| Description |
According to UNESCO’s Culture Urban Future: Global Report on Culture for Sustainable Development (Paris 2016), over half of the world’s population is now living in urban areas. Because of the heterogeneous background of these city populations, superdiversity has become a permanent feature not just of conurbations such as Singapore, Bangkok, and Mumbai. Also Europe is struggling with this challenge, which might create tensions and conflicts and the emergence of old and new cultural practices, reflecting new social identities and shared social spaces (Vertovec, 141). The Dutch city of Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, harbors immigrants with at least 160 different ethnic backgrounds, everyone bringing along his or her own intangible cultural heritage. What is intangible heritage in such an ethnically divided society? There is evidence that in such a superdiverse context, ICH can contribute to community building and more generally to sustainable development. |
