Recentring Peripheral Europe: Spatial Imaginaries and Regional Rescaling in the European Capital of Culture Programme

Abstract

This article examines how the European Capital of Culture (ECoC) programme institutionally repositions peripheral places within European cultural geography. It asks how peripheral locations are revalued through spatial imaginaries, how city titles are re-scaled into territorial platforms, and how symbolic recognition relates to the limits of structural change. A maximum-variation comparison of Matera/Basilicata 2019, Pafos 2017, Leeuwarden–Friesland 2018, Veszprém–Balaton 2023, Bad Ischl–Salzkammergut 2024 and Bodø/Nordland 2024 draws on 21 ECoC bid, selection, monitoring and ex-post evaluation documents, supplemented by peer-reviewed case research, regional survey data and other contextual evidence. The documents were coded through a transparent framework linking theoretical concepts, parent codes, subcodes, empirical indicators and evidentiary thresholds. Symbolic de-peripheralisation is identified only when spatial revaluation and institutional uptake coincide with either scalar repositioning or programme materialisation. The findings show how peripheral attributes are revalued as frontier, bridge, laboratory, open community or cultural landscape; translated into city-regional and multi-scalar programme structures; and selectively validated through the ECoC selection and monitoring system. Symbolic de-peripheralisation is therefore an institutional-discursive process, not evidence that peripherality has disappeared. It redistributes visibility and recognition, while documented resource and governance constraints, together with unresolved questions of mobility, regional distribution and temporal fragility, continue to delimit claims of structural change.