Territorial expansion initiatives for local economic development often neglect and decay small towns’ historically and culturally significant sites, including places of worship and monumental structures, preventing their preservation, enhancement and repurposing. This often contradicts the population’s appreciation of the territory’s history and culture. By formalising an economic-financial assessment framework for pre-feasibility evaluations of small town historical and cultural property conservation and enhancement, the research addresses the often overlooked conflict between socially responsible investments and economic transformative potential.
The proposed assessment approach reconciles economic and cultural interests by engaging the community as a prospective user of the restored resource. An integrated evaluation methodology, cost-revenue and importance-performance (CRIP) analysis, is formulated and executed. A Southern Italian municipality assessed and refined the proposed comprehensive evaluation technique for the restoration of Church architecture. This will facilitate a discussion on financial and economic issues pertinent to the region’s history and culture among local residents.
The holistic assessment technique offers data and tools to make economic viability determinations in scenarios when investing in the restoration of historical properties is unprofitable. The case study demonstrates the profitability attainable by integrating an importance-performance analysis (IPA) with a financial-economic model customised to the specific characteristics of the project intervention in small towns.
The work’s novelty lies in transcending the conventional economic-financial framework for evaluating investment projects aimed at rehabilitating historical properties. It contributes towards a holistic methodology that incorporates economic characteristics and a participatory process to bolster the viability of socially responsible projects, even in smaller contexts such as towns with unique cultural and traditional property assets.
