SHARE - Sustainable Approaches to Cultural Heritage for Urban Areas in Europe
Dr. Andres Coca-Stefaniak
This €1.4 million project co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through the Interreg Europe programme interprets urban areas and tourism destinations as testbeds of innovation.
The SHARE projects aim is to exchange know-how related to the management of cultural heritage in tourism destinations and urban settings in order to identify best practices and innovative methods to manage them adopting smart(er) approaches, including those used by smart cities and smart tourism destinations.
Project start: January 2017
Project end: March 2023
Latest news
"Smart" ways to look after heritage sites, with help from Greenwich
Partnerships
- Sviluppumbria Regional Development Agency (Italy) – Lead Partner
- University of Greenwich (UK) – Advisory Partner
- County Administrative Board of Östergötland (Sweden)
- Regional Government of Extremadura (Spain)
- City of Šibenik (Croatia)
- North-East Regional Development Agency (Romania)
- Pannon European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation Ltd. (Hungary)
Project Aim
One of the key innovative elements of the SHARE project will involve the development and testing of a new pan-European framework for local decision makers to identify innovations and manage places sustainably and, more specifically, cultural heritage in tourism destinations. In order to achieve this, the project will review relevant urban policies across 6 European countries and develop bespoke research in the form of case studies, tourism destination audits and surveys of key local stakeholders.
The findings of this research will inform the creation of six Action Plans, which will be tested on the ground during the duration of the project and will ultimately lead to the transfer of the project's outputs into mainstream policy in each country.
In Europe, most of the historical and cultural heritage is located in urban settings. This cultural heritage faces conservation issues, which can often threaten the integrity of sites, the authenticity of the visitor experience and feelings of identity and pride among local residents.
The rationale behind the SHARE project is anchored in the necessity for urban cultural heritage tourism destinations to be protected and promoted effectively through the implementation of better local and regional development policies across Europe.
This includes some of the following specific policy needs: Local and regional policy instruments that address more comprehensively the complexity of urban phenomena and the role of innovation to address these processes;
- Local and regional policy instruments that address more comprehensively the complexity of urban phenomena and the role of innovation to address these processes;
- Keeping concepts such as sustainability and participatory processes at the centre of urban policy making;
- Visioning towns and cities (and their cultural heritage) as key attractors for the visitor economy as tourism destinations, whilst nurturing culture as a key element of place identity for local residents by using innovative approaches to concepts such as liveability and the urban environment.