Digital Twins as Governance Infrastructures in UNESCO Low-Density Landscapes

Abstract

Low-density regions often host culturally significant heritage assets with high social, symbolic, and economic value, but yet these resources remain underused because of weak coordination, limited visibility, and institutional fragmentation. This study addresses to that problem by conceptualizing the economy of forgetfulness as a governance condition in which dispersed heritage gradually loses salience in policy agendas and public investments due to persistent visibility deficits. It argues that digital twins should be understood not merely as a technical tool for documentation or monitoring, but as a strategic governance infrastructure that can reactivate dormant heritage and improve policy action in territorially fragmented settings. The study develops a theory-building comparative framework that traces how digital visibility can translate into governance outcomes through a sequential process, while showing that the economy of forgetfulness moderates the all process. To ground this argument, it uses UNESCO-listed cases - Douro Valley, Genoa, Sintra, and Pompeii - illustratively rather than as empirical tests, highlighting differences in institutional density, coordination capacity, and digital readiness. Selective reference is made to high-visibility contexts such as Notre-Dame to explore transferability, adaptation, and scaling without assuming direct replication. Where baseline visibility is low and neglect is high, digital interventions are expected to exert stronger effects on awareness, suggesting particularly high policy value in peripheral regions. These cases illustrate how digital twins’ applications may reduce decision latency, uncover latent coordination potential, and support more effective governance across territorial contexts. Because the cases are illustrative rather than empirical, they clarify framework plausibility and transferability under adaptation rather than replication. The study’s policy contributions are threefold: it reframes digital twins as a heritage activation infrastructure; it proposes an operationalizable moderated visibility-awareness mechanism expandable to full sequential paths; and it positions the economy of forgetfulness as a policy-shaping condition for territorial cohesion, development, and governance in marginalized regions.