 | Small Town Resilience and Heritage Commodification Small towns are continuously overlooked and under-researched, although they represent a type of urban settlement present in large numbers, especially in Europe. Questions regarding the resilience of small towns are an important issue acknowledged in the EU policy of regional development. This volume is written by an international and interdisciplinary team of scholars who are convinced about the importance of small towns as a research topic. It looks at how towns approach heritage, its instrumental use and its commodification in support of its survival, asking about towns' strategies to achieve resilience to external pressure. The chapters present cases from Europe and beyond. It represents various types of situations and approaches of urban communities, but it is not limited to success stories. The authors deal with places that are undervalued, not fully exploited or in danger because of lack of appreciation. They explore a wide range of strategies in the fields of revitalization stabilization, stagnation, decline or desertification, considering the possible role of heritage, as well as small towns' creativity in networking initiatives. Luďa Klusáková was a professor at the Faculty of Arts, Institute of World History, at Charles University for more than 40 years and directed the Seminar of General and Comparative History from 2000 until her passing in 2020. She graduated from two programmes, history and French, at CUFA. Blanca Del Espino Hidalgo is an architect. She has done her PhD in architecture, Masters in architecture and historical heritage and Masters in sustainable city and architecture. She works as a research fellow in the Andalusian Institute of Historical Heritage. |
