THE PROACTIVE ROLE OF CULTURAL HERITAGE IN THE ADAPTATION PROCESS OF THE CITY

Cultural heritage is threatened by changes in current weather patterns, particularly extreme events, which affect it by influencing the biological, chemical, and physical mechanisms of its structures and materials, causing degradation. Natural factors, such as solar radiation, air temperature, humidity, precipitation, ventilation, influence the Earth's atmosphere and the climatic phenomena that occur there. And, depending on the location of the settlement, each of these elements can represent a resource or a hindrance for that particular place, with notable differences between rural and urban areas. The two contexts, in fact, present surfaces with very different characteristics: permeable, absorbent, and cooling in rural areas with a high thermal inertia factor, impermeable and reflective in urban areas. But while the factors that determine the existence of a given climate in a region of the globe are geographical in nature, the factors that influence the urban climate also depend on anthropogenic factors and can manifest themselves with similar effects even in very different contexts. Therefore, although every point on Earth has its own specific climate, different from that of any other part of the world, we can detect a certain similarity in the climatic events of urban areas. But it is also true that climatic phenomena are not foreign to the history of cities and communities. Indeed, some have always struggled with even extreme weather conditions and phenomena, such as hurricanes or the extreme heat of some region. They have developed a wealth of solutions that certainly represent important reference practices for current adaptation efforts according to a vision of a wise city that builds its future starting from the treasures of its past. Therefore, to make cities climate resilient, it seems interesting to rediscover the adaptive methods of the past, to rediscover how cities have coped with adverse climate conditions over time and what strategies they have developed to more thoughtfully address the associated problems. After all, if the structures of the past have survived until today, it is precisely thanks to their ability to adapt and evolve to historical, social, and environmental changes. From this perspective, climate change presents itself as an opportunity for growth and development, activating projects capable of generating quality, security, and innovation, starting from the consolidated past and its millennia- long stratification: territorial integrity is at the heart of European and Member State policies as the guardian of the memory of civilizations, the loss of which can lead to chaos and disorientation, as well as the loss of local identity and that of future generations. Indeed, protecting cultural heritage in its twofold dimension, tangible and intangible, is essential to a community's cultural identity (Faro Convention 2005): preserving vernacular/traditional solutions is not only a way to operate consistently with the material heritage in an evolutionary logic, but also means knowing how to preserve the skills and knowledge that make that heritage alive and therefore aligned with the identity and know-how of the community that generates, animates, and preserves it.