13. Cultural Heritage, Cultural Tourism, and Creative Economy Basis for Social and Economic Development

Observations show a growing interest in cultural heritage, which seems compensated and opposite to globalization. The individuality of a territory is determined by the cultural heritage, the culture of human relations, from the memory of what is the environment—a measure of quality of life. Cultural tourism is a process in which man strives to regain its proximity to a specific social and spatial environment with lots of authentic identity and memory. Cultural heritage must be present not only in the leisure of the individual and society, but to become part of their everyday life to enhance the value system. Cultural tourism is a major sector of the creative industry. Creative industries are an important tool for socioeconomic development and heralded for urban and regional revitalization. The economy is always influenced by consumption and “production” in the cultural sphere, creating cultural heritage—tangible and intangible, and creative products. The creative industry is working in close collaboration with the tourism industry. An important step in the development of creative industries, on which their growth depends, is to start to work on four themes: access to finance; construction of incubators; initiatives for clusterization; and professional interconnections within the creative industries. Cultural and creative industries usually include cultural tourism, which can increase the added value and create new jobs. By promoting creativity and innovation, the communities will retain their cultural diversity and will enhance economic performance. All activities in the creative industries could develop much more successfully if bound and are incorporated into a single mechanism, to set up and work creatively in tourist clusters.