*4.2. Community Life and Local Identity*

The human-scale dimensions and the quality of the public spaces in the historic centre are generally praised and said to guarantee both individual well-being and community life in well-designed gathering places, as very influential scholars have been claiming for decades [57–59], reinforcing this myth in the Italian cities. These physical characters, where the symbols of the local community's identity are preserved, seem to reinforce the social bonds and cultural identity. The so called "New Urbanism" carefully considers these physical conditions and claims these should be re-proposed for contemporary settlements [60]. The image of the centre as a pleasant place is so anchored that even some shopping malls adopt the forms and dimensions of the traditional open-air historic centre.

### *4.3. Recurrent Re-generation and Accumulation of Resources or Embedded Energy*

The large majority of the built stock in the city centre was built to last, has resisted centuries and was recurrently transformed or adapted to new inhabitants, requests or functions. The high quality of the structures, as well as of some ancient urban tissue, has allowed regeneration and renovation; the Italian Aldo Rossi and Giancarlo De Carlo clearly highlighted these historical and architectural processes and opportunities, well before the idea of sustainable recycling [61–63].

In the old towns, the economy has been circular for the traditionally limited resources and for the great value of the buildings and their location, long-term resilient practices were constantly adopted over the centuries for preserving the assets. Open public spaces were constantly improved and maintained for the community gathering for market, justice, religious events.

Conditions are radically changed and nowadays, possibilities are not considered limited anymore, but the money and energy embedded in the historical structures must be recognized and valued, as well as the regeneration opportunity, to neglect this potentiality when the world is praising recycling and circularity would be a waste [64].

### *4.4. Vanished Appeal*

If, over the centuries, the centre was the preferred and most prestigious location for inhabitants and institutions and the distinction between the centre and periphery was sharp, today the trend has changed. The paradoxes lay in the fact that universally recognized positive characteristics do not impact the choices of inhabitants and institutions today. Even though everyone recognizes the centre's great beauty, even if high-density settlements are praised as one of the best solutions for a sustainable urban environment, even though the surviving community spirit allowed by the centre's spatial peculiarities is considered an antidote against the metropolisation, the past appreciation has vanished and the historic centre is not appealing.

The paper suggests this lost social and economic attractiveness is due to the structural mutations in Italian society and economics, not only since the economic crisis in 2008 but progressively since the 1990s, expressed in urban terms by the phenomena of sprawl [65]. In times of climate change, of circular economy and search for a new ecological balance, where the urban world is a major actor, laws and regulations which govern the urban heritage should face the contradictions the paradoxes pose and be questioned. The research suggests it is urgent politicians and city officials give a different value to the historic city centre; this topic has long been neglected and it is high time the battle for preservation is followed by another battle for the recycling of a stock of primary cultural, economic and social value.
