Exploring Public-Private-Community Partnerships in Governing Cultural Heritage Adaptive Reuse Projects

Abstract

A crucial challenge for cultural heritage studies is how to steer government organizations to widely test different approaches in managing public assets to increase their sustainability over time. New strategies such as adaptive reuse projects and innovative legal-organizational tools as public-private community partnerships (PPCPs) have been increasingly implemented so far, but how public authorities can make their application more extensive and not merely episodic? This article investigates combinations of conditions leading to positive outcomes in heritage adaptive reuse projects through community engagement processes, in order to set out a few design principles to be implemented by public authorities in the field. Assisted by institutional analysis and meta-data coding protocol methodology also through an empirical and comparative case studies, this research aims to reveal such design principles, which seem to be fundamental in fostering community-driven heritage reuse projects effectiveness and sustainability. These principles can briefly be identified in three: commitment of local and managing organizations; involvement of public authorities; presence of entrepreneurship spirit in managing organizations. In this view civic participatory governance models might usefully be replicated in similar environments and may represent a fundamental and innovative tool to enhance cultural heritage values towards sustainable development methods. Our results also confirm that public involvement is definitely always necessary in regeneration processes which affect public heritage assets. Also, the results show that multiple forms of collaboration are not substitute for governments lead or intervention. This research contributes to the literature by operationalizing PPPCs as an alternative, more engaging and inclusive form of PPP in cultural heritage management.