La sustentabilidad sociocultural del patrimonio urbano de Olavarría (Argentina): una evaluación a través de indicadores

The constant and accelerated transformations affecting cities in recent decades have become one of the main threats to the safeguarding of urban heritage. This issue has prompted the development of strategies that examine heritage through the lens of sustainability, making it a central focus on the agenda of numerous international organizations and researchers. This reality also applies to the intermediate city of Olavarría (Argentina) and its urban heritage, where fragmented public management, limited effective protection, and a lack of social and institutional appreciation place its preservation at risk. In this context, the main objective of this study was to evaluate the sociocultural sustainability of the city’s urban heritage. To achieve this, a set of 24 qualitative indicators was designed and tested. These were grouped into four partial indices—institutionalization, recognition and information, appropriation and participation, and cultural diversity—which made it possible to identify the main variables involved in the sociocultural sustainability of heritage. The indicators were assessed in 2020 using document analysis, interviews, and a community questionnaire. The evaluation showed that the city’s sociocultural sustainability is medium to low, a situation that compromises the preservation of much of its cultural assets and expressions in the medium and long term. This study constitutes a novel contribution to the analysis of the city’s heritage, as it produced both a diagnostic and an evaluation of the sustainability of its urban heritage. It included all identified heritage categories, integrated perspectives from multiple disciplines, and incorporated the views of key stakeholders involved in patrimonialization recognition and management: government officials, experts, and civil society.