Cultural Heritage and the Making of Exaptive Resilience in Territorial and Maritime Contexts

Dear Colleagues,

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

However, this Special Issue explores the concept of exaptive resilience, which 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, utilization, successful management of cultural heritage, and latent capacities that can be activated when circumstances change. 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, this Special Issue seeks to conceptualize exaptive resilience as an overarching and strategic framework for territorial and maritime prospects.

Suggested Topics and Research Questions

1. Theoretical and Conceptual Grounding

• Conceptualizing exaptive resilience: how does it differ from adaptive and transformative resilience (exaptation = using existing structures/knowledge in novel ways)?
• Why it matters for territorial and maritime planning in the context of climate crises, economic shocks, or geopolitical tensions.
• The role of diversity, redundancy, and multifunctionality in building resilience.
• Cross-disciplinary approaches linking ecology, innovation studies, and socio-cultural systems.

2. Territorial Dimensions

• The exaptive use of regional assets for Smart Specialization Strategies (S3, S4).
• Cultural, ecological, and industrial legacies as resources for resilience.
• Urban–rural–coastal interactions in resilience building.
• Exaptive resilience in post-industrial or peripheral regions.

3. Marine and Coastal Dimensions

• Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) as a framework for multifunctional and resilient sea use.
• Blue Economy diversification through exaptive strategies (e.g., repurposing fisheries, ports, shipping infrastructures, or maritime/underwater cultural heritage).
• Maritime/Underwater cultural heritage as a resilience reservoir (identity, education, sustainable/heritage tourism).
• Ecosystem-based exaptations: wetlands, reefs, and seagrasses for flood protection and climate adaptation.

4. Governance, Policy, and Equity

• Institutional and policy innovations enabling exaptive resilience.
• Bridging land–sea governance and breaking sectoral silos.
• Societal participation and the co-creation of resilience strategies.
• Equity dimensions: ensuring exaptive resilience benefits vulnerable groups and regions.

5. Futures and Case Studies

• Island and archipelago case studies as laboratories of exaptive resilience.
• Comparative analyses across territories and marine areas.
• Integration of exaptive resilience into EU frameworks (European Green Deal, Mission Ocean, Blue Economy, Cohesion Policy).
• Methodological and modeling approaches to study exaptive resilience in complex systems.

Expected Contributions

We are inviting conceptual papers, empirical studies, comparative analyses, and methodological contributions from multiple disciplines, including cultural heritage studies, geography, regional science, marine science and maritime spatial planning, economics, political science, and innovation research.

Prof. Dr. Stella Sofia Kyvelou
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Heritage is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• cultural heritage
• exaptive resilience
• territorial development
• maritime spatial planning
• sustainability transitions