Culture and sustainability in international Capital of Culture programmes’ macro-level agendas: an ecosystemic and buen vivir perspective

The world’s two oldest Capital of Culture titles, the European Capital of Culture and the Ibero-American Capital of Cultures, have spent decades positioning themselves as engines of urban renewal and cultural celebration. Now, a new study published in the European Journal of Cultural Management and Policy argues that both programmes, despite their official commitments to sustainability, remain trapped inside Western, anthropocentric notions of development that separate culture from nature and sideline the environment almost entirely. The research, conducted by Jenni Pekkarinen of the University of Jyväskylä in Finland, offers a rare critical dissection of how the two flagship cultural programmes frame the relationship between culture and sustainability, and it suggests that without a fundamental reframing, their transformative potential will remain unrealised.

The analysis focused on the official macro-level agendas of the two titles, which were founded in 1985 and 1991 respectively and have since designated more than 300 cities in over 100 countries. The European Capital of Culture operates with a legal mandate as an official European Union action, managed by the European Commission, while the Ibero-American Capital of Cultures is owned by the Union of Ibero-American Capital Cities, a non-governmental organisation uniting 29 capital and major cities across Latin America, Spain, and Portugal. Both titles mention sustainability or sustainable development in their agendas, but previous research had never examined how exactly they understand sustainability or its connection to culture. Pekkarinen set out to fill that gap by analysing the official documents that guide candidate cities and title holders, including the 2014 European Parliament and Council Decision establishing the ECoC action for 2020 to 2033, the European Commission’s guide for bidding cities, and the minutes of the UCCI’s Cultural Committee meetings from 2017 to 2019.

The methodological approach combined frame analysis, originally developed by sociologist Erving Goffman and later adapted for policy research, with an ecosystemic perspective that views cultural activity as embedded in overlapping, interconnected, and interdependent dimensions rather than hierarchical levels. Frame analysis examines how actors make sense of situations, which aspects they select, name, and categorise as relevant, and how they combine elements into coherent stories about problems and solutions. Pekkarinen applied this lens to identify how the two titles construct meaning around the culture-sustainability relationship, paying attention to the various interconnections and interdependences enabling or hindering sustainability transformations within and across the micro, meso, and macro levels of the cultural ecosystem and between that ecosystem and other areas of society and nature.

Crucially, the study enriched this ecosystemic analysis with the concept of buen vivir, or good living, which draws on the lifestyles and philosophies of Latin American Indigenous peoples, particularly the Ecuadorian Kichwa concept of sumak kawsay and the Aymara concept of suma qamaña. Buen vivir emerged as a critical response to development ideology and gained political ground when Ecuador and Bolivia included it in their constitutions in 2008 and 2009 respectively. The concept is not a single coherent philosophy but a contested field of thought with three main streams: an indigenist and pachamamist line, a socialist line, and an ecologist and post-developmentalist line. What unites them is a way of life based on harmony with oneself, society, and nature, alongside principles of biocentrism and plurality and a critical stance towards development ideology. Pekkarinen used buen vivir as a non-Western lens to challenge the dominant frameworks through which international cultural policy typically approaches sustainability.

The findings reveal stark differences between the two titles. The European Capital of Culture understands sustainability primarily in the sense of lasting legacy, categorising desired impacts into cultural, economic, and social dimensions while almost completely ignoring environmental considerations. The word environment appears only once in the ECoC Decision, as an example of a sector with which title cities could develop links. The ECoC frames culture as a driver of local and regional development, presenting the title as an opportunity for cities to create sustainable solutions to their cultural, social, and economic problems through careful planning, cross-sector cooperation, and citizen participation. Its stories warn that poor preparation, weak governance, or insufficient commitment may hinder the realisation of lasting impacts, but environmental issues are never raised as problems or solutions. The guiding frame, Pekkarinen concludes, is culture-led urban development, within which culture is harnessed for the creation of a long-lasting cultural, economic, and social legacy.

The Ibero-American Capital of Cultures takes a different approach, aligning its sustainability aims explicitly with the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and Agenda 21. The IACoC documents state that culture is a dimension of sustainable development and, due to its transformative nature, indispensable for the success of the 2030 Agenda. The proposed selection criteria require each title city to commit to implementing the Sustainable Development Goals at the local level and to include an environmental sustainability perspective in its cultural activities and administration. The UCCI’s 2018 General Assembly minutes even note that the union’s cultural work is based on values of peace, diversity, solidarity, and shared care for people and the planet. Unlike the ECoC, the IACoC documents consider interconnections with the natural environment, mentioning the development of cultural policies in harmony with the environment. The IACoC also takes a more outward-looking stance, critiquing the insufficient recognition of culture in international sustainable development policies and proposing the title as a vehicle for establishing culture as the fourth pillar of sustainable development through international advocacy.

However, the critical analysis through a buen vivir lens found limited transformative sustainability potential in both titles’ current approaches. The ECoC documents show no signs of adopting an active role in sustainability policies or discussions, reinforcing the separation between culture and nature and prioritising human and economic development aims over the natural world. The IACoC’s idea of cultural policies based on plurality, inclusivity, and harmony with nature represents a refreshing viewpoint that could begin to challenge Western and anthropocentric notions, but even these promising stances fail to provide transformative viewpoints because they align with dominant development ideals instead of questioning them. From a buen vivir perspective, both titles’ ecosystemic thinking is limited: their celebration of diversity and agency lacks recognition of alternative worldviews and sustainability conceptions, and they only consider human interconnections, treating the more-than-human world as external to the cultural ecosystem rather than as part of it.

The study argues that more transformative sustainability approaches would require a conscious reframing of the titles’ macro-level sustainability approaches, which would mean questioning hegemonic sustainable development discourses and opening up to alternative conceptions, particularly ecosystemic and biocentric ones. In practical terms, the official criteria could require applicant cities to emphasise respect for planetary boundaries, foster harmonious coexistence in the more-than-human world, or make ecological priorities the central focus. The macro level could even encourage experiments on implementing the rights of nature in local contexts or constructing local culture-led utopias in which dominant worldviews are allowed to be challenged. Importantly, Pekkarinen stresses that the macro level should not dictate the process or end results; CoC projects should be developed locally with a bottom-up approach but based on a set of shared principles that integrate alternative concepts and viewpoints into the titles’ agendas and strategies.

The arts themselves hold untapped potential in this reframing. As essentially cultural and artistic programmes, the two titles currently miss the opportunity to emphasise the transformative potential of the arts in sustainability ambitions and ecological reconstruction. Drawing on Timothy Morton’s notion of hyperobjects, massive issues such as the climate crisis or biodiversity loss that are difficult to grasp, Pekkarinen suggests that CoCs could promote artistic thinking, methods, and viewpoints as possibilities to go beyond ordinary ways of thinking and seeing towards awareness and responsibility. The study also calls for a more critical approach to culture itself, acknowledging that cultures can prevent sustainable change. The wider notion of culture, encompassing lifestyles, value systems, worldviews, and the human-nature relationship, should be recognised as part of the CoC agenda alongside the traditionally understood domain of cultural policy.

The timing of this call is significant. The current period of the ECoC action will come to an end in 2033, and the UN Sustainable Development Agenda concludes in 2030 without having achieved the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Whether the ECoC and IACoC choose to take a more proactive and critical approach or continue to align with dominant development goals remains to be seen. Future research, Pekkarinen notes, should explore how the official criteria are interpreted, adapted, or perhaps challenged in CoC cities and among local culture sector actors and citizens. The two cities holding the ECoC title in 2026, Trenčín in Slovakia with its emphasis on ecological sustainability and environmental protection, and Oulu in Finland with its theme of Cultural Climate Change, would provide interesting cases for such investigation. Less information is available about local IACoC projects, but studying how the macro-level emphases on sustainable development have actualised at the city level since 2017 would be insightful. Research on the sustainability approaches of other Capital of Culture titles would also help understand what kinds of framings of culture and sustainability emerge from different contexts around the world.

Subject of Research: Culture and sustainability in international Capital of Culture programmes’ macro-level agendas: an ecosystemic and buen vivir perspective

Article Title: Culture and sustainability in international Capital of Culture programmes’ macro-level agendas: an ecosystemic and buen vivir perspective

Article References: Pekkarinen, J. (2026). Culture and sustainability in international Capital of Culture programmes’ macro-level agendas: an ecosystemic and buen vivir perspective. European Journal of Cultural Management and Policy, 16, Article 16453. https://doi.org/10.3389/ejcmp.2026.16453

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/ejcmp.2026.16453

Keywords: Culture, sustainability, international, Capital, programmes, macro-level, agendas, ecosystemic, buen, vivir, perspective, scientific research