The Management Plan for the UNESCO Heritage Sites: some Critical Reflections from a Managerial Point of View

The development of the UNESCO World Heritage list (WHL) has highlighted since its creation in 1972 the necessity to manage the outstanding universal values of the cultural and natural heritage in every country. Moreover, the “Operational Guidelines” issued by the UNESCO in 2005 have induced the World Heritage sites to adopt and use the “management plan”, in order to “specify how the outstanding universal value of a property should be preserved”. Management plans should require an interdisciplinary methodology and approach, considered the complexity of the topics and the necessity of integration among different subjects, like urban studies, architecture, heritage conservation and restoration, archaeology, engineering, landscape studies, sociology, art history, beyond economics and management. Notwithstanding, the debate has often concentrated only on the relationship between management plan and traditional urban and landscape plans so far, with a poor consideration of the linkages with the managerial studies, in particular the introduction of principles, processes and tools able to support, monitor and demonstrate the performance linked to protection, preservation, development and valorisation of cultural and natural sites. The main research question of this paper is to analyse the concrete possibilities of application of an effective managerial perspective to the UNESCO management plan. This research question has to be contextualised in the present scenario of strategies adopted for the cultural (and natural) heritage management, with specific reference to the Italian situation. This work is developed through an integrated deductive-inductive approach, with the combination of one part of theoretical analysis and consequent literature review with another part of empirical content, based on the observation of the concrete situation of some UNESCO heritage sites all around the world, but with a specific and deep look to Italy.