Journal of Cultural Heritage 31 (2018) 180–188

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Original article

Wasting heritage. The slow abandonment of the Italian Historic

Centers
Ezio Micelli a , Paola Pellegrini b,∗
a
University IUAV of Venice, Department of Architecture, Construction, Conservation, Dorsoduro 2206, 30123 Venezia, Italy
b
Xi’an Jiaotong–Liverpool University, Department of Urban Planning and Design, 111 Ren’ai Road, Suzhou Dushu Lake Science and Education Innovation
District, Suzhou Industrial Park, Suzhou, Jiangsu Province 215123, PR China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The international debate that led to the drafting of important institutional documents and charters on
Received 28 June 2017 the city considered the conservation of cultural heritage essential to planning choices and favored the
Accepted 27 November 2017 sustainability of the high-density model for historic centers. Italian theory and policy regarding inter-
Available online 5 January 2018
vention on the historic city provided a major contribution to this debate and the extensive conservation
and development policies that emerged benefitted from a general and shared consensus. All the same,
Keywords: analysis of the statistical data on population and real estate in some Italian cities over the last 30 years
Historic centers
suggests that the effects of the relationship between these policies and settlement choices should be fur-
Regeneration
Real estate property
ther questioned. The goal of this paper is to define a precise framework for the dynamics characterizing
Built heritage northern Italian historic centers in the medium and long-term, focusing attention on the use of real estate
Urban shrinkage property and the location choices of families, institutions and enterprises. The results show that historic
centers have progressively lost their social and economic attractiveness because of the structural muta-
tions in Italian society and the country’s economy. The dense regulatory mechanisms that had matured
and were tested over decades of economic and demographic growth no longer appear to hold.
© 2017 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction conservation. In developing countries, protecting heritage from

The importance of urban heritage and its social function is
strongly affirmed in international charters and conventions that
call for the maximum conservation of monuments as well as
their urban surroundings and landscape. The New Urban Agenda
adopted by UN Habitat III in 2016 and UNESCO’s Policy for the Inte-
gration of a Sustainable Development Perspective adopted by the
World Heritage Convention in 2015, to name just the most recent
and authoritative documents, insist on the need to sustain and fos-
ter heritage and landscape conservation and to consider culture an
utmost priority in developing urban plans and strategies [1–3].
These international charters affirm that heritage in general and
cultural built heritage in particular must be taken into account and
leveraged to promote development and to improve the quality of
urban life [4]. They were drafted for both developing and developed
countries, which have different levels of awareness about – and dif-
ferent commitments and approaches to – heritage and landscape
∗ Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: micelli@iuav.it (E. Micelli), Paola.Pellegrini@xjtlu.edu.cn
(P. Pellegrini).
the potentially disruptive impacts of urban development is often
a problem. In developed countries, this commitment has already
been made and the conflict between conservation and transforma-
tion is apparently no longer an issue, at least in theoretical terms.
The evolution of the concept of conservation for cultural built
heritage and the related praxis of intervention owe much to the Ital-
ian theory and the policies it subsequently defined. Since the 1920s
and after the Second World War in particular, the considerable his-
toric, cultural, and identity value of Italian city centers has been
at the core of the debate on architecture and city planning. During
Italy’s economic boom, a great deal of effort went into protecting
the centers’ form and function from the economic and speculative
forces that threatened their future, exploring many possibilities for
reusing, restoring, and regenerating the built environment through
plans and policies.
Thanks to this long, extensive process, most of the commit-
ments or principles proclaimed and promoted by the international
charters have been part of the shared knowledge of Italian city plan-
ning for decades. All the same, recent empirical data demonstrate
that this solid theoretical framework and practice have not been
able to prevent the current trends in Italian centers of internation-
ally recognized heritage. The data on property vacancy reveals the

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.culher.2017.11.011
1296-2074/© 2017 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.
 E. Micelli, P. Pellegrini / Journal of Cultural Heritage 31 (2018) 180–188
abandonment of dwellings, enterprises, and public services as well
as reverse gentrification in these centers. Thus, despite important
public material and immaterial investments, historic centers are
actually emptying out and no longer appear as attractive as they
used to be.
This paper is divided into six paragraphs. The first addresses
the main theoretical and methodological issues elaborated by the
Italian design culture for the historic centers. The second synthe-
sizes the challenges Italian historic centers now face. The third
presents the empirical data through which prior policies can be
evaluated. The fourth presents the results of the analysis while
the fifth proposes an interpretation of the medium- to long-
term demographic and socio-economic trends of Italian historic
centers.
2. Preserving historic centers: Italy’s contribution to the
international debate
In the Italian and international collective imagination, the iden-
tity of Italian cities is built around the historic city center, whose
monuments and built heritage define the caliber of the urban space
([5,54]: 13–68).
As early as the 1920s, the Italian city had already been recog-
nized as something more than just the mere sum of its structures
([6]: 129–135). Protecting its monuments and enhancing its built
heritage meant approaching entire sections of the city in their inte-
gral complexity.
In dealing with the urban heritage damaged by the Second
World War, Italian design culture developed specific theoretical
notions and projects that were almost always characterized by a
historical-morphological approach. From the 1950s to the 1980s,
the debate on the country’s historic centers was broad and far-
reaching, and its achievements were recognized as stepping-stones
in the international process of defining what heritage is and how it
should be preserved.
Reflections on urban analysis [7], on type and morphology [8,9],
and on urban restoration ([10]: 111–122), among others, made an
original contribution to the international debate ([11,12]: 38–40).
At the end of the 1950s, the Gubbio Charter laid out the principles
for preserving and restoring historic centers, reaffirming the need
to recognize and classify them in urban planning processes and to
establish, by law, the characteristics of – and drafting procedures
for – conservative recovery plans [13]. Political and administrative
action followed, and many plans were produced ([14]: 115–144).
In the 1970s in Bologna, research on heritage preservation and
building typology was combined with a new approach to hous-
ing: the preservation of heritage was considered alongside a social
mix that included gentrification processes ([15]: 32–33; [16]). The
practice applied in Bologna became a model for urban regeneration,
thanks in part to its dissemination by UNESCO and the Council of
Europe.
In the years that followed, the important cultural and technical
work that was done to underscore the value of the historic center
and the possibilities of combining preservation with the welfare of
its inhabitants was incorporated into tools that could govern the
transformation of historic centers within the broader framework
of urban development.
In the 1980s, the wide cultural debate on the preservation of
historic centers become codified within the regulatory body of
the plans and focus progressively shifted to other issues including
abandoned industrial areas and emerging phenomena related to
sprawl ([17]: 21–43). From the1990s on, however, the issues inher-
ent to the historic centers began to be neglected on the erroneous
181
assumption that they had already been definitively and successfully
resolved ([18]: 153).1
Empirical data do not support this optimism and urge readdress-
ing this topic, which has lain dormant for some time. The choices of
families and economic activities, as well as public sector decisions,
could confirm what several scholars have already claimed, namely
that the efforts promoted by regulatory bodies in earlier decades
– primarily through building codes and mobility policies (especially
in southern European countries) – are no longer adequate in coping
with strong contemporary urban trends [19].
3. Research aim: the new challenges to be met
The research aim is to define a precise framework for the dynam-
ics characterizing northern Italian historic centers in the medium
and long-term, focusing attention on the use of real estate property
and the location choices of families, institutions and enterprises.
Only a precise framework allows to discuss the regulatory appara-
tus that had been conceived and applied to preserve the historic
centers.
Two issues must be addressed. The first is demography; the sec-
ond is economic growth and the real estate market. In light of the
second demographic transition, the Italian population has shown
little or no growth and the settlement pressure historic centers once
faced has diminished ([20,21]: 26–33; [22–27,55]).
This is particularly evident outside the metropolitan areas in
which population and economic activities appear to be more
prosperous: the population of small and medium-size cities is stag-
nating, and in some regions urban shrinkage has become a major
issue resulting in a dramatic change in the urban agenda ([28,29]:
223–232; [30–32]).
Italy’s long span of no growth has also had a strong impact
on real estate markets [33,34]. Households have moved to more
economically sustainable locations with better trade-offs between
accessibility, services, and the quality of life [35]. The high prices in
historic centers have become an economic hurdle that is difficult
for both families and commercial/business activities to overcome,
given a supply whose features seem to be less interesting than in
the past.
In the face of these important demographic and economic pres-
sures the regulatory apparatus shows little adaptability.
4. The demographic and property determinants of historic
centers: a study on census data
Inquiry into the recent evolution of today’s historic centers must
give due consideration to fundamental data on demography and
the occupation of the building stock. In this study, these phenom-
ena are considered in the medium to long-term with the aim of
revealing significant changes in collective choices and of avoiding
misplaced attention on short-term circumstantial aspects that are
inconsistent with identifying and interpreting urban phenomena
with the necessary temporal depth.
The research also encompasses an area of appropriate breadth
from a regional point of view. The scope of the study includes 14
historic centers in the north of Italy. The cities under consideration
1
At the Italian Pavilion’s presentation at the 2016 Venice International Archi-
tecture Exhibition, Dario Franceschini, the current Minister of Heritage, Cultural
Activities and Tourism (October 2016), stated that “the twentieth century was, for
Italy, the century of a battle fought and won for the protection of our historic
centers [. . .], won both from the point of view of legislation and of protec-
tion. We have completely neglected the theme of urban peripheries [. . .] that is,
where all the great challenges of this century are at play, starting with integra-
tion.” http://www.takingcare.it/conferenza-stampa-4-aprile/, from minute 38:07 to
38:35.
182 E. Micelli, P. Pellegrini / Journal of Cultural Heritage 31 (2018) 180–188
were selected from five regions with different social and economic
characteristics – Lombardy, Veneto, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Emilia
Romagna, and the Autonomous Province of Trento – with the aim of
building an analytical framework that is as independent as possible
from the specific characteristics of each region.2
All of the cities have a master plan and their historic centers
have been regulated in detail by a specific plan aimed at protecting
and maintaining heritage values.3
The centers investigated are all in medium-sized cities, ranging
between the thresholds of the 30- to 40-thousand inhabitants in
the smallest case up to 200-thousand inhabitants.
In Italy, no official classification is available in order to rank cities
according to their size. The selection considered in the research,
which includes cities smaller than 50,000 inhabitants, stems from
their cultural and political role in Italian history: medium and
small-sized centers have been determining the structure of the
territory through centuries and representing territorial reference
points in Italy, even if they do not have a recognized administrative
role. This is particularly true for the smallest cities of the sample
with less than 50,000 inhabitants selected: Mantova, Conegliano,
Bassano and Rovereto.
Cities of this scale make it possible to more precisely determine
the system of collective preferences and their interaction with the
urban policies that have been promoted in historic centers. In cities
of a larger scale, the centrality of some unusual or even unique ser-
vices can determine particular dynamics: in the cases of Verona
and Padua, for example, the presence of large universities or a
concentration of commercial activities and services can lead to par-
ticular settlement pressure. Still other locations have been excluded
because of unique economic circumstances that deserve specific in-
depth study, as in the case of the historic center of Venice, which
is subjected to the extraordinary anthropic pressure of a touristic
demand that alters its settlement dynamics in an absolutely singu-
lar way. Smaller centers of less than 30,000 inhabitants have also
been excluded because their specific demographic and economic
dynamics are not within the scope of this study.
To inquiry the recent evolution of today’s historic centers this
study used ISTAT4 data from Census 1991 and 2011, the latest
available. ISTAT data was essential providing a homogeneous pic-
ture of the values within a medium-and long-term time horizon.
The method followed for compiling and processing the census
data for the last 20 years (1991 and 2011) led to collecting cen-
sus variables on population, housing, industry, and services for the
years 1991 and 2011. While acknowledging the relatively obso-
lete nature of the last census data, the direct comparability of the
data after 20 years underscores the value of this comparison and
recent economic and demographic surveys – although they have
no systematic character – confirm the sign and the intensity of the
recognized trends.5
The first variable to be considered for 1991 and 2011 was the
total resident population. This value was then supported by statis-
2
The cities are: Udine and Pordenone in Friuli Venezia Giulia; Treviso, Vicenza,
Conegliano, and Bassano del Grappa in Veneto; Trento and Rovereto in Trentino Alto
Adige; Mantua and Brescia in Lombardy; Ferrara, Modena, Ravenna, and Parma in
Emilia Romagna.
3 6
The “piano particolareggiato del centro storico”.
4
ISTAT is the Italian National Institute of Statistics. ISTAT has been a public
research organization since 1926 and is the main producer of official statistics in
the service of citizens and policy-makers. It operates completely independently
and in continuous interaction with the academic and scientific communities. The
authors can provide the entire set of ISTAT data used (available online on the Insti-
tute’s website) and their mapping method. No other source of data was taken into
consideration.
5
See for example the analysis elaborated by Conf-Esercenti (Italian National Asso-
ciation of Trade and Retail) and Immobiliare.it (the largest web-site of real estate
listings in Italy); see also the great increase of the Airbnb phenomenon in Italy.
tics stratified by age group and level of education, as well as those
on the presence of foreign population. The next step involved col-
lecting information on the housing stock in each city. In this case
as well, the aggregated data was backed by the information the
Institute had collected on the dwellings’ date of construction, their
tenure – ownership or rental –, and whether they are occupied of
not.6 Data on the total number of buildings were only available in
the 2011 census survey and made it possible to determine whether
the latter were occupied or not and to distinguish them by use.
Finally, the study considered the presence of companies and
institutions in the historic centers examined. Data was collected on
the local units of companies and institutions and their respective
employees.
The study aimed at spatially representing the phenomena
regarding use and abandonment of the building stock as well as the
other main variables under examination. The data were mapped on
cartographic bases – territorial base maps corresponding to census
sections – with GIS open source software (QGis).
To ensure a criterion of homogeneity, the historic center was
defined as the area within the last circle of walls that had once
defended the city. This definition was adopted for two reasons: to
identify a coherent sample of sites and because the large majority
of urban valuable heritage is located in such spatial domain.
This choice favored a significant reading of the economic and
social phenomena pertinent to historic centers in contrast to others
that tend to merely prioritize legal and administrative aspects.
As policies regarding mobility and parking also appear to play
a significant role in urban development of historic centers, the
restricted traffic zones (RTZ), which are subsets of the historic cen-
ters that have highly differentiated dimensions among the cities
considered, were also identified and mapped.
5. Results: the abandonment of property, the loss of
population and activities, selective repopulation
The size and the history of the cities under investigation are
quite different. The center of Ferrara, for example, is the largest (412
hectares due to its Herculean extension) and is 17 times larger than
the center of Pordenone, the smallest city considered. Despite these
variations, however, the analysis of the data revealed significant
common dynamics that do not appear to be conditioned by either
the centers’ regional location or their specific history.
One of the first results of the analysis concerns the abandon-
ment of residential property (Fig. 1 and Table 1). In all of the cities
examined there is a significant increase in unoccupied housing from
1991 to 2011. On average, the percentage of unoccupied residential
property rose from 15.25% to 26.5% in the center, and systematically
exceeds the other urban areas in which the share of unoccupied
stock increased from 9.6% to 15%.
This phenomenon is even more significant in the areas in which
traffic regulation, represented by RTZ, is added to the regulation
drafted to protect the historic center’s heritage. In these areas, the
percentage of unoccupied housing rose from 19% to 32%.
For 2011, the following census variables were considered: total resident popu-
lation; resident population under 5 years of age; resident population between 5 and
9 years of age; resident population between 70 and 74 years of age; resident popu-
lation over 74 years of age; residents’ level of education: degree; foreign residents
and stateless persons; occupied housing, unoccupied housing, and housing occupied
only by non-resident persons; abandoned buildings; families renting; total fami-
lies; buildings constructed before 1919; and buildings constructed between 1919
and 1945. These data, which are immediately consistent when compared to those of
1991, were integrated with those on the area of occupied housing; total buildings;
used buildings; non-residential buildings used, which are not available for 1991 but
are present in the 2011 census.
 E. Micelli, P. Pellegrini / Journal of Cultural Heritage 31 (2018) 180–188 183

Fig. 1. The percentage of unoccupied housing in 2011 in the RTZ area (top number), in the rest of the historic center (middle number), in the rest of the municipal area
(bottom number) in the considered cities. Source: Authors’ elaboration of ISTAT data.

Table 1
Unoccupied housing in the considered cities, comparison between 1991 and 2011. Source: Authors’ elaboration of ISTAT data.

Udine Pordenone Treviso Conegliano Vicenza Bassano dG Mantova Brescia Trento Rovereto Ferrara Modena Ravenna Parma

Unoccupied housing in the region

% in the region, 2011 20.73 20.73 19.05 19.05 19.05 19.05 15.21 15.21 27.31 27.31 20.71 20.71 20.71 20.71
Unoccupied housing in the RTZ
2011 537 115 546 84 904 743 1191 2115 757 271 2104 2808 606 2343
1991 164 116 203 47 464 208 620 1315 353 187 1121 1244 118 1355
% of total, 2011 37.9 20.1 41.78 28.87 37.46 39.5 23.58 29.93 34.68 25.96 30.4 38.81 31.14 26.33
% of total, 1991 15.69 22.66 21.39 20.17 23.17 17.38 13.7 22.47 22.92 20.39 18.08 23.28 9.49 17.55
Unoccupied housing in the historic center (without the RTZ)
2011 1590 as RTZ 798 119 1193 as RTZ 947 898 200 274 2456 430 691 1431
1991 915 as RTZ 385 91 726 as RTZ 524 612 58 176 831 137 193 714
% of total, 2011 18.54 as RTZ 23.66 18.03 24.68 as RTZ 19.45 26.22 32.1 23.78 24.6 36.5 24.95 25.61
% of total, 1991 11.7 as RTZ 12.32 14.77 18 as RTZ 11.84 20.18 14.87 19.8 9.09 15.93 8.9 14.83
Unoccupied housing in the municipality (without the RTZ and the center)
2011 5532 3280 4488 2514 7762 3628 1906 11,517 7947 2499 8335 13,867 25,910 10,154
1991 2625 1687 1769 1165 2839 1505 659 4540 4054 1392 2869 6222 19,716 4798
% of total, 2011 12.5 13.1 12.39 15.33 15.27 18.15 12.05 13.08 14.35 14.57 14.3 16.22 28.51 12.69
% of total, 1991 7.45 8.22 6.64 8.79 7.51 9.47 4.69 6.28 9.97 11.27 6.6 8.89 29.06 7.82

The vacancy rate, however, does not relate to degradation nor
the moving away of population is due to neglect: the large major-
ity of buildings in northern Italian city centers, especially those
whose heritage is particularly valuable, were largely restored and
renovated in the 1980s, as were the large majority of public open
spaces.
The vacancy rate could be considered with respect to other
processes of transformation: new constructions7 , subdivision of
7
The total number of dwellings increased on average by 28% in the RTZ in the
20 years considered. There are 8,924 more homes compared with a total of 15,124
184 E. Micelli, P. Pellegrini / Journal of Cultural Heritage 31 (2018) 180–188
existing units, conversions from office/shop/working space uses to
housing. These issues remain open questions for further investiga-
tion. We deemed they were out of the scope of our research since
no data on these topics is available in a synthetic and comparable
form in the time span we took into consideration.
The data on residential abandonment does not seem to be
related to specific parts of the historic center but appears to be
more widely distributed over the entire building stock. The empty-
ing out of entire buildings8 is modest and – with the exception of the
case of Conegliano, where this percentage reaches 15.5% – is less
than three percentage points of the overall building stock. Aban-
donment, therefore, does not involve buildings in their entirety: in
the majority of the cities, the buildings actually remain partially in
use therein contributing toward mitigating the perception of the
phenomenon.
A second result concerns the population in the historic centers.
The average data on the 14 cities investigated reveals a shrinkage
of some percentage points (approximately 2.6% in the restricted
traffic zones and 6% in the rest of the historic centers9 ), but these
figures mask differentiated trends. In all the cities, with the excep-
tion of those of the Autonomous Province of Trento, the historic
centers show a declining demographic trend when compared to
regional demographic figures. The historic centers of the cities of
the Veneto, for example, are experiencing shrinkage in their res-
ident population, while in the 20 years under examination, the
regional population has grown by almost 11 points.
If the shrinkage of the population and the shrinkage of occupied
residential units in the historic centers are compared, a difference
can be noticed: the first one is around 6% while the second is around
11% between 1991 and 2011. This difference could indicate an
interesting phenomena: a light increase in the intensity of occu-
pation of the residential units in the center.
The arrival of foreigners is another very relevant phenomenon
for the historic centers, which has contributed to reduce the shrink-
age of the population and had an effect on the structuring of
demographic cohorts and the age groups (Table 2). All of the cities in
question, without distinction, are experiencing the second demo-
graphic transition, an aging process that reflects a trend known
throughout Italy. If we consider the cities in their entirety, residents
of over 70 years of age have increased significantly everywhere. This
is not the case for historic centers in which the aging of the popu-
lation seems to have attenuated significantly, when there is not a
setback, as in the case of the city of Brescia where the percentage
of more elderly cohorts is reduced by about one percentage point,
as in Modena as well. This provides evidence that the center is no
longer populated by the elderly in the way it used to be.
The final aspect of the analysis concerns the companies and
institutions in the historic centers under examination, on the basis
of the same ISTAT database analyzed for housing and popula-
tion (Figs. 2 and 3).10 Whereas the number of companies in the
cities’ historic centers varies widely among the cases and gener-
ally increases (+5.35% variation in companies between 1991 and
2011), the number of employees is markedly reduced by an aver-
empty dwellings in the same areas in 2011, so the number of vacant dwellings
in 2011 is higher than the number of dwellings added between 1991 and 2011.
As explained in paragraph 4 this increase is due to a variety of actions: new con-
structions, subdivision of existing units into smaller apartments, conversions from
office/shop/working space uses to housing.
8
ISTAT differentiates and specifies in the census data “entire building” and “hous-
ing unit”, so a building can have more than one unit and can contain more than one
use.
9
There are 16,566 inhabitants less in the 14 centers considered between 1991
and 2011.
10
The analysis was limited to 7 cases of the 14 considered: Udine, Pordenone,
Treviso, Vicenza, Brescia, Mantua and Ferrara. Data relating to the cities of the
Autonomous Province of Trento were unavailable.
age decrease of over 20 percentage points (−21.2%). In other words,
the number of companies operating in the historic centers has not
decreased but their operations have been reorganized resulting
in a significant reduction in the number of employees, which has
decreased by a quota of between one-fourth and one-fifth when
compared to 1991.
The results for the institutions located in historic centers are
more clear-cut. The variation in institutions is homogeneous and
indifferent to the regional location with shrinkage of more than 70%
of the local units in the 20 years under consideration.11 Similarly,
the variation in the institutions’ employees decreased in all cases,
even if in a less homogeneous manner, with a reduction of one-third
of their total number, on average −32.7%.
While the data shows differentiated situations for companies,
the values for institutions highlight a homogeneous abandonment
by public services, due partially to the rationalization of office
premises following mergers and partially to the actual relocation
to other areas of the city. The density of institutions in the historic
center continues to be higher than in the rest of the municipality but
has suffered drastic shrinkage, decreasing by between two-thirds
and four-fifths when compared to 1991.
6. New policies for reacting to the abandonment: urban
functions, building regulations, mobility and accessibility
The data analysis reveals a building stock that is being used less
and less, services and companies that are on their way out, and a
shrinking population, drawing attention to profound changes that
are still scarcely considered.
The regulatory framework that was formulated through decades
of in-depth reflection has failed to influence the choices of families
who have progressively abandoned the historic center. The data
relating to unoccupied property are clear: in all the cities, the per-
centage of unoccupied housing outweighs that of the rest of the
city and the value is most significant for the areas where traffic
restrictions have also been imposed.
The regulations that were drafted to protect and enhance the
development of historic centers have contributed to preserving
the historical and architectural quality of public and private prop-
erty [36], but they have not been effective in defending residents
and economic activities. The combined shrinkage in the number of
inhabitants and services clarifies an assumption that is no longer
justified in light of the empirical survey: the abandonment of resi-
dential property is not linked to a takeover by office use. Companies
and institutions have abandoned the centers in the same way as
households did. In particular, the figures show an unprecedented
shrinkage in number of institutions in the historic centers. The pres-
ence of public institutions continues to be greater in the historic
centers than in the rest of the municipality, but it has radically con-
tracted. While it is immediately evident that the historic center is
no longer the place with the highest concentration of services, the
degree of the shrinkage registered in the 20 years between 1991
and 2011 appears surprising [37].
The abandoned building stock has allowed the foreign popula-
tion to find housing opportunities by virtue of the high accessibility
and the rental and property values compatible with modest
incomes.
The data clearly reflect the shift in the country’s ethnic and
cultural composition but, when compared to regional trends, the
values in the historic centers reveal the their unique attractiveness
11
ISTAT defines a local unit as a physical place in which a legal and economic
unit (company, institution) carries out one or more economic activities. The local
unit – private or public – corresponds to a legal and economic unit or part thereof,
situated in a geographical location identified by an address and a number.
 E. Micelli, P. Pellegrini / Journal of Cultural Heritage 31 (2018) 180–188 185

Table 2
Foreigners in the considered cities, comparison between 1991 and 2011 census data. Source: Authors’ elaboration of ISTAT data.

Udine Pordenone Treviso Conegliano Vicenza Bassano dG Mantova Brescia Trento Rovereto Ferrara Modena Ravenna Parma

Foreigners in the region

% in the region, 2011 7.94 7.94 9.41 9.41 9.41 9.41 9.76 9.76 8.26 8.26 10.41 10.41 10.41 10.41
Foreigners in the RTZ
2011 191 93 85 15 360 226 565 2189 289 269 824 2349 354 1811
1991 20 4 15 2 64 25 99 331 48 29 131 399 6 223
% of total, 2011 11.08 9.61 5.34 3.57 11.92 10.24 7.2 21.33 10.16 17.17 9.14 26.39 12.85 14.28
% of total, 1991 1.06 0.4 0.89 0.47 2 1.1 1.12 3.33 1.93 1.91 1.19 4.53 0.22 1.6
Foreigners in the historic center (without the RTZ)
2011 2356 as RTZ 526 181 990 as RTZ 765 1582 99 391 1200 385 540 1424
1991 233 as RTZ 50 8 99 as RTZ 56 303 15 14 125 76 34 71
% of total, 2011 17.08 as RTZ 9.36 16.79 12.53 as RTZ 9.19 30.51 12.09 21.73 8.19 24.7 11.8 18.51
% of total, 1991 1.51 as RTZ 0.77 0.65 1.2 as RTZ 0.59 5.75 2.05 0.88 0.65 4.56 0.68 0.79
Foreigners in the municipality (without the historic center and the RTZ)
2011 10,561 7624 8857 4460 14,851 4333 3908 27,780 11,362 3858 7609 21,432 14,126 16,951
1991 693 274 472 168 841 328 189 1937 531 153 318 1981 879 879
% of total, 2011 12.75 15.38 12 13.54 14.76 10.61 12.82 15.92 10.28 11.22 6.99 12.7 9.65 10.9
% of total, 1991 0.84 0.56 0.62 0.49 0.87 0.89 0.54 1.08 0.54 0.51 0.29 1.19 0.69 0.6

Fig. 2. The percentage of local units of institutions comparing 2011 to 1991 in the considered centers (top number) with respective employees (bottom number). Source:
Authors’ elaboration of ISTAT data.

for new populations who have settled in Italy. With few excep-
tions – in this case Treviso – the percentage of foreign residents in
the center exceeds that of the respective regions and autonomous
provinces, confirming a reverse gentrification that represents an
unexpected result of the long, intensive effort to ensure a balance
between the social groups and uses common to different Italian
cities [38–42].
The figures on the abandoned housing stock are high and the
value of the unproductive property seems to be of absolute eco-
nomic significance. If one considers the number of unoccupied
186 E. Micelli, P. Pellegrini / Journal of Cultural Heritage 31 (2018) 180–188
Fig. 3. The percentage of local units of companies comparing 2011 to 1991 in the considered centers (top number) with respective employees (bottom number). Source:
Authors’ elaboration of ISTAT data.
dwellings in 2011 (26,151 units in the 14 historic centers exam-
ined) and gives them a very conservative value of EUR 1200/sqm
and an average surface of 90 sqm per unit, the value of the aban-
doned housing stock in just the cities considered amounts to EUR
2.8 billion.
While this problem may regard property owners alone, there are
other issues that concern the community as a whole. The imbalance
in the quote of unused housing between the city center and the rest
of the municipality (approximately 30% versus 15%) is important
and reflects the preference for medium- to low-density settlement
models, while the historic centers combine high-density with rel-
evant urban spatial quality.
In light of the superiority of high-density settlement models in
terms of overall sustainability [43,44], as the suburban model use
more land and energy per capita, the abandonment of historic cen-
ters should be seen as a negative path. Furthermore, the choice of
new locations by households and businesses involves the emptying
out of areas that are subject to significant public investment. The
paradoxical effect is that the parts of the city that have benefitted
most from the community’s resources are being abandoned in favor
of areas that are partially or wholly inadequate.
The overall costs of regulation drafted in an expansive demo-
graphic and economic phase are therein significant. The norms that
were drawn up and approved to regulate growth seem to be only
modestly suited to a phase of stagnation or decline. Economic and
demographic stagnation appears to be structural and not cyclical,
with a relevant impact on the effectiveness of regulations.
In particular, in looking ahead, the increasing dematerialization
of certain service sectors – such as the development of online bank-
ing and e-commerce – could further exacerbate the abandonment
of the historic center resulting in an even greater negative impact
on residences and activities.
The hard won balance of a set of regulations drafted in a very
different phase of the country’s history does not lead to the pro-
motion of a deregulatory phase, as has occurred in other areas of
urban policy [45]. If the collective costs of regulation with contro-
versial outcomes are acknowledged, it is possible to rethink – in
a new and original way – the physical and functional transforma-
tion of historic centers and their accessibility [46–49]. The future of
historic centers might otherwise oscillate between abandonment
and social and economic marginalization – especially if the balance
with foreign components of local society breaks down – and forms
of mono-functional specialization, as in the case of the touristic
centers [50,51].
With due clarification: shifting perspective on the policies
regarding the transformation of historic centers must accept the
changes that have occurred in regional organization as an essen-
tially irreversible fact [52]. In other words, rethinking the future
of historic centers cannot take their centrality for granted. Their
original interpretation has to assume the dilution of traditional
 E. Micelli, P. Pellegrini / Journal of Cultural Heritage 31 (2018) 180–188
centralities in more complex regional systems. The result is a
role to be invented, between consolidated uses and activities that
may even be in radical discontinuity – consider, for example, the
return of manufacture in the city centers through the work of new
artisans [53] – and no longer necessarily linked to a territorial
primacy that is now obsolete.
7. Conclusions
Italy’s historic centers, which are a spatial deposit of the coun-
try’s identity and memory long at the core of intense cultural and
academic debate, seem to have vanished from researchers’ and
administrators’ agendas. From all appearances, the issues they pose
seem to have already been addressed by the broad-reaching plan-
ning efforts that had involved both their physical and functional
transformation and their accessibility.
But the data on housing stock and population do not confirm
that the problems of Italy’s historic centers have been definitely
resolved. On the contrary, the mapping of ISTAT census data clearly
shows that property has been progressively abandoned, that the
population has declined and reorganized, that companies have
been significantly reduced in size and that institutions have simply
left the historic center for new destinations. The vast widespread
phenomenon of abandonment, which is distributed over all the 14
centers investigated without significant differences between the
various regions of northern Italy, demands a new set of policies
and actions aimed at regenerating areas now at risk between phe-
nomena of reverse gentrification tied to the relevant presence of
foreigners and the development of specific functions and services
including, in particular, the tourism industry.
Future studies could broaden the field of investigation by
extending the research to other areas of Italy and to other urban
dimensions. The cities examined are in prosperous areas whose
demography reflects national trends. Other studies could consider
areas with more pronounced processes – such as those in the inner
parts of the country or in some areas of the south and the islands.
They could also take cities of different size and rank into account: on
one hand, the larger cities dealing with metropolitan developments
that also affect the historic centers; on the other, small villages and
towns that are now often affected by drastic processes of social and
economic abandonment.
The most important area of study, however, is that of policy.
To the extent that this research has deliberately sought to survey
and analyze medium- to long-term trends, further investigation
could focus on the investments that can increase mobility in and
to the historic centers without compromising their environment
and their heritage; promote residential options for many different
social groups; ensure the presence of economic activities; and make
the historic center a place for value creation – public and private –
in multiple and differentiated economic sectors.
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