Participatory Research on Heritage- and Culture-Based Development: A Perspective from South-East Europe

Abstract

The objective of the chapter is to highlight the relevance and implementation of culture-and heritage-led regional and local development in SouthEast Europe. By implementing the participatory research methodology at two major events in Europe, we analysed the practitioners' views on the topics of culture-and heritage-led development. Our results showed that culture and heritage are characteristic and unique and could provide a distinctive added value for regional development as a branding tool, a factor of motivation, community empowerment and a strong element of local identity. Although protection is an important issue in cultural heritage, it should be complemented by education, identification, tourism and development, especially by fostering the economic potentials reflected in increased tourism flows and resulting multiplier effects. Culture and heritage are deeply embedded in a local context, so local communities must be closely involved in the management structures and their views and requirements must be considered. Participatory planning of such sites is welcomed since it includes "negotiating" solutions horizontally and vertically with the main planning goal of making positive changes in local communities and integrating both perspectives (conservation and development) to achieve sustainable futures.

Digital Formats for Community Participation in Health Promotion and Prevention Activities: A Scoping Review

“…The deeper insights into participants' experiences, opinions, thoughts, and recommendations not only benefited the researchers in generating more detailed data. Through participation in focus groups, community members reported benefits including new insights and a broader perspective on issues shared within the group, in addition to a sense of inclusion and community building ( 44 ). This was most evident in the study by Ybarra et al ( 41 ), which found that online focus groups discussions should be further explored as low-cost prevention programs.…”

Cultural landscape changes in the built environment at World Heritage Sites: Lessons from Bukovina, Romania

“…At the same time, however, there is the question of whether locals should be allowed to change their houses as they wish, or if there should be strict regulations in place to restrict such changes in order to preserve the characteristics of the area. This is not a new question as other researchers have raised it before when discussing authenticity and its challenges (Cole, 2007), with some arguing that hosts should have the right to decide on the matter (Zhou et al, 2018) and others proposing context-specific solutions (Bamert et al, 2016;Nared & Bole, 2020).…”

“…The present study responds to this call by investigating the challenges faced by an important heritage destination in Eastern Europe, a region rich in cultural heritage that has been little researched (Nared & Bole, 2020). This part of Europe presents specific characteristics due to its communist past and the transition process that these countries have been going through over the past decades (South East European Heritage, 2011).…”

Tourism-Related Placeness Feature Extraction from Social Media Data Using Machine Learning Models

“…In its contemporary meaning, it is made up of a tangible or physical component, the tangible cultural heritage; and an intangible component, the non-material cultural heritage [9]- [11]. The valuation of CH has been imposed in the narrative that guides the design of tourism products, due to the great dynamizing potential of the society and economy of the territories where it is promoted [12]. On the other hand, it has favored the development of cultural heritage tourism, as a tourism with a global dimension [13].…”