Smart technology for smart regeneration of cultural heritage: Italian smart cities in comparison

Paper
Starlight Vattano, Italy

Published paper: Smart Technology for smart regeneration of cultural heritage: Italian smart cities in comparison

The current reasoning about urban intelligence and making smart cities are leading to define a new concept of future’s city, in which the relationship between the contemporary reality of the historical one becomes a key factor in the rethinking of urban smartness, through a total commitment of the historical and artistic heritage, in which is engaged the virtual city of ICTs. The smart cultural heritage, in fact, can be conceived as an identity element of a place, to share through the implementation of smart technologies, knowledge and social inclusion, for a total participation to the promotion of cultural heritage. This need is particularly evident in the Italian territory, where the cultural resource is widespread and represents a potential lever for improving local economies and the attractiveness of the territories. The article deals with the issue of smart enhancement of the cultural heritage considering the experiences of some Italian smart cities that are configured as bearers of cultural, tangible and intangible, values to be protected. Will be analysed some Italian projects, who intend to define and develop an open platform on which basing intelligent services for the cultural offer. The considered cases realize smart and open source systems, enabling the concept of personalized and contextualized exploration of the cultural good (augmented fruition), made also on the basis of experiential analysis of the territory: Naples, with the Or.C.He.STRA project, based on the development of hi-tech solutions for the smart enhancement of cultural heritage; Catania and Lecce, through the DICET project, with the goal of creating a renewed cultural perception of the city, both ancient and modern, of its monuments, ruins, halls, findings, into museums or not, of its memory through a combination among knowledge, ICTs and social innovation; Bologna, through the development of smart platform expects to be able to gain access to the wealth of data, information and resources related to the arcades system; Genoa, proposes a project relative to the area of Villa Pallavicini, to make it accessible to visitors and operated museum and park, free Wi-Fi zones and several places where are placed Qr-Code with the following differences; the Smart²Museums project aims to encourage the creation of a chain of technological solutions and telematics services able to increase the cultural and experiential elements of the intra-museum paths, the relationship between the museum and its original context, the relationship between the museum and the chain structures, technologies and opportunities of extra-museum deepening; the project In.Cul.Tu.Re. aims to achieve a local laboratory for the study of the architectural heritage and the application of analysis methodologies able to provide information on open data project. In the article will be compared national experiences which will allow us to understand how the relationship between smart city and cultural heritage is today the testing ground for a rethinking of the idea of the museum, no more traditional space of exposure and use, but including a virtual and urban territory that defines a new concept of smart heritage.