Regeneration processes activate stable regimes of interaction and interdependence among the architectural, economic, cultural and social sub-systems in settlements. The thesis of this paper is that in order to progress towards sustainable and inclusive cities, urban governance should widen the decision-making arena, promoting virtuous circular dynamics based on knowledge transfer, strategic decision making and stakeholders’ engagement. The historic urban landscape is a privileged la b for this purpose. The paper adapts the Triple-Helix model of knowledge-industry-government relationships to interpret the unexpected regimes of interaction between Local Authority and Cultural Heritage Assets triggered in the late 90es by the establishment of a knowledge provider such as a Faculty of Architecture in the highly degraded heritage context of the city of Syracuse, Italy. Following this approach, the authors explain the urban regeneration happened over the last 20 years in the port city of Syracuse, based on knowledge sharing and resources’ protection that promoted processes of social engagement and institutional empowerment for both new residents and entrepreneurs.

<p class="Abstracttext-VITRUVIOCxSpFirst">Often in the past, the great disasters (environmental calamities, earthquakes, epidemics) activated unexpressed energies, triggering transformations of the built environment, able to give rise unexpected conditions of economic, cultural and social development. The fragility of settlement systems in the face of unexpected threats brings out the need for a new planning, changing our gaze on the city.</p><p class="Abstracttext-VITRUVIOCxSpMiddle">The new framework of needs drawn by the pandemic and the renewed sensitivity towards the combination of health – sustainability, rekindle the spotlight on inner areas. These emerged as "reservoirs of resilience", areas to look at, in order to reach an eco-systemic balance.</p><p class="Abstracttext-VITRUVIOCxSpMiddle">The aim of the paper is to return an experience of adaptive reuse of the Historical Urban Landscape in an inner area of Southern Italy, where the needs of health and safety of the community are integrated with the transmission of the built heritage to future generations. The goal is the promotion of inclusive prosperity scenarios, towards the so-called "new normality".</p><p class="Abstracttext-VITRUVIOCxSpLast">Starting from an in-depth literature review on the cases of pandemics in history and the strategies implemented, the research identifies health security requirements at the scale of the Historical Urban Landscape and design solutions aimed at reactivating lost synergies between communities and places.</p>

The paper debates the results of a research carried out by the Department of Architecture of the University of Naples “Federico II” (DiARC), as part of the Creative Europe 2018 Artists in Architecture, Re-activating modern European houses program (entitled EACEA 32/2017 and EACEA 35/2017; scientific coordinator: Maria Rita Pinto; project manager: Serena Viola). The research investigates the relationships between creativity and sharing as tools of a new form of social sustainability. These elements can induce positive effects on the settlement qualities of the places, acting as engines of the custody of the settlement values and the collaborative regeneration of the built environment. The methodology is based on participatory approaches able to restore the levels of cohesion, care, and creativity that the experimentation typology of the Artists Residencies is able to trigger on the territory and on the communities who inhabit it. The results return in the form of the complex process of the artist exhibition reception a significant strategy of sustainable development, capable of influencing the community by entrusting it with the role of custodian of the existing heritage and of renewing local entrepreneurship with innovative productions.

The built environment faces challenges in all three dimensions of sustainable development—economic, social, and environmental. The increasing loss of functionality is a cross-sectional issue affecting buildings and settlements and their layering of social, spatial, and cultural processes. Based on a critical review, this paper aims to bridge the gap between international charters and ongoing research for built environments losing their original uses. Three emerging challenges to sustainability in repurposing are outlined from the debate, checking their incidence on research: (a) values preservation, (b) resources optimization, (c) systems effectiveness promotion. Experiences of conversion and regeneration in Japan, the Netherlands, Australia, Hong Kong City, and the USA are taken into account with the aim of comparing approaches, methods, and results. The discussion highlights three key entry points for future research on built environments: (1) communities involvement: new alliances between stakeholders, (2) the potential of technologies: combining resources’ protection and affordability, and (3) renewed productivity to preserve values and uses.

The application of innovative Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to the field of Urban Facility Management (UFM) outlines new possibilities for optimizing existing services and for developing new services based on the key concepts of: Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data, information sharing and smart applications. Such ICT-based services could potentially be able to: transform the demand for infrastructures and physical assets; participate to requalification processes; influence the sustainability of the built environment as well as the economic value of urban areas. Starting from this premise, the paper deals with the contents and the current results of an ongoing research whose aim is to propose sets of classification and coding rules and a framework for identifying, analysing and linking Smart Cities (SC) domains and sub-domains, related UFM services and the various levels of enabling ICT technologies. The application of the proposed framework to a selected representative sample made up by both European Initiatives (e.g. H2020 projects) involved with SC solutions at the urban scale and virtuous cases of cities that have implemented smart solutions, allows to collect, allocate and process information, in a unified way, in order to: • identify and describe the current main trends within each of the SC domains (e.g. mobility, energy, waste, building, governance) and sub-domains; • implement a taxonomy of UFM services, including related characterising parameters and stakeholders; • identify and analyse, according to reading keys, smart UFM services that may have meaningful impacts (accessibility, transport, land-use, etc.) on urban areas; • draw the current innovative scenarios of smart UFM services enabled by ICTs, characterized by information sharing (Big Data flows) and by the integration of physical and digital infrastructures and assets; • highlight the emerging and widespread enabling technologies for smart UFM services, related to each of the layers of the technological infrastructure (e.g. sensing, network, platform, analytics, applications); • investigate the possibility of the creation of context-aware communities through the inclusion of multiple social components. The research, which is part of the PRIN research “Metropolitan cities: economic-territorial strategies, financial constraints and circular regeneration”, aims at providing interpretive keys and structured information, useful to study, evaluate and compare possible influences and impacts of the smart UFM services on the sustainability of the urban environment and on the dynamics of property values. The scenario that emerges from the analysis is inscribed in the broader framework of the circular economy where, with the support of ICTs -based services, cities can put in place virtuous processes to reduce, recycle and reuse waste.