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

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.