Adaptive Sustainable Reuse for Cultural Heritage: A Multiple Criteria Decision Aiding Approach Supporting Urban Development Processes

Abstract

The European Union identifies the cultural heritage of cities as the main driver of development strategies. From this perspective, adaptive reuse can play a decisive role not only in terms of increasing the life cycle of the heritage but also as an urban strategy capable of generating new economic, cultural, and social values, thus supporting innovative dynamics of local development. The aim is to propose an integrated evaluation model based on the combined use of multi-criteria techniques, which helps to classify adaptive reuse strategies of unused cultural heritage assets and supports decision-makers in the implementation of development strategies in vulnerable contexts. The case study focuses on the potential reuse of some historical fortifications located along the coasts of the Strait of Messina in Southern Italy. The results obtained show that the proposed model can be a useful decision support tool, in contexts characterized by high complexity, able to guarantee the transparency of the decision-making process, and in which it is necessary to highlight the elements that influence the dynamics of the choice for the construction of shared development strategies.

Considering Urban Development Paths and Processes on Account of Adaptive Reuse Projects

“…The current research, following the innovative representation of the complex and dynamic equilibria of the sustainable, the cultural and the smart city, based on a literature review as previously described, proceeds by carrying out an exploratory case study approach, commonly considered to be appropriate for the study of contemporary phenomena [42]. Thus, using a questionnaire, research was conducted towards revealing whether adaptive reuse strategies, which are considered a perfect example of the sustainability principles application [43], practiced on buildings of particular cultural significance, combined with smart city initiatives, ultimately affect local development.…”

Identifying Value-Increasing Actions for Cultural Heritage Assets through Sensitivity Analysis of Multicriteria Evaluation Results

“…The value with the highest priority, l i * , can be considered as a measure of desirability of the project to be implemented. Here, we use the judgement criteria and the related weights adopted in part of the case study considered in [25]: six abandoned defensive buildings near the Italian cities of Reggio Calabria and Messina were to be evaluated against a set of possible reuses in order to choose the best site for each different scenario. In our case, we assume that the reuse destination has been fixed and we want to increase the value of a single asset (Fort Beleno) in this context.…”

“…Even though the related papers are still a small part of the literature, their number has been steadily increasing in the last few years [24]. Della Spina [25], dealing with sustainable cultural heritage reuse in urban development, mentions 16 different methods, highlighting the most popular: the analytic hierarchy process (AHP [26]), the step-wise weight assessment ratio analysis (SWARA [27]), the best worst method (BWM [28]) and the full consistency Method (FUCOM [29]). The choice of the best suited methods depends upon the specific problem.…”

“…Xue et al [9] deal with the communication of intangible cultural heritage, and apply AHP after consulting a selected group of experts through the Delphi method [37]. In the mentioned work by Della Spina [25], AHP is used to compute the weights and EVAMIX to rank the alternatives.…”

How Can I Help You? Questioning the Role of Evaluation Techniques in Democratic Decision-Making Processes

“…During the subsequent decades, practically all evaluation techniques were developed-and expressly presented-as methods designed to aid decision-making (see e.g., [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21]). Today, the terms "(decision) aid" and "(decision) support" are increasingly common in the acronyms denoting the new approaches.…”