Scenarios

Safeguards, rules, management

In the contemporary city – in the current situation of socio-economic and political instability and overabundance of administrative practices – what does combining (superordinate) protection and (local) use mean ? It is obviously a matter of ensuring knowledge and preservation of heritage, but also promoting its potential and appropriate use for current and future needs. The state, regions, and local public agencies can support private initiative enhancement activities and facilities on private property. This public-private balance is complemented by a more complex pair: that of state and local government. Through theoretical reflections and field experiences, the session discusses processes and devices that can be used to better protect, regulate, and manage historic-cultural assets more broadly. The session also welcomes reflections that, looking at the potential and limits of protection, propose reflections, studies and research in other European and international contexts.

Suggested but not exclusive themes:

Protection as recognition, prevention, protection, preservation;
Protection and enhancement between urban laws and regulations;
Public and private assets: actors, actions and tools for protection, planning and integrated management;
Conservation of urban historical heritage, between restoration and urban planning.

Heritage, authenticity, identity

The concept of heritage is changing at a global level. The material dimension, represented by monuments, historic centres and archaeological heritage, has long been exceeded, while the intangible dimension, which includes everything related to the identity of places (local traditions and practices) has become an integral part of conservation, restoration and enhancement actions. This implies the need to mediate between actions to preserve its authenticity and those to promote innovation and adaptation to global challenges. Heritage, in all its complexity, is increasingly threatened by both longstanding and emerging dual risks (tourism and depopulation, musealisation and abusivism, gentrification and immigration, adaptation and abandonment, etc.) that require more refined cognitive, planning and investment capabilities.
The session invites the exploration of modalities, strategies and actions that deal with the care and management of the existing, interpreting historical and cultural heritage as a proactive resource in regeneration processes. Good practices that, through multi-scalar and multi-actor approaches, can propose tools and devices able to manage the complexities and re-actualise the value of places.

Suggested but not exclusive themes:

Positions and perspectives of the heritage concept;
Heritage between potentials and risks;
Multi-scalar and multi-actor approaches to heritage safeguarding;
Tools, actions, and strategies in the transformation processes of the territorial palimpsest.

Landscape and landcare

In his tale of the city of Orte (1974) Pier Paolo Pasolini, italian poet, points out how the problem of the city shape and that of the nature surrounding it are the same question: the built-up area, the architectural composition of the volumes, the dry stone walls, the paving of the country roads, all contribute to compose the image and the notion of landscape considering it as a set.
Over the centuries, the concept of landscape has evolved from a static and aesthetic vision, alternating between a work of art to be admired and a source of primary materials to be despoiled, to a living and dynamic vision that considers it a foundational part of the complex ecological system of the planet, the care of which constitutes the very prerequisite of existence. In an urban dimension that has now overcome boundaries by overflowing into the indefinite territory, the session investigates how care can inform and participate in a new ecological dimension and what regeneration processes and projects of transformation of the existing can increase the resilience of the territory and its communities.

Suggested but not exclusive themes:

Historical evolution and future perspectives of the landscape concept;
Landscape between histories and management tools;
Territory and adaptation to global challenges (climate, migration, mass tourism);
Care as a tool for governing the metropolitanized and fragile territory.

Representations and new technologies

The contemporary city, due to its size, the complexity of its phenomena, the speed and unpredictability of the changes that affect it, requires new codes and new languages of representation, understood as tools of knowledge and governance. New technologies (including digital twin, IoT, GIS, tGIS, AR, AI) now make it possible to process data in real time, hypothesise future visions and generate knowledge economies, contributing to increasingly detailed and dynamic representations of cities and territories, with a wealth of information that requires skills of synthesis and critical-interpretive processing.
The session explores the role of representation and its potential – linked to continuous technological evolution – as a tool to know, design and manage more resilient and antifragile cities in an era of globalised polycrisis.

Suggested but not exclusive themes: