Participatory planning: a new approach for the conservation of the heritage of cultural landscapes.

We often believe that the transformations about our city or a public building cannot fall or be the result of the needs of all the citizens who make up society. Actually there are ways and tools which provide for the cooperation of the citizens with the institutions and with the designer during the design and/or construction. This is possible through the application of participatory planning concept. Participatory planning aims to an active and direct involvement of citizens during the entire design process in new construction interventions or in the restoration and the reuse of urban spaces and of public and residential buildings. Citizens are invited to express themselves about the location, the purpose, the functions and the requirements to be met both in the planning phase and in the implementation phase. The goal is to respond to the real needs of society in its various components, by creating shared interventions that have their roots in the history and tradition of the society. The participation of the citizen as an active and conscious part of all interventions that transform the territory, not only improves the quality of life, but also increases his sense of belonging to it and his accountability to the urban intervention. The paper aims to define the meaning and the methods of participatory architecture, and, through the illustration of examples of participatory processes of urban planning and of building design for the new and for existing buildings in the Italian and European context, to investigate the effectiveness of this approach for the conservation of the heritage of cultural landscapes.