Patrimonio costruito e pianificazione comunale. Per l’introduzione di contenuti qualitativi negli strumenti di Piano per i nuclei antichi

Local urban planning tools generally lack specific guidelines to protect historic buildings in urban settlements. If the monumental heritage enjoys particular attention as protected by the current national laws, the widespread heritage, more extensive and articulated, is more challenging to defend. The issues involved are different. The first concerns the definition of the object of intervention: what is a historic center? How to identify it? Is it possible to define shared guidelines to recognize it, at least at the regional level? Its perimeter takes on a central role, and the second question concerns the building's dating and characteristics to be defined as a historic center if this term is still theoretically valid. The third crucial point concerns the skills required to prepare municipal plans. In fact, in the composition of the professional figures necessary, the plans must never include in the team an architect expert in preservation, with specific skills on the historic built heritage. The paper intends to reread the instrument established by the Lombardy Region with the regional law n. 12 of 2005, the Plan of the territory's government (PGT, Piano di Governo del Territorio) through the specific lens of the historical heritage. The aim is to trace the criteria and guidelines for the historic buildings to identify the critical points. The area chosen as a case study is the metropolitan city of Milan, particularly the 32 small municipalities1 included in it, which are more sensitive because of the limited resources to contrast the progressive degradation of the built heritage. The starting assumption is that the historical fabric requires urban policies to have a different look to understand and integrate the complex relationships between buildings, landscapes, territory, and community.