Heritage Communities Urban Living Lab (HeCo ULL)

Abstract

This research aims to define an integrated methodological approach for activating and implementing Urban Living Labs focused on cultural resources, landscapes and assets, and their enhancement, shaped by the role of the local community and significant historical sites. The CHANGES project - Cultural Heritage Active Innovation for Next-Gen Sustainable Society - is the context to design a circular Urban Living Lab approach where evaluation acquires a central and enabling role. Social Multi-Criteria Evaluation (SMCE) is suitable for inclusion in this decision-making context, instigating a Collaborative Decision-Making Process within co-design phases that actively engage diverse stakeholders, incorporating preferences and facilitating consensus building. Specifically, SOCRATES represents an interesting multicriteria method to investigate for this purpose as part of a methodology that consists of multiple methods of work, design and research. The methodological proposal is the Heritage Communities Urban Living Labs (HeCo-ULLs) approach, a circular framework recognising multidimensional complex values and the aspiration to generate new, locally rooted, and community-driven values. The proposal incorporates the SOCRATES method across various Urban Living Lab development stages. This methodological approach has to be implemented and validated case-by-case, involving local actors and considering the peculiarities of different cultural heritages and related contexts.