The Italian way of thinking about maintenance is too often one-sided. Indeed, it is considered not so much as a useful practice to prevent the occurrence of a fault (ex ante), but as an intervention to solve it (ex post). Analyzing the legislation relating to the construction sector, it can be seen that it does not clearly define the responsibilities, timescales and methods in which maintenance interventions must be planned and carried out. For this reason, this practice is still very weak compared, for example, to the industrial sector, where it is an established practice. Currently, the complexity of reading the maintenance plans drawn up by designers and the considerable costs associated with maintenance operations discourage owners and managers from even carrying out preliminary inspection operations. This research aims to stimulate these stakeholders to carry out inspection operations regularly, highlighting their costs and benefits. In particular, working on a case study in Piedmont, the costs of visual inspections carried out in the traditional way are compared with those that would be incurred if unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) were used. Finally, the collateral benefits of inspections carried out with UAVs are highlighted.

By now, it is clear the built environment could play an important role in fighting climate change, since it accounts for around 39% of global energy-related carbon emissions. Generally speaking, Italian residential stock is over 50 years old and around 16% of that needs large interventions due to its poor maintenance condition. So, the maintenance in this context can play a pivotal role in acheiving both energy efficiency and asset valorization. Introduced by a reference framework for the question in the title, this paper presents the case study: a portion of a working-class neighborhoods near the metropolitan city of Turin, marked by very recurrent typologies for the period (early seventies). The local real estate market is discussed to investigate the extraordinary maintenance impact on the property values: the paper considers the market value increase due to the energy class upgrade and the external look improvement. Individual owners putting money on this group of works get a very cost-effective investment and take advantage of Italian legislation supporting these kinds of interventions: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and in turn greater than the cost assumed for the renovation work.

This paper introduces actual considerations for the progressive disuse of residential space in the Alpine territory, considering possible actions. Nowadays, the building complexes built around the 1960s and 1970s (a symbol of mass tourism) are suffering and searching for a new identity. The generation of owners who bought them has aged and the propensities of the new generations for holiday in those places has changed, which means fewer opportunities for leisure, particularly in the winter. Due to the great attention (and seeming opportunities) of current incentive policies toward improving the energy use of the existing stock, the authors investigate the private conveniences of transformations through the refurbishment of these buildings. Starting from a study of the territory and the dynamics of the local population, this research analyzes a possible set of energy works, based on a new (2020) incentive measure, the 110% Superbonus, which consists of a series of facilitation mechanisms, deductions, and reimbursements for building interventions. A large part of the insight is focused on a technical and economic feasibility study of the possible actions, following a process based on the evolution of the legislation. This work is based on a specific case study, located in a small municipality in the Piedmont mountain area, consisting of three apartment blocks of mostly second homes. The methodology adopted lends itself on the one hand, as a guide for preliminary economic energy assessments and, on the other hand, as a policy evaluation tool from the public and private perspectives.

Although the theme has been studied for more than a decade, the green transformations of buildings are limited in practice and often new buildings, by large private or public estates, promoted and publicized it to gain public support. Is it possible to think about a widespread action to “green” our cities? If in other European countries the responsive-ness to this issue is certainly greater, in Italy there is still too little attention on this topic (in facts some people seem to be still more focused on economic expenditure than on the environmental impact) and the presence of a historical/monumental building herit-age can be a further issue, because it requires specific authorization process (longer times) and rises the level of the restoration project (costs). Neglecting the monumental heritage which actions (on a national scale) can “green” the big cities, starting from the maintenance of the building facades? The paper introduces, first, the new national ‘facade bonus’ that will be used to improve building facades, in a perspective of greater urban decorum, with a tax credit of 90% for the restoration and recovery expenses. Then, it analyses the current maintenance condi-tion of private properties and some green facade solutions. Assuming widespread inter-ventions in the form of extraordinary maintenance, it discusses – for a case study –environmental (water and CO2) and economic issues. At the end, it proposes some modifications to the recent national rules to facilitate interventions, awarding not just the simple redevelopment of the facades but, where possible, “green” actions on build-ings to achieve the Strategic Agenda objectives.

The decentralization of the production sector crisis following industries in the suburbs have generated a multitude of empty containers in the medium-large Italian cities, which are abandoned, unsafe, and often dangerous for the community. From this arises the need to recover them and transform them into something else. This is not always possible or interesting for the subjects involved in the transformation. When the abandoned space is (even if only partially) polluted, then any hypothesis of transformation is stopped due to the high impact of decontamination costs, which greatly compromise the profitability of the investment. This paper deals with this issue focusing on a complex case study involving the abandoned area and the buildings of a former paint mill in the center of a typical city in the Turin metropolitan area. The suggested hypothesis is to act only on building components and external areas without any ground modification because of its contamination. Moreover, the new planned use (energy production from renewable sources to supply part of the public administration’s needs) does not foresee neither a stable presence of people nor a further consumption of land. The technical analysis of community energy needs and the subsequent economic and financial study lead to a financial sustainability over a period of about 25 years.