Reclaiming Heritage for UNESCO: discursive practices and community building in Northern Italy

This chapter discusses the impact of web-mediated communication in enhancing cultural actions for heritage promotion, focusing on UNESCO's World HeritageList. The analytic field embraces three sites in the Lombardy region of Italy. A World Heritage Site since 1995, the model workers' village of Crespi d'Adda needs massive regeneration and an inclusive project for its future civic destination. Heading a transnational nomination file of Venetian fortifications from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century, the municipality of Bergamo now seeks citizen engagement. On the outskirts of Milan, Sesto San Giovanni, a former heavy industrial district of the twentieth century, is applying to be recognised by UNESCO as an organically evolvedlandscape. The investigation of visual/verbal materials retrieved online is carried out by means of discourse analysis and heritage studies in order to better understand the contribution of digital media to the synergic making of places and publics.