Territorial effects of shared-living heritage regeneration

The paper presents further steps of study started by authors in recent years, as part of the widest international research collaboration, which focuses on shared life and regeneration of abandonment of rural settlements as strategies for the development of sustainable territories. This research aims to understand how the regeneration of ancient community buildings impacts on the sustainable development of the local context. To understand these effects, the research considered four traditional typologies of community buildings, from different cultures: Tulou (China), Cascina (Italy), Hacienda (Mexico), and Marae (New Zealand). Among the tens/hundreds of contemporary regeneration interventions, three contemporary projects per each of these typologies have been selected. To assess the territorial impact of the projects a new approach has been defined using Expert Interviews as the methodology, so as to be able to have an assessment directly by experts in the fields of regenerative projects and sustainable development. The Expert Interviews were held based on a questionnaire that assessed the effects of the projects. For the evaluation of the projects, two categories of indicators have been selected: (1) United Nations SDGs, (2) architectural regeneration indicators generated by the study “The Role of Cultural Heritage in Sustainable Development: Multidimensional Indicators as Decision-Making Tool”, by Francesca Nocca, published in Sustainability (2017, 9, 1882). The research outputs show how the urban-architectural regeneration of these historical typologies can be clearly associated with indications of sustainable development. The results also show that in all four cultures the regeneration of historic buildings provides many benefits to local communities by successfully mixing different income groups and the inclusion of marginalized or vulnerable groups.