Transnational Urban Projects Assembled within Cultural Heritage sites: protection, accessibility, and valorization in Italian cities

Cultural heritage has become a key asset in public and private investments as an element to enhance the image, tourist attractiveness, and retail appeal of an area, city, or even an entire region. While promising the physical conservation or restoration of cultural heritage, these processes may come at the expense of using transformative projects to generate and extract economic value from places, their uses, and cultural meanings. Today the process of heritage recognition and economic appreciation is generally expected to be driven by high-level technical expertise (e.g. UNESCO and transnational architectural firms) and public interventions rather than community-driven initiatives and political interaction. However, this policy approach can be ineffective due to conflicting planning powers at different levels, inconsistent visions, local activism and antagonism, and other contingent reasons. In fact, much less is known about how these actors interact in localized processes of urban transformation and appreciation of cultural heritage or the stark frictions that occur inside organizations and institutions within design and decision-making processes. This matter is quite relevant in policy practice in Europe, and especially in Italy, the country with the highest number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in the world (53 Cultural sites and 5 Natural sites) as well as substantial investments at stake, from the national recovery plan (PNRR) to dedicated lines in local and regional governments’ schemes. Despite the practical relevance, almost no research findings nor policy guidance explicitly explore these urban planning and design processes nor their effects in enhancing or hampering the protection, access, and valorization of cultural heritage following the completion of such projects. The TUPACH Project breaks new ground by utilizing assemblage theories and methodologies to debunk typical assumptions regarding the role of transnational actors and projects in heritage-rich cities, pose innovative questions, and collect new evidence. The research will develop and draw on six case studies of transnational projects in the heritage-rich contexts of Naples, Rome, and Venice. It will mobilize multiple institutions and local actors within three workshops (dedicated to heritage protection, accessibility, and valorization), and carry out extensive dissemination in the academic realm and transfer in different urban policy arenas. The TUPACH Project will generate evidence-based policy guidelines for heritage-rich cities in Italy and Europe to promote better accessibility, protection, and valorization of heritage within urban projects. These findings and guidelines will positively impact the architectural, urban design, and planning disciplines as well as the governance of complex processes of transformation in heritage-rich contexts to better meet the goals of Horizon Europe Strategic Cluster 2 of Culture, Creativity, and Inclusive Society.