In recent years adaptive reuse has proven to be a promising strategy for preserving cultural heritage. When the adaptive reuse approach is used for cultural heritage, the expected outcome is not only the building protection, but the preservation of its historical and heritage significance, and the trade-off between the retention of symbolic values and the adaptation to new alternative (economically profitable) uses becomes of paramount importance. Decisions on the allocation of resources for cultural heritage preservation or development are based on a set of multiple, often conflicting, criteria, as well on the preferences of various, and not always consensual, stakeholders, who attribute different relative importance to market and non-market effects of adaptive reuse proposals. In this context, multiple criteria approaches provide a proper theoretical and methodological framework to address the complexity which characterizes adaptive reuse strategies of cultural heritage. This paper aims to contribute to this strand of literature by proposing a multicriteria decision aiding approach for ranking adaptive reuse strategies of cultural heritage. In detail, we present a novel application of the Preference Ranking Organization Method for Enrichment of Evaluations (PROMETHEE) to support the design and implementation of adaptive reuse strategies of abandoned industrial heritage in vulnerable contexts, and evaluate relative tangible and intangible effects. Industrial sites are frequently left to deteriorate, as their preservation is not considered as important as other kinds of heritage structures. Nevertheless, they are characterized by special architectural and technical features as well as by huge spaces suitable to be redeveloped for new uses. The paper focuses on the potential reuse of nine different abandoned buildings located in an industrial valley in the North-West of Italy, with a strong presence of wool and silk factories starting from the 18th century.

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The paper illustrates the development of an evaluation model for supporting the decision-making process related to an urban regeneration intervention. In particular, the study proposes an original multi-methodological approach, which combines SWOT Analysis, Stakeholders Analysis and PROMETHEE method for the evaluation of alternative renewal strategies of an urban area in Northern Italy. The article also describes the work carried out within an experts’ panel that has been organized for validating the structuring of the decision problem and for evaluating the criteria of the model.

In the past 15 years, cultural and creative industries have been center-stage in international and national debates. Policymakers promoted culture and creativity in dedicated initiatives and the need for evidence-based policy has prompted governments to undertake broad-scope cultural mapping, in order to identify spatially-defined systems of cultural and creative activities, such as clusters and districts. This has specifically been the case in Italy where, currently, the term “cultural district” is indifferently adopted for both analyzing a spatial conformation of cultural production and consumption and for promoting specific policies targeting the social organizations managing these activities. It has not yet been questioned whether these two acceptations should be separated or not. In order to address such a question, this paper reviews the relevant national and international literature, provides an overview of Cultural Districts in Italy explaining the contextual characteristics and constraints. It draws on two in-depth case studies: one mainly focusing on cultural mapping and the other on policy intervention. The authors maintain that it is not appropriate to use the concept as an analytical unit as well as a ready-made policy measure, at least with reference to Italy. Significant distinction should be made since the cultural district model has high explicative relevance but it needs to be reconsidered as a policy instrument

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