Abstract
Cultural heritage (CH) is considered a key element of cities and regions’ identity anduniqueness, contributing to people's wellbeing and health, as well as jobs creation, environmentalregeneration and place attractiveness. The adaptive reuse of abandoned and underused CH can be asustainable strategy for heritage conservation, stimulating local development processes. However,heritage conservation needs large investments, while the resources available are scarce, and invest-ment projects are subject to high uncertainties. Therefore, a careful assessment of impacts is neededto orient and direct CH adaptive reuse projects towards sustainability. Recent studies approach theadaptive reuse of abandoned buildings and sites as an effective circular economy strategy, potentiallycontributing to climate objectives through environmental regeneration and the reduction of naturalresources consumption. However, evaluation tools to assess the impacts and orient adaptive reuseinterventions in the perspective of circularity are lacking. Through the analysis of 76 literature sourceson CH impacts, this article explores how indicators are currently used in CH research and practice asimpact assessment tools. More than 3500 indicators were retrieved and classified. Finally, this articleproposes a comprehensive evaluation framework to assess the impacts of cultural heritage adaptivereuse in the perspective of the circular economy. The results show that, while some indicators areavailable, many circularity aspects are not considered in the current studies on CH impacts.
Highlights
Cultural heritage is considered a key element of city and region identities and uniqueness, potentially contributing to peoples’ wellbeing and health, as well as to job creation, environmental regeneration and place attractiveness [1,2,3,4,5]
Scope: ranging from the sources strictly focused on cultural heritage impacts, to sources addressing other sectors indirectly associated to cultural heritage impacts (“other topics”) and, to sources linked to the concept of circular economy applied to cultural and built heritage
One of the key studies analysed was Gravagnuolo et al, which defines the circular economy in cultural heritage adaptive reuse as “a sustainable economy that enables a continuous positive development cycles that preserve and enhance the created values, in an indefinite time, of cultural and natural capital, optimises resource yields and minimises system risks by managing finite stocks and renewable flows” [12]
Summary
Cultural heritage is considered a key element of city and region identities and uniqueness, potentially contributing to peoples’ wellbeing and health, as well as to job creation, environmental regeneration and place attractiveness [1,2,3,4,5]. The adaptive reuse of abandoned and underused cultural heritage sites can be a strategy to enhance heritage conservation, stimulating sustainable development processes through new uses of old buildings and sites, co-creating new meanings and re-activating neglected areas, turning them into new vibrant cultural places [10,11,12,13]. Several authors [10,15,16] have stressed the importance of adaptive reuse for urban regeneration. Günçe and Mısırlısoy [17] explored how investments in adaptive reuse can Sustainability 2021, 13, 4759.
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