City Centre Regeneration in the Context of the 2001 European Capital of Culture in Porto, Portugal

Abstract

In 2001, the city of Porto hosted the European Capital of Culture event. ‘Porto 2001’ was a year-long programme of arts, cultural events and urban regeneration activities. The purpose of this article is to discuss the city centre regeneration operation conducted in conjunction with the European Capital of Culture initiative in Porto. My objective is to extract a set of lessons learned that can be useful to other cities pursuing the same designation and strategy. The key finding is that despite rich and well-participated cultural events, too much emphasis was put on attracting public investment to regenerate the public space, replacing infrastructures, and modernizing cultural facilities. This was done at the expense of institutional capacity building and boosting civic creativity.

'Our Tyne': Iconic Regeneration and the Revitalisation of Identity in NewcastleGateshead

“…The broader sociological impact of cultural investment on this scale remains intangible and new lessons are constantly having to be learned. For example, in his discussion of the regeneration of Porto in the aftermath of its stewardship of the 'European Capital of Culture 2001 ' Balsas (2004) concludes that too much emphasis was put on attracting public investment to regenerate public space, replacing infrastructures and modernising cultural facilities, but at the expense of more fundamental institutional capacity building and civic creativity.…”

From 'Event-led' to 'Event-themed' Regeneration: The 2002 Commonwealth Games Legacy Programme

“…The Amsterdam Arena, developed as part of the Dutch capital's bid for the 1992 Olympic Games, was developed on a commercial site near to, but physically divorced from the Bijlemeer district, one of the poorest neighbourhoods in the city (Thornley, 2002 to the local people and businesses that need them most. Softer economic and social considerations also need to be addressed (Balsas, 2004). Accordingly, some events have involved deliberate attempts to encourage economic and social regeneration by providing new skills and support for local people.…”

Devenir capitale européenne de la culture : principes, enjeux et nouvelle donne concurrentielle

“…C'est en effet en langue anglaise qu'on trouve les principaux travaux sur le sujet, dont la démarche idiographique semble commune : il s'agit de décrire et d'analyser des expériences concrètes et localisées de capitales européennes de la culture. Précisément, ce sont les conséquences, sur la ville et sa région, de l'organisation de l'opération qui sont au coeur des analyses, que ces conséquences soient appréhendées d'un point de vue socioéconomique (Sjøholt, 1999 ;Herrero et al, 2006), culturel (Ferreira, 2004 ;Deffner et Labrianidis, 2005 ;Werquin, 2006 ;Garcia, 2007 ;Hitters, 2007), en terme d'image (Gomez, 1998 ;Richards et Wilson, 2004) ou de requalification urbaine (Balsas, 2004 ;Garcia, 2004, Gravari-Barbas et Jacquot, 2007. À quelques rares exceptions (Griffiths, 2006 ;Gravari-Barbas et Jacquot, 2007 ;Azam, 2008 ;Giroud et Veschambre, 2010), peu de travaux se penchent véritablement sur ce qui se joue avant l'événement, que ce soit en amont des nominations par les instances officielles avec les projets proposés et les stratégies déployées par les villes pour obtenir le titre, ou lors de la période de préparation de la manifestation, une fois la désignation effectuée.…”