Mines and Water

Introduction

As the recent phenomenon of industrial heritage tourism increases across Europe, under an academic perspective it has become remarkably important to outline an overview of the existing literature on the matter hoping to define a clear framework of the socio-cultural and historical origin of the process of industrial sites heritagization, their management, conservation and promotion in the tourism framework.

With this chapter, the author intends to offer a definition of industrial heritage tourism, starting with understanding what is industrial heritage and how it became heritage in the first place; secondly, an analysis of the socio-cultural global context in which the industrial heritage tourism develops will be provided. It is crucial to explain the postmodern socio- cultural context arising from the consequences of de-industrialization, which changed the social fabric and underlined issues involving labour, class, race, gender and so on. The postmodern, globalized historical framework in which the phenomenon develops can be understood within the wider concept of Anthropocene, which defines the core elements of the postmodern society and allows a deeper discourse around the human impact on the environment and how it defines the approach to industrial heritage.

Besides a theoretical outline, in this chapter the European management regulations around industrial heritage sites are seen in relation to the reuse of these settlements and different approaches are roamed. Among these, it is discussed how the criteria for conservation and preservation – aesthetic integrity, technological functionalism – impact the decision-making process for the reuse of such sites; which problems arise, which strengths and weaknesses these buildings pose, the new life they can have, by whom and for whom. Lastly, coming to a more concrete vessel that boils down the academic literature examined concerning industrial heritage tourism, the Bilbao Effect derived from the Guggenheim Museum of Bilbao, Spain, will be proposed as representation of the approaches of renewal of industrial buildings in the tourism context, discussed in its characteristics and impacts on the landscape, economy and local community.

Industrial Heritage Tourism: The Anthropocene and the Socio-cultural Context of the Phenomenon

Industrial heritage refers to abandoned industrial buildings of different sorts which in time have been given new life and use and turned from obsolete and forgotten to areas culturally relevant for the place’s inhabitants, which then include the sites in their mental map of their living space (Rogić, 2009). The process of heritagization of industrial sites finds its roots in the post-war period of the Second World War in the United Kingdom and developed rapidly in other European countries as well (De Bernardi et al., 2019). It was in 1990, within the Council of Europe, when a Recommendation established a legal requirement for the protection of industrial heritage, controlling de facto the intervention on industrial heritage sites and their preservation. Other two Recommendations followed in 1989 and in 2000, to make sure that industrial and rural heritage were properly safeguarded (Rogić, 2009).