Rethinking Minor Cities with Historical Heritage Through Adaptive Reuse Strategies: Evidence from the Case of Craco (Italy)

Regenerating fragile historical contexts requires choices of repurposing that combine heritage protection, continuity of use and managerial feasibility, in the presence of multiple objectives and stakeholders with different preferences. This study develops and tests an MCDA-based decision-support framework for the ex-ante selection of adaptive reuse scenario applied to Craco (Italy) and Palazzo Carbone-Rigirone. Craco and Palazzo Carbone-Rigirone were selected as a critical case because they combine heritage abandonment, geomorphological fragility, cultural visibility, weak local services and the need for a feasible management model. The methodology involves: (i) defining four adaptive reuse scenarios; (ii) constructing nine criteria that integrate socio-economic impacts, safety/security, cultural attractiveness, compatibility with the property and economic–financial feasibility; (iii) elicitation of weights using a hybrid approach, combining the decision-maker’s macro priorities and the social quota derived from questionnaires using normalised indicators of satisfaction/dissatisfaction and priorities for improvement; (iv) classification using the Weighted Sum Model and TOPSIS under two normalizations (distributive and ideal) and two variants (relative and absolute). The results show convergence between methods and stability of the ranking, with a preference for the multifunctional scenario oriented towards cultural services and socialising. In the case of Craco, adaptive reuse offers advantages compared with purely conservative, passive musealization or tourism-only strategies. The study concludes that MCDA is useful as a transparent pre-selection tool and supports the alignment of local needs and institutional priorities; its robustness can be strengthened with sensitivity analyses and policy scenarios.