Conceptual eco-physical reframing for immovable cultural heritage assets in the context of sustainable cities

Abstract

Urban sustainability research increasingly recognizes cities as social-ecological systems shaped through the long-term construction of the human niche to which cities belong. However, immovable cultural heritage assets remain largely absent from ecological models of urban resources functioning and management. This article advances a theoretical reframing of built cultural heritage as components and regulators of urban systems, arguing that their material persistence contributes to environmental modulation and supports the provision of ecosystem services. In particular, we hypothesize that built heritage participates in urban metabolism not only through material flows, but also through the transmission of environmental information and the generation of non-material ecosystem services such as identity, spatial coherence, and perceptual intelligibility, operating as long-term regulators of human–environment interactions, while anchoring collective memory within the urban landscape. Thus, the ecological agency of heritage produces also systemic co-benefits that align with the integrative principles of One Health, not as health-driven outcomes, but as emergent effects of ecological continuity and informational stability. The framework presented here positions immovable cultural heritage as a material–sensory–informational infrastructure embedded within the metabolism of the city and outlines a set of testable hypotheses for future interdisciplinary research aimed at integrating heritage into sustainable urban systems.

1 Introduction

Urban sustainability increasingly requires approaches capable of integrating ecological, social, and material dimensions of human life. Contemporary research in urban studies has shown that cities are not merely agglomerations of structures and infrastructures, but complex social-ecological systems shaped by the continuous construction of the human niche, the set of environmental, material, and cognitive conditions that enable human survival and flourishing (Garmestani et al., 2025; Jiang, 2012). Therefore, understanding sustainable urban systems requires investigating how the built environment regulates these conditions through long-term interactions between people, resources, spatial configurations, and ecological processes. Within this broader scientific context, immovable cultural heritage remains one of the least explored components of urban sustainability theory, despite its deep entanglement with the evolution of human social-ecological systems.

Far from being static objects or solely cultural artifacts, historic buildings and urban forms constitute inhabited cultural landscapes (Vakhitova, 2015): socially produced, materially embedded, temporally stratified environments that structure everyday experience. Such landscapes combine tangible properties (e.g., mass, geometry, materiality, orientation, etc.) with intangible dimensions, such as cultural meaning, identity, practices performed within urban spaces, and social memory. As highlighted in recent cultural-geographical and heritage studies, treating cultural heritage as a lived landscape reveals its capacity to shape environmental conditions, mediate ecological interactions, and produce a broad spectrum of socio-ecological values beyond conservation alone. This perspective aligns with ecological niche construction theory, which recognizes built forms as long-lasting regulators of the human niche, capable of influencing microclimates, flows of energy and matter, sensory experience, relational patterns, and cognitive orientation within cities (Nagatsu et al., 2023).

Despite this, a substantial scientific gap persists. Frameworks commonly used in sustainable urban systems, like urban metabolism, resource flows, circular economy, environmental performance indicators, rarely include historic built heritage as an operative component of urban resource management. Simultaneously, heritage scholarship often focuses on cultural, symbolic, or socio-economic value, with limited attention to the eco-physical and resource-based roles of historic structures. In this scholarly tradition, cultural heritage is frequently framed as a component of cultural capital, meant as a repository of material, cultural and institutionalized educational schemes able to determine the inequalities among different social classes (Bourdieu, 1986). As a result, immovable cultural heritage remains conceptually separated both from the ecological functioning of cities and from the study on how urban environments and ecological functions contribute to human wellbeing.

Conversely, emerging evidence points to the need for a more integrated approach. Studies on cultural ecosystem services show that interaction with culturally significant environments generates experiential, psychological, and relational benefits that arise from the encounter between people and place (Nowak-Olejnik et al., 2022). Research in environmental psychology further demonstrates that historically layered, legible, and culturally meaningful environments can support stress recovery, cognitive restoration, affective regulation, and social cohesion through perceptual and embodied mechanisms grounded in the material form of the environment (Thompson, 2018). These immaterial ecosystem services—such as identity, place attachment, orientation, aesthetic experience, emotional regulation—are now potentially embedded in the cathegorization of ecosystem services, such as the Common International Classification of Ecosystem Services (CICES), as non-material contributions of ecological systems to people, where culture and nature are considered as mutually constituting (Díaz et al., 2015). With this respect, also broader frameworks, such as IPBES and the Nature's Contributions to People (NCP) approach, can be adopted as conceptual references for interpreting the socio-ecological relationships between heritage, human wellbeing, and environmental regulation.

In other words, immovable cultural heritage, together with its intangible aspects, becomes, from one side, a key contributor to social sustainability, due to its role in shaping the identity of a space, as well as the sense of identity and belonging, that contribute to the wellbeing of human communities living in the urban context (Parameswara et al., 2021; Keitumetse, 2013). On the other side, immovable cultural heritage becomes a socio-ecological regulator embedded in the long-term construction of urban environments. It modulates microclimatic conditions, contributes to spatial coherence, influences movement and visibility patterns, anchors urban identity, and stabilizes ecological and social processes across generations. Nonetheless, these functions are rarely conceptualized as components of urban resource management, nor evaluated as part of the ecological performance of cities.

This article proposes to address this gap by advancing a conceptual theoretical reframing of immovable cultural heritage as a regulator of the urban human niche, having specific eco-physical features, that can be modeled and quantified. In particular, the present study is intentionally conceptual in nature and does not aim to provide a comprehensive operational toolkit for urban resource assessment. Rather, it offers an eco-physical interpretative framework that can be integrated with existing analytical methods, indicators, and urban metabolism models to support context-sensitive evaluations of cultural heritage within socio-ecological systems.

In the work, we conceive historic built forms as involved in material resource flows, due to their construction, maintenance and degradation processes, determined by their interaction with the environment and the human communities interacting with these heritage assets. The multiple interactions, contributing to the dynamics of heritage assets as physical structures, in turn, generate immaterial ecosystem services, essential for the sustainability of human life within urban systems. Then, health-related outcomes—psychological wellbeing, social cohesion, environmental comfort—are not understood as direct objectives of this reframing, but as systemic co-benefits emerging from the ecological functioning of inhabited cultural landscapes.

Adopting an inter-disciplinary approach, we propose a new theoretical approach that: reconceptualizes immovable heritage as a long-term regulator of the human niche; situates cultural ecosystem services within eco-physical processes; Integrates heritage into the dynamics of urban resource flows and metabolism; discusses the systemic co-benefits of this reframing and its alignment with integrative sustainability frameworks such as One Health. By doing so, the article aims to reposition immovable cultural heritage within the scientific discourse of sustainable urban systems, highlighting its relevance for urban resource management, social-ecological resilience, and long-term urban sustainability. Although the present framework is primarily conceptual, its structure is consistent with existing applications of systemic emergy-based approaches to urban cultural heritage assets. For example, studies on the historic city of Siena have operationalised material stocks, energy flows, and maintenance-related resource inputs to assess the long-term sustainability of built heritage within urban systems (Pulselli et al., 2009, 2010; Rugani et al., 2011). Within such analyses, immovable heritage can be represented as a persistent material stock contributing to environmental regulation through thermal inertia, spatial configuration, and reduced material turnover, while also shaping informational and sensory conditions relevant to cultural ecosystem services. This demonstrates that the proposed eco-physical framework can be integrated into urban metabolic assessments through measurable indicators and system-based modeling approaches.

2 Eco-physical reframing of immovable cultural heritage

2.1 Introduction

Immovable cultural heritage assets and their interactions with the surrounding environment and the public can be represented as a physical system composed of measurable components and interactions, which may remain stable or vary over time. On the one hand, physical variables describing the amounts of material, energy, and information required to build and maintain heritage structures define the initial conditions and the evolution of the system. On the other hand, system structure and dynamics are shaped by processes that transform these resources throughout the lifespan of the asset, as well as by informational interactions between the heritage asset and the public.

The epistemological background of this conceptual reframing originated in physics and evolved through systems theory. Its formal thermodynamic formulation is omitted here, as it is available in the cited literature. The approach was first introduced by Wolfgang Köhler, who investigated the common features (Gestalten, i.e., forms) of physical systems in equilibrium or stationary states (Köhler, 1920). Köhler's ideas were later developed by Ludwig von Bertalanffy in General Systems Theory and by Jay Forrester in system dynamics (Bertalanffy, 2009; Forrester, 1990). Moving beyond linear cause–effect chains, system dynamics focuses on the representation of system structures and their temporal evolution. When phenomena cannot be reduced to simple causality or reproduced at laboratory scale due to system size and constraints, structure and dynamics can be represented through equivalent circuits (Wyckoff and Reed, 1935). These graphical models symbolize sets of differential equations describing the temporal evolution of system variables.

This systemic representation was subsequently extended to ecological systems by Howard T. Odum, who formalized environmental processes in terms of energy, material, and information flows. Odum introduced the concept of cumulative energy availability (emergy, with “m”) as a thermodynamic variable describing the cumulative investment of resources (matter, energy, and information) supporting system persistence and evolution. He demonstrated that energy can serve as a unifying proxy variable for quantifying resource use, transformation, and system organization across natural and human-dominated systems (Odum and Odum, 1994). Furthermore, Odum and his collaborators showed how graphical system representations can be converted into differential equations describing resource dynamics, feedbacks, and leverage points on the basis of empirical data (Odum and Odum, 2000).

A further development of this epistemological framework was proposed by Enzo Tiezzi and his collaborators through the concept of Confined Ontic Open Systems (COOS). COOS describe thermodynamic systems that remain open to external interactions while preserving their ontic identity over time (Tiezzi and Cecconi, 2010). This perspective emphasizes the role of energy state functions in regulating both material and information-based interactions. The physical formalization of these ideas is available in the literature (Tiezzi, 2011). Within this framework, heritage assets can be interpreted as COOS, characterized by physical resource dynamics that sustain their structural integrity, environmental performance, and long-term interaction with the biosphere and human users. These dynamics can be described through energetic proxies reflecting the thermodynamic costs of preservation and transformation over time. The literature is coherent with the proposed conceptual approach (Pulselli et al., 2009; Rugani et al., 2011).

At the same time, heritage assets generate informational flows through their interaction with human perception. Physical properties such as geometry, materials, acoustic response, spatial configuration, and visual form mediate sensory engagement, producing environmental cues that shape orientation, memory, and identity. This interaction between physical form and perception constitutes an informational process through which cultural ecosystem services emerge, including place attachment, collective memory, and symbolic meaning. Although not yet implemented in the specific context of heritage assets, the possibility of approaching information cycles through thermodynamic-based energy accounting has already been demonstrated in the literature (Abel, 2024, 2023b).

Based on this framework, cultural ecosystem services are not abstract cultural outputs that can only be quantified in hedonic or monetary terms. Instead, they can be described as systemic products of eco-physical interactions between material structures and human experience. While matter and energy flows sustain the physical persistence of heritage, informational flows sustain its social and ecological relevance. Together, these coupled processes define the role of immovable cultural heritage as an active regulator of urban resource dynamics and long-term socio-ecological stability. The characterization of cultural ecosystem services through energy-based quantifications within information cycles has already been proposed in the literature (Yang et al., 2018).

Within this eco-physical framework, “regulation” refers to measurable physical processes through which built heritage influences urban environmental conditions and resource dynamics. In general, relevant variables include material stocks (e.g., construction mass, surface density), energy exchanges (thermal inertia, shading, airflow modulation, acoustic propagation), and maintenance-related resource inputs. These variables can be operationalized through energetic or material proxies, such as embodied energy, energy fluxes, or resource consumption rates associated with conservation and use. In this context, “information” is distinguished from symbolic or cultural meaning. Informational flows are defined here as physically mediated signals generated by the interaction between material structures and human sensory systems, including visual patterns, acoustic signatures, spatial configurations, and environmental cues. These signals operate at a physical–perceptual level, shaping orientation, recognition, and behavioral responses. Cultural memory and symbolic meaning represent higher-level emergent properties of these informational processes rather than their primary physical expression. This multilevel distinction allows eco-physical regulation to be analyzed in operational terms, linking physical variables and resource flows to perceptual responses and long-term socio-cultural outcomes within urban systems.

To further operationalise the concept of eco-physical regulation in the context of urban resource management, specific physical variables, indicators, and proxy measures can be identified. At the material level, relevant indicators include building mass, surface density, material composition, and the frequency of material replacement, which can be associated with embodied energy and material turnover rates. At the energetic level, thermal inertia, solar exposure, shading patterns, airflow modulation, and acoustic absorption can be quantified through temperature gradients, energy fluxes, heat storage capacity, and sound propagation metrics. At the resource-management level, conservation and maintenance activities can be described through material inputs, energy consumption, and labor intensity, providing proxies for long-term resource investment in heritage assets. Informational processes can also be analyzed across distinct analytical levels. At the physical–perceptual level, information refers to measurable sensory signals such as visual contrast, spatial configuration, acoustic signatures, and environmental cues, which can be assessed through visibility indices, spatial syntax metrics, acoustic spectra, or environmental monitoring. At the cognitive–experiential level, these signals shape orientation, recognition, and place attachment. At the symbolic–cultural level, collective memory and cultural meaning emerge as higher-order representations, grounded in repeated perceptual interactions but not reducible to physical signals alone. This multilevel operationalisation clarifies how eco-physical regulation can be linked to urban resource dynamics, allowing heritage assets to be analyzed not only as cultural entities, but also as measurable components of material, energetic, and informational flows within the urban socio-ecological system.

This framework also supports the formulation of testable hypotheses regarding the role of immovable cultural heritage in urban systems. In particular, it allows the examination of how heritage-related material stocks and energy exchanges influence local microclimates, resource flows, and environmental modulation. It also enables the assessment of how physically mediated informational signals—such as acoustic, visual, and spatial cues—affect human perception, spatial behavior, and place recognition over time. Finally, by linking these processes to long-term system stability, the framework provides a basis for testing whether heritage-rich urban areas exhibit greater socio-ecological continuity, environmental resilience, and resource efficiency compared to non-heritage contexts.

The main components of this eco-physical framework, their key interactions, and the expected systemic outcomes emerging from the coupled dynamics of material, energetic, and informational processes are summarized in Table 1. With this respect, the proposed framework can be converted into empirically testable hypotheses regarding the relationships between heritage-related material stocks, environmental regulation, sensory conditions, and socio-ecological stability, which can be examined through comparative urban analyses and long-term monitoring data.

The reasons that motivate the proposed conceptualization depend on four interrelated aspects that, together, describe the key principles underlying the eco-physical role of immovable cultural heritage within urban systems. Each of these aspects addresses a specific dimension of the conceptual framework, while their interaction defines the mechanisms through which built heritage participates in urban resource regulation, environmental modulation, and long-term socio-ecological stability. The following sections correspond to these four aspects and should be read as parts of a unified conceptual model rather than as independent thematic discussions.

2.2 Human niche construction and the eco-physical identity of built heritage

Urban environments emerge from the long-term interactions between human communities and the material conditions that support their existence. Cultural heritage emerges as a human expression of such interactions. Cultural heritage built forms represent a particular cumulative expression of these processes (Eriksson, 2018). Their mass, geometry, spatial distribution, and material properties persist across generations, stabilizing environmental conditions and shaping the human niche through slow but powerful eco-physical dynamics. Moreover, these structures, encode centuries of adaptive knowledge—technical, sensory, and experiential—that, being part of the intangible dimension of the heritage, like in the case of ancient Greek téchne applications in architecture, cannot be interpreted merely as symbolic heritage (Barone and Casazza, 2025). However, the built heritage transcends its mere symbolic and aesthetic values. In fact, in the framework of niche construction theory, the built environment is not a passive backdrop, but an active regulator of the ecological, spatial, and perceptual context in which human life unfolds.

This perspective naturally calls for an eco-physical approach, understood as the study of how physical structures and the dynamics of physical variables (e.g., mass, geometry, energy exchanges, and material configurations) shape ecological processes and patterns of human–environment interaction. The need to invoke eco-physics, that consists in the application of theoretical and experimental physical methods to the study of ecology, emerges from the fact that built forms participate in the dynamics of environmental resources, in environmental regulation processes, as well as in the evolution of civilization, through mechanisms that are inherently physical (Wesley, 1974; Sertorio, 1991; Makarieva et al., 2008; Casazza et al., 2016). In fact, also heritage assets are dependent, starting from their construction phase, on the extraction and transformation of material resources, and their further changes, depending on the degradation processes triggered by different environmental factors. Meanwhile, interacting with the environment, immovable heritage assets absorb, reflect and dissipate energy in various forms, becoming both agents of transformation of the surrounding environment, supporting gradients of different environmental variables (e.g., temperature; solar radiation; etc.), and agents of multiple biophysical sensorial interactions with human and non-human living species. This triadic interaction (environment—heritage objects—the biosphere and, so, human communities) co-evolve and become measurable as physical interactions, that accumulate into durable ecological niches. Applied to cities, this perspective reveals that built structures act as long-term modulators of microclimate, energy flows, sensory fields, and spatial affordances, exerting ecological agency through their physical presence. Therefore, bringing eco-physics into the analysis of cultural heritage enables the built environment to be interpreted not only as a cultural artifact, but as a material and energetic component of urban ecological functioning.

In other words, the existence of immovable heritage assets elicits the idea of an “eco-physical identity,” by emphasizing that immovable heritage influences human–environment interactions through its physical characteristics as much as through its cultural meanings. Here, “eco-physical identity” refers to the ensemble of material, energetic, and sensory properties through which built heritage shapes long-term human–environment interactions, including microclimatic regulation, spatial configuration, and perceptual affordances. This identity is the result of historical design choices, environmental constraints, and socio-cultural practices sedimented over time. Such structures constitute inhabited cultural landscapes rather than isolated historical objects, meaning that they participate in ongoing ecological and social processes. Their role in regulating the human niche is not metaphorical, being grounded in physical effects such as thermal inertia, shading, spatial enclosure, acoustic filtering, and the alignment of built forms with environmental forces. These long-lasting material configurations define the conditions of habitability and social life in ways that align with contemporary ecological understandings of cities as coupled human–environment systems. Immovable heritage, therefore, must be understood as a structural component of the human niche, exerting eco-physical agency within the broader metabolism of the city.

2.3 Built cultural heritage within urban metabolism and flows of resources

Urban sustainability scholarship increasingly conceptualizes cities as metabolic systems in which resources (energy, matter and information) circulate in an evolving structured way (Raina et al., 2023; Cui, 2018). Within this perspective, immovable heritage is seldom considered, despite its substantial contribution to the physical stock of cities and its persistent regulation of resource flows. Conversely, from an urban resource management perspective, this approach allows immovable cultural heritage to be considered within long-term material and energy budgeting processes, supporting planning strategies that account for durability, reduced resource turnover, and ecosystem regulation functions.

Historic structures, by virtue of their mass and form, influence microclimatic variables such as temperature, humidity, and air movement. Their spatial arrangements affect solar exposure, shading patterns, and the distribution of heat within urban canyons, thereby modulating energy demand and environmental comfort. The eco-physical configurations constructed over centuries also create stable pathways for movement, visibility, and sociability, shaping the flows of people and activities within the city. These pathways, formalized through streets, courtyards, and plazas, are not neutral: they codify long-term ecological and social adaptations. Built environments of historical relevance often reflect optimal responses to local climatic and geographical conditions, and they can therefore serve as precedents for sustainable urban form. Their role within urban metabolism is not limited to passive storage of materials; it extends to the regulation of ambient conditions and the structuring of urban rhythms. In this context, “urban metabolism” is understood as the systemic circulation of material, energy, and information flows that sustain urban functioning, including the long-term role of built heritage as a persistent material stock influencing environmental regulation and resource dynamics.

Placing immovable heritage within the framework of resource management requires recognizing its capacity to stabilize environmental processes. Its longevity reduces the frequency of material turnover, its design often embodies low-energy principles, and its spatial patterns help maintain ecological connectivity and microclimatic gradients (Keitumetse, 2013). These functions align closely with the sustainability objectives expressed in SDGs 11, 12, and 13, especially regarding resource efficiency, climate adaptation, and the integration of cultural and natural values in urban development. From this viewpoint, heritage acts as a long-term ecological infrastructure embedded in the metabolism of the city, influencing both physical and social processes across extended temporal scales.

2.4 Cultural memory as immaterial ecosystem service derived from human niche processes

The concept of cultural ecosystem services provides a bridge between the material structure of heritage and the experiential, cognitive, and relational benefits that arise from human interactions with place. The international classification systems on ecosystem services include the cultural ecosystem services among the non-material contributions of nature to people. These products should be interpreted as products of social-ecological systems, rather than purely cultural constructs. In fact, they are also defined as biological cultural heritage, defined as “biological manifestations of culture, reflecting indirect or intentional effects, or domesticated landscapes, resulting from historical human niche construction” (Eriksson, 2018).

Recent work has demonstrated that historic environments generate measurable effects on subjective wellbeing through pathways grounded in perception, memory, and social meaning (Parameswara et al., 2021; Nowak-Olejnik et al., 2022). These effects, however, before involving the neurological and psychological dimension, depend on multiple biophysical interaction processes mediated by a direct sensory engagement. In other words, we can define a triadic physical interaction process (i.e., heritage objects—the environment—human community inhabiting a human niche), where the interest is focused on the heritage-environment interaction, from one side, and, on the other side, on the heritage-humans sensorial interaction. In particular, any heritage object is exposed to different environmental factors, that transform the material conditions of these objects along the time. In parallel, the design of heritage assets shape their functions, even if their design was based on the implicit know-how of those who built the asset (Barone and Casazza, 2025). The interaction between the immovable heritage assets within a landscape trigger a physical response on the structures, that can be described, in physical terms, as an interaction, which can be represented in physical terms. For example, a study proved that a concert room, built inside a historic building in an urban center, reacted, in relation to its structure, to the natural vibrations (e.g., the sea waves), the anthropic sources (e.g., the road traffic), as well as to the urban fabric (e.g., roads layout and sizes) (Barone and Casazza, 2024). On the other hand, the environmental conditions mediate the interactions between the heritage objects and the human communities, sometimes identified as ‘public' or visitors. This interaction can be characterized and identified through physiological and psychological processes. Then, the heritage object is identified, while the physical interaction process becomes a source of meaningful information associated to a specific heritage object. For example, this is the case of the sound of a specific bell, considering the human ability to discriminate the frequencies within the audible sound frequency spectrum (Casazza et al., 2026). Then, the sensorial interaction, in combination with its semantic dimension, becomes a source of information and memory (Moraitou et al., 2019; Farina et al., 2021). The stability of spatially-located interactions generate a familiarity with spatial patterns, supporting cognitive and emotional regulation through the legibility, coherence, and affordance of historically-layered spaces (Thompson, 2018).

These evidences support the fact that the structure and flows of natural resources, which can be described in physical terms, support, through the dynamics of successions and hierarchies, also cultural memory (Barrett et al., 2009; Abel, 2013). This is why cultural memory is not only a symbolic construct, but a perceptual and ecological process, that emerges from repeated interactions with stable material forms. The permanence of cultural heritage assets, as part of the human niche, support a long-term memory of human communities, that becomes perceived as identity. This capacity is related to the mechanism underlying the neurological benefit of cultural ecosystem services (Ames and Fiske, 2010). These services are foundational to the human niche because they mediate perception, social relations, and behavioral patterns. In other words, when immovable heritage is interpreted as a cultural landscape, its ecological significance becomes clearer. It provides continuity, anchors collective memory, and maintains spatial intelligibility in rapidly changing urban environments. Consequently, these functions while shaping the experiential dimension of urban life, these functions contribute to the stability of social–ecological interactions, reinforcing the idea that cultural ecosystem services are themselves niche processes grounded in physical and ecological dynamics.

2.5 Sustainability of built cultural heritage under the one health perspective

The sustainability of built cultural heritage can be better understood when examined through the integrative lens offered by the One Health perspective. Although originally developed to address interdependencies among human, animal, and environmental health, One Health has progressively expanded toward a broader social-ecological understanding of how environmental conditions shape human wellbeing. When applied to urban environments, this perspective highlights that the quality of life in cities is deeply influenced by the ecological performance of built structures, the environmental conditions they regulate, and the socio-cultural interactions they sustain (Harrison et al., 2019).

Historic built forms participate in these dynamics in ways that are structurally embedded and long-term, reflecting cumulative adaptations that stabilize ecological and social processes. Seen from this angle, the sustainability of built cultural heritage is not solely a matter of material conservation or cultural continuity, but a question of how historic structures contribute to the long-term ecological functioning of the city. Their capacity to modulate microclimates, structure sensory environments, and stabilize spatial configurations operates through specific mediating mechanisms, including thermal buffering, spatial legibility, sensory modulation, and cognitive load reduction. These mechanisms generate the conditions that support behavioral, perceptual, and social processes integral to human flourishing.

As already discussed, environmental psychology has shown that legible, coherent, and culturally resonant environments facilitate cognitive restoration, emotional regulation, and a sense of safety. Research on cultural ecosystem services likewise demonstrates that interactions with meaningful and historically layered environments generate experiential and relational benefits that reinforce social cohesion, identity, and subjective wellbeing. These outcomes arise from the eco-physical properties of heritage: its mass, form, enclosure, texture, and spatial rhythms, which operate as environmental cues and regulatory elements within the human niche. Therefore, interpreting built cultural heritage under the One Health perspective emphasizes that its sustainability is linked to its ecological agency.

Historic structures regulate flows of light, heat, air, sound, and movement, creating environments in which ecological and social processes co-evolve across time. Their endurance reduces material turnover, their spatial configurations support environmental stability, and their cultural significance reinforces place-based attachments that enhance community resilience. These qualities generate systemic co-benefits that extend beyond the conservation of fabric or the preservation of cultural meaning. They reveal that built cultural heritage functions as a socio-ecological regulator whose effects contribute to the environmental quality, resource efficiency, and social vitality of the city. However, these co-benefits are not deterministic nor uniformly distributed. Their magnitude and direction are shaped by contextual and confounding factors such as socio-economic conditions, accessibility, maintenance quality, tourism pressure, urban density, and patterns of use.

In this sense, the effects of built cultural heritage can be interpreted as part of the urban exposome processes, producing a cumulative set of physical, sensory, and social exposures that influence human experience and environmental regulation over time (Ibanez et al., 2024). Accordingly, the positive contributions of built cultural heritage to wellbeing and socio-ecological stability should be understood as context-sensitive outcomes, that depend on specific environmental, social, and governance conditions, rather than as universally valid effects. Importantly, the positive contributions of built cultural heritage to urban sustainability depend not only on physical and perceptual properties, but also on governance frameworks, maintenance policies, and inclusive access conditions that shape how heritage environments are experienced and managed.

Understood in this way, the One Health perspective does not redefine heritage as a health asset, nor does it position wellbeing as the primary justification for conservation. Rather, it illuminates the multi-layered ecological relations through which heritage contributes to sustainable urban systems. It provides a conceptual space where resource flows, environmental regulation, cultural meaning, and experiential dimensions can be considered together, without collapsing them into a single disciplinary narrative. Thus, the sustainability of built cultural heritage emerges as an attribute of its ecological integration, shaped by cumulative and context-dependent interactions rather than linear cause–effect relationships.

3 Discussion

Reframing immovable cultural heritage within an eco-physical perspective repositions historic built environments inside the metabolic functioning of cities, while revealing dimensions of sustainability that conventional models have not yet incorporated. The central innovation emerging from this conceptual work lies in understanding the built heritage as a hybrid structure in which material, sensory, and informational dimensions coalesce to generate long-term ecological and cultural functions. This perspective contributes to sustainable cities research by showing that heritage participates in the circulation of resources in ways that extend beyond material conservation to include the transmission of information and collective memory, both of which hold bio-physical implications. This evidence is also confirmed by past studies, that approached to some case studies, aimed to characterize immovable heritage assets, through the use of biophysical indicators (Pulselli et al., 2009, 2010; Rugani et al., 2011). By integrating eco-physical regulation, cultural ecosystem services, and an exposome-based perspective, this framework bridges environmental physics, urban ecology, and heritage studies, contributing to interdisciplinary approaches to sustainable urban systems.

The ecological significance of heritage becomes evident when its material persistence is linked to its role in establishing the sensory and spatial identity of the city. Built heritage contributes to the formation of the genius loci, precisely because it is materially stable, perceptually distinctive, and intimately integrated in the urban landscape. Its textures, geometries, acoustic resonances, and spatial rhythms generate a recognizable sensory field that inhabitants learn to interpret and inhabit over time. This sensory identity is not an aesthetic accessory, but a structuring condition of the human niche, guiding orientation, attention, and behavioral patterns. As such, the perceptual presence of heritage constitutes an ecological interface through which people interact with their environment. Its persistence across generations provides continuity in these interactions, contributing to the stability of socio-ecological processes that sustain urban life.

When examined through this lens, conservation and degradation emerge as ecological processes embedded within urban resource flows. Conservation mobilizes materials, skills, and energy, while degradation expresses environmental pressures, climatic stressors, and metabolic transformations intrinsic to the city. These dynamics embody exchanges between human communities and the material environment, mediating adaptation, resilience, and long-term ecological continuity. Seeing heritage conservation in this way shifts the emphasis from safeguarding objects to managing resource flows that span temporal scales far longer than those associated with most built infrastructures. Heritage becomes a site where ecological stability and cultural continuity coincide, revealing a deeper integration between bio-physical processes and collective meaning.

The most distinctive implication of this reframing concerns the role of information as a fundamental resource embedded in built heritage. Systems ecology, following Odum's formulations, recognizes information as a bio-physical resource whose storage and transmission structure ecosystem dynamics as much as matter and energy (Abel, 2023a). Built heritage embodies such information in its spatial organization, environmental adaptations, craft traditions, and formal principles. This information is not abstract: it is continuously expressed through behavior, perception, and social practice. As historic built forms endure across centuries, they stabilize and transmit information about environmental conditions and successful human–environment adaptations, making heritage a long-term ecological memory system. This informational continuity helps maintain navigational cues, spatial legibility, and shared identity, thereby stabilizing socio-ecological patterns essential to the functioning of urban ecosystems. Recognizing this informational dimension challenges sustainability frameworks that privilege short-lived efficiency metrics, revealing instead the ecological value of slow-changing structures that retain and convey environmental knowledge.

Within this expanded interpretative space, the reframing also opens a conceptual bridge toward the One Health perspective. Although originally grounded in biological domains, One Health has evolved into a framework concerned with environmental configurations that sustain long-term conditions for human flourishing. When built cultural heritage is understood as a materially persistent and informationally rich component of the urban ecosystem, its contribution to these co-regulated conditions becomes evident. Historic built forms moderate environmental stimuli, structure sensory fields, and maintain experiential coherence, creating environments that reduce cognitive load, anchor orientation, and support a sense of safety and predictability. Environmental psychology has shown that these perceptual conditions influence stress responses, attention, and affective stability. Likewise, cultural ecosystem service research highlights that interactions with meaningful environments strengthen social cohesion, identity, and emotional wellbeing. These outcomes arise from ecological processes grounded in the material configuration of heritage—microclimatic moderation, acoustic filtering, spatial legibility, and informational continuity—not from intentional health interventions.

Seen through this lens, One Health clarifies the systemic co-benefits generated by heritage without redefining it in biomedical terms. It highlights how the stability of sensory identity, the continuity of ecological information, and the persistence of spatial patterns create favorable socio-ecological conditions. These conditions, in turn, support psychological and relational dynamics consistent with One Health's emphasis on interconnected environmental determinants. While health is not the direct focus of this framework, One Health provides a useful interpretive layer for understanding why heritage contributes to the vitality and resilience of urban ecosystems: by stabilizing the ecological and informational environment on which both individuals and communities rely.

Embedding heritage within a resource-based ecological framework also raises questions that can guide future empirical research. One area concerns the quantification of the environmental moderation provided by historic spatial configurations, particularly in relation to shading, airflow, and thermal buffering. Another concerns empirical links between eco-physical features and experiential indicators such as spatial legibility, place attachment, or restorative perceptions. A third concerns integrating heritage into metabolic models capable of evaluating its contributions to material retention, energy modulation, and the longevity of spatial infrastructures. These questions suggest a research agenda grounded in interdisciplinary methodologies spanning environmental modeling, perceptual analysis, and socio-ecological assessment.

Despite these open challenges, the conceptual reframing proposed here opens space for dialogue among heritage studies, urban ecology, environmental psychology, systems ecology, and sustainability science. It suggests that the sustainability of cities depends not only on the efficient circulation of matter and energy but also on the preservation and transmission of environmental information embedded in the built environment. In this sense, immovable heritage becomes a critical component of the long-term viability of urban ecosystems: a material–sensory–informational infrastructure that stabilizes the human niche and participates in the ecological coherence of the urban landscape.

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