Resilience, creativity and innovation. The case of Chemical innovations after the 1966 Flood in Florence

Over the last decade, the debate on Evolutionary Economic Geography has been enriched thanks to the ecological approach and its application to the concept of resilience to social systems. Resilience is not only the capacity to absorb shocks and maintain functions, but also includes the capacity for renewal, reorganisation and development. This “adaptive capacity” may be consider in creative approaches as a “creative capacity” able to generate ideas and innovations after a shock, in a creative milieu such a creative city. This paper aims to contribute to the still under-researched debate on resilience and innovation, integrating the resilience approach with the creative one, and developing the still neglected idea of a creative and resilient city. We focus on the city of Florence and on the innovations in conservation sciences developed after the 1966 flood. Combining these perspectives, we consider the city of art as a creative and resilient system, not only to absorb shocks, but also to transform ad renew itself through a “creative adaptive capacity”, where the cultural and art heritage may be both a source for innovation and a source for resilience. We investigate lateral and transversal innovations developed from cross-fertilisation processes in the scientific and humanistic knowledge embedded in the territory. In particular, we focus on the innovations in chemistry in conservation sciences of cultural heritage developed by a scientific network rooted in Florence. The flood was the starting point for the rise of a new innovative trajectory, forming a new scientific niche in modern conservation sciences.