Eventfully preserved: Turin’s historic heritage in the policies for urban regeneration of the last twenty years

Abstract

Heritage has played a major role in the policies for Turin’s urban regeneration over the last two decades, oft en in connection with strategies aimed at strengthening the city’s cultural economy. Narratives focused on the preservation of historic heritage have been crucial for the local community, depicting Turin as a city capable of fi ghting its industrial decline and reinvent itself through a balanced association of the old and the new. Nevertheless, representations of urban heritage have also remained singularly unfocused and the emphasis placed by local elites upon international competition and urban marketing has favored an opportunistic use of an important symbolic resource.