Ljubljana has recently started to accumulate various European and global awards such as the European Green Capital 2016. Article analyses the city’s sustainable living policy that led to this award and assesses non-environmental factors which improve the quality of urban life – an important indicator for various city rankings. Through case studies of urban cycling and gardening, it focuses on the quality of public spaces as perceived by city-supported creative initiatives and by grassroots practices that resist the city’s vision. It concludes with a questioning of the efficiency of current urban policies for improving the quality of life of all citizens.
COBISS.SI-ID: 40925485
In accordance with its green environmental strategy as well as past efforts to obtain and now promote the title European Green Capital 2016, the City of Ljubljana has been in recent years intensively developing its cycling infrastructure and encouraged cycling. An analysis of cycling in the context of the politics of urban spatial planning provides a starting point for understanding the importance of bicycle as a means of transport, a business opportunity, and an actor of socializing events and social change; the impact of city politics on the development of creativity is simultaneously disclosed.
COBISS.SI-ID: 39276845
Article focuses on degraded heritage(s) and their meanings for different groups of inhabitants, interpreting it/them through the studies of dominant and silenced memories. Case-studies of chosen Slovenian urban centres illustrate the consequences of drastic population change after the Second World War and of the transformation of power relations after Slovenia’s independence which brought changes in the political-ideological and economic system. As the authors observed, memories and heritage of Italian, German and Yugoslav inhabitants are often mute and silenced within the contemporary Slovenian hegemonic/authorised heritage discourse. Consequences of changes in social relations were also recognised at the micro level in the valorisation of the socialist heritage of industrial plants and military barracks. Today, these places are left to decay as the material reminders of the unwanted (pre-WWII or socialist) past or they are transformed into centres of youth culture, creative industries or city administrations. However, such reinterpretation does not enable their former users (industrial workers, military officers, former personnel from Yugoslav republics) to access them and claim them as their own heritage.
COBISS.SI-ID: 61429858
The aim of the article is to show how museums and galleries as representatives of cultural industries go beyond regular activities to encourage creativity, support cultural diversity and open access to cultural goods. The article analyses two decades of efforts in Slovenia's museums and galleries to include the blind and visually impaired in their activities in the context of cultural policy and legislative demands. This museum practice today not only contributes to better accessibility of culture to vulnerable groups and their general inclusion, but also yields more positive museum experiences for all segments of visitors, widens the horizon of museum workers, and sensitizes the general public to the position of vulnerable groups in society.
COBISS.SI-ID: 1839238
The article questions the role of culture in sustainable development and is the introduction to thematic section on local (traditional) knowledge as the key for sustainable rural development. Attention is given to concepts such as sustainability, innovation, added value, enterpreneurship, community, social inclusion, accessibility, partnership and community cooperation, which are often theoretically and practically linked to local or regional development. The authors position the studies from thematic bloc within theoretical context of sustainable development and call for analysis of practical obstacles for its realization.
COBISS.SI-ID: 40804397