2.4. Heritage miningMany cities and

2.4. Heritage miningMany cities and regions have attempted to re-developthemselves through the revalorisation of cultural heritage, usually with an emphasis on the built heritage.Such strategies are particularly prevalent in those placesthat went through a ‘golden age’ followed by a lengthyperiod of economic decline. Bereft of the economicresources necessary to engage in ‘creative destruction’,cities such as Bruges, Florence and Girona have littleelse to exploit than their well-preserved past. In the caseof some regions, the mining is much more literal, as inthe development of old coal mines as new experiencesshows (Edwards & Llurdes i Coit, 1996). The problemsthat affected the old extractive industries also seem toapply to modern heritage mining. As the novelty and/ornostalgia potential of the raw ‘cultural capital’ becomesexhausted, increasingly sophisticated technology has tobe employed to dig still deeper into the cultural resource(light shows, animation, virtual reality).