Recupero e Manutenzione: la ricerca incontra le esigenze dei territori/ Recovery and maintenance: the research complies with local needs

The areas of Recovery and Maintenance face a scenario of deep transformation of the built environment, subjected to multiple pressures, aiming to restore quality of urbanized territories through the increasing of their “values” over time. In this scenario, Recovery and Maintenance - meant as culture and practice of care to disseminate across the territory - require strategies able to improve the skills of resources management, providing support to the subjects involved in the related processes. The EU policies suggest, as main stimulus to a more effective growth of the construction sector, to drive towards innovation and the regional approach. In Italy, the experiences conducted in the Recovery and Maintenance of the built heritage show numerous critical points: the lack of coordinated planning between operations undertaken within the same territory, the inadequate involvement of private operators and third sector in policy for local development, the use of inadequate approaches to the multi-scale nature of recovery and maintenance. In connection with this situation, the quality of the results achieved and, above all, the limited financial resources available call for a review of intervention strategies and investment policies, to grow in clusters as places of innovation. Therefore, the cluster intends to expand its branches throughout the Country, using the network of Universities to overcome the local borders through advanced forms of proximity and coexistence, helped by the consolidation of relations among research groups and by the opportunities offered by Ict. The specific choices for the Recovery and Maintenance of the built environment frequently generate local conflicts. This condition is mainly due to the rare coincidence of the instances of involved groups, to the conflict between priorities of the Public Administration and businesses interests and to the inconsistency with the needs of the population (Aas, Ladkin, Fletcher, 2005). The role of the Public Administration shall be oriented, at the same time, towards the definition of development goals consistent with both national and EU policies, and to systems of resources and constraints identified in the territories. In fact, the planning of local actions and the implementation of promoting and facilitating tools for the recovery and management of the built heritage require the recognition of shared priorities. The active participation of subjects operating in the territory requires their involvement in all stages of decision-making process, overcoming the top-down or bottom-up dynamics. The role of the Public Administration changes, as mediator of partial instances to identify shared targets, values and strategies. In this process, the Universities and the research institutions have the task of building knowledge networks for local scenarios, able to represent the complexity and the complex values of the territories and to analyze the dynamics of transformation. This knowledge base is essential to put remedy to the conflicts and to promote policies for local recovery and resource management more effective and understandable by the people involved. Furthermore, the possibility of establishing public-private partnerships requires a system of measures to support the business sector, aimed at strengthening the supply chain related to the built heritage by increasing the productivity of investments and activities that in turn can increase competitiveness (research, innovation and promotion). The creation of clusters allows to realize a system of actors, assets and services that takes advantage of competitive edges through economies of management based on cooperation and access to wider markets. This strategy leads to the development of positive system externalities and promotes the growth of specific skills/capacities, according to local goals and available resources. The Recovery and Maintenance cluster is a means to reinforce the identity of territories, providing real opportunities for development, in terms of technical, economic, cultural and social sustainability of the management choices, dedicated to the built environment.