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European cities and regions have a strong cultural heritage preservation tradition that has been traditionally sustained by public management and support. However, the limited capacity and funding availability of the public sector has left a large inventory of cultural heritage assets abandoned, vacant and underused - particularly in cities, but also in small towns and in rural settlements. This, in conjunction with intergenerational and intercultural conflicts, the tensions related to climate change mitigation and adaptation, and a significant decrease in public engagement, has challenged cities/regions and their heritage communities to look for new collaborative approaches, financing methods, and governance models for cultural heritage and urban regeneration that transcend conventional ways and means - specifically through the lens of circularity. The Horizon 2020 CLIC project explored how circular business models, circular financial tools and a circular governance approach could be used to integrate cultural heritage adaptive reuse in the perspective of the circular economy model and circular city implementation. Adaptively reusing cultural heritage sites is a fundamental component of the circular economy and circular city model that the European Union is adopting to replace current linear models. Cultural heritage is the entry point for implementing the circular city. Adaptively reusing cultural heritage not only reduces waste, raw material consumption and energy use, but it also reuses knowledge, preserves tangible and intangible heritage elements (like traditional construction methods, materials, and processes), engages a wider support community for long-term custodianship, and fosters new synergistic business, finance and governance partnership models. A unique approach to address adaptive reuse of cultural heritage in a circular way was developed and tested as part of the project. It brought together unlikely stakeholders in a structured process through local Heritage Innovation Partnerships (HIP) in four pilot areas, to harvest knowledge about local cultural assets, test project-developed tools and methods, and propose mutually-agreed upon pathways to transform a defunct cultural heritage asset into a new living system. This cocreation process resulted in a Local Action Plan for Adaptive Reuse of Cultural Heritage. Conceived as part of the research and innovation agenda for the CLIC project, this approach went beyond single-building architectural and technical matters to encompass circular, environmental, cultural, social and economic considerations about cultural heritage sites and their settings. The HIP concept proved to be an essential element of an integrated planning approach for adaptive reuse of cultural heritage that can be tailored to any sub-national scale (rural and urban). These multi-stakeholder partnerships ensure that a wide and diverse array of stakeholders (including unconventional actors) are included in the process, and advocate for a shared and circular governance model for cultural heritage, with a mix of bottom-up and top-down actions. In the CLIC project, the HIPs were the primary forum for bringing together local stakeholders, municipal leaders, and research institutions to test and assess a variety of tools developed for the project, as well as to explore how the HIP functioned in diverse contexts and configurations. They also helped create new knowledge that could establish a basis for better, more effective adaptive reuse of cultural heritage, as well as inform the decision-making processes and governance structures that make it possible to implement and sustain it over time. Each CLIC pilot produced a Local Action Plan (LAP) as part of the structured HIP process. The LAP was initially foreseen to be a co-created, politically-recognized document to guide future circular, cultural heritage adaptive reuse implementation actions in each pilot area. It was intended to document the key findings and outcomes of the HIP process in each pilot, as well as articulate a shared vision for local heritage assets and include mutually-agreed upon pathways (in the form of objectives and actions) to meet the plan's goals over a specific timeframe. Each CLIC pilot embarked on the same HIP process structure at the same time, however, as anticipated and, due to reasons elaborated on in the following section, the resulting "Local Action Plans" were as distinct from one another as the pilots themselves. This report is a summary document organized into two parts: the first part briefly presents the Heritage Innovation Partnership / "Local Action Plan" development process in each CLIC pilot area by reflecting on the vision, primary objectives, and some critical actions that emerged from that process, as well as the key challenges, innovations, and outcomes. The second part reflects on the HIP process and the considerations needed to optimize it as a replicable collaboration model for adaptive reuse of cultural heritage throughout Europe - and beyond. |
