Sviluppo locale a base culturale: quando funziona e perché ? Alla ricerca di framework di riferimento

In this paper, we carry out a meta-analytic review of the literature on cultureled local development models. We identify and discuss three typical fallacies characterizing mono-causal culture-led development schemes: instrumentalism, over-engineering, and parochialism, discuss their analytical background, and provide examples illustrating the consequences of each. Based upon this critical discussion, we make a case for a ‘new territorial thinking’ approach that keeps into account the tangled hierarchy of global and local viewpoints that is connatural to spatially situated cultural production, and focuses upon a non-linear, multi-causal scheme, as the only possible framework for the policy design of credible, socially accountable culture-led development strategies.