Innovations and innovators in a resilient city: The case of chemical innovations after the 1966 flood in Florence

Over the last decade, the debate on local systems and innovation has been enriched thanks to the ecological approach, as well as to the application of the concept of resilience. Resilience is not only the capacity to absorb shock while maintaining function, but also the capacities for renewal, reorganisation and development. This “adaptive capacity” may be considered in creative approaches as a “creative capacity”, able to generate ideas and innovations after a shock in a creative milieu, such as a creative city. This paper aims to contribute to the still under-researched debate on resilience and innovation, integrating the resilience approach within the creative one, as well as 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 a creative and resilient system, not only to absorb shocks, but also to transform and renew itself through a “creative adaptive capacity”, where cultural and art heritage may both be sources of innovation and of 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 the chemistry in conservation sciences of cultural heritage developed by a scientific network rooted in Florence. The flood was the starting point of the rise of a new innovative trajectory, forming a new scientific niche in modern conservation sciences.