Culture-based urban regeneration
Fondazione Cariplo’s Arts & Culture Area has long been promoting lines of intervention that can be traced back to the theme of “culture-based urban regeneration”, an approach that views the arts and culture as a development lever for the recovery of local areas witnessing degradation or abandonment.
Project pathway
The Foundation’s experience in this area includes initiatives such as the Cultural Districts project, conceived and developed between 2004 and 2015 to promote the leveraging of cultural heritage according to an approach of synergistic development in local areas. While the six Districts have spread mainly in extra-urban areas, except in Cremona and Mantua, between 2011 and 2013 the Foundation – through the Culture and Urban Areas call for proposals – supported the recovery and reuse of city locations to assist with support design and implementation.
Based on these experiences, in 2018 the Foundation – together with the Lombardy Region and Unioncamere Lombardia – signed a partnership agreement focused on the design and implementation of Integrated Culture Plans (ICPs). These aim to implement both on a local scale and on priority issues, integrated and synergistic interventions on cultural heritage and production that can promote leverage processes, to consolidate the link with economic development and tourist appeal. Created by public initiative, the ICPs represent the natural culmination of a process conducted in conjunction with a private institution whose goal has long been to innovate, experiment and catalyse potential resources. A further example is the Lacittàintorno cross-sectoral programme, launched in 2016 under a Memorandum of Understanding with the Municipality of Milan, with the aim of improving the quality of life and cultural offering in three areas of Milan identified as priorities in terms of critical issues and potential resources. In recent years, calls for proposals have also been issued with the express aim of regenerating disused spaces by grafting on new cultural functions, such as the “Spaces in transformation” call (2021), or with the purpose of restoring the original beauty, including in terms of landscaping, of locations where work has been done, such as the “Beauty rediscovered” call (2021). The latest initiative in this area is the Locations for regeneration call (active since 2023), a tool to encourage the reactivation of places already subject to public policies and regeneration processes, with the aim of promoting integrated and sustainable actions in the long term.
Strengthening skills
During the implementation of the initiatives, the need for specific technical skills not necessarily held by experts in the production and management of artistic and cultural activities became increasingly evident. In particular, in recent years this need has been encountered while support was being provided for the “Spaces in transformation” call. Carried out with the technical assistance of KCity – Urban Regeneration, this support was proposed in order to disseminate the French approach to transitional urbanism promoted by the call and its related opportunities. At that time, on the one hand good quality was found in the artistic and cultural proposal made by the proposing bodies; on the other, however, in some cases it has proved difficult to deal with reasoning regarding the context, the long-term vision of transformation and the sustainability of operations. In addition to the one-to-one consultancy provided to the beneficiary entities of the “Spaces in transformation” call, online training sessions on the methodology and tools of transitional reuse were also organised with KCity; after the three years of support, a final report was produced on the experience, now available on the KCity website.
Based on the aforementioned experiences, since 2023 Fondazione Cariplo has chosen to work on the dissemination of skills in the field of cultural-based urban regeneration, supporting Third Sector entities and public bodies in their local areas (Lombardy and the provinces of Novara and VCO) in the design and definition of coherent, sustainable long-term project proposals integrated with the relevant local development plans. According to these intentions, work was started on establishing a hub for cultural-based urban regeneration, named BeiLuoghi, in the belief that cultural-based urban regeneration is a powerful tool to support sustainable, accessible and innovative development processes. BeiLuoghi, designed and built in collaboration with the Social Housing Foundation, aims to become a space and a benchmark for the launch and development of a season of cultural-based urban regeneration projects, to encourage the dissemination of knowledge and tools for the development of local areas and sustainable social infrastructure. In this sense, the role of the project is also to foster intermediation between entities of various kinds, offering the opportunity to facilitate the development of complex, shared projects.
Next steps
From September 2025, the pathway of support created with the technical advice of Avanzi – Sustainability for actions, CheFare, Research and Intervention Codes, KCity and the Planning Area of the Social Housing Foundation will resume, working alongside the nine entities selected in the call for proposals on the design of attractive, sustainable places shared with communities in the relevant local areas.