Revitalizing a Heritage Site through the Lens of Environmental and Social Justice

Cultural HIDRANT is an urban social innovation project in the city of Halandri, Greece. It regards the revitalization of an ancient aqueduct and hidden natural resource through community participation, aiming to promote environmentally sustainable and socially fair development.

Through a cross-sectoral approach, collaborative and participatory methods –between municipality, specialists, local stakeholders, communities, schools- the Hadrian Aqueduct is re-embedded in everyday life as historical heritage and memory, as water, cultural and urban commons. 24.500m2 are transformed, through participatory planning, into car-free green public spaces. A non-drinkable water network is created, saving annually 25000m3 of expensive energy-costly drinkable water, which along with a local history archive and the community HIDRANT festival constitute novel citizens-managed institutions.

Besides re-emerging as historical landmark, Hadrian Aqueduct becomes a community building facility. It interweaves past, present and future, but also everyday needs with green transition, local identity and sense of belonging with participatory modes of governance, endogenous development with sustainable resource management.

This session is part of the “Bureaucracy 2045: Thinking afresh” block, which runs from 13:30-14:15 CET. The sessions in this block will appear in the following order:

·      How European AI Registers Create Transparency and Trust in Public Sector Deployed AI

·      Digital Transformation Centre Kenya: Building Tomorrow’s Digital Society Together

·      Motivating Young Prisoners by Thinking Differently

·      Revitalizing a Heritage Site Through the Lens of Environmental and Social Justice

·      In-house Consulting: Empowering the Public Sector in Europe