Cultural heritage preservation and territorial attractiveness: A spatial multidimensional evaluation approach

The introduction of the concept of sustainable development in the field of cultural heritage preservation has stressed the importance of a holistic approach. Achieving a balance among cultural significance retention and economic development is a challenging goal, even more for fragile and vulnerable contexts with limited economic and social resources, low return expectations and a huge tangible and intangible cultural heritage. Given such a complexity decisions about where to place valorisation interventions with the purpose to activate synergies with existing projects and trigger economic and social development processes require to be based on robust evaluation methodologies. According to this instance, Spatial Multicriteria Analysis (SMCA) can support decision-makers along all the steps of the decision process, moving from the intelligence phase to the design and, finally, to the choice one. Within this approach, the study has been focused on the intelligence phase, in order to define a multidimensional analytical framework aimed at mapping widespread cultural heritage with a special attention to its territorial features. The proposed methodological evaluation framework points out the challenge of structuring a decision problem related to the inner areas regeneration by the reuse of cultural heritage placed along slow mobility routes. The results are value maps that provide recommendations for placing culture heritage preservation and reuse interventions, meant as territorial catalyst.