Discussions about culture and local sustainable development have occurred in multidisciplinary academic contexts and in policy arenas internationally, bringing together various conceptual threads and considerations about human-nature relations, wellbeing, and planning alternative futures. These efforts have been insightful and sometime ground-breaking in their impacts, but the fractured nature of the emerging discourse(s) also make ‘cultural sustainability’ a ‘messy’ and sometimes confusing topic to explain and to operationalize.
Researchers have been putting forward and discussing, from various perspectives, an array of issues related to the relations between culture and sustainability. A variety of storylines, sometimes conflicting, have been developed to articulate and organize these relations (Soini and Birkeland 2014). Overarching these trajectories, three conceptual frameworks are dominant in articulating the roles for culture in sustainable development, briefly characterized as culture in, for, and as sustainable development (Dessein, Soini, Fairclough and Horlings 2015).
Complementing this research, policy-directed statements have demonstrated discursive and political power – and also provided important conceptual guidance. From a policy/governance perspective, three areas to watch are: (1) culturally sensitive sustainability governance processes and structures; (2) a cultural framework or lens on all public policies/decisions (towards integration of culture in broader policy/planning systems); and (3) taking a ‘sustainability approach’ to cultural policy/planning and governance (Duxbury 2014). Furthermore, in keeping with growing emphasis on direct citizen action and participation in co-creating their city and developing more sustainable ways of living, it is important to also examine key dimensions of transformative sustainable development (Otsuki 2015) and how these might relate to community engaged cultural practices.
There has been an ongoing gap in implementation advice in regards to culture and sustainability. ‘Making it real’ has been largely a matter of in situ initiatives to bring these ideas into local resonance and attempts to integrate them within local processes and actions. Although many isolated experiments have occurred, to date it appears that they are only loosely aware of one another. However, emerging policy frameworks highlighting culture in local/urban sustainable development promise to catalyze inter-municipal networking to a greater degree.
With these frameworks as background, this presentation will present an array of international examples of local innovations and approaches that are aiming to operationalize roles for culture in local sustainable development policies, planning processes, and associated actions towards sustainable local futures.
Nancy Duxbury, PhD, is a Senior Researcher and co-coordinator, Cities, Culture, and Architecture Research Group at the Centre for Social Studies (State Associate Laboratory), University of Coimbra. She has been Chair of the Policies group within the COST Action IS1007 on “Investigating cultural sustainability” (http://www.culturalsustainability.eu/). Her research examines the link between culture and local sustainable development in two ways: First, the ways in which a community´s distinctive cultural features can be incorporated and supported within local sustainability plans, and, second, the ways in which local cultural traditions as well as contemporary artistic practices and enquiries can inform and propel more sustainable living practices. Her wider research focus is local cultural development and has included studies on cultural infrastructure, cultural indicators, and cultural mapping.
2015: Hristova, Svetlana; Dragićević Šešić, Milena; Duxbury, Nancy (eds.). Culture and Sustainability in European Cities: Imagining Europolis. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-1138778412 [Book]
2015: Duxbury, N., W. F. Garrett-Petts, and D. MacLennan (eds.). Cultural Mapping as Cultural Inquiry. New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-1138821866 [Book]
2015: Duxbury, Nancy; Jeannotte, M. Sharon. Making it Real: Measures of Culture in Local Sustainability Planning and Implementation. In Lachlan MacDowall; Marnie Badham; Emma Blomkamp; Kim Dunphy (eds.), Making Culture Count: The Politics of Cultural Measurement (in press). Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1137464576 [Book section]
2014: Duxbury, N. Cultural Governance in Sustainable Cities. Kult-ur: Interdisciplinary journal on the culture of the city, 1(1), 165-182. [Article]
2012: Duxbury, N.; Cullen, C.; Pascual, J. Cities, Culture and Sustainable Development. In H.K. Anheier, Y.R. Isar & M. Hoelscher (eds.), Cultural Policy and Governance in a New Metropolitan Age. Cultures and Globalization Series, Vol. 5. London: Sage, pp. 71-86. [Book section]
For a full publication list see: http://www.ces.uc.pt/investigadores/cv/nancy_duxbury.php
