This paper delivers actionable recommendations towards building a rationale for activating and promoting Underground Built Heritage (UBH) based on the nexus heritage, territory and society, and making use of existing literature and findings from five international cases. The research was conducted in the framework of the working group on Planning Approaches of the COST Action Underground4value. The analysis of the cases aims to provide guidelines for this working group and to benchmark good practices in activating UBH. It highlights the importance of community-led initiatives, leadership and dialogue and power sharing between the local/regional authorities and communities aiming for better understanding of the potential of UBH. The successes and/or failures of the five cases emphasise the importance of knowledge and experience in participatory approaches. Success was verified, when effectiveness and democratic principles were combined in the planning process, and local history is integrated with citizen science, co-creation and placemaking. The analysed approaches stimulate a new hybrid layer for activating UBH, provide mechanisms of mediation between people and heritage, and contribute to cultural and social dimensions of sustainability. This is a highly challenging endeavour, as it seeks to support and advance a sound understanding of UBH as a sustainable resource, backed by strategic stakeholder dialogue and contextual knowledge. Such effort requires a dynamic understanding of UBH values, knowledge, abilities and skills, towards creating more effective coalitions of “actors” within localities, by developing structures, which encourage long term collaborative relationships.

Interests of young people are neither often well considered in public spaces nor in decisions about the environment around them. One of the most important achievements of growing from childhood to adulthood is the development of one’s own social life and increasing one’s autonomy, which also means a widening of one’s spatial range of action. Despite these spatial needs and benefits for their own development, teenagers are often treated with suspicion in public spaces. One will often find them in large groups, standing around, chatting loudly with one another or playing around. Spatial needs, appropriation and practices, on the one side, and social norms, on the other side, do not necessarily match. In an inclusive city, spatial consumption and production is part of a dialogue with citizens, including vulnerable, “undesirable” and marginalized groups, in order to guarantee them not only the access to public spaces, but also their involvement in planning and decision-making processes. Studies show that young people have a great potential to bring unique insights to the built environment. This chapter explores the potential of young people to be involved in placemaking, reflecting on challenges facing such involvement and taking into account the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. Backed by studies in Cork, Lisbon, Ljubljana, Stockholm and Volos, it addresses the question how to use placemaking to change the city into a more inclusive and responsive environment for young people. These cases demonstrate that placemaking can be used as a tool for engaging young people in the decision-making process about their city and local environment, collating evidence-based research on the relationship between young people and public spaces.