Cultural districts and policies. A comparison of different approaches

Glocalization is the new way of defining the double face of the local development: facing the challenges of globalization and to be more attractive on local needs and resources. There are three main approaches to local development. The first one is typically economic, developing industrial districts and local systems of production. This approach envelops also social issues. The second approach is linked to plan and implement of local development policies. In this sense there are all the local agencies and a new way of territorial planning. The last approach involves cultural district. The awareness of cultural identity of territories has brought to a new attention on cultural heritage of any local system. Starting from this awareness, there is no unique model to develop, plan and implement a cultural district, because of the complexity of territories, the interconnection between social, cultural and human capital linked to a local specific context. Aim of this paper is to investigate how actors’ strategies and policies may be a push factor in fostering local development trough the implementation of cultural districts and/or the creation of new ones. The paper will be organized as follows. In the first part a framework for the analysis of the interactions among culture, economy and tourism is presented. In the second part we will analyse the different approaches in defining strategies and policies as far as cultural districts are concerned. In the last part some cases are analysed.