Sara GIOVANSANA, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano, Italy
Paolo MOLINARI, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano, Italy
Given their multiple socio-economic and cultural resources, urban peripheries are undergoing a huge redefinition, generating a considerable interest. In these terms, a fruitful field of research is the requalification of these areas through art and creativity: a both top-down and bottom-up process marked by the agglomeration of cultural activities and business incubators. These changes demand a reconsideration of stereotyped narratives (which tend to associate urban peripheries to degradation) and the role of the so-called “urban margins” in the centre-periphery dynamics.
In this regard, noteworthy fields of investigation are Bergamo (a highly dynamic city in Lombardy and future Italian Capital of Culture 2023) and Leipzig (the most populous city of the federal German Land of Saxony): two urban realities united by a common industrial past and a similar process of creative revitalisation of the old productive establishments of their peripheries. In this respect, emblematic cases are the ones selected as core issues of this study: Daste, Bergamo’s former thermoelectric plant located in the district of Celadina converted into a multifunctional cultural hub, which presents itself as a space of aggregation; Baumwollspinnerei, the former cotton mill of the districts of Lindenau and Plagwitz in Leipzig, symbol par excellence of the city’s industrial heritage, subject of an intense arts-led regeneration.
Overall purpose of this study is to examine the socio-territorial implications and the opportunities offered by the artistic and cultural (and also commercial?) requalification of the aforementioned peripheral urban areas, without denying the possibility to gather the complexities, the contradictions and the conflicts as the very features nurturing urban lives. Moreover, our research proposal is aimed at evaluating the degree of non-passive involvement of the local community and at outlining hypothetical risks of gentrification.
Mots clés : urban peripheries|urban regeneration|culture|Bergamo|Leipzig
A104142SG