Adaptive Reuse of Cultural Heritage in Amsterdam: Identifying Challenges and Solutions through the Historic Urban Landscape Approach

The conservation of cultural heritage through its adaptive reuse contributes to the transition towards circular cities enhancing urban liveability and tackles challenges such as resource scarcity (UN SDG target 11.4) and waste prevention (UN SDG target 12.5). By regenerating heritage resources and maintaining their values over time, adaptive reuse comes out as a circular practice that can boost wellbeing and create new values, e.g. spill over effects. Currently, the knowledge on challenges affecting cultural heritage adaptive reuse is limited in scope, geographical area, and stakeholders’ contribution. This study thus seeks to address such limitations by identifying what challenges cultural heritage adaptive reuse entails and how to overcome them. This identification uses the steps of the holistic and integrated approach set forward by the 2011 UNESCO Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape. This study is based on a case study analysis entailing a workshop in the City of Amsterdam. A wide range of [46] stakeholders from the public, private, and civic sectors participated. The qualitative dataset was analysed through content analysis revealing that the identified challenges mainly concern the domains of knowledge, interest, and civic engagement. In sum, this study provides insights in cultural heritage adaptive reuse practices by enabling a better understanding of their challenges from multi-stakeholders’ perspectives. This research also raises awareness on challenges and sets out the basis for further developing solutions and tools to overcome them facilitating the transition from a reactive towards a proactive attitude in adaptive reuse practices.