Adaptive Reuse of Cultural Heritage: Barrier Assessment and Policy-Related Recommendations

The adaptive reuse of cultural heritage is a heritage conservation and urban development strategy that supports circularity in the built environment. A human-centred circular city approach that places cultural heritage adaptive reuse at the core of the transition to circular economy takes into account complex values inherent in cities and their heritage as part of the circular economy agenda. To better understand the challenges to adaptive reuse processes and practices in order to come up with the best solutions and recommendations, the local, regional and national stakeholders involved in the decision-making processes for adaptive reuse policies and practices were consulted to identify the main barriers to adaptive reuse, suggested solutions and to formulate a multi-level toolkit and policy enablers to facilitate and accelerate adaptive reuse in local contexts. This knowledge base thus has a dual purpose: to inform the formulation of the circular instruments and models, and to constitute the first step to formulate policy-related enablers and strategies to tackle these barriers at local, regional, national and global levels. The main barriers to adaptive reuse identified predominantly focus on governance-related issues, followed closely by economic, social, and legislative barriers. The underlying parameters of the identified barriers also served as an initiative for formulating policy solutions and a complex set of toolkit recommendations to tackle these challenges. We identified 18 policy enablers that can be adopted at European, national, and local levels. By raising awareness and building consensus on barriers among relevant actors involved in adaptive reuse, this research also promotes the transition towards a proactive attitude in adaptive reuse practices worldwide.