Multicriteria Assessment of Urban Buildings’ Rehabilitation for Integrated Urban Regeneration

Urban regeneration comprises a broad range of themes and actions concerning problems that cities have faced for a long time. Some of these actions include physical conservation and rehabilitation of urban infrastructures, public spaces, buildings, and housing. However, the housing crisis in European cities removed housing rehabilitation from the priorities of urban regeneration, creating a paradoxical situation in which cities regenerate districts where people cannot live for extended periods, compromising the cultural, energy, material and social values present in rehabilitated buildings. This article presents a brief framework that accesses the reality of urban and building rehabilitation in Portugal in the last decade, going back to the first appliable legal regimen, which is still in force. This framework endorses a research project on the impacts of urban and building rehabilitation on urban metabolism and heritage, which led to the proposal of a specific governance process and an assessment tool here described and applied to two buildings in Lisbon recently submitted to works. A reflection on the widespread lack of implementation of the national urban rehabilitation legal regime, as well of the principles of a recent regulatory building code, this study supports of a proposal of new and complementary urban regeneration tools to manage cultural, environmental, and social values contained in urban residential buildings, considering those as a future legacy to the next generations.