AbstractThe idea of sustainability is based on the need to preserve the natural resources which already exist, so earth could provide them for the future generations. If it is valid for environmental resources, it should also be apply to the maintenance of place identity which plays a direct key role in shaping both individual and community identity. When the typical features of places are preserved, their peculiarity is highlighted, as well as the relationship between the human being and their living environment. Such a heritage, enhancing the individual development in relation to the place features, can be an important life anchor left for future generations as a part of their own history and tradition, especially now, in the historical period we are living in, where relationships are characterized by high mobility and virtualization. The experience acquired in Comacchio (FE), where a Project of Airworthiness for its historical centre was presented few years ago, can be an example of intervention to retrieve the local identity. This project intended a recuperation of the fundamental relationship between land and water, typical of human settlements, which interventions in the 60s have severely jeopardized, compromising place characterization and, subsequently, the identity formation of population.