Cultural heritage: an opportunity to activate (new) public spaces Exploring solutions in European cities and regions Are cities made of buildings or of public spaces? From an urban design point of view, public spaces, as sites for social connection between people, are the catalysts of urban life. Cities have understood the power and assets that public spaces represent and have been investing in them widely in the past years. Cities are creating new public spaces and transforming existing ones. The objective is to turn public spaces into characterised urban products filled with urban services that can attract a wide range of users – locals and visitors. Cultural heritage has a role to play in these urban development strategies as an inherent element of an urban landscape that evolves with cities. If heritage is above all a place of remembrance and memories of the past, cultural heritage in cities and regions connects to urban planning and urban regeneration, where repurposing heritage buildings or heritage spaces contributes to generating new dynamics in neighbourhoods and provides places for new urban experiences. Promoting creativity and heritage in public spaces is key to creating sustainable societies and can bring communities together. But urban regeneration also has a social role and cultural heritage can be key to bringing communities together around a shared project and can help revive neighbourhoods or communities that felt neglected or abandoned. Bringing the focus onto locals’ experience and history, having them participate directly in the making of cultural heritage, can empower communities to develop new approaches and solutions through a co-design process. Cities and regions are eager to invest in their cultural heritage and breathe a new life into (sometimes abandoned) heritage spaces. They seldom do this alone, instead working with multiple partners and communities. The key component of the redevelopment and adaptive reuse of cultural heritage is often the involvement and collaboration of local authorities with citizens, businesses and researchers to promote cultural experimentation, social innovation and entrepreneurship for a collaborative and sustainable economy. The Covid-19 pandemic has also reconfigured the way we use and think about public spaces. Public and green spaces have gained an importance and a recognition of their impact on physical but also mental health and quality of life for people living in cities. Public spaces have been widely used and reinvented during the pandemic, and the changes in the way people interact with them will have long lasting impacts in how cities should design and conceive such spaces. 51 Exploring solutions in European cities and regions Reggio Emilia Italy From the San Pietro Cloisters to an open hub Leuven Belgium OPEK, public depot for the arts Plovdiv Bulgaria Kapana creative district Šibenik Croatia Transforming Šibenik fortresses into a major cultural hotspot