Cultural symbols as engine for urban regeneration

Culture’s key role in the contemporary urban life is something society accepts, at least at a theoretical level. People consider cities are complex experiences, with many faces. Culture and arts help us understand all this complexity and o!er new means of exploiting their prospects. The practice, on the other hand, needs to take a step forward, especially at a wider, national, angle, as in Romania we do not fully understand yet that cities are cultural multipliers and accelerators, places in which ideas may have great sonority and also investments may have a huge impact. More than that, we do not understand cities as cultural suppliers and engines of the hinterland. Romania’s biggest problem is the absence of strategic management in cities: each urban community should have a series of parametres and indicators according tto its own aspirations. These should be under constant monitoringization, in order to evaluate the direction in which the city is heading. Cultural management needs to detach itself from highlighting only on art forms and it needs to focus rather on the cultural symbols of a specific place, on culture as an experience or a complex reality of a certain place. This approach has significant peremptory implications, as the ministries of culture or the municipal departments that deal with culture need to be departments that promote culture, instead of just being of culture.