Underground Built Heritage (UBH) is a unique cultural resource, context-specific and characterised by an historical and cultural exclusivity, which influences people's sense of belonging and of 'ownership' of particular localities, as well as daily routines, local rituals, traditions, and atmospheres. Its significance contributes to individual and collective identity, social cohesion and inclusion, and represent a valuable resource for the sustainability challenge. In particular, it has the potential of catalysing urban/rural regeneration, raising community awareness and making local communities more resilient to globalised systems of production and consumption by preserving their unique environmental and cultural aspects. Although UBH success stories have captured the attention of the world, this resource's valorisation finds relevant constraints, such as knowledge gaps and geotechnical and geo-environmental concerns. This paper takes origin by the recently started Cost Action CA18110 "Underground Built Heritage as catalyser for Community Valorisation" (2019-2023). As main reference for promoting a UBH sustainable use, it uses UNESCO "Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL)". It implies the application of a range of traditional and innovative tools, based on civic engagement, knowledge and planning tools, regulatory systems, and financial tools to adapt to different local contexts and built heritage. However, the HUL approach demands for a cultural transition to make planning systems mature. This process can be considered as a sustainability transition, which requires further changes in society and implies complex and uncertain processes, mainly depending on experimentation, learning and sharing ideas. These processes demand to acquire and test tools for encouraging dialogue and engaging stakeholders across society, by stimulating and facilitating communities' empowerment and connecting natural, social, cultural, political and economic environments, gauging impacts across different spheres of life, and grasping the importance not only of 'hard' but also of 'soft' infrastructures". The paper investigates two community management tools - such as Strategic Stakeholder Dialogue (SSD) and Transition Management (TM), and their integration into a new tool, the Strategic Transition Management (STM), based on local communities' experiments and empowerment, and a multi-level strategic dialogue (e.g. Living Labs). Finally, it describes objectives and outcomes, which reveal practices, imaginaries and local cultures associated with the UBH, renews interpretation, and stimulates new knowledge and the perspective vision of local communities. UHB landscape might become a place of equilibrium for nature, identity and attractiveness, by re-associating multiple uses and giving capacity for development at all levels and all temporalities while generating positive and self-sustaining "natural" interdependencies.
Underground Built Heritage as catalyst for strategies of community engagement and regeneration policies
Giuseppe Pace
2019
Abstract
Underground Built Heritage (UBH) is a unique cultural resource, context-specific and characterised by an historical and cultural exclusivity, which influences people's sense of belonging and of 'ownership' of particular localities, as well as daily routines, local rituals, traditions, and atmospheres. Its significance contributes to individual and collective identity, social cohesion and inclusion, and represent a valuable resource for the sustainability challenge. In particular, it has the potential of catalysing urban/rural regeneration, raising community awareness and making local communities more resilient to globalised systems of production and consumption by preserving their unique environmental and cultural aspects. Although UBH success stories have captured the attention of the world, this resource's valorisation finds relevant constraints, such as knowledge gaps and geotechnical and geo-environmental concerns. This paper takes origin by the recently started Cost Action CA18110 "Underground Built Heritage as catalyser for Community Valorisation" (2019-2023). As main reference for promoting a UBH sustainable use, it uses UNESCO "Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL)". It implies the application of a range of traditional and innovative tools, based on civic engagement, knowledge and planning tools, regulatory systems, and financial tools to adapt to different local contexts and built heritage. However, the HUL approach demands for a cultural transition to make planning systems mature. This process can be considered as a sustainability transition, which requires further changes in society and implies complex and uncertain processes, mainly depending on experimentation, learning and sharing ideas. These processes demand to acquire and test tools for encouraging dialogue and engaging stakeholders across society, by stimulating and facilitating communities' empowerment and connecting natural, social, cultural, political and economic environments, gauging impacts across different spheres of life, and grasping the importance not only of 'hard' but also of 'soft' infrastructures". The paper investigates two community management tools - such as Strategic Stakeholder Dialogue (SSD) and Transition Management (TM), and their integration into a new tool, the Strategic Transition Management (STM), based on local communities' experiments and empowerment, and a multi-level strategic dialogue (e.g. Living Labs). Finally, it describes objectives and outcomes, which reveal practices, imaginaries and local cultures associated with the UBH, renews interpretation, and stimulates new knowledge and the perspective vision of local communities. UHB landscape might become a place of equilibrium for nature, identity and attractiveness, by re-associating multiple uses and giving capacity for development at all levels and all temporalities while generating positive and self-sustaining "natural" interdependencies.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
