Cultural Development:
an Opportunity for territorial planning?

Nîmes, France
MTE laboratory, Montpellier III
CEPEL, Montpellier I
ADCEI, Marseille

This symposium, which stems from the activities of the "Mutation des Territoires en Europe" research center (University of Montpellier 3), aimed at confronting interdisciplinary research around a groundbreaking questioning of the interconnection between space and culture. After two previous events focusing on cultural geography, ethnology, and cultural studies this third meeting intended to become a regular, international event in cultural geography research.
The goal is to question very notion of "cultural development", a now common place phrase, though its relevance has never been tested, in order to appreciate its ambiguities, understand the reasons of its popularity, and analyze the illusions it generates.

The link between culture and creativity opens new vistas, cultural activity becoming a sort of pool of creative capital for economic activity as a whole. Economic activities tend to focus more and more on "culture". This economic sector, whose growth is faster than other sectors, seems to crystallize the hopes for economic and social development, innovation, and cohesiveness. Cultural district, polarization, or attractiveness are now plausible explanations for the dynamism of the cultural sector.

The very notion of cultural development has now become the staple of scientific and political discourse on society. It describes the type of development, which appeared in the 70s and 80s in industrialized countries, and refers to the emergence of new processes in a context of competition between spaces of different scale, and of growing interconnection between territories organized in networks.
Le Cultural development suggests a set of representations centering on a few themes: the attractiveness of territories, the creativeness of societies, and social cohesion. Together with "diversity", it suggests a reshuffling of cultural policies on the basis of the participation of numerous actors. Applied to "territory", it enables to make sense of the analyses of the economic impact of culture taken as a factor of local development.

This symposium aimed at a better understanding of what may now well be an overrated notion, to the extent that is has now become a cliché in a context characterized by the crisis of traditional industries, the development of immaterial goods, and of the services sector.

The questioning will take two different directions:
1. Cultural development: can it be defined, can it be conceptualized?
Is it possible to give a definition of cultural development? Can it be explained? As such, the notion may sound meaningless, but it becomes much more significant if it considered from the perspective of territorial resources, as a tool for local and regional development or reconfiguration.
2. Practices: myths and realities
Culture legitimates a number of policies. A utilitarian conception of culture leads to its confrontation with numerous objects; it eventually plays a part in extremely diverse "cultural development" practices.