*3.5. Structural Di*ffi*culties and Conservational Approach*

Even though the numbers of vacancies are high and the value of the property not utilized seems to be of absolute economic significance, the city plans presented here fail to propose innovative policies to reuse the centre. A further step, i.e., to consider these actions as a way to reduce land consumption and recycle housing stocks, is only mentioned.

The paper proposes that the examined plans express a structural difficulty in dealing with the historic centre within renewed cultural and economic coordinates. "Structural" means pertaining to the long-term cultural and organizational essence of the Italian regulation mechanism for protecting the heritage: In order to be in compliance with the law, regulations tend to deny transformation rather than to define an operational approach, allowing agreement and compensations.

Italian urbanism distinguishes between policies of regeneration based on cultural values—the building type, the permanence, the historical-architectural legacy—and actions based on scientific and technological values—sustainability, de-carbonisation, reduction of energy consumption, etc. This separation is highly inefficient, this is also because, in Italy, the conservational approach is often overwhelming due to the extension of the classification of heritage to essentially everything old [47,48] and the idea that the historic centre—as a whole—is a work of art and, as such, it cannot be changed [49]. The risk of stagnation is increased by the lack of dialogue in Italy between the culture of design and the culture of conservation [50,51].

### **4. Four Paradoxes of the Italian Historic City Centres**

The results of the research show that some paradoxes exist in Italian historic centres. They are part of the most precious heritage of the country, locations of monuments and beauty, guarantee the cultural identity, icons of well-designed open spaces and well-being, and of a high-density and efficient use of land. Therefore, they should be successful but the interpretation of demographic movements and property dynamics over the past thirty years in small-to-medium-sized cities in Northern Italy reveal these positive and advantageous characteristics do not prevent the relocation of the population, businesses and institutions. The critical recognition of these paradoxes—presented in the following paragraphs—should be the starting point for the re-framing of the policies for urban heritage which do not seem able, as the previous paragraph shows, to give a dimension to the problems and react to transformation dynamics.

### *4.1. High-density and Compactness*

The sustainability of high-density settlements has been a widely discussed topic together with the opportunity to drastically decrease land consumption for new settlements [52–55]. The historic centre has used land very efficiently because the settlement is compact and has a high-density: Generally, the centre is many times denser than the rest of the settlements in the municipality (in Udine, Brescia e Modena the inhabitants in the historic centre per square meter are roughly four times as many as in the rest of the city).

Compactness and high density produce also proximity to public services and can support public transportation, which is convenient and accessible because of the concentration of people and activities. It can be said the city centre has the required parameters to be sustainable because it is compact and of higher density, in a word, it has already the main characteristics of an "eco-neighborhood" [56]. But the issue is socio-cultural and related to changed desires for living condition: the heritage value and the human-scale value of the history centre are not enough to attract residents; failing to recognize it is misleading.
