A comprehensive approach to urban heritage regeneration

Abstract

Urban regeneration has been the dominant practice in revitalising urban heritage over the last three decades. It represents a comprehensive, holistic and integrated approach, encompassing material and immaterial dimensions of space that make up the city’s identity and image, considering the wider city area and systems relevant in the interaction between the city and the citizens. Therefore, it should be grounded on sociological insights into stakeholders’ opinions and accomplished with experts from relevant fields offering a result focused on all elements, “from the spoon to the town”, as EN Rogers defined designing in different scales. Urban and planning practices often focus on the bigger scale, but for the successful reintegration of urban fragments into a functional whole, it is necessary to establish a comprehensive strategy encompassing elements from the smaller scale as well. Simultaneously planning and designing in different scales and grounding the result on both material and symbolic elements of urban space and life would give way to a coherent and meaningful environment supporting the integrity and identity of a place. A comprehensive and parallel approach embodying sociological, psychological, economic and spatial research could provide a strategy for creating revitalised space through the synthesis of urbanism, architecture and design.