Underground Built Heritage as Catalyser of Urban Regeneration. Case-studies in the Naples Metropolitan Area

COST Action Underground4value promoted a reflection on the planners’ role in the face of the challenges caused by Underground built heritage (UBH) sites’ transition from abandoned landscapes to touristic attractions. This transition involves complex considerations on both heritage preservation and community development, considering that current touristic trends often marginalise local communities, dispossessing them of their spaces, and with them of their traditional activities, rituals, and cultural practices. These changes inevitably prompt alterations to the original cultural landscape and, consequently, reshape the community’s sense of place. The project aims at better defining planners’ role for connecting, in heritage valorisation practices, community empowerment to the main planning metaphors, research process, and construction of meaning. Nonetheless, applying the Strategic Transition Practice (STP) (https://toolbox.underground4value.eu/), it aims at exploring alternative urban regeneration planning trajectories on several heritage sites. Through interviews and in-depth studies, the main result is a reflection on critical conditions for protecting UBH site and developing sustainable transitions, where communities take charge of both economic initiatives, directly or indirectly linked to tourism, and cultural and educational initiatives. Central focus is the Naples metropolitan area, with the Rione Sanità and the Campi Flegrei case-studies.