Historic small towns in China and Italy: Conservation and sustainable development

Exponential urbanisation has brought forward issues of sustainability throughout the globe and not only in the old continent or in the so called western world. One of the approaches to counteract urbanisation process is to direct (or re-direct) future growth towards smaller cities organised in networks. Research on these grounds is going-on on different levels (regional economics and planning, infrastructure and digital technologies, but also in the field of heritage planning). My lecture will focus only on the contribution heritage planning may offer, having as case studies the small historic towns of Italy and of South-East China.