RISK MAP OF CULTURAL HERITAGE IN URBAN WATERFRONT

Abstract

Many are the threats and risks in historical urban waterfronts that can cause dangerous effects on cultural heritage. The most important threats are represented by: new infrastructures and new urban functions not compatible with the preservation of cultural heritage; economic interests that can induce irreversible transformations of the original context; anthropical pressure that mines the delicate ecosystems of waterfronts; abandonment to which pollution and decay follow. The Risk Map of cultural heritage in urban waterfront aims to soften the risks in historical contexts and to convert all the possible threats in creative processes of re-qualification and development. The Map aims to review the waterfront issue from the actual problematical condition to a new creative dimension, by promoting the revitalization of urban waterfronts, by recovering the historical and industrial heritage linked to water, by improving the quality of environment and life, by enhancing the cultural heritage and, eventually, by encouraging social, cultural and economic development. Great transformations can only arise when endorsed by big projects, policies and joint ventures oriented to the invention of resourceful improvements targeting the urban quality, the promotion of new places of cultural innovation, and a creative action of regeneration. To set up the tools to promote these creative improvements, several “cities on water “ of the Mediterranean Sea and North European Sea have been analyzed. The creative “cities on water” chosen have promoted their development starting from the regeneration of their waterfront preserving, at the same time, the cultural heritage, and the best practices of urban renaissance have been thus extracted to draw the guidelines of Risk Map of urban waterfront1.