CA18110 - Underground Built Heritage as catalyser for Community Valorisation (Underground4value)

The proposal will establish and implement an expert network, aiming at promoting balanced and sustainable approaches for the conservation of the underground heritage and, at the same time, realising the potential of underground space in urban and rural areas for regeneration policies. The experts will be organised in three working groups: 1. Underground space conservation and monitoring; 2. underground Heritage-Led urban and rural regeneration; 3. Planning and governance tools. Each expert will share best-practices, by reporting on governance mechanisms, planning framework, stakeholders’ involvement management, financing mechanisms, technical needs, and their direct impacts on the underground built environment preservation, environment, society and economy, as well as potential negative externalities (i.e. ‘gentrification’, hard-branding, mass tourism, recreational villages, underground degradation…). Collected information will be the basis for developing new research and training, open and accessible to all parties interested in the underground regeneration, and it will provide knowledge on main technical and organisational barriers to the underground regeneration and correlated solutions. The proposal aims at guaranteeing continuity of use and significance to the underground historic fabric, revitalisation of the public realm and skills development for townspeople. It will disseminate knowledge on underground culture and assist local communities’ decision-making with adequate cultural, scientific and technical knowledge of the underground built environment from many different aspects (i.e. archaeology, geotechnics, history, urban planning, cultural anthropology, economics, architecture, cultural tourism). Finally, it will contribute to other EU programmes implementation.