“Heritage entrepreneurs": Mechanisms, instruments and sustainability of heritage redevelopment projects in France and Quebec – HerEntrep

On a local and international scale, urban heritage is a powerful vector for development and the enhancement of identities, as well as a lever for the tourist economy and many aspects of regional planning.
The enhancement of urban heritage is studied mainly from the point of view of the public sector. The present project aims to shed light on the role played by property developers in the process of urban heritage development. To do so, it looks at the multiple strategies, particularly land strategies, that are deployed by property developers and seeks to situate the place that urban heritage occupies within them.
The project pays particular attention to the relationship between heritage and sustainable development within the strategies and discourses of property developers. It reinterprets the concept of the neoliberal city by showing that 1) it can include a set of complex, varied and innovative arrangements within a very circumscribed territory that challenge its domination by a homogeneous ethos; 2) although conflicts can arise around the values accorded to tangible and intangible heritage, arrangements can be found around heritage that reconcile uses, exchange values and sustainability.
The project is based on two case studies that have been the subject of heritage policies supported by the inscription on the UNESCO list of World Heritage sites, Quebec City and Bordeaux, which are also twinned cities. It is particularly interested in the strategies of promoters who give a very important place to urban heritage in their "city making" (GM Développement and Norplex in Quebec and ID&AL Groupe and Pierranova in Bordeaux). The interdisciplinary consortium, specialised in urban and heritage issues, will use mainly qualitative methodological tools.