The document discusses the purpose and goals of the KAIRÓS Network project. The project aims to address urban environmental challenges in partner cities by using cultural heritage and tourism to promote social and economic revitalization of degraded historic areas. It will work to conserve cultural/natural spaces and engage local communities and stakeholders to develop sustainable cultural eco-tourism. This will improve cities' cultural assets, increase visitors, and benefit residents through new employment and social inclusion opportunities while achieving sustainability goals. The partner cities have significant cultural heritage in need of regeneration to attract residents and tourists alike.

1. 1
KAIROSshortoverview
1.1 The purpose of Kairós
KAIRÓS Network will address the policy challenge of improving the urban environment of the
involved cities by developing social and economic alternatives in degraded historic areas using
the cultural and touristic values of the city as a tool for economic and social revitalization.
KAIRÓS`s engine wants to propel sustainable change, from decaying and degraded heritage
assets and urban areas to regeneration and valorization of neglected or forgotten areas and
assets. It will enhance the urban cultural and natural heritage of historical parts of cities in decay
by developing social and economic strategies tailored for small and medium cities while
reinforcing social cohesion and inclusion.
The network will support the conservation and renovation of cultural heritage/landscape and
natural spaces around historic areas as a tool to engage and work with local community and
relevant stakeholders, including women and groups under risk of social exclusion to jointly turn
the weakness of these spaces into an opportunity for sustainable cultural eco-tourism creating
culturally pleasant cities to live in. Through these types of strategies, KAIRÓS aims to increase
the number of visitors in cities attracted by their cultural heritage, improving the state of
conservation of buildings and places of cultural interest, mitigating problems of urban and
environmental decline.
Degraded urban areas with historic and cultural values are valuable resources from the economic-
social and environmental point of view and will be at the core of the interventions to protect,
develop and rethink them in order to benefit the whole community on a sustainable basis. The
project will be rooted in a profitable exchange among local-regional authorities, citizens, cultural
and educational institutions and the private sector, supporting the diversification of the local
economy and sustainable cultural tourism in those degraded areas to boost local employment
and social inclusion while accomplishing the 11th SDG “Sustainable Cities and Communities”.
Kairós partners will work for introducing socially and environmentally innovative solutions going
far beyond simple conservation, restoration, physical rehabilitation or repurposing of a site to
demonstrate heritage potential as a powerful economic, social and environmental catalyst for
regeneration, sustainable development, economic growth and improvement of people’s well-
being and living environments.
KAIRÓS intends to propose the setup of a participatory-bottom up approaches to design and
implement new policies to revert the degradation process in the areas of intervention. This will
imply to take actions to improve existing public spaces and cultural heritage/landscape as new
touristic resource towards urban regeneration, which ultimately will increase the quality of life of
the beneficiary citizens while increasing the attractiveness of cities. The actions will have a
positive impact on tourism related services (local commerce, crafts, hotels and restaurants,
cultural services, travel agencies and tour operators, etc. can benefit from the resulting economic
diversification), thus generating added-value employment opportunities. Kairós is guided by a
new heritage-led urban regeneration paradigm, up-scalable and replicable, which is able to offer
new products and services, reduced regulative and administrative barriers, innovative
governance (trans-disciplinary and participatory approaches) and promoting citizens’
engagement and new local skills and jobs.
Clustering and network activities will be supported to build bridges between various stakeholders:
tourism related activities, Culture Creative Industries (CCIs), academia, public bodies, companies
and investors. Each one will bring in its specific expertise and the resulting alliances produced by
Kairós’s network might grow into long-term partnerships or mergers, thus contributing to
sustainability. Strong clusters between enterprises and citizens, supported by local authorities,
will increase the opportunities for companies to do business with social acceptance and
responsibility.
1.2 The Kairós cities

2. 2
KAIROSshortoverview
KAIRÓS partners have an important cultural heritage, concentrated in their historic centers, which
is undergoing processes of urban and social degradation although been a valuable cultural asset
able to attract cultural eco-friendly tourism.
KAIRÓS will analyse how the various dimensions of urban life – environmental, economic, social
and cultural – are interwoven, especially in historic and cultural urban areas. These type of urban
areas have fewer facilities than what is required by modern cities (e.g. lacking green or open
areas, greater difficulties to access or benefit from municipal services, stringent requirements for
the renovation of listed buildings, small presence of shops and commerce, difficulties to access
to – and not only, persons with disabilities, etc.) and are suffering from population decline while
groups under risk of social inclusion with low income are becoming the main inhabitants.
Partners from the network are cities of a small or medium size, so that the problems they are
facing have special and shared characteristics: historical areas that are abandoned because local
population prefer to live in moderner parts of the city; lack of funding to regenerate heritage that
doesn’t have currently a proper use; local authorities giving priority for the first time to touristic
promotion of heritage, etc. ; and the needs they have are shared: find solutions to attract not only
visitors but local population to degraded areas of high historical value, plan actions together with
neighbours, local companies and other public institutions in order to be successful, negotiate with
building owners from historical areas to promote the recovering of the local heritage.
Kairós network is leaded by Mula, Spain. Mula City Council has already put in place different
actions tackling the most relevant problems identified by KAIRÓS. It should be underlined that a
previous “General Planning” of the city was made paying special attention to the historic and
degraded areas of the city. Furthermore, the city has produced a “Director Plan” for the Castle
which includes preservation and renovation of the site and the natural slopes around it.
Additionally an agreement was signed with the Cartagena`s Polytechnic University and a study
has already been undertaken to analyse the needs and solutions for the renovation of degraded
cultural heritage areas and tourism development.
Several KAIRÓS partners have already interesting experiences related to urban planning and
development through their participation in previous Urbact initiatives, like Cesena and Catania
(Italy), Sibenik (Croatia) and Bragança (Portugal) and have already introduced, and successfully
tested, innovative methodologies to guarantee effective stakeholders and citizen’s participation
in the elaboration and implementation of action plans to tackle their problems. Another partner,
Heraklion (Greece) has also been recognized by URBACT as a “best practice” on setting up and
running a local support group (https://urbact.eu/smart-city-strategic-plan).
The other partners, Belene (Bulgaria) and their links to the Danibe basin and Roman trail with
transborder cooperation with Romania and Ukmerge (Lithuania) and their participation in ERDF
and ESF programs have also interesting experiences to share and will play an important role for
the network.
2. KAIRÓS´s core and related thematic areas
Kairós projecthas selected its thematic areas taking into consideration the approved project´s application,
a tentative identification ofareas and sub-topics elaborated bythe Lead Expert and the discussions held
among the 8 city partners at Mula Kick off meeting (9-10 October). As a result,it was identified a core
policy challenge (with subtopics),which deals with the main projectobjectives and aims together with three
derived thematic areas,which are developed to fulfill the core policy challenge.The core policy challenge
covers the essence ofKairós projectand acts like an umbrella for the other three thematic areas.
A) Core Policy Challenge:
Degraded areas with relevant cultural heritage/landscape: how to preserve- restore and develop
these areas

3. 3
KAIROSshortoverview
Deals with the conservation and restoration ofarea-buildings with historic or architecture value and
promotion oftheir adaptive reuse for tourism activities;
Subtopics:
a) Eco-restoration technics and methodology for sustainable renovation with local roots and
production
b) Energy strategies and solutions for efficient deep renovation of historic buildings
c) Accessibility to heritage areas:pedestrian access; car-vehicles access,touristic routes, facilitating
access to local services; accessibility with a gender perspective;parking areas;shopping zones,
improving roads to reach heritage town and areas, etc.
d) Landscape regeneration,existence or creation of open-green areas for community encounter and
social life.
a) Funding heritage´s supportand tourism-local economy diversification and development:Annalise
sources of funding,from EU funds, to National/Regional support,private investmentand
innovative ways for funding (e.g: private/public partnership;crowdfunding;community shares;
social responsible investmentfunds,lottery funds, etc.)
B) DerivedThematic Areas:
1 – Heritage support and tourism development (and relatedactivities) to promote local economy
growth and diversification
Deals with the supportbusiness creation related to heritage and tourism,self-employment,entrepreneurial
skills to facilitate the diversification of the local economy.Growth initiatives,including supportto SMEs
(hospitality,creative industries,crafts,etc.) through skills development,business planning,and access to
credit. Improved managementoftouristdestinations and the developmentofleisure travel clusters.
Subtopics:
a) Intangible Cultural heritage as a tool for economic development:conservation,developmentand
promotion ofimmaterial cultural heritage
b) Cultural and Eco-friendly tourism:needs and requirementfor its developmentwhile creating
Multifunctional Heritage Centre/Area to preserve genuine local character avoiding Gentrification.
c) SmartHeritage City: use of Information Communication Technologies for smartsolutions (e.g.
using apps - smartcity initiatives for heritage preservation-valorisation and tourism development
while improving managementofresources
d) “Passing by” tourist: how to make them stay; how to reach them from rural or remote areas.
e) Creative Culture Industries’support addressed to link heritage and sustainable tourism while
stimulating production ofdiversified tourism thematic products aimed atcombatting seasonality
2 - Employment opportunities relatedto cultural heritage and tourism to develop in the cities.
Deals with labour marketissues,including analysis ofavailabilityand efficiency of active employment
measures adapted to heritage and tourism-local development;matching employmentand demand by
improving forecasting tools on markettrends and needs on skills and professional profiles (including e -
skills required in a globalized economywhile preserving and reinventing skills atrisk ofbeing lost). Making
education and vocational training responsive to the needs ofthe local labour market(improving career and
vocational guidance,apprenticeships,traineeships,entrepreneurial education and the acquisition of
generic skills and highlyvalued abilities facilitating the transition into the world of work).
Subtopics:
a) Labour marketanalysis and activation measures for heritage and tourism.Passive measures
transformed into encouraging ones.
b) Vocational education measures to update and upgrade skills
3 - Social factors and cities identity: involving people
Developing effective models ofcooperation involving and mobilizing citizens and inhabitants with local
businesses,training providers and relevantadministrations.Changes within a city affect the individuals,
communities and businesses,therefore the need to involve all concerned stakeholders in the governance
of the city and facilitate interactions and co-generation.

4. 4
KAIROSshortoverview
Subtopics:
a) Cultural heritage for an inclusive city: participation and access for all ssetting up co-creation
processes and developing initiatives together with groups ofcitizens or stakeholders
b) Administrative / regulatory burden and new innovative managementtools
c) Actions to involve immigrants,women,youth and groups under risk ofsocial exclusion in
decision making - problem solving related to heritage and tourism