Revitalisation of Public Spaces in Historic Cities

Start Date: 01/06/2024
End Date: 30/11/2026
Web Site: https://www.interreg-central.eu/projects/re-public-spaces/

Historic cities, invaluable heritage, struggle to become resilient to the increasing impacts of climate change. Their structural rigidity and urban density hinder large-scale adaptive solutions.

In historic centers, the internal courtyards of quartered buildings require special attention. These spaces, though distinctive, can amplify heatwaves, reducing thermal comfort. Currently, specific tools and policies for their climate adaptation are lacking.

The RE-PUBLIC SPACES project -funded by the Programme Interreg Central Europe- intervenes to transform this challenge into an opportunity. Its approach is based on the active involvement of local communities and the application of participatory methods, crucial elements for sustainable and effective solutions that emerge from the bottom up, integrated with the needs of those who live in these spaces.

The project partners are developing a new innovative methodology to analyze courtyards as a single spatial organism. This means considering them in their entirety, taking into account the interactions between buildings, vegetation, materials, and airflows. The objective is to create adaptation strategies that are not generic, but based on the specific climatic factors of each region.

To ensure the validity and effectiveness of these new strategies, they are tested and evaluated in local pilot projects, implemented directly in the involved cities. This on-site experimentation phase is fundamental for collecting concrete data and refining the approaches. The results will converge in the drafting of clear and practical protocols and guidelines for the replicability of actions. These documents will constitute valuable tools for public authorities, providing evidence-based and experimental indications to address the adaptation of urban courtyards, transforming them from vulnerabilities into key resources for the climate resilience of our historic cities.