Risk Map of Cultural Heritage in Urban Waterfront

Abstract

The project Risk Map of cultural heritage is promoted in Italy by the “Istituto Centrale per il Restauro” of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage. The project support the Central Administration for the safeguarding of cultural heritage. In Sicily, Region with a special statute, the Risk Map is edited by the “Centro per il Restauro” of the Regional Authority for the cultural heritage. The Regional Risk Map is developed according to the country peculiarities: one of these is the cultural heritage in urban waterfront. The innovative project of the Risk Map of cultural heritage in urban waterfront aims to mitigate the risks in historical contexts and to convert the threats in creative processes of requalification and development. Threats in waterfronts might be represented by: new infrastructures and new urban functions not compatible with the protection of cultural heritage, economic interests that can cause irreversible transformations of the original context, anthropical pressure that causes crisis in the delicate ecosystems of waterfront, the abandonment to wich it follows pollution and decay. The project, drawn up by the office for urban planning PLANdifferent , aims to review the waterfront issue from the actual problematic condition to a new creative dimension, by promoting creative action toward revitalization of urban waterfront, by recovering the historical and industrial heritage linked to water, by improving the quality of environmental and life, by enhancing the cultural heritage and by stimulating social, cultural and economic development. To set up the tools to promote the aforementioned creative processes, we have analyzed several “cities on water” of Mediterranean Sea and North European Sea. The creative “cities on water” choice, that have promoted their development starting from the regeneration of their waterfront – according to the safeguarding of the cultural heritage –, are: Bilbao, Genoa, Liverpool, Malmö, Marseille, Valencia and Venice. From each case of study, we have extracted the best practices to draw the guidelines of Risk Map of urban waterfront. Beside the theoretical approach, we have done practical experiences in five “city on water” in Sicily: Catania, Messina, Palermo, Siracusa and Trapani. These five cities are currently transforming their waterfronts; it is possible that these transformations became opportunity of development at the local level but also at the regional and international level. Great transformations need projects, policies and joint ventures that could be oriented toward creative issues, the promoting of new places of cultural innovation, the urban quality and creative actions of regeneration. By analyzing the main questions and the expectations of city users, the guidelines of Risk Map applied at the five cases of study have focused these aforementioned opportunities. Finally, the project has been verified through a set of filters on sustainability of transformation in historical urban waterfront. This set of filter is based on seven principles to value the correlation between transformation and safeguarding of cultural heritage, economic and social development, urban regeneration, welfare, local identity and environmental sustainability. In details, the seven principles are: the principle of identity, the principle of economic sustainability, the principle of potentiality, the principle of dynamicity, the principle of interaction, the principle of “multisectionality”, the principle of perturbation.