Adapting urban heritage for health and well-being

The subsequent Covid-19 emergency has generated new lifestyles and introduced new principles and tools for long-lasting urban quality improvement in historic environment. Accordingly, heritage open spaces can play a vital role to be preserved and re-designed under new environmental, social, cultural, and historic criteria. In this context, measures to promote air quality, reduce urban traffic, create resilient cycle and pedestrian zones can help people to re-gain public space value, image, and safety. This paper aims to show quality improvement of urban space regarding the Florence UNESCO Area. Particularly, urban spaces need to be of high-quality by adopting a network strategy for 'active travel' (walking, cycling and public transportation); by promoting green spaces to obtain a higher degree of space equity. Historic environments have a huge potentiality to satisfy community and visitors’ needs. Adaptive, dynamic strategies and design approaches must better define towards a revitalization of a challenging post-Covid historic City.