Beyond the Management Plan: regulatory instruments for the management of built heritage transformations

Since 2002, all UNESCO sites are required to adopt a Management Plan, a tool aimed at preserving the Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) of World Heritage and at promoting an integrated development of local resources. Despite the strategic value of the Plan, in many cases its drafting is considered a mere formality: therefore, its potential towards the improvement of preservation, and towards the dissemination of good practices by institutional actors and by heritage owners, is not adequately exploited. The company town of Crespi d'Adda (BG), part of the UNESCO World Heritage List (WHL) since 1995, has recently initiated the process for the adoption of the Plan. In accordance with the guidelines drawn up by the Italian Ministry of Culture (MiBAC), the Plan identifies management issues, strategies and actions to be put in place, their timing, the necessary resources and monitoring actions. The drafting of the Management Plan for Crespi d'Adda is a crucial step to guide the village towards sustainable evolutionary processes, contrasting the dynamics of decay and neglect that have affected the site over the past decades. The disposal of the factory, occurred in 2004 as a result of a slow process of decline, has seriously undermined the balance between industrial development, use of local resources and residential sector evolution, which was a reason for the inscription in the WHL. Management planning therefore has to provide integrated strategies, which pursue both valorization, through the site promotion and the extension of its possibilities of use, and protection, through the constant care of the built environment and the management of transformations of the buildings and system as a whole. While the transformations seem necessaries so that the site can be preserved as a living system, avoiding its “musealization”, cumulative effects of punctual actions on buildings and open spaces already put at risk the perception of site values. For these reasons, a further step in the direction of the Management Plan’s effectiveness was required, since the Plan itself has no binding character. This led to the drafting of some regulatory instruments, complementary to the Management Plan. These instruments aim to suggest operational criteria for intervention, supporting the design phase rather than imposing a priori solutions. The first instrument deals with interventions on exterior surfaces of buildings and public spaces. The second one deals with the internal transformations of residential buildings, in order to improve their performances towards new requirements related to comfort and usability. It also includes suggestions for the intervention on construction elements, in order to maximize conservation. The third one provides suggestions related to interventions aimed to increase the energy efficiency of buildings, by respecting conservation needs. The fourth instrument, finally, is aimed at the management of outdoor private spaces, and particularly of the structures used for the storage of cars and equipments. The paper identifies the critical issues related to the transformation dynamics of the site, and describes the regulatory instruments in preparation, highlighting their innovative aspects.