or friction between events and heritage and calls for heritage actors to become more involved in these processes.

Going Beyond Tourism Attraction in the Festivalisation of World Heritage Cities

“…A disconnected approach that overlooks critical issues like tourism can lead to cities being woefully unprepared for mass tourism and the wide range of physical and socio-economic impacts, and the city of Matera found itself ill-prepared to manage tourism flows during the peak tourism season. The case of the Liverpool 2008 ECoC is another cautionary example where the much-celebrated event interacted little with the city's World Heritage Site and instead aligned with future urban growth and development in city strategies (Jones, 2017;West, 2022). The long-term effects of this approach led to the unfortunate delisting of the Maritime Mercantile City World Heritage Site in 2021, only the third ever site to lose its status.…”

Mega-events and the Preservation of Urban Heritage: Literature Gaps, Potential Overlaps, and a Call for Further Research

“…Despite this broad purview, little is generally said about the relationship between mega-events and the relevant planning efforts made to preserve a city’s cultural heritage. Though not managed by event organizers, the Liverpool 2008 ECoC came to inspire several independent restoration projects throughout the city (Jones 2017).…”

“…García and Cox (2013b) also found the London 2012 Olympic Games to contain a number of cultural activities as part of the preparation for the games, blurring the lines between sporting and cultural events. Within the previously mentioned ECoC program, several cases can be highlighted where the event was used to invest in and promote heritage such as in Genoa, Italy (Bonfantini 2015; Gabrielli 2005; Gastaldi 2016; Jones 2017) as well as missed opportunities as in the 2010 Istanbul (Jones 2015) or 1997 Thessaloniki (Deffner and Labrianidis 2005) where the event was not integrated into other city plans with projects not completed on schedule.…”