Contemporary Challenges for Urban Built Environment and Landscape Conservation: Social, Cultural and Economic Issues

Dear Colleagues,

In the last few decades, growing concern about the negative effects of climate change, environmental degradation, and a land consumption-based planning approach has driven decision-makers to opt for sustainable development models in projects and plans at the urban and landscape scales. This shift in paradigm has resulted in a focus on territorial and urban systems’ built heritage dimension as a possible source for making cities, human settlements, and landscapes inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable. However, the acknowledgement of built heritage’s possible role in sustainable and multi-dimensional development is still struggling to find reflection in intervention and planning practice due to the high thematic and operative complexity of heritage assets’ specificities.

Such a complexity, stemming from the need to balance heritage asset value protection with the social and economic sustainability of conservation interventions, poses several challenges of a cultural, social, and economic nature to decision-makers, planners, and scholars.

This Special Issue is aimed at collecting a variety of research papers and reviews to frame an interdisciplinary and structured debate on how to interpret and address the contemporary challenges related to built heritage conservation. Moreover, coherently with the journal scope, it aims to reflect on heritage conservation’s space in the UN’s urban and landscape planning agenda 2030 (SDG 11) and on the possible role of assessment and evaluation frameworks toward addressing these challenges from an economic, social, and cultural perspective, considering the interaction between these dimensions.

Within this general thematic frame, this Special Issue welcomes articles dealing with the following:

• The existing criticalities or ‘virtuous’ elements in the relationship between territorial planning and conservation at the national and international levels;
• Innovative planning and decision-making approaches to heritage conservation at the urban and landscape scale;
• Heritage-driven or culture-driven approaches to urban and landscape regeneration;
• Participatory approaches to conservation issues and local community roles in heritage landscape planning and decision-making processes;
• Built heritage conservation’s specificities and challenges in development and transformation processes related to different territorial contexts (urban landscape and rural landscape);
• The cultural, social, and economic dimension of built heritage reuse and landscape enhancement;
• Assessment and evaluation methodologies to support conservation decisions;
• The multi-dimensional value of cultural heritage assets and landscape.

We look forward to receiving your original research articles and reviews.

Dr. Francesca Torrieri
Dr. Marco Rossitti
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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• heritage conservation
• cultural landscape
• built environment
• urban planning
• economic evaluation
• reuse
• participation
• social value
• decision-making
• sustainable development

Title: Ex ante designing strategies for reusing and managing the neglected public historical heritage and his landscape within the framework of planned conservation. Insights from the Milanese context.
Authors: Dr. Paola Branduini (corresponding author), Dr. Andrea L’Erario, Prof. Laura Daglio, Prof. Lionella Scazzosi
Affiliation: Dept. of Architecture, Built environment and Construction engineering (DABC), Politecnico di Milano – Piazza Leonardo da Vinci 32, 20133, Milano (Italy)
Abstract: Planned conservation is a systemic and progressive decision-making process. Regarding underused or disused architectural and landscape heritage, the ex-ante identification of appropriate new uses is crucial for the sociocultural and economic sustainability of conservation strategies. The complexity of historical heritage implies its multi-scalar and systemic interpretation, which is often underestimated in current preservation practice due to the absence of appropriate analytical methods. The study describes an iterative methodology to delve into heritage reuse and governance issues within planned conservation and management strategies. The methodology has been designed to be place-based and adaptable to different application contexts. The methodology has been tested within the framework of projects in collaboration with public agencies in charge of owning and managing civil and rural historical assets to define appropriate new uses. By fostering participatory processes through the active involvement of stakeholders and citizens, the method proposes a multi-scalar interpretation of heritage as part of historical landscape systems based on its potential role in renewed sociocultural contexts. By comprehending heritage intervention and reuse limits, the methodology allows identifying economic and technical feasibility for planning long-term conservation and management actions. The paper will critically discuss the positive results and issues of applying the tool to various types of historical buildings (farmhouses, churches, a hospital), emphasizing the progressive improvement of the method’s flexibility and adaptability. The application of the method resulted in the identification of a new set of place-based and appropriate uses for the public assets according to the historical-architectural features and the socioeconomic context’s expectations.