The abandonment of the built heritage, as a result of functional or technological obsolescence or as a consequence of cultural, social, and economic trends, is steadily increasing. This great number of buildings, worldwide spread, offers a huge opportunity to reduce the environmental impacts related to the construction industry. Nonetheless, the recovery and reuse interventions that require the implementation of residual technological performance, to accommodate new uses, are not always environmentally neutral. Therefore, a new design approach needs to be developed so as to improve the buildings’ technological performance and enhance resources and energy already incorporated in buildings. The circular economy principles in the building sector, performance-based building design together with downcycling and upcycling theories are applied to develop a methodology aiming to reduce the environmental impacts within the rehabilitation and refurbishment design process. Starting from the building analysis phase (historical, material, construction) residual performance is evaluated; then the design phase demonstrates that, according to downcycling and upcycling design strategies applied on building components and materials, it is possible improving the building to the required new uses while minimizing transformations and effectively reducing related environmental impacts. The reduction of environmental impacts depends on a careful assessment of the residual technological and structural performance that the building still provides, by involving limited performance implementations to balance rehabilitation needs and environmental protection goals.

This contribution is part of the context of studies on the prospects of eco-oriented territorial rebalancing involving the settlement networks of inland areas. These are characterised by the contrast between socio-territorial disadvantage issues and opportunities to reuse physical resources within the broader framework of territorial regeneration and the revitalisation of local identities. In Italy, the region of Sardinia represents one of the most suitable operational contexts for the study of this relationship due to the presence of a natural context that dominates the urbanised areas and a deep, and in some ways still intact, cultural identity. Between nature and culture lies the issue of urban settlement structures, which are progressively being emptied due to depopulation and abandonment, and which require responses to revitalise territories integrated with the now inescapable ecological–environmental needs. This study proposes the formation of an initial platform of indicators to describe the effects of land abandonment through a multidimensional approach to highlight the potentials and weaknesses of the natural, urban, and socio-cultural heritage. The scale of observation and comparison concerns urban centres and small towns in the province of Sassari in the Region of Sardinia (Italy). The creation of an integrated set of maps highlighting deficiencies, vocations, and unexpressed potentials are the first results of the observation methodology adopted; these residual potentials can be used to design possible redevelopment and regeneration strategies based on the specific vocations of territories and urban settlements.

There is an evident relationship between climate change and the building sector through reciprocal environmental impacts. The circular economy is fitted into this relationship as a mitigation strategy in the building sector, thanks to its nature of life cycle perspective consideration, support for stakeholder collaboration, and the ideology of waste minimization, reduction of natural resource consumption, and greenhouse gas emissions. This article aims to conduct two subsequential systematic literature reviews to evaluate the status in the scientific literature about the circular economy as a climate change mitigation strategy in the building sector and to find the place taken in the scientific literature about the stakeholder’s involvement toward circularity transition in the abovementioned link. As a result of the methodological approach, publicly available and reliable publications have been identified and analyzed based on the publication year and territory. The results indicate an increasing scientific literature contribution about the context, but the stakeholder concept is considerably taken less place; thus, it is a gap in the scientific literature. The stakeholder focal point, which the innovativeness of this article lays down, needs more attention in academic research, thus in the sector with the strengthening collaboration and mutual awareness among stakeholders.

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For years, the building sector has been marked by the progressive exploitation of raw materials and the growing production of waste. The product and process innovations, based on waste valorisation starting from their geographical location and identification, prefigure potential reductions of environmental impacts. This paper presents the methodology and findings of the mapping of waste from construction and manufacturing processes, carried out in Sardinia to identify possible scenarios of valorisation. The geographical location of waste production both in construction and manufacturing processes, along with their possible reuse, have allowed the definition of some supply chains which are able to process their own waste, according to industrial symbiosis scenarios.

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The building reuse can reduce both consumption of non-renewable resources and production of construction and demolition waste, preserving the architectural and constructive culture. The progressive depopulation of the European inner areas is an opportunity to discuss the potential of reuse and sustainable adaptation of extensive heritage sites to cope with abandonment processes. The study of depopulation processes, as well as the investigation of case studies, allows to analyze the main strategies implemented to regenerate and repopulate abandoned inner areas, to highlight successful approaches and intervention criteria. In this scenario, “smart shrinkage” emerges as a powerful strategy to systemize resources and values embedded in the territories. On the basis of the economic-territorial interpretation of the performance decay process of buildings and settlement systems, developed by the research group of the Universities of Sassari and Catania, the paper proposes a multi-scale methodological approach for the evaluation of enhancement strategies and technological upcycling. The research links building performance with the urban and territorial values, integrating the Performance-Based Building Design in an axiological approach based on the solidarity between functions and values, referring to the economic category of human and urban capital. The model is tailored to the characteristics of Sardinia, the Italian region with the strongest population shrinkage in inner areas. The result is an analysis-evaluation-programming model, based on an iterative process of information/decision-making, allowing to steer intervention strategies toward a balance between the rehabilitation of the built environment and the enhancement of cultural and environmental resources, offering new opportunities for socioeconomic development.