Adaptive Reuse Practices and Sustainable Urban Development: Perspectives of Innovation for European Historic Spa Towns

Viola Fabi,Emilio Faroldi,Maria Pilar Vettori

doi:10.3390/su13105531

Abstract

Spa towns represented, for decades, a point of reference for the European panorama of health, tourism and cultural exchange. They have been the first tourist destination in the modern sense, as well as a manifesto for a renewed demand of quality and laboratories for architectural and urban experimentations. A product of territorial relations, they have been able to aggregate ideas, capital and skills in a generative logic. However, from the second half of the 20th Century, these cities underwent a series of structural changes related to health and tourism trends that deeply affected all levels of their local systems. Today, these places are witnessing numerous episodes of degradation and abandonment of their built cultural heritage. Promoting a place-based approach, this paper argues that spa towns could be reconsidered as strategic resources in the construction of the territorial capital and that adaptive reuse practices, if integrated into strategic visions, can represent a driver for the activation of a sustainability transition based on ‘fully circular’ processes. Here, the abandoned built cultural heritage represents an opportunity space, a potential catalyst of innovative synergies, and a meeting point between local and territorial interests. While referring both to theoretical profiles and applied research experiences, the paper frames urban transformation and adaptive reuse processes as an integrated challenge within change management logics. Finally, the paper proposes a set of thematic recommendations in order to stimulate the creation of receptive environments for change and deal with the different times, scales, actors and the economic and non-economic interests involved.

Highlights

This paper illustrates the expressed and unexpressed potential that the adaptive reuse practices of built cultural heritage and urban regeneration processes can have within local development and territorial cohesion strategies
The matter is investigated through the context of historic European spa towns: touristic territories that are currently dealing with the instability of their post-maturity phase, in which a decline or renewal is determined by the ability toactivate competitive and sustainable local dynamics [1,2]
The research presented in this paper argues that spa towns, as contexts of high urban and landscape quality, rich in cultural and architectural heritage, may assume a relevant role within local development and territorial rebalancing dynamics

Summary

Introduction

This paper illustrates the expressed and unexpressed potential that the adaptive reuse practices of (public) built cultural heritage and urban regeneration processes can have within local development and territorial cohesion strategies. At the turn of the 20th Century, spa towns represented a point of reference for the European cultural and political panorama. They embodied, since their foundation, urban and architectural experimentations that reflected the evolution of global tourism and health trends [2,3,4,5,6,7]. First touristic destination in the modern sense, spa towns developed through a process of construction of the territory that originated from the identification of privileged locations across Europe—defined by the availability of natural resources (landscape, thermal water), geographical advantages (semi-peripheral location from main urban centres)—and a declared political will (initially aristocratic, bourgeois) [2,3,4,6,7,8,9].

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