The Ambientes do Ar project is the result of a research project started in 2001, in the village of Souto Bom, with the organization of the 1st. EUROPEAN HERITAGE CAMP in the village. The Heritage Camp took to Souto Bom students of architecture, art, history, and other areas and specialists in various fields such as biology, geology, architecture, ethnography, etc..During fifteen days various inventories were made ​​of the built heritage of the village, there were made several interviews to the people of the village, there were studied the mills, the fauna and flora of the shore of the Pena and there were organized various activities and conferences.It was organized by Ana Barbero as a FOUM UNESCO: UNIVERSITY and HERITAGE activity (headquarters in the Piaget Institute of Viseu) and funded by the City of Tondela. For its organization it was signed a protocol between these two institutions.​The result of this Heritage Research Camp was the development of the PhD thesis entitled The historical heritage management, a tool for sustainable development. A case study: the local development project: Os Ambientes do Ar.This thesis was defended at the University of Salamanca, Department of History of Art and Design, earning a rating of Excellent Cum Laude. The author also received the Extraordinary Doctoral Award.The Management of Cultural Heritage: a tool for sustainable development. A practical case: a local development project “Os Ambientes do Ar”.
 
Cultural heritage management.


 In the last decade there has been a proliferation of projects which relate cultural aspects with local and territorial development.
 On the other hand, the appearance of new technologies, the development of new fields for leisure and tourism, and globalization, have diverted the debate relative to cultural aspects towards the role culture and heritage can or should play in global and territorial contexts.
 

With this in mind, two of the fundamental discussions that arise are:
 -  how to integrate the wise management of cultural heritage management projects within strategies and policies of sustainable development; and in what form of social use of heritage be understood as a resource for community development that should be incorporated into those projects that form part of said strategies.
 

This gives rise to the necessity to reflect on such aspects as the very concept of culture, sustainable development, globalization, community, place, management …
 

The initial affirmation of a study of these terms is that there is no singular definition that can be applied to said concepts, nor exists a definitive model of the wise management of cultural heritage. The traditional cycle of heritage management (research, documentation, conservation, disclosure) to which can be added other functions such as the function that this management study should play in our society and the form in which it could benefit the endogenous and sustainable development of a region (that is to say, in which ways it could contribute to the sustained economic growth, social and economic cohesion, and the conservation of the environment, at the same time as looking to improve the quality of life of the people).
 

This is how we arrive at our principal hypothesis; a project of cultural heritage management should be considered a social project of community development.
 
The Management of Cultural Heritage: a social project of community development.


 Heritage fulfils a fundamental role in society today because of the values it can contribute: identity value, economic value and social value.
 In this way it is necessary that the inhabitants learn to discover these values in heritage and understand how heritage can be a factor in determining their development, both personal and communitarian.
 

We are convinced that whichever management project has a well-considered cultural heritage as a resource should have as its backbone good connections with the local population. For that we propose that cultural heritage management should be considered a social project of community development where the principal protagonists are the people themselves.
 

To reinforce this thesis and as the practical part of our scientific investigation we worked with a specific case; the community water-mills of the hamlet of Souto Bon (situated in Tondela, in the district of Viseu, Portugal); we analysed the reality of the hamlet and proposed a project of locally based ambit within a strategy of community intervention, whose principal objective was the valorisation of the mills and their transformation from good local utilities to good local “heritage” and utilities, generators of wealth, where the people of the community acquire a  very important responsibility in the success of the project.
 
Other aspects that we wanted to deal with in these works are:

 -  To define the concepts key relationships with the culture in the middle and end of development.
-   To analyse the existing resources in a community, based in the process of a project of heritage management.
-   To study and analyse projects that have as a line of action, the identification, valorisation and conditioning of heritage resources.
-    To realise the investigations necessary in Souto Bom, to be able to propose a project of local development for this hamlet.