Sustaining the Past and Future: Innovative Approaches to Design, Heritage and Environmental Sustainability

Dear Colleagues,

Today, we face an important challenge: we need to sustain the past and look to the future by safeguarding the identity and historical value of landscapes and cultural heritage while preparing and reorganizing territories and cities to cope with new environmental stresses. A renewal of the ways in which to intervene is overdue, and it is increasingly urgent to identify innovative approaches to heritage and environmental sustainability.

It is necessary, at this point, to delve into the connections of the effects of new environmental challenges—reducing land consumption, combating climate change—to landscape and cultural heritage or the impacts of tourism (cultural tourism on land use policies).

Sustainable development and conservation are not mutually exclusive and can be harmonized through thoughtful legislation and the implementation of virtuous strategies, either those already tested or in experimental form. The benefits of integrating conservation with ecological transformation are indisputable. Therefore, the potential long-term impacts of the proposed strategies on both heritage conservation and ecological sustainability need to be explored, with reference to the economic context, that is, the practical dynamics in strategic impact areas that also produce economic externalities and through which urban landscapes are managed and enhanced.

The complementarity between “traditional” landscape and city culture, in the form of architecture and history, on the one hand, and sustainable aspects of urban ecology (parks, waterways, and the like) on the other, is an important notion, not only for urban planning, but also for architecture and all interacting disciplines.

The goal of this Special Issue is to collect papers (original research articles and review papers) to provide insights into various interrelated topics.

It seems increasingly relevant to try to join forces to jointly address heritage and sustainability issues from different perspectives. In fact, closely linked to architectural and urban design, the preservation of cultural heritage and the identity of places include topics such as cultural tourism, sustainable management, energy efficiency, culture, quality of life, sustainable development, participatory initiatives, etc. All are themes that, if reasoned together and as jointly as possible, could lead to the desired overall level of achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN Agenda 2030 and the UN Convention on Biological Diversity.

Climate change and environmental degradation are among the greatest challenges of our time and threaten Europe and the entire world. The European Union (EU) is striving to become the first climate-neutral continent. This also applies to cultural heritage. Sustainability is also one of the five pillars of the Framework for Action on Cultural Heritage, which emphasizes its potential for enhancing social capital, economic growth, and environmental sustainability. The framework includes three groups of actions to regenerate cities and architecture through cultural heritage, promote and work on the adaptive reuse of cultural heritage buildings, and balance access to cultural heritage with sustainable cultural and natural tourism. Culture and cultural heritage, thanks to this project and everyone's diverse input on the topic, can contribute to inclusive and sustainable development.

This Special Issue will welcome manuscripts that link the following themes:

• Heritage and sustainability: strategies for a resilient future;
• Cultural heritage in the age of sustainability: challenges and innovations;
• Regenerating cities and architecture through cultural heritage;
• Blue and green infrastructure in architectural and urban regeneration;
• Urban regeneration projects and strategies on the water edges: best practices for regenerating waterfronts.

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

Prof. Dr. Celestina Fazia
Prof. Dr. Dorina Camelia Ilieș
Prof. Dr. Clara Stella VICARI AVERSA
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 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.

• integrating conservation
• land consumption
• cultural heritage
• green areas and water edges
• architectural and urban regeneration
• waterfront regeneration
• architectural heritage and design
• landscape restoration
• green and blue infrastructure
• sustainable cultural tourism
• re-use of heritage building
• regenerate cities and architecture
• sustainable design
• regenerative design
• climate-resilient design