The regeneration of minor centres: from planning scenarios to project practices

Minor historic centres in Italy represent a widespread heritage that, already recognized as a repository of historical and cultural values, seems to express today under the new paradigms of sustainability and resilience a potential that can be activated through compatible regeneration processes. The aim of the research, carried out in an interdisciplinary perspective and according to a cross-scale approach, is to define an operative tool to support the policymaking, planning and intervention actions, by local authorities and stakeholders, for regenerative processes capable of combining the heritage preservation with cultural and economic enhancement of the area, tourism promotion with natural resources protection. This paper, considering the first outcomes of the research, proposes a critical overview on the current Italian cultural, regulatory, and strategic framework on the topic of regeneration of minor centres from which a significant divergence between implementation policies and practices seems to emerge. To outline this framework, the research was divided into three phases. The first involved the selection and critical analysis of the main European and national policy documents, regulatory references and ongoing programs. The second surveyed the results of the "Village Attractiveness" initiative, funded by the Ministry of Culture for the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, which is nowadays the main source of funding for regeneration projects in minor centres. In the third phase, the contents of some projects, selected by appropriate parameters, were analysed and collected to build a database. Two significant issues seem to emerge from the research on current regeneration practices - the lack of a long-term vision in planning and the fragmentation of interventions - which lead back to the need to define an operative tool for controlling the regenerative process that is sustainable and respectful of the peculiarities of the investigated heritage.