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This book explores the in-depth relationship between historic-cultural heritage and landscape, urban, and regional planning. It analyzes recent cultural and discipline positions and addresses research to interpret legacy values and the necessity for conservation within the urban setting. It also presents a method that helps urban planners to implement the suggestions, based on extensive knowledge of topographic methods and urban archaeology, to enhance the shaping and planning of the historic and present-day city.

A rapid evolution of techniques and methods that provide innovative planning instruments and contribute to conservation projects involving cities and territories is now being witnessed in urban planning. Actors involved in the planning process use an organic and multidisciplinary vision of techniques and methods to understand the relation between the historic-cultural goods and their settlement context. Through urban archaeology it is now possible to orient-in a systematic way-interventions in the historic centers of European cities and document the origin and evolution of the urban shape, to reconcile renewal demand and preservation of ancient heritage.

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Preface.- Methodological Introduction.- Building the Process of Knowledge.- The Instrumental Use of the Process of Knowledge.- Development of a Multidisciplinary Approach.- Influencing Factors.- The New Interdisiciplinary Frontiers.

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Prof. Dr. Anna Maria Colavitti is Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the School of Architecture, University of Cagliari, Italy. She started as a Research Fellow, before becoming a Lecturer at the Department of Land Engineering of the same university. In 2011 she became an Assistant Professor at the Department of Architecture and she has been an Associate Professor since 2014.

Dr. Colavitti graduated in Ancient Topography and Archaeology at the University of Rome La Sapienza and hold a Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Planning. Her main scientific interests are oriented to formal and functional reading of the city, historic settlement analysis and interpretation, cultural heritage management and the role cultural and environmental resources (as factors of long-lasting and sustainable local development) play in the urban planning processes.

Dr. Anna Maria Colvatti wrote five monographs, all published in the Italian language and several papers pubished in international journals and conference proceedings.

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