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The industrial landscapes of the Eastern Danube Region

"Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings."

Jane Jacobs , The Death and Life of Great American Cities, 1961

Amine Benabdallah

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T)Our context

Established in 2013, the Association for the Development of Social and Health Tourism (ADSHT) started as a non-profit initiative of the advisory firm Détente Consultants which, over the last 8 years, delivered consultancy services and realized development strategies for the main Romanian central and local public authorities:

Government (Ministry of Regional Development and Tourism – the Strategy for Spa Tourism of Romania, Bucharest Tourism Strategy, etc.),

County Councils and Municipalities (Iasi, Bacau, Slatina, Giurgiu – local development strategies, feasibility studies), etc.

ADSHT is now participating on a regular basis to European funded projects and expert groups and is now located both in Bucharest and Brussels

This presentation aims at introducing how our last projects made us discover the richness and potential of industrial heritage and its linkage with major challenges for territorial development or social cohesion

It is meant to emphasize the consideration of industrial heritage through the landscape paradigm as we tried constantly to insert this heritage in its current environment and in interaction with its surroundings and neighboring populations

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T)A territory: the Romania-Bulgaria Cross-Border Region

The Romania-Bulgaria cross-border region is one of the European Union less developed region, 6 out of the 10 poorest EU regions (NUTS III) are situated in the area.

The Romania-Bulgaria Cross-Border region is part of the European Territorial Cooperation framework (INTERREG) and its latest programme for the period 2014-2020 has just been approved by the European Commission

The association in collaboration with its parent consultancy firm Détente had greatly collaborated to its drafting and worked closely with the Romanian Ministry of Regional Development and Public Administration (MDRAP) on several topics related with industrial heritage

It included the evaluation of the landscapes from the Romania-Bulgaria cross-border area and draft of the landscape atlas

The drafting and publishing of this atlas was a milestone in our grasp of industrial heritage and lead us to set new basis to our approach of tourism development

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T)A living heritage: the landscape

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http://www.spatial-landscapes.eu/index.html

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T)A living heritage: the landscape

On October, 20th 2000, the European Landscape Convention (ETS No. 176) was adopted in Florence by the Council of Europe (COE)

Art 1 of the ELC defines “Landscape” as an area, as perceived by people, whose character is the result of the action and interaction of natural and/or human factors.

Thus the landscape is made of an interaction between the nature and man, this interaction cannot be blocked or stopped, it has to be enhanced and managed since preservation cannot be a synonym for petrification.

Landscape can be defined, as an ecosystem that is interacting with man and that is located at the crossroads of nature and culture. This interaction is mostly beneficial to the population since as an ecosystem, landscapes can provides goods and services in various ways.

Industrial landscapes are exemplary of the division between monofunctional and multifunctional units

For instance, in the county of Mehedinti, they are two communes whose landscapes are mainly related to coal extraction being then coal-mining landscapes.

Before the industrialization these lands were devoted to traditional agriculture. The coal mining introduced a monofunctional use of the landscape, disregarding of any other considerations that the extraction of the precious lignite.

• The result is the loss of groundwater, landslides and important social issues as unemployment

In this region, industrial landscapes are mainly considered as hostile and marked environment where horizons are veiled by decayed chimney and illusory remnants of their smokes.

At the opposite multifunctionality understands the landscape as a “land of opportunities”; it promotes the multiplicity of interactions between the population and the landscape in order to avoid its abuse in favor of a sustainable use

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T)Tourism as a potential threat Tourism development is a key but not the end of the diversification of a landscape’s activities. Admittedly if tourism

is the only function in a landscape, this unit will be dependent on seasonality or on external shocks as an economic crisis.

There are many example of regions where tourism had the same impact than lignite extraction. One function tends to exhaust the resources of the landscape as monoculture exhaust soils.

This threat is well exemplified by the city of Drobeta Turnu Severin. Its “museification” would certainly threaten its future and betray its past as the industrial and cultural centre of southern Romania

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T)Tourism as a key challenge :

Landscape management cannot provide a handbook of typical answers, every situation being unique. That is the main reason why the ELC focused on local communities, because they are the one which know the best their landscapes, its needs, its potential and its threats.

Thus we view the development of tourism in industrial landscapes as an holistic task implying multi-level stakeholders as public authorities, Ngo’s, Sme’s ….

This was the theoretical ground of our application to a recent EU call for proposals:

Transnational cultural tourism products and Tourism and accessibility for all

Theme A: Cooperation projects to support transnational tourism based on European cultural and industrial heritage

We presented the project Danube Industrial Landscapes which included Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania

It stressed the need for a multifunctional approach and considered awareness-raising activities as crucial for its success.

The call oriented us towards this stance as it stated that “industrial tourism is a way to revamp degraded areas both economically and socially: it can ensure a swift conversion of economic activities, generate new revenues and avoid impoverishing of local culture and identity.”

We focused heavily on processes that would help entrepreneurs, Sme’s, Ngo’s, artists and architects to find new uses for old building.

Tourism is an important part and certainly the necessary spark for such plans but its players have to be associated with the whole social, economic and innovative eco-system of the site.

It appears to us as the condition for building sustainable foundations for tourism and territorial development. 7

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T)Danube industrial landscapes:

Heavy industrialization was strongly encouraged by the Soviet Union and in Romania, the Calarasi Steel Works for instance, symbolize both the megalomania of Ceausescu and the chaos of the democratic transition.

Indeed, after the fall of communism, no policies or planning were made to rehabilitate these endless horizons of steels. Thus these facilities have to be secured and the dramatic pollution problems solved.

Then we are certain that this historical context can attract visitors that are looking for a cultural added value to their journey.

According to a survey on the reasons to visit industrial heritage sites, 34.4% of the tourists chose the item “interest in the site”. In the same poll, only 10% of the tourists were looking for recreation.

Joseph S. Chen PhD, CHA , Deborah L. Kerstetter PhD & Alan R. Graefe PhD (2001), Tourists' Reasons for Visiting Industrial Heritage Sites, Journal of Hospitality & Leisure Marketing, 8:1-2,p 25

Post-communism related sites are of historical interest and have become also oddly recreational. This “niche” follows a deep cultural trend particularly present in Germany or in Russia, Ostalgie.

The project’ starting point and questioning can finally be epitomized by this sentence written by René Char in 1946

“ Our heritage is preceded by no testament”.

This is an accurate manner to summarize the situation of the escheated industrial heritage sites located within the scope of the project. We aim at promoting their acceptation as a part of European identity and their consideration as potential resources for regional development.

To fulfil that purpose we intend:

• to assist each type of stakeholders in becoming heirs apparent that understand fully their heritage;

• to design and disseminate concepts, strategies and tools that can value it sustainably as a genuine inheritance.

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T)Planning for 2015

This year is definitely promising for the preservation, revitalization and promotion of industrial landscapes.

This holistic approach allows to embrace both industrial sites and their environment and thus to increase opportunities for funding and above all for many more positive social and economic externalities to our work

We consider industrial tourism as a part of a whole, we firmly believe that our next projects will highlight the necessity to build partnerships with players that are not primarily related to the tourism sector

For this year we are devoted to undertake several activities :

Enhancing our assessment methodology of the main cross-border industrial landscapes

Developing projects in the financial framework of the RO-BG Cross-Border programme and the EUSDR (European Strategy for the Danube Region)

Strengthening our relations with the academic world in order to organise a conference raising awareness about the industrial history of the Eastern Danube Region

Finding new partners that would need us to design or implement innovative projects

Finding new partners as we need to create the more diverse and rich consortia for our future projects

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Thank you very much for your attention

Association for the Development of Social & Health Tourism

E-mail: aben@shtourism.euwww.shtourism.eu

Tel : 00 32 (0)2 31 182 24 Tel : 00 32 (0) 497 83 10 19