The Cultural Heritage – Territorial Capital nexus: theory and empirics / Il nesso tra Patrimonio Culturale e Capitale Territoriale: teoria ed evidenza empirica

The potential role of cultural heritage in local development has been extensively recognized, both at the academic and institutional level. Its conservation and valorization, however, have been at the center of a lively debate between those who see preservation policies as a mere moral duty and those who see them as part of a wider forward-looking strategy to support economic evolution and performance. This is especially the case now, with the Covid-19 pandemic casting additional doubts on the most effective schemes to face and overcome the current crisis. Within this context, the present paper aims at discussing the relationship between cultural heritage and local development in an original manner. Overcoming the traditional idea that the linkage takes place merely through touristic activities, this work puts forward the idea that Cultural Heritage represents one of the multiple elements of what is called “territorial capital” (TC), i.e. the set of territorial assets – material and immaterial, public and private, cognitive and relational – that generates endogenous development. The effects of Cultural Heritage on local development stem from its interaction with the other elements of TC, and in particular from the intermediation of intangible territorial elements like creativity, identity and quality of governance. The paper explains the reasons for such linkages and provides empirical evidence in this sense.