and so forth, define the “cultural infrastructure of the territory” encapsulate best the cultural
identity of a territory and its differentiation; they are the subject of cultural policy aimed at their
preservation and promotion.
- tangible, movable collections of objects, compiled in museums and galleries. These assets are
the object of cultural policy: institutions explicitly aimed at colleting, forwarding, and studying
the various traces of the cultural identity of a territory, or a country, or a given historical period.
Their existence and relation with the territory (location, access policy) is “political” as it already
presumes a “will” to defend a given cultural current and “use” culture as a regional asset.
- libraries and archives are a significant aspect of cultural policy, disconnected from the “object”
but aiming at diffused cultural education and sensibilisation of the population regarding the
local culture.
Other dimensions of culture and heritage, especially of the “intangible” type, will be taken care of at
later stages of this study: cultural practices, activities and events; jobs and enterprises in the cultural
industries; production clusters of culture-based goods and services; etc.
On the basis of such data, maps could be compiled according to three basic indicators:
1. Presence of cultural assets. The sheer number of heritage assets in a region allows an
overview of the distribution and localisation of cultural assets in Europe. This information
provides no immediate policy indication, but may illustrate of the “cultural complexity” of a
given territory and of specific cultural environments delimited by administrative boundaries.
In the cases of museums and libraries, this indicator may be an illustration of differential
policy approaches to cultural provisions between regions.
2. Density of cultural assets. The number of assets per square kilometre indicates the
concentration of heritage assets and resources in the space, and could be considered a proxy
of the attractiveness of the region, therefore of the economic potential for development from
tourism but also from other forms of valorisation of local culture: education, heritage
industry, creative industry, which need a “spatial critical mass” to attract the investments and
infrastructure that is needed for development.
3. Use pressure on cultural assets. The number of users (residents and tourists) indicate what is
the “demand basin” for heritage resources and other cultural facilities and therefore what is
the ease of access to culture (or the level of conflict in the access, as in the cases of excessive
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