Revitalisation Practices for Resilient Cities: Creative Potential of Heritage Regarding Revitalisation and Renewal of Cities

The term “Resilience” has, in recent years, gained currency in many disciplines and has been increasingly applied to various scientific contexts. In relation to urban issues and studies in governance there exists a strong focus on the challenges of policy-making and planning, for which it is very important the power of the resilience approach to improve human wellbeing in urban contexts.Built heritage and resilience may appear contradictory, at first glance, but a more thorough understanding leads to the conclusion that heritage contributes to resilience in various ways.In recent years, mainly thanks to the inflow of the EU funds, many country of Europe have seen a great increase in the need or even fashion for reviving historical heritage and landscapes of cities.In particular the historic city centres, the residual areas and the industrial heritage abandoned have become an arena of the new practices.The paper aims to individue both positive and negative consequences of revitalisation projects made in the Reggio Calabria city, and as are the newly created places perceived by inhabitants. In addition the paper show how, trough good urban project, can there be balance between old and new architecture and green spaces and what is the situation of revitalised buildings and residual areas, often transformed to fulfil completely new roles, and their surroundings, often degraded and threatened with ecological disaster. The final considerations regarding how these urban renewal projects have helped to build a relisience city.