Public private partnership and urban normative instruments for the conservation of public built cultural heritage

Public properties constitute a significant cultural heritage and a wide range of real estate, characterized by an important strategic value as well as a social and economic potential, which are required to be correctly conserved and valorized, in order to find a solution for the condition of neglect that frequently affects the Italian heritage. Taking into consideration the difficulties in obtaining funds and the deficiency of public financing aimed at conserving immovable heritage, it is necessary to find new opportunities to subsidize public buildings’ conservation and to analyze possible procedures to manage it, improving new business models and involving different actors. As recent approaches promote the merging of investments from different sectors and the exchange of benefits developed through adequate negotiations, an interest towards the participation of private funding in conservation activities upon this kind of asset and public private agreements is increasing. Public private partnership derives from transactions and dialogues between actors from different domains and is the result of complex processes developed through diversified formal arrangements. Combining competences originating from various sectors, it represents the expression of the need of integration between public bodies, private companies, non-profit entities, etc. and the necessity to link together activities, functions, experts, roles, in order to face the complexity of a project. Besides the deficiency of resources, another obstacle could be the planning use, currently regulated not only by the national, but also by each local legislation, which often makes the change of intended use difficult. Specifically, in situations where a public property becomes a private property but the use continues to be a public benefit for the community. In these cases the reflection on the notion of public interest is a key factor in the decision of the building use, it does not strictly depend on the kind of property and it refers to the collective fruition of the asset.