From tangible to intangible: hybrid tools for operationalizing Historic Urban Landscape Approach

UNESCO Recommendation on Historic Urban Landscape (UNESCO, 2011) introduces a new and systemic approach for the conservation of the cultural heritage. For operationalizing this approach, where the interaction with social, cultural and economic processes and the empowerment of local communities are critical, new tools are needed, capable of addressing the critical issues of both bottom-up and top-down processes. Many communities are enhanced from acting on their physical context, which as cultural heritage in turn become social glue. Through the study of literature and the comparison between some good practices, the paper introduces a methodology for the recovery of built environment and investigates if the actions on the physical dimension of landscape really produce impacts on its immaterial dimension.