The renewal of the city started from the examination of urban conditions of comfort/discomfort (safety, mobility, environment, social cohesion); this required the direct involvement of the city's inhabitants as experts of the urban environment, and therefore able to suggest solutions. Nowadays in Italy the renewal tools of the city cannot be found in planning laws, but in new tools with participated procedures. These participated procedures have put the public administration and the private entrepreneurial class in agreement. In the '90's, the so-called Complex Programs both in the national and regional domain have been realized. The Complex Programs aim to propose urban improvement through innovative procedures to improve urban life quality. Among the Complex Programs, the District Contracts have been realized in January '98 and proposed in 2002 by the Infrastructure Administration. They set the aim of district renewal in places characterized by buildings degradation, urban environment lacking services, scarce social cohesion and marked housing problems as well as the presence of an elevated seismic vulnerability. This paper underlines a methodology of urban retraining with participated procedures applied in a historical centre of a town in southern Italy.