Cultural heritage as a key to engagement and participation in Learning Cities programmes

The contribution highlights the importance of tangible and intangible cultural heritage as a key factor in promoting participation in projects linked to Learning Cities. Cultural heritage can become an important centre of aggregation, but it requires specific mechanisms to evaluate the processes put in place. To do this, the paper re-examines the case study of Mantua and Sabbioneta, within the more complex Mobartech industrial research and innovation project, as a practice of urban learning guided by cultural heritage and discusses its evaluative potential. Although not conceived as a ‘learning city’ programme, the institutional anchoring (collaboration with the municipality and local Unesco offices) and the participatory approach to heritage interpretation have allowed it to be interpreted in terms of urban learning ecosystems.