Lecture: Regional Identity

Cultural identity seems to have become a type of magic word in contemporary ‘transformational commissions’. The focus on historical, geographical and archaeological meanings has really taken off recently and contemporary arts are also being used more and more often in order to map out the cultural identity of a specific area.

In the past few years urban development has been increasingly influenced by historical themes. The uniting of cultural history and urban development became a reality in 1999 with the central government’s policy note ‘Belvedere’ and was permanently adopted in April 2005 in the Actieprogramma Ruimte en Cultuur.
Previous industrial zones are being transformed into creative breeding grounds. Large-scale urban expansion is gaining a personal identity by forging links with the historical development of the actual area. For the spatial planning of regional areas planners are also seeking solutions that do justice to the historical landscape. Each time the design is expected to reflect a distinct identity that ties in with the history of the area and simultaneously boosts its economic growth.

How can cultural-historical values be secured and accepted by our new socio- economic reality? And what meaning can art give to urban and regional planning?

As part of the presentation of the publication Regionale Identiteit, Jan Kolen (Erfgoed van stad en land / legacies of the city and the land) extraordinary professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, spoke about the subject of cultural and regional identity and the role that art can play in this.

The lecture was organized by SKOR (Stichting Kunst en Openbare Ruimte) in collaboration with the Netherlands Architecture Institute and NAi publishers (www.skor.nl; www.nai.nl; www.naipublishers.nl).