Slow Cities

Abstract

The Slow City or Cittaslow movement developed in Italy in 1999 as an offshoot of the Slow Food movement and by 2011 had 147 members in countries on four continents. Since membership in the organization is restricted to centres under 50,000 people, it is clearly a small town movement. The development of a charter of over 50 principles provides a basis for judging whether applicant cities have sufficient agreement with enough of the ideas to be worthy of membership. Although the movement promotes sustainability and green policies, its major emphases are on developing a more relaxing, slow life-style, and supporting autochthonous traits—from local products, processes, crafts and events—providing an alternative to the homogenizing trends in contemporary life. Yet the movement also supports the need to embrace new technologies and improve the quality of the environment, especially features of historical value. In addition it promotes hospitality to visitors, education about food and its enjoyment, and creates awareness in the local population of the slower life-styles being promoted. A review of Cittaslow’s governance shows the problems the movement faces in balancing the preservation of the uniqueness of the participating towns with the need to reach out and embrace ideas from towns in other cultures.

Slow living … is not an escape from global culture into an ossified past but rather it is part of contemporary arguments about how we are to live now and in the future. The idea of slow living represents a contemporary interpretation of the past of places and communities and a mobilization of their traditions, principles and values in order to critique the present and provide alternatives for the future.

Parkins and Craig 2006, p. 78