Assessing Cultural Heritage Adaptive Reuse Practices: Multi-Scale Challenges and Solutions in Rijeka

Abstract

Cultural heritage is recognized as a driver and enabler for sustainable development, and its role within the circular economy and circular cities is gaining attention. Its adaptive reuse plays a significant role in this while prolonging the heritage lifespan, preserving the values associated with heritage assets, and creating shared values. The adoption and implementation of the adaptive reuse of cultural heritage practices present challenges at multiple levels. This research aims to identify these challenges and propose solutions to overcome them, considering the post-industrial port city of Rijeka, Croatia, as a case study. The adaptive reuse of cultural heritage practices was assessed through a stakeholder engagement workshop performing a multi-scale analysis using the Historic Urban Landscape approach as an assessment framework. Forty-nine themes were identified by content analysis of the challenges and solutions identified by stakeholders involved in adaptive reuse practices and decision-making in the city. The five most mentioned themes refer to aspects relating to participation, capacity, regulatory systems, economics-finance, and knowledge. These findings provide evidence of challenges for policy- and decision-makers to be addressed in policy-making. Solutions are also suggested to facilitate the adaptive reuse of cultural heritage in the city of Rijeka and similar contexts, such as introducing policies to support participatory decision-making whose absence is a barrier.

Exploring the nexus between social vulnerability, built environment, and the prevalence of COVID-19: A case study of Chicago

“… Megahed and Ghoneim (2020) argue for an antivirus-built environment with increased and added security layers to help fight against disease spread, including decentralization, fewer cars and more pedestrian friendly spaces, adaptive reuse, or work-from-home capabilities. Planners have similarly suggested many of these concepts for more sustainable urban spaces prior to and apart from the COVID-19 pandemic ( Freudendal-Pedersen, 2020 ; Kim & Kwon, 2018 ; Liu & Sun, 2020 ; Pintossi et al., 2021 ). Others further suggest greater balance between public green space and private dwellings ( Leng et al., 2020 ; Megahed & Ghoneim, 2020 ).…”

Identifying Challenges and Solutions in Cultural Heritage Adaptive Reuse through the Historic Urban Landscape Approach in Amsterdam

“…This assumption justified the use of the HUL steps to frame the data collection. In fact, the steps (Table 1) were employed as an assessment framework of the adaptive reuse of cultural heritage to better contextualize the identification of challenges and their solutions in the broader heritage planning process [63], considering the various dimensions composing the urban landscape with an interdisciplinary perspective [64]. With this approach, the interdisciplinary nature of both adaptive reuse [24] and heritage [65] was acknowledged, and the various dimensions of cultural heritage and its context were considered.…”

Current Status and Emerging Trends on the Adaptive Reuse of Buildings: A Bibliometric Analysis

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“…In the most current period, the evolution of adaptive reuse has shifted its focus to design for sustainability and innovative technologies [49,73]; and also, the considerable amount of policy-driven studies in the field has been progressively growing and the policy sciences have gained greater traction. Scholars are more interested in understanding how governmental policies, government priorities and actions impact the dynamics of adaptive reuse and its effects on adaptive projects [4,25].…”

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