An Integrated Decision Support System for the Sustainable Reuse of the Former Monastery of “Ritiro del Carmine” in Campania Region

Abstract

Nowadays, many public administrations have abandoned and underused heritage buildings due to a lack of public resources, although the effective contribution of cultural heritage as a driver and enabler of sustainable development is strongly recognized. Currently, investments in cultural heritage have multidimensional impacts (social, economic, historical, and cultural) and can contribute to increasing overall local productivity; improving the wellbeing of inhabitants; and attracting funding from the public, private, and private–social sectors. Lack of public resources has pushed local administrations to favor new forms of valorization of public property that can promote the “adaptive reuse” of historic buildings in order to preserve their social, historical, and cultural values. At the same time, administrations seek to stimulate the experimentation of new circular business, financing, and governance models in heritage conservation, creating synergies between multiple actors; reducing the use of resources; and regenerating values, knowledge, and capital. The objective of this paper is to propose an integrated evaluation model, based on multicriteria analysis, and a financial model to support the choice of an alternative reuse of an ancient monastery in the municipality of Mugnano in the Campania region in order to define a “shared strategy” based on a “bottom-up” approach. This starts from the needs of the local community but does not neglect the historical and cultural values of the heritage building, as well as the economic and financial feasibility. The positive results obtained show that the model proposed can be a useful decision support tool in environments characterized by high complexity such as cultural heritage sites, where the objective is to precisely highlight the elements that influence the dynamics of choice for building shared bottom-up development strategies.