Políticas Culturais em Revista, the prestigious Brazilian Cultural Policy Journal, has published its latest open access issue which includes an article by ICCE member Dr Cecilia Dinardi on culture-led urban regeneration in Buenos Aires. The journal, based at the Federal University of Bahia since 2008, has an international editorial board of outstanding experts in the field – such as George Yudice, Renato Ortiz, Ana Rosas Mantecon, and Daniel Mato, among many others – and publishes two issues per year in Portuguese and Spanish.
Cecilia’s article provides a sociological critique of the politics underpinning culture-led urban regeneration in order to unsettle the role of culture as panacea, that is, as a universal cure to the city’s myriad problems. Drawing on a case study – the redevelopment of the post office palace into a commemorative cultural centre in Buenos Aires, Argentina – the analysis offers an in-depth account of the policy process by which industrial heritage is redeveloped through a cultural rhetoric. The paper develops an innovative methodological strategy engaging with the past, present and future of an emblematic public building. It finally concludes by drawing attention to the urgent need to adopt a critical perspective to the study of culture-led urban regeneration in Latin America, one which situates the analysis in historical and political terms and acknowledges the contending circumstances out of which these urban strategies often emerge.
The article (in Spanish) is free to read at: https://portalseer.ufba.br/index.php/pculturais/article/view/26730