Role of Cultural Heritage in the Sustainable Development of Rural Settlements

Abstract

World spread globalization is a continuously process which necessitate growing of big cities with prospering metropolises and the process of emptiness small cities and countryside. The problem of the extinction of the Russian countryside is one of the acute social and economic problems of modern Russia. What is more, according to The World Bank’s data, the tendency of the decrease in the share of the rural population is also relevant for countries of Europe and the USA. Likewise, in Russia, for 8 years from 2002 to 2010 the number of abandoned villages had rocketed from 13 to 19.5 thousand. Hence, amount of abandoned rural cultural heritage properties, such as country estates, churches, graveyards is continuously increasing. The paper analyses the ways of how the implementation of modern business models for the above obsolete properties can contribute to the regeneration of rural settlements. Moreover, the research reports the driving forces of the regeneration, barriers, risk and opportunities given by the shift to new governance model as an aspect of sustainable development.

Participatory Process for Regenerating Rural Areas through Heritage-Led Plans: The RURITAGE Community-Based Methodology

“…Therefore, rural areas have great economic and CNH potential that can be exploited in tackling their socio-economic challenges towards a sustainable regeneration of rural communities. While this path has been explored at an international level [6][7][8][9][10], this perspective is rather new in the European context, stimulated by the evolving meanings of CNH and its role in a smart, inclusive and sustainable growth [11] and the overall role of culture as the fourth pillar of sustainable development [12,13].…”