From Preservation to Living Heritage Systems: Activating Heritage, Towards Territorial Resilience

1. Introduction

In today’s ever-changing, complex, and uncertain world, the importance of urban and territorial resilience is vital. From natural and manmade disasters and climate change effects to the forces of globalization, cities and territories face a range of challenges that necessitate a focus on resilience. These events underscore the critical need for cities and territories, considered as social–ecological systems and complex adaptive systems, to gain preparedness, adaptability, transformability [1], and the capacity to weather shocks and stresses.

Cultural heritage has increasingly been acknowledged as a territorial asset and a valuable resource for enhancing territorial and urban resilience. It offers a sense of belonging, tangible assets, and historical knowledge that can be effectively utilized in risk prevention and management activities. In the 21st century, cultural heritage—whether submerged beneath the sea, or embedded in rural landscapes, or even inscribed in the urban fabric—is increasingly conceived as far more than a remnant of the past. It is, instead, conceived as a living system, an origin of identity, knowledge, and creativity, and a powerful driver of economic innovation, social and territorial cohesion, and environmental sustainability.

The necessity to rethink the role of heritage is underlined by the above-mentioned converging pressures: the climate crisis and its impacts both on human settlements and on the marine environment, and the accelerating transformation of economies under digital and ecological transitions. Hence, there is a growing demand for social resilience in the face of disasters, inequalities, and demographic evolutions.

The current Special Issue responds to these challenges by bringing together eleven (11) articles, consisting of nine (9) original research articles and two (2) review articles, that explore the activation of cultural heritage across diverse geographic contexts (marine, urban, rural, etc.). The contributions converge on a pivotal argument. Heritage should move from the preservation-related paradigm to the one of active contribution, i.e., serving as a strategic asset in the framework of the place-based approach of development and a contributor to new economic activities (e.g., blue economy), capacity building, sustainable development, and innovation.

The research papers included in this issue span geographically from the Mediterranean to Southeast Asia, from Latin America to sub-Saharan Africa, and from Eastern to Western Europe. They embrace diverse forms of heritage, i.e., maritime cultural heritage (MCH) that includes underwater cultural heritage (UCH), architectural assemblies, vernacular landscapes, traditional practices, and cultural–creative industries. They are all addressing, correspondingly, diverse pathways for the activation of heritage, including maritime spatial planning (MSP) and blue economy, smart specialization strategies (S3/S4), renewable energy transitions, post-disaster recovery plans, and building of social capital as an important component of the territorial capital [2,3] of cities and regions.

2. The Thematic Clusters

The Special Issue distinguishes across the publications four major clusters of articles. The first cluster deals with maritime/underwater cultural heritage in relation to blue economy innovations, the second one with resilience and post-disaster cultural recovery, the third one with urban heritage, in relation to transformation, and regeneration, and the final one with rural heritage, focusing on identity and networking issues.

2.1. Heritage for Maritime and Blue Economy Innovations

The maritime domain offers perhaps the clearest example of how heritage can be mobilized as a driver for development and innovation. The article about “Leveraging Maritime Cultural Heritage to Drive Smart Specialization Strategies” by Kyvelou et al. (List of Contributions) examines the potential of maritime/underwater cultural heritage within the European blue economy agenda. It demonstrates that UCH, when combined with low-impact tourism and nature conservation in soft multi-use (MU) settings, can simultaneously promote ecological integrity, socio-cultural value, and economic liveliness. The Greek case study highlights the untapped opportunities for integrating UCH into regional innovation ecosystems via S3/S4, despite the current gaps in data, regulation, and strategy. The authors strongly opt for the use of maritime spatial planning (MSP) as a tool to enable such an incorporation. Supplementing this, the review on “How to Incorporate Cultural Values and Heritage in Maritime Spatial Planning” Barianaki et al. (List of Contributions) proceeds to a systematic analysis of global literature using also the VosViewer tool to highlight that cultural values are often the “missing layer” in MSP. The review identifies important participatory and knowledge-transfer processes—from the assessment of cultural ecosystem services (CES) to the integration of indigenous knowledge—that can enrich MSP and warrant community acceptance and its willingness to actively support and participate. It strongly claims that embedding socio-cultural values into marine governance is a “sine qua non” condition for promoting sustainable blue activities that are both innovative and socially appropriate.

Together, these contributions shift the discourse from treating maritime heritage as a constraint on other marine uses to recognizing it as a generator of multi-benefit solutions that may combine ecological stewardship with socio-economic opportunities, cultural continuity, and place-based innovation. It reaffirms what UNESCO evokes, that underwater cultural heritage (UCH) should be considered as a contributor to blue economy [4].

2.2. Resilience and Post-Disaster Cultural Recovery

Resilience discourse often focuses on infrastructure, yet these contributions reveal the cultural dimension as equally vital. The article titled “Sasak Cultural Resilience in Lombok, Indonesia” Sasongko et al. (List of Contributions) examines how the Sasak tribe’s cultural values, practices, and social networks shaped adaptive capacity in the aftermath of the devastating 2018 earthquake in Indonesia. By aligning “Build Back Better” recovery plans with local cultural reasonings, the study demonstrates that rehabilitation is more effective and socially embedded when it exploits cultural capital. Similarly, the article titled “Mozambique Island’s World Heritage” Milão et al. (List of Contributions) presents a morphological vulnerability framework for a climate-exposed UNESCO World Heritage property. The island’s dual urban morphology—Stone and Lime town on higher ground and flood-prone Macuti town at or below sea level—demands differentiated strategies. Here, the mixture of traditional building knowledge with GIS-based monitoring is proposed to enhance resilience while safeguarding authenticity and reliability. Finally, the review titled “Water Sowing and Harvesting in Ecuador” by Herrera-Franco et al. (List of Contributions) explores ancestral water management practices as nature-based solutions (NBS) to water scarcity. A SWOT analysis highlights that these low-cost, ecologically effective, and socially embedded practices are not only sustainable but may also have replicability on a global scale, offering resilience to rural communities under climate stress.

Across the above case studies, a shared insight emerges: traditional knowledge and cultural practices are not marginal to resilience; they are multipliers of it. When incorporated into recovery of disaster and climate adaptation, they are anchoring strategies in local realities, foster ownership, and preserve identity along with transformation.

2.3. Urban Heritage, Transformation, and Regeneration

Urban heritage is often contested ground between preservation imperatives and economic development pressures. The three contributions of the Special Issue focused on the urban fabric highlight how heritage can be mobilized as a foundation of sustainable urban transitions.

The research article about “Revitalizing the Canale Maggiore, Parma” Aureli et al. (List of Contributions) offers a fascinating nexus approach between heritage and energy. By putting forward the restoration of the hydroelectric capacity of the historic canal alongside its cultural and recreational value, the research bridges renewable energy production, cycling tourism, and heritage conservation, thus suggesting an integrated model of circular urban metabolism. In addition, the article about “Railway Housing in Francoist Spain” by Martínez-Corral et al. (List of Contributions) addresses a less celebrated heritage: mid-20th-century workers’ housing built during Francoism. These ensembles, often in prime urban locations today, remain 95% in use but are rather undervalued and disconnected from regeneration agendas. The quantitative and qualitative analysis of the research emphasizes their potential for adaptive reuse and social housing renewal, aligning with the 2030 Agenda for sustainable cities. Finally, the research article “Urban Historiography and Graphic Reconstruction of a Historic Area in Valencia, Spain” López González et al. (List of Contributions) employs Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to integrate archival cartography and historical urban data, enabling an “illustrative recovery” of urban evolution. This approach specifies both a tool for conservation planning and a means to strengthen collective memory, particularly in heritage cores where physical recovery is not always viable.

All the above case studies collectively argue that urban heritage is not an inactive constraint but instead a robust asset that may generate economic, social, and environmental co-benefits when embedded in regenerative planning oriented to innovation.

2.4. Rural Heritage, Identity, and Networking

Three contributions address a specific dimension: if the activation of urban heritage often revolves around density and adaptive reuse, rural contexts illuminate identity, social capital, and innovation through networking.

The article entitled “Synergies of Cultural–Creative Industries and Development in Peripheral Areas: Networking, Social Capital, and Place” by Malisiova et al. (List of Contributions), focusing on peripheral Greece, examines the synergy patterns that emerge when formal entrepreneurial networks transect with informal social capital in peripheral areas. It argues that social capital—trust, mutual exchange, and local identity—is the decisive factor for sustaining cultural–creative industries in these contexts. In its turn, the article about “Rural Landscapes along the Mureș River, Romania” by Dragan et al. (List of Contributions) explores how the river acts as both a divider and a unifier of rural identity. The research highlights how landscape heritage is central to residents’ sense of belonging and to the development opportunities (and risks) that arise from that identity. Furthermore, the article about “Knowledge Exchange in 19 Rural Territories” by Åberg et al. (List of Contributions) interestingly presents a methodology for multi-directional knowledge transfer in heritage-led regeneration. By involving local stakeholders in mutual learning and capacity building, the process engenders both solutions and resilient professional associations—an often-overlooked outcome of regeneration initiatives.

Here, another insight is that the activation of heritage is inextricable from place-based identity and the capacity of networking within communities. In rural contexts, the social organization may be more decisive than the physical infrastructure, and heritage-led development is as much about sustaining cultural capital—being part of the territorial capital—as it is about leveraging economic potential alone.

3. Discussion—Key Takeaways

Whilst the eleven (11) contributions in this Special Issue varied in focus and geographic contexts, several key cross-cutting themes are bonding them.

First, contributions converge on the fact that cultural heritage is increasingly acknowledged as a strategic asset. They all underscore the need to reconceptualize heritage from a “perceived constraint” to a “catalytic asset”, gifted to foster innovation, economic diversification, and resilience building, while aligning with overarching policy frameworks such as the European Green Deal, Regional Innovation Strategies, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the EU Climate Law, etc.

Second, the contributions emphasize the effect of networks. From cultural values related to participatory processes embedded in MSP to rural knowledge exchange platforms, or networks—either formal or informal ones—all are key to activating heritage. In this process, collaborative governance, social capital, and trust emerge as added values and success factors.

The incorporation of heritage into policy and planning is a third key conclusion. Whether through MSP, smart specialization strategies (S3/S4), urban regeneration frameworks, or climate adaptation plans, the activation of cultural heritage requires inclusion in policy agendas and policy documents. Individual heritage projects may be inspiring, but only integrated approaches are the ones that deliver durable benefits for local communities, the society, and the economy as a whole.

Finally, traditional knowledge is considered a strong catalyst of innovation. From Ecuador’s water sowing to Lombok’s cultural recovery, ancestral and indigenous practices are reinterpreted as modern solutions, offering low-carbon and community-centered participatory alternatives to simply technocratic solutions.

4. Further Research

In an age of climate change acceleration, ecological disruption, geopolitical uncertainties, and economic shocks, resilience has become a central concern for both terrestrial and marine geographical contexts. Yet, most resilience strategies remain narrowly adaptive, focusing on recovery and return to the previous status quo.

In this sense, further research on the contribution of heritage to territorial resilience may explore the concept of “exaptive resilience”, that is, the capacity to repurpose existing assets, knowledge, and practices in innovative and often unexpected ways to address emerging challenges. Exaptive resilience goes beyond adaptive capacity: it blossoms on diversity, redundancy, undeveloped capacities that can be activated when circumstances change, utilization, and successful management of heritage. It is particularly relevant in territorial systems (urban, rural, and regional contexts) and marine/coastal systems, where overlapping pressures (climate risks, sea-level rise, resource claims, tourism, industrial restructuring, and geopolitical tensions) create both challenges and vulnerabilities and opportunities.

By bringing together perspectives from regional studies, maritime spatial planning (MSP), cultural heritage management, innovation studies, and sustainability transitions, a second Special Issue could ideally seek to conceptualize exaptive resilience as an overarching and strategic framework for territorial development prospects.