CUMET

Presentation

The Cultural Heritage in the Metropolitan Peripheries (CUMET) project deals with the diverse cultural heritage of the peripheries of three European metropolises, Paris, Madrid, Edinburgh, and its potential to contribute positively to contemporary metropolization. Researchers from three Una Europa universities – Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Complutense University of Madrid, University of Edinburgh – participate in the CUMET project whose objective is to analyze both opportunities and risks for cultural heritage at the metropolitan peripheries. CUMET is interdisciplinary and intersectoral and adopts a comparative methodology.

Heritagization and metropolization

Usually considered as the “city’s backyards”, urban peripheries are crucial for contemporary metropolization. They are the theater of diverse social processes and reconfigurations, which involve formal, functional and symbolic changes that include the formulation of nex uses of public space, the creation of new landmarks, references or heritage symbols. They offer the potential for renewed and more inclusive understanding of often contested and dissonant) cultural heritage. They are, therefore, of increasing interest to national, regional and local governments, private investors and local communities.

Heritage of the metropolitan peripheries includes architectural heritage – industrial areas, factories and warehouses, both obsolete and in use; transport infrastructure including airports, canals and railways; housing, and contemporary residential architecture. It also comprises the rich intangible heritages of working-class and/or migrant communities, in process of constant change and reconfiguration through protest, negotiation, and cultural expression.

However, despite the conceptual broadening of heritage to include more recent heritage elements (19th_20th century) or non-monumental architectural typologies, the heritage of metropolitan peripheries suffers from neglect in comparison to city centers, and their well-recognized cultural zones, monuments, museums, and sights. Peripheral cultural heritage tends to be vulnerable, and ephemeral.