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The challenges of contemporary urban regeneration processes call for innovative and sustainable operating models and strategies. Cultural Heritage acknowledgment and valorization, combined with participatory and engagement practices, can trigger reactivation and re-appropriation of underused urban spaces. Co-design, self-construction and participatory paths, through demonstrative and temporary actions, can generate new dynamics in the public space use, provide effective solutions to tackle climate change, improve outdoor microclimatic comfort conditions, enhance Cultural Heritage accessibility and knowledge, fostering responsibility for the common good. The implementation of demonstrative interventions, co-created with local administrations, stakeholders and citizens, represents a viable and effective tool in order to test temporary experimental transformations and to monitor and evaluate their impacts, recalibrating the proposed strategies on a case-by-case basis. This integrated and innovative approach was experimented in the Bologna University area by the EU Horizon 2020 project ROCK - Regeneration and Optimisation of Cultural Heritage in creative and Knowledge cities (GA 730280) - through a series of pilot actions. ROCK experimentations are implemented in the historical city centres, enhancing public open space fruition and performative potentials, to generate new resilient processes in terms of environmental sustainability and social inclusion. The co-design and self-construction interventions on Piazza Rossini - focused by the paper - represent short term and reversible transformations with a long-term impressive and beyond expectations results.

Enhancing accessibility of Cultural Heritage information represent a key step for the implementation of sustainable and inclusive valorisation actions that recognize knowledge as valuable and operable material. The paper addresses the issue from the point of view of the opportunities offered by digital technologies, in particular through the tool of the digital interoperable platforms for repository, processing and visualization of open and interoperable data – of different format (3d models, images, texts, etc.), collected from different sources (traditional repositories, digital libraries, real-time contents, IoT, sensors, social networks, etc.) and targeting multiple types of users (researchers, authorities, policy makers, tourists, citizens, etc.). The comparison between three projects - The EU funded INCEPTION project – Inclusive Cultural Heritage in Europe through 3D semantic Modelling (2015-2019), The H2020 ROCK project - Regeneration and Optimization of Cultural heritage in creative and Knowledge (2017-2020) and the on-going PON PNR IDEHA project (2017-2021) – Innovation for Data Elaboration in Heritage Areas – with different focus, explain possible knowledge-driven strategies of data use models and information databases, aimed at the common goal of improving accessibility, knowledge, enhancement and conservation of Cultural Heritage. The achieved results show how the information management through open interoperable platforms represents a helpful decision and monitoring support for the processes involving Cultural Heritage: in addition to providing data and digital resources to different users, it is able to create collaborative networks between all actors involved at various levels and to enable new potential knowledge scenarios.