Participatory practices in heritage management in world heritage cities: a global SWOT analysis

Community engagement is today a goal of heritage management. Participatory practices are generally advocated for matters of authenticity and ethics, but also for the economic, environmental, cultural and social, in short, sustainable development of local communities. However, criticisms and challenges arise due to the diversity of practices, influenced by issues related to specific heritage properties, communities and management models. International organisations and institutions are increasingly integrating topics of community engagement and participation of diverse ranges of stakeholders in their policies, charters and recommendations. The amount of academic and professional publications is growing worldwide, presenting specific case studies and local realities from different world regions. All those studies provide valuable data, but little attempts have been made to compare them, disabling local governments and heritage professionals to learn from best practices and collaborate worldwide. This research seeks to reveal how local governments currently managing World Heritage Cities engage with local communities in heritage management. In particular, it aims at unveiling what is the perception that representatives of local governments, currently administrating World Heritage Cities, have of participatory practices in heritage management, focusing on specific strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in their city. Mayors from the Organisation of World Heritage Cities network, who attended the OWHC 14th World Congress on “Heritage & Communities: tools to engage with local communities”, were invited to contribute to this research by participating to a SWOT analysis workshop. Forty Mayors, from cities representing all the eight OWHC regional secretariats, attended the workshop. First they worked individually on the SWOT analysis for participatory practices in heritage management in their city. Then, divided in 6 working groups, they shared and compared their experiences and practices. Eventually they summarised their findings and presented them to the room, in order to allow fruitful discussions and comparisons between the groups. These data have been recorded, analysed and compared to reveal global and regional trends, common issues, perceptions and strengths, in order to spot new opportunities within the network. The workshop made the communication possible between cities that have rather seldom the chance to learn from each other and come up with new solutions to common issues. This research built the foundations of a continuing dialogue aimed at the improvement of participatory practices in heritage management and at the implementation of national and international heritage policies.