**Abstract**

Europe is a land of ancient urbanization where nature and culture of places are inextricably intertwined, defining real territorial cultural systems. After the era of a hurried expansion of the cities linked to the industrial revolution, in the height of the digital era, urban planning finds the key to understanding space in cultural heritage. In a European territory that appears increasingly distinct between metropolitan and inner areas, both cultural heritages play an essential role in defining the paradigms of self-sustainable development that urban planning declares to promote. This is the basic assumption that the paper proposes starting from the analysis of the relationship between historic centers and natural landscapes, in search of a different use of the land, reversible, respectful of the environment but still capable of being the physical support for anthropogenic transformations and the productions of economy and life. Starting from a rereading of the relationship between cultural heritage and territorial systems, the paper elaborates a different vision of the historic centers as epicenters of possible economic networks and ecosystem services, based on the analysis of Italian and Eastern Europe experiences.

**Keywords:** territorial cultural systems, self-sustainable development, urban planning, cultural heritage, historical urban landscape
