Cultural heritage and creative cities: an economic evaluation perspective
F. Lazrak,
P. Nijkamp and
Piet Rietveld ()
Additional contact information F. Lazrak: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Faculteit der Economische Wetenschappen en Econometrie (Free University Amsterdam, Faculty of Economics Sciences, Business Administration and Economitrics
Abstract:
Creative classes are usually found in inspirational, cultural environments. From that perspective, the presence of an attractive cultural or historical environment that is actively enjoyed by many people is a major asset for many cities. Cultural heritage has become a resource of both historico-cultural and socio-economic significance in a modern society. The needs of a leisure society as well as the needs of those who want to relax from their daily labour race are often met in places with a local identity and an appreciative specific built environment. Undoubtedly, a main challenge of the modern creativeness fashion is to translate creative and cultural assets and expressions into commercial values (value added, employment, visitors etc.), which means that private-sector initiatives are a sine qua non for effective and successful urban creativeness strategies. In the present paper a survey of methods to value cultural heritage is offered. Most valuation approaches appear to use stated preference methods, but we also observe a limited set of studies using hedonic price approaches. Given the orientation on the local benefits of cultural heritage, the latter class of methods is a promising area of research on the valuation of amenities in creative cities.