Losing Cultural Heritage due to Anthropic Environmental Disasters: An Application of the DPSIR Spiral Framework

Abstract

Cultural heritage often mirrors the evolution of the social and economic dynamics of territories. In Taranto, a city in Apulia in southern Italy, cultural heritage represents the synthesis of the profound environmental and economic crisis that has characterised the city over the last century. Its loss is the order of the day following repeated collapses and static instability. Probably, this is the result of the strong conditioning that large industrial groups and military institutions have been exercising over the city’s environment and economy since the end of the 19th century. This paper focuses on the analysis of aspects related to the management and enhancement of the cultural heritage in the area, in the broader scenario of territorial heritage management. Using the DPSIR (Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response) spiral logic scheme, the aim of the research is to highlight causal links between the impoverishment of Taranto’s cultural heritage and the management and socio-economic drivers present there. In this perspective, the study aims to contribute to the implementation of the scientific literature on the topic of the application of the spiral DPSIR model to the theme of built cultural heritage and not only to the management of the naturalistic factors of the territories. Furthermore, it aims to stimulate policy makers to initiate specific analyses of the risks threatening cultural heritage in order to implement protective measures before irreversible damage occurs. The results of the analysis promote the need for a subversion of the area’s development dynamics with a view to a ‘culture of sustainability’.

1. Introduction

The loss of tangible and intangible cultural heritage, due to actions introduced by the economic and political system, is a phenomenon that is not easy to solve for the entire European Union as it can affect, albeit at different times and in different ways, all Member States. Directives, recommendations, and conventions have, for several decades, been aimed at strengthening prevention policies aimed at making policy makers and political classes more responsible for how to protect cultural heritage. Nevertheless, the disappearance of the latter remains a worrying phenomenon of deep-rooted destruction and dismantling of the existing symbolic apparatus [1].

This is an ‘indirect’ destruction of cultural heritage theorised by the doctrine that, in recent years, has been addressing a very topical issue: the destruction of cultural heritage even in the absence of armed conflict. As far back as 1968, UNESCO, through its recommendation on the conservation of cultural heritage endangered by public and/or private works [2], first drew attention to the protection of cultural heritage in anticipation of the economic development of member countries which, even in those years, appeared unstoppable.

Pollution, oversized industrial development plans, agricultural activity, unauthorised excavations, inadequate infrastructure maintenance and planning, unsustainable tourism, and urbanisation are some of the factors threatening the survival of cultural heritage today. In addition to physical destruction, the consequences of human-made events also involve intangible assets, such as the apparatus of knowledge of a popular, historical, and scientific nature [3].

Among the territories in which this short-circuit is particularly evident, Taranto—one of the most densely populated urban centres in Apulia in Italy—is an indicative place where, alongside the ineffective remedies of protection and regeneration of the territorial heritage in general, the productive and reproductive dynamics of industrial and military growth have been preferred, resulting in a difficult sustainable coexistence of the resources present and an unprecedented environmental disaster for more than a century.

The old city of Taranto, the historic core of the city and the cradle of the city’s historical and artistic settlement dynamics, today represents the synthesis of the profound crisis that has characterised the city for decades. Urban neglect, disintegration, social decay, depopulation, loss of importance, and progressive impoverishment of the community’s quality of life—recorded as a result of the more or less forced abandonment of houses, alleys, and entire portions of the built-up area—coexist with a widespread cultural heritage stratified by almost three thousand years of history, the cancellation of which is the order of the day following repeated collapses and static instability. This dynamic of neglect, however, along with many others, is neither identified nor recognised as a consequence of the environmental disaster that characterises the city.

The “Ambiente svenduto” (Sellout Environment) trial that landed in the courtrooms on 17 May 2016, concluding in the first instance on 31 May 2021, saw 47 defendants linked to the management of the former Ilva steel plant in Taranto and the public administration accused of crimes of poisoning the environmental biophysical characteristics of the territory, foodstuffs, and wilful failure to take precautions in the workplace.

However, the city’s cultural heritage is one of the inseparable components of the territorial heritage subject to environmental disaster, a structural component of the ‘Taranto environment’ characterised by all its natural and cultural resources, by the conservation, rational management, and improvement of natural conditions (air, water, soil, and territory in all its components), by the existence and preservation of land and marine genetic heritages, by all the animal and plant species living in it in their natural state, and, ultimately, by human beings in all their extrinsic expressions [4].

It is in the context of a broader collective political reflection on the risks of loss and deterioration of a society’s history, memory, and value scales that the health of cultural heritage could represent a ‘mirror’ of the level of sustainability of the development processes implemented in a place.

The protection of cultural heritage implies that decisions have to be made regarding its management, the identification of hazardous events, the estimation of their probability and the severity of their tangible and intangible consequences, and the amount of resources required for their restoration. This requires a scientific and analytical assessment of the pressures and impacts affecting cultural heritage in the broader context of an area’s environmental heritage in order to identify the best responses to be implemented in the field. At an international level, various studies have emerged over the years on the determination of possible indicators to measure the health status of cultural heritage [5].

Examples are the documents developed by Monitoring Human Settlements with Urban Indicators [6], Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development Framework [7], European Common Indicators Policy [8], UNESCO [9], Characterisation of the Historic Landscape [10,11], The Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage [12], and Millennium Ecosystem Assessment [13]. Emerging indicators, which can be both qualitative and quantitative in nature, are now important elements in complex frameworks for analysing the health of territories.

One of the useful tools for measuring the socio-economic and environmental sustainability of a territory that over the years has seen the integration of specific indicators on cultural heritage is the DPSIR (Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response) framework, developed from an OECD approach that aims to trace logical cause–effect connections within the system it is intended to describe.

Definitions and Evolutions of the DPSIR Framework

The DPSIR framework was proposed by the European Environment Agency as a useful methodological approach to describe the environmental problems of a territory—through the representation of appropriate indicators—and to assess the most critical environmental issues to be addressed in the decision-making process oriented towards sustainable development [14,15,16].

The logical scheme of the DPSIR, as a methodology that facilitates the search for cause–effect relations in environmental problems [17], makes possible an approach specifically oriented towards highlighting the criticalities of the environmental quality of a territory and evaluating the effectiveness of applied policies. This methodological approach has often been able to document, with quantitative data, the size of the gap between the results of environmental analyses and the response actions planned in management plans [18]. The scheme is based on a structure of causal relationships that link together drivers (e.g., economic sectors, human activities); pressures (e.g., emissions into water and the atmosphere, waste production or contaminants, soil alienation, raw material supply, abstraction, and diversion, interaction with vegetation); the state of environmental resources; impacts (e.g., on the structure and functions of ecosystems, human health, cultural heritage); and responses (e.g., environmental and sectoral policies, regulatory prescriptions, remediation and repopulation actions, etc.). According to Legislative Decree 152/2006 (art. 5 paragraphs o, q, r, s), in Italy the DPSIR should be drawn up by ‘competent authorities’, ‘the public’, and ‘stakeholders’ with respect to a specific environmental issue. The use of the approach therefore presupposes a path of involvement and participation, which is one of the reasons why this methodology is subject to conceptual and structural modifications.

The DPSIR approach has been used, among others, to identify social and economic pressures in an estuary [19]; to determine indicators of coastal zone sustainability [20]; to assess land degradation caused by land uses [21,22,23]; and to evaluate alternative management strategies for a national park [24]. The DPSIR framework has also seen wider applications. Tsai et al. [25] have used it to establish indicators of sustainable development in the European environment in general and several national and international environmental reports have used the framework for spatial systemic analysis [26]. Some of this research proposes mathematical methodologies capable of verifying cause–effect correlations [27]. Rarely has the logical scheme been used for the integrated assessment of cultural heritage within territorial contexts.

Like any conceptual scheme, the DPSIR scheme also has limitations because it delimits and categorises the environmental and social dynamics of a territory, which are far more complex. The set of environmental and socio-economic processes occurring in territories implies the adoption of a perspective of analysis that interprets the environment–territory as a system of material and immaterial relations [28] and as interconnections between different types of flows. Indeed, although the DPSIR framework is considered a valuable tool [17,19,29], its combination with other analysis methodologies is increasingly promoted [20,30,31]. Furthermore, if the DPSIR framework is applied to analyse a long-term problem, the driver-pressure-state-impact-response linkages might only be partially represented as the activated responses might involve additional drivers, pressures, states, or impacts [32]. The indicators used in the DPSIR framework, in addition to providing a correlated reading of the events detectable in the form of causes and effects, should therefore also be useful for the setting up and evaluation of a circular monitoring of the phenomenon under analysis. The “spiral DPSIR framework” proposed by Sampath et al. [32] could be used for the representation of the continuous influence of the DPSIR scheme components.

Through the application of the spiral DPSIR logical-causal scheme to the case study, the aim of this study is to improve understanding of the complex situation of the cultural heritage at risk in the city of Taranto, with particular attention to cause–effect relationships. This thematic application is intended to be a contribution to the existing literature. The collection of information from scientific articles, public datasets, and technical reports aims to highlight the industrial, socio-economic, and environmental aspects that have made Taranto and all its environmental components a place of extreme environmental crisis. Through this methodology of data analysis, it is also intended to assess the effectiveness of the responses in terms of protection and enhancement of the cultural heritage of Taranto implemented by policy makers over the last 20 years. The choice of the indicators used is, in fact, closely linked to the purpose of the analysis. They were also selected on the basis of conceptual values that interpret cultural heritage as a potential matrix for the development of territorial contexts [33,34]. In view of the results, the study promotes the need for a subversion of the area’s development dynamics with a view to a “culture of sustainability”.

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. Study Area

With a population of 189,461 as of 1 January 2022, the city of Taranto covers a territory of approximately 249.86 km², representing the natural shoreline of the homonymous Gulf (Figure 1).

Morphologically, the city develops along three natural peninsulas and an artificial island—the historic centre known as ‘Città Vecchia’—located between Mar Grande and Mar Piccolo, the city’s two basins.

Its favourable geographical position has been the reason for its strategic military importance over the centuries. Taranto’s Maritime Military Arsenal, located in the coastal area of Mar Piccolo and inaugurated in 1889, a source of degradation of the marine environment due to the release of polluting materials (such as heavy metals and PCBs) on the seabed, with its almost 2400 civilian employees represents the numerically most important body in the technical–industrial area of Italian Defence. Since the early 1950s, the city of Taranto has been strategic not only for military functions (a vocation reconfirmed by the construction of the new N.A.T.O. Naval Base in Mar Grande, inaugurated in 2004) but also for strictly industrial functions. It became, in fact, a centre of excellence for iron and steel production with the establishment of the IV iron and steel centre ‘Italsider’ (now Acciaierie d’Italia S.p.A.), inaugurated in 1965, and still one of the largest industrial complexes in Europe for steel processing (the full-cycle production unit covers an area of 15 km²). On the northern side of Taranto is the refinery, owned by ENI S.p.A., which is directly connected to the oil fields in Basilicata (Italy).

Moreover, on the same side are numerous centres for the management of special waste from Taranto and other industrial areas. In spite of the presence of an important production pole and the preservation of heavy military servitudes, the city shows forms of degradation and socio-economic imbalance connected to the strong conditioning that large industrial groups and military institutions have exercised over its economy: high unemployment, poverty and marginalisation, crime, low levels of education, environmental degradation, and social and economic inequalities between the city’s different neighbourhoods are some of the chronic phenomena within the city of Taranto. The employment rate between the ages of 15 and 64 for the year 2021, for example, barely reaches 43.4% [35] against 59% nationally, with a negative percentage change 2021/2019 of −12.6% in the industry sector and −24.7% in the business sector.

Particularly relevant is the compromised health status of residents (with high mortality rates for respiratory and cardiovascular diseases) with excess infant mortality. The proportion of deaths between 1995 and 2009 is 15% of the overall population [36]. The variation recorded in 2021 with respect to the 2015–2019 average—according to ISTAT’s official mortality statistics—shows the city of Taranto among the provinces with the greatest increases (+22%), despite the generalised rise at a national level due also to the effects of the COVID-19 syndrome.

In addition, the conditions of the city’s built heritage appear worrying, particularly the abandonment of the old city’s built heritage, determined by the impoverishment of the quality of urban life recorded following the more or less forced neglect of houses, alleys, and entire portions of the built-up area (since the 1970s there has been the deportation of the ‘historical’ inhabitants to newly built neighbourhoods). The revolution of the social value scale of an entire community therefore appeared decisive: the economic productive reality that affected the population of Taranto (and other contiguous geographical areas) with the advent of heavy industry necessarily caused a radical remodelling of the customs and traditions of a society that had been chronically unemployed up to that time [37,38,39,40].

In fact, the loss of the built heritage, even of historical artistic interest, is commonplace as a result of repeated collapses and static failures [41] (Figure 2 and Figure 3).

The census developed on the basis of the emergency response and damage survey monitoring tools of the Taranto Provincial Fire Department, revealed—in the period between 1995 and 2020 (as of 2016, the figure is a projection of the statistical trend measured over the previous years due to inaccessibility of the reference databases)—816 incidents for an average of 31.38 events per year. The trend identified can support the hypothesis that, in the absence of targeted and systemic intervention plans, there will be a number of static disruptions in the next few years in the range 24–38, on an average of static disruptions = 31 and standard deviation = 8.

2.2. Data Collection and Analysis

An in-depth analysis and review of the literature was carried out to identify drivers, pressures, states, impacts, and responses related to the management of the cultural heritage of the city of Taranto and, in particular, of the historic centre, in two specific periods: (1) 2001 to 2011 and (2) 2012 to 2020. The choice to treat these two periods in a “helical” and continuity perspective is determined by two factors. The first concerns the advent of a historical event. On 26 July 2012, the Italian judiciary seized the most polluting processing facilities of the Taranto steel plant. The Italian state, through its Ministry of the Environment, however, announced an appeal to the Court of Review and, a few months later, the same Ministry stopped the magistrates’ action by decree, allowing the plant to continue production. Since then, all the successive Italian governments have perpetrated (and still do) a long series of attempts to save production “by any means”, in the promise of ecological upgrading of the plant. Meanwhile, after five years and almost 300 hearings, in May 2021 comes the historic verdict of the “Ambiente svenduto” (sold off environment) trial, which certifies that Taranto has been the victim of an unprecedented environmental disaster by the steel plant, causing a “very serious danger to public health”, “events of illness and death”, widespread emissions spills, contamination of soil and groundwater for multiple km², and poisoning of livestock and marine species. However, ten years after 2012, the plants remain sequestered, but with the right of use.

The second concerns the quality of available data. As a rule, an indicator is effective when it is representative of the phenomenon being examined, when it is quantifiable (number, percentage, rank), verifiable, and reproducible.

The literature review showed that extremely diverse characteristics are used as indicators to assess drivers, pressures, status, impacts, and responses in the field of cultural heritage. For the most part, these are status indicators, such as “Natural and cultural landscapes and components of landscape with importance for natural and cultural heritage”, “Impairments or loss of natural or cultural heritage” [5], “the area/percentage of landscape of a given type” [42], “Rural pedestrian spaces”, “Revitalisation historic spaces”, “Enhancement urban green”, “Protection of the Archaeological Heritage” [43,44], “Cultural historical building” [42], “no. of Historical/cultural heritage” [45], “Revenues from tourism (% farm income)”, and “Regional products sales (% PDO label)” [46]. Or indicators capable of representing a certain type of transformation of the object of analysis such as “Innovation and creativity to experience nature and cultural heritage”, “Traditional and environmental engineering”, “Implementation of activities in the area” [5], “Development of a public arts fund” [47], and “Increase cultural exchange” [48]. There are also pressure indicators such as ’Number of cultural sites affected by natural disasters and urban expansion’ [49] and ’Pressure on cultural heritage’ [50]. On the basis of the literature consulted, it was decided to integrate specific indicators with context indicators more commonly used in environmental/territorial analyses, by virtue of the treatment (in this study) of cultural heritage as an inseparable element of the more extensive environmental heritage of a territory.

Through desk consultation of primary and secondary sources, the study obtains multilevel data on different categories of interest: Demographic dynamics; Population growth; Heritage protection and conservation; Community Development; Land; Tourism activities; Climate Change; Environment pressure; Cultural Heritage security (Integrity and authenticity); Eco-environment quality; Community living conditions; Tourism economic structure; and Thematic planning (

Table 1. Indicators selected and analysed with spiral DPSIR methodology on the ‘Taranto case’, subdivided by ‘DPSIR category’, theme, and indicator type. Years 2001–2020.

DPSIR Category	Indicator Theme	Indicator	Source
Driver	Population	Population resident on 1 January	National Institute of Statistics Istat [51]; Municipality of Taranto [52,53,54]
Driver	Heritage protection and conservation	Landscape area under protection	Puglia Region—Department for Environmental Quality [55,56,57]
Driver	Heritage protection and conservation	% of the area under protection in relation to total area	Puglia Region—Department for Environmental Quality [55,56,57]
Driver	Heritage protection and conservation	Municipal public expenditure allocated to heritage management—% of total budget expenditure	Municipality of Taranto [52,53,54]
Driver	Heritage protection and conservation	Per capita current public expenditure in euro for the management of cultural heritage	Municipality of Taranto [52,53,54]
Driver	Community Development	Gross domestic product production side	National Institute of Statistics Istat [51]; Municipality of Taranto [52,53,54];
Driver	Land	Land use intensity	Puglia Region—Department for Environmental Quality [55,56,57]
Driver	Tourism activities	% of enterprises in accommodation and food services and creative, artistic and entertainment activities in relation to total enterprises	National Institute of Statistics Istat [51]; Municipality of Taranto [52,53,54]
Driver	Population growth	Total fertility rate	National Institute of Statistics Istat [51]
Driver	Population growth	Population density	National Institute of Statistics Istat [51]
Driver	Climate Change	Average annual temperature	ARPA Puglia [58]; Puglia Region—Department for Environmental Quality [55,56,57]
Driver	Climate Change	Average annual precipitation	ARPA Puglia [58]; Puglia Region—Department for Environmental Quality [55,56,57]
Pressure	Demographic dynamics	Unemployment rate	National Institute of Statistics Istat [51]
Pressure	Demographic dynamics	Total migration balance	National Institute of Statistics Istat [51]
Pressure	Environment pressure	Extent of forest fires—total average area per fire	Puglia Region—Department for Environmental Quality [55,56,57]
Pressure	Noxious emissions	PM10—annual average concentration	ARPA Puglia [58]; Municipality of Taranto [52,53,54]
Pressure	Noxious emissions	NO2—annual average	ARPA Puglia [58]; Municipality of Taranto [52,53,54]
Pressure	Noxious emissions	Benzene—annual average	ARPA Puglia [58]; Municipality of Taranto [52,53,54]
Pressure	Noxious emissions	Settleable dust deposits—annual average concentrations	ARPA Puglia [58]
Pressure	Noxious emissions	Industrial CO2 emissions	ARPA Puglia [58]; Municipality of Taranto [52,53,54]
State	Cultural Heritage security (Integrity and authenticity)	No. of structural damages to the heritage of the historic centre	[41]
State	Soil	Average agricultural values	Puglia Region—Department for Environmental Quality [55,56,57]
State	Eco-environment quality	Availability of usable urban green space	Puglia Region—Department for Environmental Quality [55,56,57]
State	Eco-environment quality	Illegal building index: illegal dwellings built in the year per 100 legal dwellings	Puglia Region—Department for Environmental Quality [55,56,57]
State	Eco-environment quality	Urbanisation index of landscape area under protection	Puglia Region—Department for Environmental Quality [55,56,57]
State	Eco-environment quality	Erosion of rural space by urban sprawl. % of the surface area affected by urban sprawl over the total surface area	Puglia Region—Department for Environmental Quality [55,56,57]
State	Eco-environment quality	Erosion of rural space by abandonment—% of areas affected by abandonment over the total surface area	Puglia Region—Department for Environmental Quality [55,56,57]
State	Eco-environment quality	Consistency of historic urban texture—% of inhabited buildings built before 1919 and in excellent or good state of preservation	Puglia Region—Department for Environmental Quality [55,56,57]
State	Community living conditions	Individuals in relative poverty	National Institute of Statistics Istat [51]
State	Community living conditions	Average taxable income of individuals	National Institute of Statistics Istat [51]
State	Tourism economic structure	No. of accommodation facilities	National Institute of Statistics Istat [51]
State	Tourism economic structure	Tourist flows: annual no. of arrivals	National Institute of Statistics Istat [51]
State	Tourism economic structure	Tourist flows: annual no. of overnight stays	National Institute of Statistics Istat [51]
Impact	Tourism economic growth	Tourist intensity (arrivals per inhabitant)	Elaboration on National Institute of Statistics Istat [51] data
Impact	Tourism economic growth	Tourist intensity (overnight stays per inhabitant)	Elaboration on National Institute of Statistics Istat [51] data
Impact	Tourism economic growth	Proportion per capita of urban waste from tourism	National Institute of Statistics Istat [51]
Impact	Tourism economic growth	% of contaminated facilities out of total controlled facilities	National Institute of Statistics Istat [51]; ARPA Puglia [58]; Puglia Region—Department for Environmental Quality [55,56,57]
Impact	Environment risk	No. potentially contaminated sites	ARPA Puglia [58]; Puglia Region—Department for Environmental Quality [55,56,57]
Impact	Cultural Heritage risk	% of municipal cultural assets surveyed in the “Cultural Heritage Risk Map” information system (Italian Ministry of Culture) out of the provincial total	Municipality of Taranto [52,53,54]; Superintendence for Archaeological Heritage of Puglia; University of Salento—Department of Cultural Heritage
Response	Thematic planning	Decontamination proceedings concluded out of total proceedings at provincial level	ARPA Puglia [58]; Municipality of Taranto [52,53,54]
Response	Thematic planning	No. urban regeneration plans with heritage interventions	Puglia Region—Department for Environmental Quality [55,56,57]; Municipality of Taranto [52,53,54]
Response	Thematic planning	Site of national interest (SIN) total area (km2)	Puglia Region—Department for Environmental Quality [55,56,57]; Municipality of Taranto [52,53,54]
Response	Thematic planning	Site of national interest (SIN) marine area (km2)	Puglia Region—Department for Environmental Quality [55,56,57]; Municipality of Taranto [52,53,54]

).

The data used in the analysis refer, depending on the theme, to scientific and technical reports from various institutions, research centres, and active citizenship: (among others) the National Institute of Statistics Istat [51]; Municipality of Taranto [52,53,54]; Puglia Region—Department for Environmental Quality [55,56,57]; Regional Agency for Environmental Prevention and Protection “ARPA Puglia” [58]; Basin Authority of the Apulia Region; Taranto Chamber of Commerce; CNR-Institute for Coastal Marine Environment, Higher Institute for Environmental Protection and Research ISPRA;; Ministry of the Environment and Protection of Land and Sea; Province of Taranto; WWF Taranto [59,60]; Superintendence for Archaeological Heritage of Puglia; University of Salento—Department of Cultural Heritage; Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport [61]; associations [62].

The data were then analysed using the spiral framework for DPSIR analysis and illustrated in a linear manner for effective representation.

3. Results

3.1. D-Driver

The driver indicators—those designed to capture the economic sectors and human activities that induce environmental pressures—were selected according to a holistic approach that makes it clear how different categories of determinants contribute, each for their part, to exerting a certain pressure on the environment. These contributions have been estimated separately and determined according to each supply chain or sector. The pressure exerted by the drivers is always anonymous, originating from a plurality of actors or causes. The indicators chosen for the development of the analysis responded to precise requirements of availability and updatability of data; representativeness of the environmental issues considered; and sensitivity (ability to return the changes in the phenomena monitored) for the purposes of activating environmental policies. Thus, indicators were used relating to demographic dynamics, territorial economy, land use, tourism activities, climate change, and aspects of cultural and environmental heritage protection.

The indicators constituting the “driver” dimension were first normalised, i.e., transformed into pure dimensionless numbers, using the Min–Max method. The normalisation had the aim of making the indicators comparable since, originally, they were expressed in different units of measurement and polarity. Subsequently, the normalised indicators were aggregated to form a synthetic index of the category through an exponential mathematical function [63]. This step required the application of a weighting system that assigned the same weight to all indicators and the identification of the compensatory synthesis technique (the indicators were considered replaceable). This practice has been developed for each category of the DPSIR scheme.

By comparing the aggregated data, it was possible to prepare a line chart that shows the overall trend of the drivers in the periods 2001–2011 and 2012–2020, where values above 1 indicate improved situations than in the starting year, and below 1 lower situations (Chart 1).

The discontinuities are related to particular events or to precise indicators responsible: in particular, the inconstancy of the ‘drivers’ trend in the years 2005–2007 can be attributed to the discontinuity of the indicator on ‘municipal public expenditure allocated to the management of cultural heritage—percentage of total budget expenditure’, which in 2005 was 0.09%, in 2006, 0.75%, and in 2007, 0.03%—values probably connected to the state of municipal financial collapse formalised in 2006.

3.2. P-Pressure

The environmental pressure indicators—the various human activities that constitute sources of pressure on the various environmental components—were also selected on the basis of the indicators initially proposed by the EEA and the model developed by the Statistical Office of the European Community (Eurostat) updated in 1999. It should be emphasised that not all pressures are considered in the DPSIR scheme: those that are attributable to natural causes or global effects of human activities, such as climate change, depletion of raw materials, and atmospheric ozone production, are often excluded [18]. Nevertheless, these effects should be the subject of adaptation and mitigation measures and, therefore, become part of the ‘response package’ to be prepared by environmental authorities. In this study, indicators related to population dynamics and atmospheric emissions were used. From the comparison of the aggregated data, it was possible to prepare a line chart showing the overall pressure trend, within the defined time periods, where values above 1 indicate improved situations than in the starting year, and below 1 lower situations (Chart 2).

The discontinuities are related to particular events or to precise indicators responsible: in particular, the pressure trend is discontinuous in the year 2003, where the deposition of settleable dust—average annual concentrations (mg/m²/day)—stands at 317.75, 74 units higher than the previous year, just as the total migration balance (per thousand inhabitants) grows to 7.1% compared to the previous year (2.8%). The same indicators lead to a peak in 2007 where the total migratory balance (per thousand inhabitants) stands at 1.5% compared to the value from the previous year (0.2%). In 2009 there is also the influence of the annual average of benzene emissions (mg/m³) at 0.8%, which is lower than the average of the following year (1.4%), and the indicator of industrial CO₂ emissions (mg/m³) which rises from 21,972.210 to 12,636.098 in the years 2008–2009, and then increases again in 2010 to 18,000,969 mg/m³. Finally, in 2019 the discontinuity is determined by the value of the total migration balance (per thousand inhabitants), which stands at −3.6% compared to the value from the previous year of −4.2%.

3.3. S-State

State indicators attest to the current quality of the environment and its alterations. Indicators relating to land use, the urbanisation index of areas subject to landscape protection, the quality of urban greenery, community living conditions, tourism dynamics, and structural damage to the heritage of the historic centre were therefore used. From the comparison of the aggregated data, it was possible to prepare a line chart showing the overall trend of the ‘states’, within the defined time periods, where values greater than 1 indicate improved situations than those of the starting year, and less than 1 lower situations (Chart 3).

The discontinuities are related to particular events or to precise indicators responsible: in particular, the trend in states is clearly upward from the second period of analysis. The incidence is related to the increase in the availability of urban green space (per capita), which stands at 3.1 in contrast to the 1.6 recorded in 2010, and increases to 6.4% in 2019; furthermore, by the considerable increase in the number of tourist arrivals (in 2019 amounting to 93. 739 units, for a total of +39.3% compared to 2001), tourist overnight stays (in 2019 amounting to 264,083 units, for a total of +36.6% compared to 2001) and the total number of accommodation establishments increased by +458.5% compared to 2001.

3.4. I-Impact

Impact indicators describe the effects on the ecosystem and human health resulting from pressure factors. Analysing impacts translates, in the logical process, into linking the pressures and processes at work to the driving forces of the economy: pressures can give rise to more or less significant impacts. In fact, given the same relevance of a particular pressure (in terms of intensity, frequency, harmfulness, duration), the probability of impact depends on the target’s sensitivity. For example, an ecosystem that is small and perhaps even fragmented is more vulnerable than one that is particularly extensive and compact. Policy makers, therefore, should assess the significance of impacts by considering not only the relevance of integrated pressures but also the sensitivities and vulnerabilities of environmental targets [18]. For the purpose of analysing the study area, indicators relating to the preservation of cultural and environmental heritage, economic growth in the tourism sector, and contaminated sites were used. By comparing the aggregated data, it was possible to prepare a line chart showing the overall trend from the impacts, where values above 1 indicate improved situations compared to the starting year, and below 1 lower situations (Chart 4).

The discontinuities are related to particular events or to precise indicators responsible: the trend shows significant peaks in the year 2011, potentially ascribable to a decrease in the percentage of contaminated tourist accommodation facilities out of the total of those inspected, which increases from 60% to 81.82% during the following year. In the period 2017–2019, the tourist intensity (presences per inhabitant) and the per capita share of municipal waste attributable to tourism grew steadily, thus in line with the exponential growth of tourist flows. As evidence of this, note the reverse peak recorded in the year of the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, where the impacts of the tourism sector declined everywhere.

3.5. R-Response

To conclude this section dedicated to the application of the DPSIR methodology, it is interesting to note the structure of the line chart obtained from the comparison of aggregated data on government actions implemented to address and mitigate pressures and problems manifested on the environment (Chart 5).

The overall trend of the response, within the defined time periods, shows discontinuity of the trend especially in the second analysed period 2012–2020 as a result of the remediation proceedings concluded out of the total proceedings foreseen at a provincial level over the entire area of the site of national interest (SIN), which in 2020 was 38.96%.

Furthermore, the trend in the second period of analysis is determined by an indicator (added compared to the first period), that is part of the “Thematic planning” theme: the “number of pro-iron and steel industry law decrees”. These measures, although in response to the environmental disaster in Taranto, must be read as strategies inversely proportional to the environmental protection of the area as actions aimed at safeguarding industrial production: in fact, all the decree laws were issued to keep the plant alive under the same conditions as before.

Urban regeneration plans with heritage interventions deserve special mention. To date, the two main instruments also prepared for the historic centre of Taranto are the Institutional Development Contract (CIS) started following the approval of Law 20/2015, which has suffered from the changes of Government on a national scale [64] and the project “Re-inhabiting the historic centre of Taranto” approved within the National Innovative Programme for Housing Quality (PINQUA) financed by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan with EUR 2.8 billion and which aims to reduce the decay of suburbs, make public housing more energy efficient, and carry out urban regeneration interventions to improve people’s quality of life.

The progress of the CIS intervention programme sees for the “Heritage, Cultural Activities and Tourism Promotion” sector, the realisation (now completed) of two interventions. These are the restoration of the Ex-Convent Sant’Antonio and the Compendium Santa Maria della Giustizia, two examples of cultural heritage located outside the historic centre of Taranto but nevertheless close to extremely compromised industrial areas. On the other hand, the restoration of a number of built heritage assets in the historic centre of Taranto are included in the “Urban Regeneration” sector, such as the restoration of Palazzo Carducci, Palazzo Troilo, and a building located on one of the main streets, Via Garibaldi. All the interventions are still in a purely embryonic stage. The most significant issue, however, is that all these latter interventions are actions that bounce back from old programmes (e.g., Urban II, Area Vasta Tarantina) which have never achieved—on these specific actions—any realisation objectives.

PINQUA’s ‘Re-inhabiting the historic centre of Taranto’ project, on the other hand, concerns a large portion of the territory, the eastern quadrant of the historic centre, characterised by a high level of housing and socio-economic hardship, aggravated by the old age of the buildings, including those of Public Residential Housing. The aim of the plan is to “repopulate the area”, which today sees large portions of uninhabited buildings. The area covered by the plan appears disjointed from an urban planning point of view. In fact, compared to the historical compendium represented by the municipal palace in Largo Calò, for which a conservative restoration is planned, the adjoining municipal buildings to be renovated represent the vestiges of the work of the fascist “redevelopment pickaxe” which, disguised as a need for “rehabilitation”, demolished the original “Turripenne pittaggio” (in the medieval historic centre there were four neighbourhoods (pittaggi): San Pietro, Baglio, Ponte, and Turripenne) where there was a large Jewish population. At the hands of fascism, hundreds of housing sectors, alleys, and churches fell, partly emptying the island of its most formed and combative human and social content, where territorial rootedness and popular consciousness were strong. Work will be carried out on these ‘new’ building complexes to consolidate them statically (removal of unsafe parts, new water system) and to make them more energy efficient (external coat, replacement of external window frames, heat pump system, photovoltaic panels on the roof). A total of 95 housing units are being renovated on 8041 m² of public space, for a financing of EUR 15,000,000.00.

Even in this case, the process is still at an embryonic stage dictated, above all, by a dynamic that, historically, has always precluded the concrete pursuit of planned works in the historic centre of Taranto. With protocol no. 0196701/2022 of 24 October 2022, notice no. 48, almost a year after the project was approved by the Italian Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport, the Municipality of Taranto—Urban Planning and Maritime State Property section initiates the procedure of “caution of the urgent execution of works to ensure the static safety of unsafe buildings falling within the perimeter affected by the PINQUA national innovative programme for the quality of living”. The recipients of this caution, however, are owners who are “not uniquely traceable”. The result is that the direct interlocutor who should act with the municipal authority for a participatory redesign of the territory is unknown, not least due to the many years that have elapsed since the first instances of collapse, which have caused considerable community dissolution.

4. Discussion

The sustainable use of a territory consists, on the one hand, of its protection and safeguard, on the other in its promotion as an instrument of lasting economic growth. From this point of view, the management of cultural heritage plays a role of primary importance as it is the subject of considerable controversies arising from the balance in the dichotomy between conservation and use of resources. The close interconnection between spaces of cultural heritage and those destined for socio-economic activities requires a holistic approach to territorial governance, which includes environmental objectives in the various sector policies. In the concreteness of sustainable land management, this need translates into the need for integration between the various planning and regulatory tools, which cannot and must not act independently and functionally in isolation. The ‘environment’ is configured as an active complex of elements that move in a common context and influence each other. It is not only a set of facts—the elements that compose it—but also a place of acts—the dynamics that exist between these components [65,66].

The DPSIR spiral analysis developed in this study centred on the loss of cultural heritage due to highly impacting anthropic factors must therefore be read as an analysis of the state of health of one of the components of the environmental good that should remain in collective enjoyment and not be the object of a subjective appropriative situation even when this provides for its indirect use (as well as abandonment).

The discontinuities found in the trends of the various dimensions of the logical analysis scheme relate to events or precise responsible indicators. Some of these are related precisely to the dimension of cultural heritage. For example, the trend line of the drivers detects an inconstancy determined by the fluctuation of the “municipal public expenditure for the management of cultural heritage—percentage of total budget expenditure”. In the trend line of the impacts, one of the phenomena of discontinuity is that relating to the percentage of contaminated tourist accommodation facilities out of the total of those controlled, to the tourist intensity (nights per inhabitant) and to the per capita share of urban waste attributable to tourism. The latter have not been used as specific indicators of the “cultural heritage” dimension even if they assume a side effect of the use of territorial cultural resources.

The “responses” category of the DPSIR scheme deserves a particular note and, in particular, the variables “number of pro-iron and steel industry law decrees” and “urban regeneration plans with heritage interventions”. These measures, albeit in response to the environmental disaster of Taranto, must be read as strategies inversely proportional to the environmental protection of the area. We are in the presence of regulatory instruments for the protection of industrial production which begins even before 26 July 2012.

The first ‘save steel’ decree law had arrived in the summer of 2010. In the middle of the benzo(a)pyrene emergency, the environment minister had authorised the raising of emission limits for this carcinogenic pollutant in cities with more than 150,000 inhabitants. Since then, some 12 decree laws have been amended by the various Italian governments to keep the plant alive. The never-ending story of the iron and steel plant in Taranto is representative of the attitude that governments have taken and continue to take towards the ‘industrial monsters’ necessary for national GDP growth. The programmatic plans for cleaning up and redeveloping the area fail to take root, revealing how no transition operation makes sense without the cessation of the source of territorial destruction. The results of the analysis point in this direction: each response, although logically coherent, turns out to be ineffective or partially effective in the face of maintaining the status quo of the existing system.

5. Conclusions

This study focused on the application of the spiral DPSIR framework to analyse the management responses adopted from 2001 to 2020 for the protection and consequent enhancement of the cultural heritage—as an integral component of the ‘environmental asset’—located in the historic centre of Taranto.

The loss of the built cultural heritage appears to be a process repeated over time, which probably began in systematic terms—in relation to the socio-economic system present in the area—from the first news events in the 1970s that recorded collapses of sections of built-up areas causing injuries and deaths. Since then, the main solution has been to relocate households to newly built neighbourhoods, leaving the historical built heritage emptied of the resource that, along with many others, is capable of keeping it alive: the inhabitant. The failure to reverse this trend today places Taranto’s historic centre at the core of a slow process of gentrification which, unlike many other historic centres, struggles (perhaps fortunately) to take root also because of the amount of investment needed to rehabilitate the buildings.

In this perspective, the study aims to stimulate managers to initiate specific analyses of the risks that threaten cultural heritage in order to implement protective measures before irreversible damage occurs. The results of the analysis are useful as a first approach to the evidence of possible causal relationships that exist in the territory and should be the subject of more detailed analytical evaluations, with a “narrower” focus on the cultural heritage in order to specifically understand possible direct causal links between the environmental destruction of the city and the destruction of the cultural heritage present there.

The research sees some limitations. The first is determined by the analysis methodology used. In future evolutions, the spiral DPSIR scheme could be combined with the Landscape Economic Valuation methodology [67], which is particularly common in planning practices as a support to decisions on the protection, enhancement, recovery, and redevelopment of the territorial heritage.

The second limitation concerns the time periods used in the analysis. In order to demonstrate a cause–effect relationship between the drivers identified and the cultural and socio-economic impacts determined, it would be necessary to relate the analysis of the Taranto area in the pre-industrial period and then in the post-industrial period. This comparison could further demonstrate the effectiveness (or ineffectiveness) of the policies included in the area’s management system. Moreover, such a longer-range time demarcation could fully utilise the typology of the spiral DPSIR scheme, which can provide both a persistence of indicators and the input of new indicators in their driver-pressure-state-impact-response evolution. It is certain that the availability of data in the pre-industrial period remains a critical element. This lack could be remedied using common historical indicators which, although limited in their categorisation, could provide a semi-complex view of the evolution of the environmental, cultural, and economic dynamics of the study area.