Role of Cultural Mapping within Local Development Processes: A Tool for the Integrated Enhancement of Rural Heritage

Cultural mapping consists in an innovative tool of knowledge, utilized in the local development processes to enhance territorial resources and to increase local growth in terms of environmental, social and economic sustainability. This research investigates links in strategic planning between heritage, communities and local identity, where knowledge analysis represents the starting-point to define a series of objectives, expressed by local community and by the whole society. Cultural mapping is here applied in the Grecanic Area, a Southern Italian region rich of material and immaterial resources in terms of history, nature, culture and it represents a possible instrument for local development, contributing to arise awareness of the local cultural heritage, discarded too many times just for an ephemeral seaside tourism. The research methodology is companied by a survey about the perceptions of the cultural values, material and immaterial, feeling by the community, tourists and visitors. Data are collected and elaborated as graphics and histograms to get an exhausting vision of the country, especially the historical traditions to the contemporary ones. The results are transferred in a Cultural planning’s action within the borders of the Metropolitan city of Reggio Calabria