Culture as a Factor of Urban Resilience in Former Industrial Cities Belonging to the UNESCO Creative Cities Network: The Case of Katowice and Saint-Étienne

Cities that seek new development factors in the era of knowledge-based economies and global competition increasingly often turn to culture and the development of the so-called creative industries. The mobilization of endogenous resources leads both to the demarcation of new paths of development and the preservation of continuity through reference to the tradition, skills, and ethos proper to a given area. The author addresses the question in terms of the concept of urban resilience, using the example of two post-industrial cities: Katowice and Saint-Étienne, which are struggling with a lack of positive image and limited access to external resources. He recounts the city authorities’ strategies and attempts to assign them to models of development through culture described in the literature. He devotes considerable space to the tactic of supra-local networking and to cooperation within the framework of international networks. He attempts a critical description of the actual role of culture in the processes of revitalizing selected cities. He claims that culture has a large role to play as a factor enhancing the participation of the inhabitants and thus to the endogenous development of the city. The ability to change the path of development while preserving the cohesion of the process with a city’s historical and cultural heritage testifies, in the author’s opinion, to the existence of a potential for resilience