The international debate on the adaptive reuse of cultural heritage sites consistent with the Sustainable Development Goals has become increasingly important in the implementation of circular economy models for urban policies. The new values that characterize cultural assets, considered the result of a collaborative process, can enhance both manufactured and human capital, and provide the basis for a system of relationships that binds them. Furthermore, the values of historical artistic assets produced by community-based regeneration processes are particularly relevant when they characterize abandoned commons and cult buildings, to which communities attribute an identity and symbolic value. Starting from the definition of the concept of complex social value, we propose a methodological process that combines approaches and techniques typical of deliberative evaluations and collaborative decision-making processes. The aim is to identify the complex value chains generated by adaptive reuse, in which intrinsic values can play a driving role in the regeneration strategies of discarded cultural heritage. The experimentation, tested with the project “San Sebastiano del Monte dei Morti Living Lab” (SSMOLL), activates a creative and cultural Living Lab in the former Morticelli church, in the historic center of Salerno, in southern Italy. The reuse project is part of a more comprehensive process of social innovation and culture-led urban regeneration triggered in Salerno starting from SSMOLL. The partial results of the process show how a co-exploration phase has characterized the cultural characteristic of the living lab and how the co-evaluation of the individual activities orient the possible reuse scenarios. Finally, the results provide a first analysis of the relationship types activated.

According to the current European scenario, cultural, creative, and community-led policies play an increasingly important role in influencing local resources, systems, and infrastructures management and demand a novel approach in governing, financing, and monitoring urban regeneration processes. Therefore, cities become contexts where cultural and creative practices can be implemented, integrating social cohesion principles based on communities, shared values, and collaborative decision-making approaches, with particular attention to enhancing cultural heritage, mainly unused or underutilised. The purpose of this research is to explore how the Cultural and Creative Cities Monitor (CCCM) methodological framework, developed by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, can be integrated at the local scale to assess the impacts of urban regeneration processes in an interactive and dynamic way, through the data emerging from the monitoring of urban regeneration experiences activated with the communities. The paper describes the “Play ReCH (Re-use Cultural Heritage)” approach, that promotes a process of collaboration, gamification, and innovation in cultural heritage reuse, as an opportunity to test how cultural, creative, and community-led urban strategies can support the enhancement of heritage generating enabling environments and culturally vibrant contexts. The Play ReCH approach and the “Hack the City Salerno” mission, activated in the Salerno historic centre (Italy), open the reflection on some relevant issues related to how citizens become makers of cultural and creative cities’ policies, and contribute to evaluating and monitoring their implementation at diverse urban scales. The Play ReCH mission underlines how new evidence suggests declining the CCCM conceptual framework and related urban policies assessment, co-defining suitable community-based indicators.

The international debate on the adaptive re-use of cultural heritage sites following the Sustainable Development Goals becomes more central than ever in the implementation of circular economy models for urban policies. The new values that characterise the cultural assets, considered as the result of a collaborative process, can enhance both the manufactured capital and the human capital, and to carry out the system of relationships that bind them. At the same time, the values of historical-artistic assets and produced by community-based regeneration processes are particularly relevant when they characterise abandoned commons and cult buildings, to which communities attribute an identity and symbolic value. Starting from the definition of the concept of Complex Social Value, we propose a methodological process that combines approaches and techniques typical of deliberative evaluations and collaborative decision-making processes. The aim is to identify the complex value chains generated by adaptive re-use, in which intrinsic values can play a driving role in the regeneration strategies of discarded cultural heritage. The experimentation, tested with the project “San Sebastiano del Monte dei Morti Living Lab” (SSMOLL), activates a creative and cultural Living Lab in the former church of “Morticelli”, in the historic centre of Salerno, in southern Italy. The re-use project is part of a more comprehensive process of social innovation and culture-led urban regeneration triggered in Salerno starting from SSMOLL.

In recent years, the concept of the commons has gained relevance across academic, legal and civic spheres as an alternative framework for managing shared resources. Rooted in Elinor Ostrom’s seminal work on collective governance, contemporary debates on the commons increasingly challenge the traditional binary of private versus public ownership by foregrounding the social function of these resources and the role of their communities in their administration. Urban commons, in particular, have emerged as dynamic spaces of experimentation, where local actors reclaim underutilised or abandoned assets and activate them through bottom-up processes of care, cultural production, and civic innovation. While international literature provides a robust conceptual foundation for understanding commoning practices, their practical implementation mostly depends on local specificities, such as legal and social contexts. Despite the important milestone of the Rodotà Commission’s proposal (2007) and Law 168/2017 on collective domains, the Italian regulatory framework remains highly fragmented, with regional and municipal regulations pioneering policies and practices frequently driven by community-led efforts to redefine the use and governance of public assets. This paper contributes to the growing debate on urban commons by investigating how, since 2011, experiences of collaborative care of the commons in Southern Italy have rekindled interest in the issue raised in 2007, highlighting a strong connection between the regulatory and social dimensions of these processes. The study develops a methodological framework—the COMmons Places ASSessment (COMPASS)—to evaluate the enabling conditions and governance dynamics of these processes. The research specifically focuses on five case studies in the Campania region, where diverse actors have mobilised to reclaim and transform public heritage through cultural, social, and creative activities. From the results, insights on collective management practices emerge potentials and criticalities of the analysed governance, as well as of the designed decision-making process and their effectiveness for the open, participatory, and sustainable management of urban commons.