CITY OF ART

The future of art cities in Italy

In memory of Sergio Cordibella, founder in 1990 of Centro Internazionale d’Arte e di Cultura di Palazzo Te

Places of historic, architectural and landscape heritage, cities of art are integral parts of daily life and work, layers of an urban fabric linked to the organising, civil and economic functions of community life.

The art and architecture, historical heritage and urban value of our country pose urgent problems of conservation and planning, and the indispensable need to dialogue with future sustainability and economic development.

On the one hand, art cities have become sure goals for a rapidly growing, progressively global tourism industry; on the other, due to their very characteristics and need for safeguarding, such sites are facing competition from large urban centres whose development has been able to attract intellectual and economic resources.

It goes without saying that art cities face the logistic reorganisation of the contemporary market from a relatively unfavourable position. This is why it is now necessary to plan ways of protecting, preserving and enhancing these cities so that they can generate projects, new forms of entrepreneurship and involvement of other communities, strongly motivated and able to face the local and global dimension of communications and economic exchange.

In the concluding months of Mantua Capital of Culture of Italy 2016, the CITTA D’ARTE 3.0 conference, in sharing some of the practices  experimented in Mantua, not without looking at Italian and international examples, offers a wider reflection on the future of art cities in Italy.

Being a city of art offers the privilege of being right at the heart of art, and it is legitimate and necessary to believe that this value can lead to fruitful transformations in the way of perceiving, seeing, and thinking, with new ideas and new challenges.