The Objectives and Indicators towards Cultural Sustainability

Abstract
While a glance to sustainability reveals its first definitions with the most emphasis on taking advantage
from resources without compromising future needs, cultural sustainability is a term which is rather placeoriented
or at least place-related; not only because each community has its specific culture and value
systems but also for the variety and diversity of its residents’ needs and desires. Moreover culture can be
defined as an ability to retain cultural identity and to allow change to be guided in ways that are consistent
with the cultural values of the people. Also culture is seen as an important contribution to all of the other
fields, including social, and provides a contextual explanation which incorporates diversity and
understanding. Hence, mostly due to the pressure of cultural issues and, most importantly, the increasing
threats posed by rapid globalization to local identities, culture has gradually emerged out of the realm of
sustainability and is now recognized as having a separate, distinct, and integral role. Within the
community development field, culture is defined broadly as being the whole complex of distinctive
spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features that characterize a society or a social group. It
includes not only the arts and letters, but also modes of life, the fundamental rights of the human being,
value systems, traditions and beliefs, etc. (UNESCO, 1995). Within the sustainability field, culture is
discussed in terms of cultural capital, defined as “traditions and values, heritage and place, the arts,
diversity and social history” (Roseland, 2005). The stock of cultural capital, both tangible and intangible,
is what we inherit from past generations and what we will pass on to the future ones. However, achieving
the culturally sustained urban places is an objective which cannot be met exclusively by the manipulation
of the physical environment, and in considering the wide range of elements which must be incorporated in
achieving sustainability, it is more often the non-physical variables that are the most effective ones. The
main objective of this article is to determine the priority of culture in programming toward sustainable
development. To get more focus on the issue, two case-studies (United States and Canada) has been taken
to study and investigate their main indicators which are effective on cultural programming. Finally the
findings of this study are compared with the indicators and the stakeholders in the city of Tehran
concerning the cultural issues. The outcome of the research reveals that cultural diversity and enforcement
of cultural identities are fundamental goals towards cultural sustainability. Hence, as long as culture is
assumed as a high rated aspect in sustainable development, it’s quite important for the municipality of a
metropolis (such as Tehran) to have its own indicators in supporting local identities and characteristics.