Management of Coal Mining Heritage in Recessive Contexts, from Isolated Site to Mining Basin. A Reflection from the Experience of the Concepción-Arauco (Chile) and Nord-Pas de Calais (France) Basins

Abstract

In Chile and France the closure of coal mining resulted in unemployment and urban decline. After more than a century of activity, abandoned facilities, ruins and large tracts of abandoned land, were left to be degraded. The cities were not prepared to face their urban, social and economic effects. It is interesting to know the potential of mining heritage and what obstacles its management faces, in order to assist the improvements of the inhabited environment. The analysis of heritage management, conversion plans, planning strategies and intervention initiatives shows that being sparingly protected and articulated, the heritage disappears rapidly. Instead, moving from the notion of isolated site to that of coal basin, it becomes easier to integrate heritage into a territorial strategy that can break the stagnation. Two decades later the situation in both contexts is highly dissimilar. In Chile, both the shortcomings of the available planning tools and the weakness of local governments are revealed.