The “democracy cube” revised: Assessing a culture-led regeneration process in Bergamo City
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Reflecting on the threats of the commodification of art and culture, often driven by top-down cultural policy designs, the paper analyses a collaborative administration procedure between a local public authority (the Municipality of Bergamo) and a social cooperative (Teatro Tascabile di Bergamo). The “Special Public-Private Partnership”, a recent regulation activated for the first time in Italy, led to an effective and participated culture-led urban regeneration process, still acting in Bergamo city (North-east of Italy) and resulted in a best practice of active citizenship in support of social needs. The research question is to understand how far these participatory processes result in a wager democratic space respect the traditional public procurements. We analyse three dimensions strictly connected with the framework of the Democratic Cube developed by Anchor Fung in 2006 to represent the institutional space in participatory governance processes: public engagement mechanism; decision-making power; skilling of actors involved. The visual representation lets us to understand the added value of this kind of collaborative administration devices and where they could be optimized.
Source: Cities
Author: Marco Marucci
Language: English
Subfield: Urban Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,000
OpenAlex ID: W4405613944