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Rural areas in Europe host more than 55% of the overall population and embed a unique and peculiar cultural and natural heritage. Nevertheless, they are facing common issues of disengagement, depopulation and economic and social crises. Rural communities are increasingly interested in setting up inclusive and participatory regeneration processes, but participatory planning experiences in rural areas are still limited. This paper introduces the Community-based Heritage Management and Planning methodology (CHMP) developed within the RURITAGE project, and analyzes and presents the results of its implementation in six demonstrators around Europe and beyond. The methodology is based on the establishment of Rural Heritage Hubs (RHH), intended as the community of local stakeholders and a physical place to run the co-creation activities. We used four types of feedback—online survey, in-presence survey, consultations and interviews with RHH Coordinators—to analyze the implementation of the CHMP. The research findings show that through built capital (RHH places activated) and through the activation of local social and human capitals (RHH communities engaged in the process), participatory processes can attract local communities and engage them into the development and the implementation of local regeneration plans, fostering heritage ownership and inclusion.

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As increasingly recognized by scholars, climate change is posing new challenges in the field of disaster risk management and urban planning. Even though cultural heritage has passed through decades and centuries, it has never experienced such unexpected and variable events as those forecasted by climate change for the foreseeable future, making it a sensitive element of the living environment. By selecting the city of Ravenna and the cultural heritage site of the Santa Croce Church and archaeological area as a case study, the paper aims at providing an insight into the role that urban planning tools have when it comes to improving the resilience of historical areas, coping with climate change through improvements to the disaster risk management of cultural heritage. Starting from a deep analysis of the existing spatial and urban planning tools that operate at different scales on the Ravenna territory, the adaptive capacity of the historical area toward the identified risks was assessed. The results may lead, on the one hand, to improving the integration of cultural heritage risk management into urban planning tools; on the other hand, they contribute to improving the scope and the governance of the heritage management plans in order to cope with climate change risks and their effects.

Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) is an inclusive approach to the research and innovation process. Regional and local authorities are encouraged to take advantages of RRI in order to address the complexity of the interplay between science and society, especially as it affects territorial development policies. However, adopting the RRI approach is not an immediate or linear process. Consciously or not, many territories have already adopted policies and planning instruments that incorporate RRI, generating effects on the spatial scales. The aim of this study is to provide a methodology to map the inclusion of RRI dimensions (i.e., public engagement, open access, gender, ethics, science education) into regional development policies and spatial planning instruments, in order to detect integrated strategies and elements that are sustainable, open, inclusive, anticipative and responsive. The mapping methodology has been applied to three territorial pilot cases. The results provide the territories with a baseline to improve the integration of the RRI approach in their commitments to develop self-sustaining research and innovation ecosystems. Through the lessons learnt from the pilot cases, recommendations are drawn for the integration of RRI in spatial and urban planning policies and tools.