TOWARDS MULTI-CRITERIA ANALYSIS FOR CIRCULAR ECONOMY IN ADAPTIVE REUSE OF CULTURAL HERITAGE

Cities face growing challenges from demographics, mass-urbanization, new development
projects, tourism growth, and climate change issues, threatening the preservation
of their cultural urban heritage. Most of these challenges are related to economic
rationale and a better understanding of heritage economics may contribute to
urban conservation planning. As cities compete for attracting new residents, visitors,
businesses, jobs, skills, talents, and innovations, heritage economics and urban conservation
can go hand in hand to improve the liveability of cities, and shape their
sustainable development.
The integration of heritage economics in urban conservation planning is in line
with UNESCO’s commitment to enhance sustainability of cities on the basis of the
New Urban Agenda which is embedded in the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable
Development. The Goal 11: “Cities being inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable” and in particular
the Target 11.4 “Conserve natural and cultural heritage” addresses the issue of the
conservation of natural and cultural heritage.
The noticeable point in the list of sustainable development goals is that culture
does not appear explicitly, although it is present in most of the other objectives defined
by the United Nations. It is peculiar to the field of culture to offer a context that
encompas all possible concerns of sustainable development. Culture − and cultural
heritage in particular − provides a framework for reflection about all primary and
secondary needs of humand kind. Therefore it is not surprising to see culture as the
underlying vector for all development and improvement of countries’ basic needs.
Thus, cultural policy is a major axis of sustainable development, not only in its
capacity to make a direct contribution to the creation of innovative and value-laden
goods and services, but also for its capacity to give sense to the other development
axes (education, quality of life, health, social policies, diversity, reduction of inequalities,
etc.). The particular case of architectural heritage has the same advantages as
culture taken as a whole. The tangible heritage renders an essential service to the
people by offering a place to live, or a place of be sheltered, while at the same time
it creates symbolic and identity values which are essential to the local communities.
Uses and non-uses, use values and non-use values are the economic terms of such
double dimension of tangible cultural heritage. In parallel, intangible cultural heritage
offers a range of services to the benefit of a broad population, while simultaneously
giving sense and values to this population. The paradigm of heritage conservation is impacted by this new perspective on culture,
and on its central role in sustainable development. In fact, the principle of “culture
as a legitimate end in itself” (culture as cultural topic only) is now challenged. In particular
in the field of tangible conservation, there is a shift from the monument to its use value.
While conservation put emphasis on the works to be done to restore a building, there is
a trend for putting more emphasis on the use (and reuse) that will justifiy its preservation.