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“Transition” is the dynamic process of changing state, going beyond, crossing over, and passing from one point to the next. The signification of the word is close to that of evolution, modification, mutation, and transformation, all of which are confined into a strictly restricted timeframe. Etymologically, “transitions” can be nothing else than temporary: they appear silently, burst, violently establish, and gradually disappear into reality. In their blinding momentariness, “transitions” bear with them the positive undertone of change and renewal, along with the hopefulness of that which is unknown. If the term “transition” recurs regularly in the contemporary vocabulary of architecture and design cultures, this repetition reveals a period characterized by overlapping and sequential changes. The word is without a doubt overused, but not without reason. Indeed, we find ourselves in an unusually extended period of consecutive “transitions”, overwhelmingly undefined in temporality and ambitions. As we are witnessing societies go through stark demographic, political, economic, and cultural changes, the intersecting problematics (e.g., ecological, digital, pandemic, etc.) form a rather complex topography of change, negatively charged by the instability of dilated time and the uncertainty of undefined destination. The word is employed with the confidence of a natural process, as if it were a storm, and while we affirm our existence in “transition”, we nod our troubled times away. Whether positively or negatively perceived, “transitions” form bridges between histories. Yet, what does it actually mean to be in “transition”? Can we define it as an autonomous and productive period whose importance could go beyond a starting and an ending date? How are “transitions” impacting and being impacted by human spaces, the built environment, and design cultures? What are some concrete, practical case studies that demonstrate how “transitions” could affect architecture and design cultures while emphasizing the role that these disciplines play in transitional processes? It is within this backdrop that we put forward the theme of “transition”—in all its simplicity and complexity.

La necessità del cambiamento di paradigma della mobilità nelle nostre città verso un modello meno dipendente dall’uso dell’auto è stato definito post-car city. Il libro, che raccoglie contributi di studiosi di numerose università italiane, restituisce un quadro di misure avviate per traguardare tale modello, valutarne la significatività rispetto alle diverse condizioni insediative e la applicabilità rispetto al quadro normativo di riferimento. Il Rapporto offre tre prospettive di dibattito: si interroga sull’efficacia e trasferibilità di modelli di integrazione trasporto e usi del suolo come i Transit Oriented Development e le politiche per sostenere la accessibilità di prossimità; discute del ruolo delle innovazioni tecnologiche e digitali e delle implicazioni socio-economiche e spaziali della loro diffusione e, infine, si confronta con le necessarie innovazioni normative per perseguire la transizione.

Cities are small-scale complex socio-ecological systems, that host around 60% of world population. Ecosystem Services (ES) provided by urban ecosystems offer multiple benefits necessary to cope with present and future urban challenges. These ES include microclimate regulation, runoff control, as well as opportunities for mental and physical recreation, affecting citizen’s health and wellbeing. Creating a balance between urban development, land take containment, climate adaptation and availability of Urban Green Areas and their related benefits, can improve the quality of the lives of the inhabitants, the economic performance of the city and the social justice and cohesion aspects. This work starts analysing current literature around the topic of Ecosystem Services (ES), Green and Blue Infrastructure (GBI) and Nature-based Solutions (NBS) and their integration within current European and International sustainability policies. Then, the thesis focuses on the role of ES, GBI and NBS towards urban sustainability and resilience setting the basis to build the core methodological and conceptual approach of this work. The developed ES-based conceptual approach provides guidance on how to map and assess ES, to better inform policy making and to give the proper value to ES within urban context. The proposed interdisciplinary approach navigates the topic of mapping and assessing ES benefits in terms of regulatory services, with a focus on climate mitigation and adaptation, and cultural services, to enhance wellbeing and justice in urban areas. Last, this thesis proposes a trans-disciplinary and participatory approach to build resilience over time around all relevant urban ES. The two case studies that will be presented in this dissertation, the city of Bologna and the city of Barcelona, have been used to implement, tailor and test the proposed conceptual framework, raising valuable inputs for planning, policies and science.

Il concetto di paesaggio ha storicamente un carattere ambiguo e transdisciplinare. Se a livello teorico, le molteplici accezioni hanno contribuito a definire l’ampio ambito di valenza semantica del paesaggio, nelle pratiche di pianificazione, esso è spesso oggetto di approcci settoriali e non coordinati. I cambiamenti ambientali e climatici che caratterizzano il nostro tempo hanno portato, tuttavia, a una considerazione più profonda dell'importanza del paesaggio in quanto manifestazione tangibile del rapporto essere umano-ecosistema. In questo quadro, la ricerca mira ad affermare come il paesaggio, concetto di margine tra la sfera sociale e ambientale, alludendo a diverse dimensioni temporali e rimandando a legami soggettivi, identitari ed emozionali, possa essere leva catalizzatrice in grado di mobilitare le persone e di tradurre molteplici istanze in azioni integrate. Assumendo una prospettiva transdisciplinare e pragmatica, la tesi ha l’obiettivo di contribuire all’integrazione degli approcci ecologico-ambientali e semiotico-culturali nell’analisi del paesaggio, definendo una metodologia e degli strumenti di supporto agli amministratori per la più efficace integrazione del valore plurimo del paesaggio nella pianificazione locale e sovralocale. A questo scopo, muovendo da una riflessione sull’evoluzione storica del concetto e sulle sue declinazioni contemporanee, attraverso un’analisi del contesto normativo italiano ed europeo e una ricognizione di alcuni strumenti di lettura e valutazione del paesaggio, la ricerca giunge a definire una proposta metodologica diretta ad indagare i molteplici valori del paesaggio e a supportare i processi decisionali per la gestione dello stesso. Infine, gli approcci e i metodi proposti sono declinati in relazione al contesto normativo dell’Emilia-Romagna, definendo alcune misure per l’integrazione dei valori del paesaggio negli strumenti di governo del territorio, con l’obiettivo di rafforzarne il ruolo strategico come erogatore di servizi e di valori e come ambito di sperimentazione di una rigenerazione territoriale diffusa, sostenibile e modellata sul contesto., The concept of landscape has historically an ambiguous and transdisciplinary character. While at the theoretical level, the many interpretations have contributed to defining the wide semantic scope of landscape, in planning practices it is often the subject of sectoral and uncoordinated approaches. The environmental and climatic changes that characterize our time have however led to a deeper consideration of the importance of landscape, as a tangible manifestation of the human-ecosystem relationship. In this framework, the research intends to demonstrate how the landscape, alluding to different temporal dimensions and referring to subjective, identity-related and emotional ties, can be a catalyst lever able to mobilize people and to translate multiple instances into integrated actions. Taking a transdisciplinary and pragmatic perspective, the thesis aims to contribute to the integration of ecological-environmental and semiotic-cultural approaches, defining a methodology and some tools to support policy-makers and designers for the effective integration of the plural value of landscape in local and regional planning. To this end, the thesis presents a reflection on the historical evolution of the concept and its contemporary declinations, an analysis of the Italian and European regulatory context and a survey of tools for landscape evaluation. On these bases, the thesis comes to define a methodological proposal for landscape analysis, planning, and management. Finally, the proposed approaches and methods are declined in relation to the regulatory context of the Emilia-Romagna region, defining measures for the most effective integration of landscape values into the governance system, to strengthen its strategic role as a provider of services and cultural values and as a promoter of a sustainable, inclusive and place-based regional regeneration.

The research investigates the interaction between social innovation practices and urban planning, assuming as a case study and field of application the city of Bologna, observed from the point of view of the production of urban policies and with respect to the places where it is practiced. Social innovation are localised actions tackling current urban complexities with micro-scale practices of service and urban production, by which new urban actors find answers to social needs, which are less afforded by the market and the public sectors. Planning and social innovation practices are two dimensions working in the city in different but complementary ways, subject to a mismatch. Through the lenses of interaction, the research explores the context of Bologna, a paradigmatic study and application field, a laboratory of innovative policies where a tradition of collective civic initiatives intertwines with a more responsible institutional planning framework. After drawing from area-based policies of Berlin and Barcelona, the thesis reads the role of specific intermediate places, mediators in bridging the level of institutions and the practices. Through an inventory and a cross-cutting taxonomy of intermediate places, the research draws the knowledge to inform a new urban model for the city of Bologna, aimed at overtake the mismatches by enabling the practices to act, allowing urban planning to frame them in a cross-fertilisation dimension. The proposed urban diagrammatic model, foresees intermediate places as local socio-urban observatories for research and development, interacting with both institutions and communities. The goal is to critically explore the limits and widen the meaning of the capacity of action of social innovation practices engaging in mutual-learning with the city. The model suggests a new possibility for reflection on urban planning as a more flexible approach, which translates the numerous experiences of the city into alternatives and multiple visions.

The focus of the Ph.D. dissertation is on the thermal part of the energy planning issue since the space conditioning (heating and cooling – H&C) of buildings represents about 75% of the energy consumed by European residential buildings and only 16% of the heating and cooling consumption is covered by renewable energy sources (RES). At the same time, the increased complexity of the spatial planning process when energy issues are involved has made clear the need for new “energy-aware” tools and methods used in this field. The proposed methodology is GIS (Geographical Information System)-based and performed at regional scale given that the movement of energy planning activities from national to regional and local scale allows a much more detailed analysis of both the energy demand and supply, balancing them more effectively. The integration of the spatial dimension within energy analyses can also provide the decision-makers with a spatially-explicit approach towards the energy transition and the development of sustainable energy plans and strategies. The general aim of the Ph.D. thesis is to develop a Spatial Decision Support System (SDSS) allowing the decision-makers to take into account (during the planning process) both the improvement of the energy production from RES and the energy renovation of the existing building stock. The SDSS aims also to connect the energy planning (supply side) with spatial planning (demand side) by seeking synergies between the two fields. This connection is made taking advantage of the framework of the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA). The Ph.D. thesis is partially developed within a European co-financed project included in the Interreg Alpine Space programme. The GRETA project was designed to foster the use of shallow geothermal energy (SGE) in energy plans and strategies along the Alps. SGE is a low-carbon source for H&C of buildings, which exploits the heat stored within the ground, a local source widely available and less dependent from changes in time compared to other RES. Despite this, its exploitation is not yet diffused and its growth is limited mainly by factors such as scarce knowledge, complicated and fragmented legislation, and high installation costs. Considering all these issues, the research questions that shaped the Ph.D. activities are: ➢ How to estimate the thermal energy demand of the residential building stock at the regional scale, as a starting point for developing sustainable energy strategies aimed at the reduction of the thermal energy consumption in the existing buildings. ➢ How to integrate this appraisal in the energy planning of a region in order to elaborate different scenarios for the energy balance between thermal demand and supply, fostering the use of shallow geothermal energy (SGE) that is a renewable source still not well-known and not exploited. ➢ How to encourage the connection between energy planning and spatial planning towards the common goal of sustainable energy transition, helping to fill the gap between the development of plans and strategies and their implementation, thanks to the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) framework. The proposed methodology has been applied in a case study, i.e. Valle d’Aosta, an Italian alpine region. Almost all the data processing is performed with open-source software (GRASS GIS, QGIS, Python, and R) and applying a spatially-explicit approach, for pushing the integration of the spatial dimension in the energy analysis. The spatial units of analysis are the single building and the census tract. The single building has been chosen as the smallest unit available for ensuring a better characterization of the thermal energy demand and of the potential energy production from SGE. Moreover, the scenario analysis for the energy renovation of buildings is better performed at the building level; so, it is particularly suitable for developing an SDSS. Nevertheless, some data processing is done at the census tract level, using aggregated and statistical information to estimate the required values at the building level. The reason for this twofold scale of analysis is that the data availability often changes depending on time, space and data provider. For instance, for the case study area only little data was available at the building level for the whole region. Therefore, the methodology integrates data from different sources to fill this knowledge gap. The methodology applied in the case study is divided into two parts: 1) The first one concerns the data collection and processing for the spatial estimation of the space heating demand of the existing building stock. At the end of it, the technical and economic suitability of SGE (performed within the GRETA project) for covering the energy demand of buildings and replacing some fossil fuels is evaluated. 2) The second one is carried out in the framework of SEA, by defining common objectives and developing scenarios for the integration of SGE in the energy planning process, as the short-term objective, and the coordination of energy and spatial planning goals, as the long-term objective. In the Ph.D. thesis, SEA is intended as a conceptual framework for integrating energy and spatial planning, rather than as an evaluation tool. The main outputs of the Ph.D. thesis are: (i) the spatial evaluation of the space heating demand of each residential building of the case study, without using the “archetypes approach”; (ii) the development of a method for the integration of data from different sources and for its estimation if missing at the building level; (iii) the use of SEA as a framework for connecting energy planning and spatial planning fields, to support strategic decision-making processes. Even though the Ph.D. case study is a typical alpine region, (iv) the developed methodology can be applied at different scales and not only on alpine regions but potentially in every kind of context. Since it strongly depends on the availability of data, the replicability of the methodology is quite high. The main expected impacts of these outputs are: (1) SDSS allows to reach a trade-off between the number of input data and the level of detail often required by decision-makers; (2) SDSS can support the decision-makers allowing them to analyse from various viewpoints different energy scenarios and also to localise where is better to address the energy measures; (3) the results at the building level represent a starting point for defining and developing strategies for the energy transition of settlements at different scales; (4) SEA used as a strategic tool for integrating energy and spatial planning, by coordinating strategic objectives, and linking the thesis outputs to the energy decision-making process.

The overall aim of the research is to contribute to promote urban regeneration through the energy renovation of residential buildings. The goal is to show, on the one side, the relevance of the occupant behaviour, at present seldomly included in the consideration of the measures to be adopted to renovate the buildings; on the other side, the relationship among stakeholders involved in the renovation process. The specific aim is to assess the impact of household behaviour on energy-related policies and practices tailored at reducing the energy consumption and at increasing energy efficiency of buildings. The outcomes shall support decision-makers, planners and stakeholders to design and implement energy policy instruments and strategies to regenerate the existing built environment, with a focus on the residential sector. Despite the limited size of the Italian public housing stock, due to the favourable situation of public housing providers, having an exclusive role in building management, and similar regional regulations and procedures to comply with, the public housing sector is considered as the case study for this research. Chapter 2, 3 and 5 make an extensive use of literature review as main methods to investigate energy behaviour models in all the most relevant disciplines dealing with behavioural studies, the policy frameworks, the determinants of household energy behaviour, the strategies to promote behavioural change and the main characteristics of the Italian public housing stock in terms of roles and responsibilities. Chapter 4 describes quantitative research methods as statistical analysis on the census data, and qualitative research method for the analysis of the questionnaires resulting from the survey. Chapter 6 applies building energy simulation to investigate the impact of behaviour and to build scenarios to inform decision-makers, while in Chapter 7 a multi-criteria decision-making tool is adopted, and new solutions suggested., L'obiettivo generale della ricerca è quello di contribuire alla promozione di processi di rigenerazione urbana attraverso il retrofit degli edifici residenziali, per mostrare da un lato, la rilevanza del comportamento degli occupanti, attualmente raramente incluso tra le misure da adottare per la riqualificazione; d'altra parte, la relazione tra gli attori coinvolti nel processo di riqualificazione, al fine di suggerire nuove misure per migliorarne l'efficacia. L'obiettivo specifico è quello di valutare l'impatto del comportamento energetico delle famiglie sulle politiche e le pratiche per ridurre i consumi energetici e aumentare l'efficienza degli edifici. I risultati sono pensati per supportare i decisori e i pianificatori a progettare e attuare strumenti e strategie per rigenerare l'ambiente costruito, con particolare attenzione al settore residenziale. Nonostante le esigue dimensioni dello stock abitativo pubblico, caratteristiche irripetibili quali la proprietà unica, la natura pubblica e le analogie tra le normative e procedure regionali, sono le ragioni alla base della scelta come caso di studio privilegiato per questa ricerca. I capitoli 2, 3 e 5 fanno ampio uso della revisione della letteratura esistente come principale metodo per studiare i modelli e le determinanti del comportamento; le strategie per incentivare un cambio di paradigma nel comportamento, secondo diversi livelli di governance; le principali caratteristiche del patrimonio abitativo pubblico italiano in termini di ruoli e responsabilità. Il capitolo 4 presenta due diversi approcci all'argomento, utilizzando sia metodi di ricerca quantitativi su dati statistici, che metodi di ricerca qualitativa per l'analisi dei questionari. Il capitolo 6 applica un modello di simulazione energetica allo studio dell'impatto del comportamento al fine di costruire scenari per supportare i decisori locali nelle loro scelte. Infine, nel capitolo 7 vengono illustrati i risultati di un’analisi multi-criterio per determinare l’impatto degli utenti sulle strategie per il risparmio energetico e formulate nuove proposte.

While ecosystem service knowledge has demonstrated to enhance decision-making at different levels, successfully managing the interface between science and policies is still a challenge. The thesis focuses on cities, and aims to explore the integration of ecosystem services in urban planning processes and tools. A preliminary review of recent urban plans reveals shortcomings in current practices and the potential benefits of a further integration. At the conceptual level, the problem of integration is addressed by building a framework that shows the entry points and pathways through which planning actions affect the supply and demand of urban ecosystem services. The framework is applied to systematise a fragmented scientific evidence, and to select a set of indicators that planners can use to assess the impacts of planning decisions. At the operational level, the integration of ecosystem service knowledge is tested in a real-life planning context dealing with the prioritization of brownfield regeneration scenarios in the city of Trento (Italy). Alternative scenarios are assessed based on the beneficiaries of two key ecosystem services, namely microclimate regulation and nature-based recreation, hence compared through a multi-criteria analysis that allows exploring multiple perspectives and balancing competing interests. The last part of the thesis frames the integration of ecosystem services in urban planning in the wider context of spatial strategies for sustainable urban development. The six main spatial strategies agreed-upon at the European level, including the 'green city' strategy supported by the ecosystem service approach, are compared with the recent development trends of 175 European cities. The results reveal factors that may hinder the implementation of the strategies, as well as potential conflicts and trade-offs that should be carefully considered when aiming at a truly-sustainable urban development.

2015 - 2016, Currently, urban planning theory and practice is focusing on the renewal and enhancement of the existing urban settlements and no longer on enlargement and expansion of the city. Generally, cities are looking for the sustainable use of resources, paying particular attention to environmental and social aspects. The urban quality and collective well-being cannot be separated from the identification of a network, structuring of the city, of infrastructures and services that are not resolved in the themes provided by legislation. In fact, the characteristics, that transform a place into a liveable area, derive from a set of tangible and intangible urban endowments, that evolve continuously according to their type. Without a balance between the built environment and the consequent urban facilities and services, which are named as Standard Urbanistici (Urban Standards) by the Italian legislation, a town can go into crisis. In Italy, almost fifty years on from the issue of the Decree on the Urban Standards (DI no.1444/1968), currently in force, the problems relating to their planning are unresolved and, moreover, exacerbated: application methods, criteria for the users computing, land acquisition processes, raising funding to move from planning to implementation and management of the infrastructures. Noting the failure of attempts to define, a priori, a quantity of universally valid services, it is necessary to rethink the strategies and criteria for the provision of infrastructure. In order to meet the real needs of local communities, which are continuously changing, elastic and flexible facilities must be coupled also with a change in the method for their determination and verification. Consequently, a need for the redefinition of tools to interpret the social dynamics and to ensure and assess a changed concept of urban and environmental quality can be revealed, through the identification of innovative equipment and services. “The Urban Standards are and will be those specific services and facilities which the local community, over time, recognizes as basic and essential for the balanced structuring of the territory, and that are standard, i.e. constant, for its management” (Lr Lombardia no.01/2001). From an initial analysis of the current situation, on the basis of technical references, and from the best practices on services planning, a methodology was developed to evaluate the system of urban standards quantitatively and qualitatively, in order to fully understand what the priorities are and the benefits they can bring. The intent of the methodology is to define an innovative tool to support land use decisions and to implement the planning of services (Piano dei Servizi). From the application to the planning of services of different techniques, tools and models belonging to different disciplines, the methodology has been defined and integrated into the practice of traditional urban planning, thus becoming also a regeneration tool of the urban system. The methodology has been tested in various municipal systems, producing significant results, reflecting the identity of the places and their morphological, social, cultural and economic features. The conclusion of the work also tracks possible future developments, which can turn to an operational simplification of the methodology in order to guide the definition of legislation for new services planning. [edited by author], Attualmente, le teorie e le pratiche di pianificazione urbana pongono l’attenzione alla riqualificazione e valorizzazione dell’esistente e non più sull’ampliamento e lo sviluppo delle città. In generale, esse sono rivolte all’uso sostenibile delle risorse, ponendo particolare attenzione agli aspetti sociali e ambientali. La qualità urbana e il benessere collettivo non possono prescindere dall’individuazione di una rete, strutturante per la città, di infrastrutture e servizi che non si risolvono nei temi previsti dalla norma. Infatti, le caratteristiche che rendono un luogo in un buon posto per vivere, derivano da una serie di dotazioni materiali e immateriali, che si evolvono in continuazione per tipologia. In mancanza di un bilanciamento tra l’ambiente costruito e le attrezzature e i sevizi che ne derivano (quelli che vengono definiti “standard urbanistici”), la città va in crisi. In Italia, a distanza di quasi cinquant’anni dall’emanazione del Decreto sugli Standard Urbanistici (D.I. no.1444/1968), attualmente ancora vigente, i problemi in materia di standard sono, nonché irrisolti, aumentati di numero: modalità applicative, criteri di calcolo dell’utenza, procedura di acquisizione delle aree occorrenti, reperimento delle risorse finanziarie per passare dalla programmazione all’attuazione ed alla gestione delle opere. Appurati i tentativi di fallimento di definire, a priori, una quantità universalmente valida dei servizi, è necessario ripensare alle modalità e ai criteri da considerare nella definizione della maggior parte delle attrezzature. Con l’intento di incontrare i bisogni reali delle comunità locali, che hanno cambiato il loro aspetto, attrezzature elastiche e flessibili devono essere combinate anche attraverso il cambiamento nel metodo della loro definizione e verifica. Di conseguenza, può essere rilevata la necessità di ridefinire strumenti in grado di interpretare le dinamiche sociali e di assicurare e valutare un diverso concetto di qualità urbana e ambientale, attraverso attrezzature e servizi innovativi. “Gli standard urbanistici sono e saranno quelle attrezzature e quei servizi specifici che a comunità locale, nel tempo, riconosce come basilari ed essenziali per la strutturazione bilanciata del territorio, e che, sono standard, costanti, per la sua gestione” (Legge regionale lombarda, 2001). Da una prima analisi dello stato dell’arte, sulla base della consultazione tecnica nazionale ed internazionale, e le esperienze di pianificazione dei servizi, è tato possibile delineare, a partire dalle diverse sue componenti, un percorso di ricerca che mira alla definizione di una metodologia di localizzazione dei servizi, intesi in un’ottica innovativa rispetto a quella tradizionale. Lo scopo della metodologia è quello di definire uno strumento innovativo di supporto alle decisioni dell’uso del suolo e capace di implementare la pianificazione dei servizi (Piano dei Servizi). Attraverso l’applicazione alla pianificazione dei servizi di diverse tecniche, strumenti e modelli appartenenti a diverse discipline, la metodologia è stata definita e integrata alla prassi di pianificazione urbana tradizionale, diventando quindi anche strumento di rigenerazione del sistema urbano. La metodologia è stata testata in diversi ambiti comunali, producendo dei risultati significativi, che possono rispecchiano l’identità dei luoghi e le loro caratteristiche fisiche, sociali, culturali ed economiche. La conclusione del lavoro traccia anche possibili sviluppi futuri, che possono rivolgersi a una semplificazione operativa della metodologia per poter orientare la definizione normativa di pianificazione dei servizi. [a cura dell'autore], XV n.s

La presente tesi si occupa del territorio agricolo periurbano, ovvero aree coltivate che si collocano ai margini dell’espansione della città e che possiedono al contempo sia caratteristiche di ruralità che di urbanità. L’obiettivo della ricerca è offrire un contributo all’analisi delle aree agricole periurbane nel caso di una città di dimensioni medio-piccole; il caso di studio scelto per condurre questa indagine è il territorio periurbano di Cesena. La prima fase della ricerca è consistita in un’indagine sul territorio periurbano sia sotto il profilo teorico che per quanto riguarda le pratiche. A partire dalla lettura del testo Campagne urbane di Pierre Donadieu, la ricerca individua nel contesto italiano diversi punti di vista, non del tutto contrapposti quanto piuttosto complementari, sulle aree periurbane: un approccio ecologico, un approccio “territorialista” e posizioni che considerano l’agricoltura come materiale per la costruzione di un nuovo paesaggio. Vi sono, inoltre, numerosi progetti di intervento sulle aree agricole periurbane che sono stati individuati e classificati in quattro categorie: piani paesaggistici regionali, parchi agricoli, piani strategici alla scala urbana ed esperienze agricole di prossimità. Successivamente, il lavoro si è concentrato sullo studio della pianificazione regionale e degli strumenti urbanistici locali per capire come essi trattano il territorio agricolo periurbano. L’indagine su Cesena, infine, è stata condotta attraverso la sovrapposizione di un reticolo a maglia regolare sul territorio e sullo studio dei settori in cui ricadevano gli “ambiti agricoli periurbani” definiti dagli strumenti urbanistici. Analizzando le caratteristiche di tutte le aree è stato possibile individuare cinque categorie di territorio agricolo periurbano: residenziale, produttivo, infrastrutturale, agricolo, naturale. Per ogni categoria sono state analizzate dettagliatamente un’area campione (tra quelle ricadenti negli “ambiti agricoli periurbani”) e un’area comparativa (con caratteristiche simili). Sulla base di queste indagini sono state individuate alcune strategie progettuali, che potrebbero essere inserite nel nuovo strumento urbanistico comunale., This PhD thesis is about the peri-urban agricultural territory situated around the expansion of the cities. It consists of agricultural areas in the middle of suburban districts and rural zones closed to consolidated city. The purpose of this research is to offer a contribution to the analysis of contemporary rural condition in the peri-urban areas of a small-average dimension city; the case study is the territory of Cesena. The first step of the research consists in the investigation about peri-urban areas both in theoretical and in practical aspects. Starting from the book Campagnes urbaines of Pierre Donadieu, the research identifies some different points of view about peri-urban areas in the Italian context: the ecological approach, the ‘territorial’ approach and some positions that considers the agriculture like a tool to design urban spaces. There are many Italian and European projects about peri-urban areas that in this research are classified in four categories: territorial plans, agricultural parks, urban scale strategic plans and experience of agriculture of proximity. After that the research focuses on the study of the regional regulations and of the local plans that govern the peri-urban agricultural territory of Cesena. In the analysis of Cesena peri-urban territory a regular matrix has been overlapped on the whole territory getting a partition in equal areas. This operation allows to analyse the particular characteristics of each area, and to recognise five different types of peri-urban territory: residential, productive, infrastructural, agricultural and natural. For each type we have selected one ‘sample area’ (between areas including ‘ambiti agricoli periurbani’) and one ‘comparative area’ (between all the other areas having similar characteristics of ‘sample area’) analysing them in detail. This survey allows to give out some planning strategies for the regulation of Cesena peri-urban territory; this urban policies should be included in the next City Plan.

Smart energy city (SEC) development is a component of the urban development initiative smart city, which has been a popular response to the global energy challenge in Europe during the past two decades. SEC development aims to increase the sustainability of urban energy systems and services. Since 2011, SEC development has been supported by the European Commission as part of the Strategic Energy Technology plan (SET-Plan) and through the European Union Programmes for Research and Technological Development (specifically FP7 and Horizon 2020). This, along with the promising vision of SEC development and considerable financial support by the private sector, has encouraged numerous European cities to initiate SEC projects. Successful implementation of these projects at the urban scale is crucial to achievement of urban energy objectives and sustainability of future urban development. The here presented thesis aims to support urban decision-makers towards successful implementation of urban scale smart energy city development in Europe. The study includes three stages. The first stage is dedicated to conceptual analysis. Within this stage, I conceptualized smart city through a keyword analysis of existing literature on the concept. Then, within the context of the smart city concept, I defined SEC development through literature review and expert knowledge elicitation. The second stage is dedicated to empirical investigation. Using the definition of SEC development, I distinguished and investigated 43 previously implemented SEC projects to identify common barriers that hinder successful implementation of SEC development. In addition, I proposed a new multi-dimensional methodology that allows a simultaneous prioritization of barriers against their probability, the level of impact, scale, origin, and relationship with other barriers. The third stage of the thesis is dedicated to learning methodologies that allow efficient transfer of knowledge from the past SEC experiences to the new SEC developments. I introduced the application of two learning methodologies that support decision-makers to predict barriers to the implementation of a new SEC project: case-based learning and decision tree learning. The former predicts barriers based on internal similarities between the new SEC project and the past projects. The latter uses the past projects and creates a predictive model for each barrier based on internal and external project characteristics. These models are later used to predict barriers to a new SEC project. Both methodologies were tested in a new SEC project, named SINFONIA. The conceptual analysis revealed that application of information and communication technologies, the collaboration of multiple stakeholders, integration of multiple urban domains, and sustainability evaluation are the constant characteristics (i.e. principles) of smart city and SEC development. It resulted in, to the best of my knowledge, the first multi-dimensional and comprehensive definition of SEC development, revealing its principles, objectives, domains of intervention, stakeholders, time and spatial dimensions. Furthermore, a list of smart energy solutions in each SEC domain of intervention was provided. The empirical investigation of the past SEC projects resulted in the identification of 35 common barriers to the implementation of SEC development, categorized in policy, administrative, legal, financial, market, environmental, technical, social, and information and awareness dimensions. The barrier prioritization showed that barriers related to collaborative planning, external funding of the project, providing skilled personnel, and fragmented ownership should be the key action priorities for SEC project coordinators. Application of case-based learning methodology resulted in identifying five past SEC projects that were the most similar to the SINFONIA project in terms of project internal characteristics. Investigating the barriers to the similar projects revealed that fragmented ownership is the most probable barrier to implementation of SINFONIA project. Application of the decision trees methodology resulted in generation of 20 barrier models, four of which showed a very good performance in prediction of barriers: lack of values and interest in energy optimization measures, time-consuming requirements by European Commission concerning reporting and accountancy, economic crisis, and local unfavorable regulations for innovative technologies. None of these four barriers were predicted to occur in the SINFONIA project. The application of this method in the SINFONIA showed a higher predicting power when a barrier was absent. The findings of the here presented thesis contribute to successful implementation of SEC development by supporting decision-makers in different phases of SEC projects. The results of the conceptual analysis contribute to a common understanding and foster the dialogue on the concept among various SEC stakeholders, particularly decision-makers and urban planners. The results of the empirical investigation lead to a better comprehension and evaluation of the barriers to the implementation of SEC projects in order to efficiently allocate resources to mitigate barriers. The proposed learning methodologies proved to be promising in helping decision-makers to identify similar projects to a new SEC development and to predict barriers to the implementation of new SEC projects. The thesis concludes that SEC is an outstanding urban development that can make a valuable contribution to the sustainability of urban energy systems. The specific characteristics of SEC development pose new challenges to the future smart and sustainable urban planning. Nevertheless, SEC development brings about unprecedented opportunities for integration and application of advanced quantitative techniques with current urban planning methods. This allows efficient knowledge transfer in not only intra-urban but also inter-urban levels in order to provide a collaborative, integrated and constructive movement towards successful implementation of SEC projects and sustainability of future urban development.

Human wellbeing in cities, often associated to availability of engineered structures, is increasingly linked to the conservation of ecosystems. This is the case of the urban water sector where the focus is shifting from adequate infrastructural arrangements to the key role of ecosystem services, thus offering a unique opportunity to achieve sustainability transitions. The urban water sector entails significant complexities and uncertainties, which no longer can be addressed effectively with traditional approaches. A new paradigm of “adaptation and integration”, emerging as a collective effort of stakeholders that engage themselves in a process of social learning, is needed. However, real-life implementation is arduous: it requires linking diverse stakeholders and knowledge systems, across management levels and institutional boundaries. Three innovative concepts can help face this challenge, namely, ecosystem services, boundary work and learning organizations. Ecosystem services provide a holistic approach for framing socio-ecological issues and for integrating different biophysical and socio-economic data. Boundary work, i.e. the effort put in place to facilitate transfer of knowledge into action, informs active management of the tension at the interface between stakeholders that have differing views on what constitutes relevant knowledge. A learning organization is one that is skilled at creating and acquiring knowledge and modifying its behavior to reflect new insights. In this study, these three concepts are jointly explored to build operative approaches to support the implementation of adaptive management. To this end, the work is driven by four specific objectives presented hereafter. The first objective is to frame the urban water sector from an ecosystem services perspective, synthesizing the most relevant aspects related to the exchange of water between watershed and city, and within the city. The proposed framework highlights the role of the urban water sector in (i) linking ecosystem service production and benefit areas, (ii) bridging spatial scales ranging from the watershed to the household level and (iii) adopting ecosystem service-based responses to drivers of water vulnerability. The second objective is to explore practices of boundary work in adaptive watershed management. Thus, an empirical investigation of how boundary work can facilitate knowledge co-generation and cooperative application in a case study of adaptive management in the Fuhrberg watershed (Germany) is conducted. The results suggest that scientific insights have been crucial for "enlightenment", "decision-support", and in "negotiations" between a water utility and stakeholders in Fuhrberg watershed management. The successful implementation of adaptive watershed management is attributed to boundary work deployed by the water utility and ultimately to its high institutional capacity. This study, which is one of the first empirical assessments of boundary work in practice, presents many promising approaches for initiating boundary work in the case of water utilities. Yet, more comparative research is required to understand the influence of contextual differences on appropriate methods and potential outcomes of boundary work. The third objective is to build and test an approach for designing and assessing impact of watershed investments, aiming to implement adaptive management. The proposed approach is structured to facilitate negotiations among stakeholders. Its strategic component includes setting the agenda, defining investment scenarios, and assessing the performance of watershed investments. Its technical component consists of tailoring spatially explicit ecosystem service models, generating future land use scenarios, and modeling impacts on ecosystem services. The approach is applied to a case study in a data-scarce context: Toker Watershed (Eritrea), considering soil erosion -related challenges. It produced spatially explicit data, which has been aggregated to assess quantitatively the performance of watershed investments, in terms of changes in selected ecosystem services, thus answering key management and planning questions. By addressing stakeholders’ concerns of credibility, saliency, and legitimacy, the approach is expected to facilitate the negotiation of objectives, definition of scenarios, and assessment of watershed investments. The fourth objective is to explore water utilities as learning organization implementing adaptive watershed management. A conceptual framework for evaluating the institutional capacity of water utilities is used to characterize the water utilities in Hanover and Asmara. In particular, the institutional capacity of the “Hannover Water Utility” and “Asmara Water Supply Department” is investigated based on the available information from documents, literature and the previous results, and an interview with a key informant. The results show that the institutional capacity of Hanover Water Utility can be classified as Level 5 – “Progressive water utility” and Asmara Water Supply Department can be classified as Level 2 – “Basic water utility”. An empirical pathway to test the results, by involving senior managers and informed scientists from both case studies, is proposed. In any case, the preliminary results highlight the attributes that determine the capacity of water utilities to become a central actor in the in the implementation of an adaptive watershed management. This research, by jointly exploring the innovative concepts of ecosystem services, boundary work and learning organizations, builds operative approaches that can support the implementation of adaptive watershed management. Further work is needed to address some of the complexities and uncertainties underlying the proposed approaches, including data resolution, model calibration, and above all participation of real-life stakeholders

The phenomenon of slum with its related problems interests different regions in the world and it is one of the most interesting topics for the multidisciplinary research, in particular on issues of urban migration in large cities. For various reasons, it is difficult that this phenomenon could be formalized by the planning tools. The main aim of this dissertation is to analyse, interpret, evaluate the different social and economic factors of informal settlements that characterize the growth in the metropolitan areas of many countries. On this basis, the research compares the different urban and suburban informal settlements that have not yet acquired and certified. The thesis is divided into two parts. The first deals with a survey of the slum settlements in some countries strongly characterized by the phenomenon of slum: Mexico, Argentine and Brazil in Latin America; Kenya in Africa and India in Asia. In order to analyze this phenomenon, and its broader aspects, the thesis focuses on the dynamic not only of the migration flow, from Europe to America, but also of wars, conflict and persecution which are causes of illegal immigration, that, particularly in Africa, are a very topical issue. The second part of the thesis treats Dharavi and Shivaji Nagar slums in Mumbai (India). They are the most important examples of informal settlements in Asia because of different levels of aggregation, and also because urban and social literature recognises them as the most difficult problems for size and complexity. Mumbai was the city where the empirical research took place. The collaboration with Indian architects allowed to describe experiences and cases study that helped to understand models of aggregation and sustainability of the slums considering political activities and projects produced by the Municipality of Mumbai. Stakeholders interviews, characterised by different age and gender, made possible to understand and represent different housing and land reclamation of slums. This research underlines the difficulties that cities will have as increasing of the land use due to non programmed migration flows. Therefore, urban planning, interested on the periphery, the enclave of poverty and social distress within the city, needs to choose which kinds of urban design tools could adopt. In fact, zoning, as land-use planning tool, needs to face with these new realities so as to suggest solutions for redevelopment of informal settlements especially where it is important to consider the socially and economically consolidated contests.

The dissertation concerns the opportunities arising from the use of social media platforms as an information resource for supporting design, analysis and decision-making in spatial planning. The widespread diffusion of Web 2.0 technologies and tools such as geobrowsers, Application Programming Interfaces (API), GPS-enabled mobile devices, and recently Location-Based Social Networks are fostering the production, collection and sharing of georeferenced information by the Internet users, namely Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) and Social Media Geographic Information (SMGI), which are not only related to measures of the geographical component, but also to user perceptions and opinions on places, localities and daily-routine events. The wealth of VGI and SMGI freely available through the Internet may affect current practices in regional and urban planning, offering opportunities for real-time monitoring of needs, thoughts and trends of local communities. However, several hurdles related to data accessibility and management, as well as to knowledge extraction are limiting a wider use of SMGI in practice. In the light of the above premises, the research goal is to address the different aspects required for properly using VGI and SMGI within the urban and regional planning domains. The methodological approach is developed following two main directions. First, the approach builds on the design and development of ad-hoc tools able to deal with the issues regarding the access, management and analysis of SMGI. Second, the dissertation formalizes a novel analytical framework, called SMGI Analytics, which enables the proficient use of this information in different planning scenarios. Several case studies are discussed in order to evaluate the value of both the developed tools and the proposed framework. Then, the SMGI Analytics framework is applied on a case study concerning the municipality of Cagliari in Sardinia (Italy) investigating and characterizing a specific public space. Finally, the dissertation proposes a critical discussion about the developed tools and instruments’ effectiveness for eliciting knowledge from SMGI. The discussion ends identifying the potentialities of obtained findings to address diverse questions related to spatial planning.

Every day, billions of mobile network log data (commonly defined as Call Detailed Records, or CDRs) are generated by cell phones operators. These data provide inspiring insights about human actions and behaviors, which are essentials in the development of context aware appli- cations and services. This potential demand has fostered major research activities in a variety of domains such as social and economic development, urban planning, and health prevention. The major challenge of this thesis is to interpret CDR for human activity recognition, in the light of background knowledge of the CDR data context. Indeed each entry of the CDR is as- sociated with a context, which describes the temporal and spatial location of the user when a particular network data has been generated by his/her mobile devices. Knowing, by leveraging available Web 2.0 data sources, (e.g., Openstreetmap) this research thesis proposes to develop a novel model from combination of logical and statistical reasoning standpoints for enabling human activity inference in qualitative terms. The results aimed at compiling human behavior predictions into sets of classification tasks in the CDRs. Our research results show that Point of Interest (POI)s are a good proxy for predicting the content of human activities in an area. So the model is proven to be effective for predicting the context of human activity, when its total level could be efficiently observed from cell phone data records.

In the last two decades territorial competitiveness has profoundly changed the objectives of government intervention in the field of culture. No longer seen as a tool of social integration, Culture is now considered a tool for the economic revitalization of the city, especially in relation to chronic deficit of public finances. This depends mainly on the fact that the cultural heritage, as a scarce and irreproducible resource, is now the only economic good capable of competing on the global market, conquering niches in the "new new economy" and, at the same time, ensuring new forms of development, sustainable and able to unleashing positive processes at the micro-scale. Scientific literature on protection, conservation, enhancement and management of Cultural and Environmental Heritage, gives reason for these large-scale dynamics, exhorting to a general renovation of the sector. Researches carried out in order to respond to this instance often aim to the identification of physical, economic and human resources already present in a given region in the attempt to create a 'local cultural chain' functional and working. In Italy, the reference model for networking is Third Italy's industrial district, whose success is due to the close correlation between production, territory and local knowledge. The application of industrial district's organizational principles to cultural and environmental heritage has given rise to the 'advanced cultural district', now also applied to the more technical aspects of conservation, as demonstrated by the Regional Technology Districts for Cultural Heritage and Activities of Lazio and Tuscany. The identification of physical, economic and human resources already present in a region and necessary for the cultural district operation is, as in the industrial field, based on the analysis of cultural and creative clusters, i.e. the measure of the geographic concentration of businesses, suppliers, and institutions networks which operate in the fields of culture and creativity. The analyses developed in Anglo-Saxon countries in relation to the theme of the creative city, have had a wide spread, especially thanks to the works of Charles Landry and Richard Florida where creativity and culture are read as the principal agents of the economic transformation processes and, in some cases, as the ideal solution to all the contradictions and issues of urban. This, however, leads to a reductive and distorted view of the two concepts which, in their original meaning, have instead strong implications from ethical and civic point of view, so much important as to suggest possible links with the theme of the common goods and the historic urban landscape (as palimpsest of human-nature interactions in a given geographical area). The PhD thesis, entitled “The creative city. Cultural policies and urban regeneration between conservation and development”, focused on these relationships between creative city principles and landscape approach outlined by the European Landscape Convention in order to identify best practices for the development of innovative cultural policies and new urban regeneration tools. The research is characterized by a cross-cutting approach to cultural heritage which involves conservation technologies, cultural planning, urban studies and creative economy. In particular, the thesis faces and deepens many questions related to creative city and cultural districts in Italy leading to a theoretical model for the design of advanced cultural districts, consisting of: a benchmark methodology which explains, step by step, how to built an advanced cultural district, i.e. a district focused on cultural heritage, based on urban policies inspired to “creative city” theories and included in landscape planning framework; a "toolbox" of spatial, economic and social analysis and indicators that can be used to build the necessary knowledge on the future district’s territory as to draw a feasibility study. Finally, having Sardinia region as reference, the thesis offers a picture of programs and plans to which the methodology and toolbox can be applied, outlining potential impacts of the proposed theoretical model within regional programming and landscape planning.

The concept of landscape has evolved through a process of reconsideration and redefinition in the past seven decades. This concept has been used in a broader scope of action and intervention. Particularly during the last ten years the importance of landscape definition has gone hand in hand with the debate about resource management planning. The analyses and regulation of human activities on landscape has been largely discussed in Europe from several points of view. The word landscape indicates all the visible features of an area that can be seen in a single view. The meaning of this word identifies a link between the object and the viewer. Being the image filtered by the audience, a correct representation of landscape should consider both the aspects of the land characteristics of a particular region and of the people’s point of view. A inter-disciplinary approach is essential in order to register the features of land-cover and to combine them with the values assigned by the community. The complexity increases if we think about the difference between the perspectives of insiders and outsiders and about the fact that they must be seen obviously as collective entities and not as individuals. The quality of natural resources, as well as historical heritage, is conditional on their management. The heritage is therefore an irreplaceable resource for mankind and it is often a synonym of identity, which must be preserved for current and future generations if our goal is sustainable development. Every single element belonging to a specific area takes part to the same complex system that has to be fully managed in a sustainable perspective: the challenge is managing all sources in a way that economic, social and aesthetic needs can be fulfilled while maintaining cultural heritage and biological diversity. In order to improve life-quality the management of the territory must consider not separately economic, social/cultural and environmental perspective. Such shift relates to the managing skills of local institutions and of entrepreneurs if the goal is the stability and success of a long-term collective action for a sustainable resource management, in terms of tax revenues, jobs, additional sources of income to support conservation and valorization strategies.

Several plans based on the concept of "community", clearly defined by Erwin Anton Gutkind in his essay The expanding environment (1953) as "an entity whose location and extension ensure maximum possibility of realization of the social program", were largely applied and urban and territorial sciences developed a plenty of examples of community based strategies throughout all the Twentieth Century. The first part of the work explores precisely what were the first models of cities or regions organized by the principles of cohesion of the community and what were the transpositions at the architectural and urban scale of this philosophy. Since the first attempts proposed by utopian planners of the Nineteenth Century up to Clarence Perry’s Neighborhood Unit conceived in 1929 for the Regional Plan of New York. This concept of the city and territory generated huge expectations being especially suitable for the functionalism instances proposed, for example, by the Athens Charter. Same principles animated the post-war reconstruction and expansion plans all over Europe with different issues. Italy implemented the “community” principles in the INA-Casa programme as well in the rural reform programmes, with some advanced experiments as those conducted under the patronage of Adriano Olivetti in different parts of the country and especially in Sardinia. Today all this theoretical and built heritage are posed as starting point of strategies potentially successful for solving the most of urban and territorial criticisms and are suitable to implement sustainability practices developing new instruments and appreciable policies for metropolitan regions, setting a new approach of shared responsibility on planning process, on resources availability and use, on social issues leading to the definition of a paradigm for supporting resilience policies in urban and regional planning.

The dissertation deals with the role of social media platform is playing as an information resource in tourism both for customers (i.e. the tourists), who gather trustworthy information supporting the choice of destinations and services from peers, and for businesses, which can use the same information for improving their marketing strategies. The use of social media data can also offer new opportunities for decision‐support in tourism planning. With improved understanding of the motivations of tourists and tailoring tourism service supply, decision making can be facilitated by emphasizing the strengths of tourist destinations for past and potential visitors. However, this kind of information about tourists’ perceptions and opinions is not always properly analysed by planners. Understanding the user satisfaction, which depends on factors related to both the location and the services that the local industry proposes, may offer valuable information in tourism planning at regional and local level. In the light of the above premises, the goal of this study is to propose an integrated approach to investigate the relationships between tourists’ satisfaction, destination resources and tourism industry for supporting design and decision‐making in regional tourism planning. The methodology implemented in the thesis includes data collection from Booking and TripAdvisor.com and their integration with authoritative territorial data. Spatial and statistical analysis techniques are applied in order to assess tourists’ perceptions on success factors, which may be used as planning support tools. Four cases study demonstrates the value of social media‐related data integrated by authoritative information in tourism planning. Finally, the dissertation proposes a critical discussion on the effectiveness of using the implemented integrated approach in order to address other planning issues. The discussion underlines the potential of the proposed approach in order to address other planning questions as well.

This thesis proposes a methodology for the construction of spatial composite indicators (SCI). The study starts from the premise that Composite Indicators (CIs) are regarded as very reliable tools to support decision processes. They are usually developed to describe complex phenomena of the reality in various domains, and more specifically, to rank spatial units (usually countries) in which a given indicator is calculated. Despite their wide use and their development, no attention has generally been paid to the spatial dimension of their input data and of their final score. Data are treated as normal statistical sampling, therefore their spatial structure and their spatial importance are considered to be equal across the spatial domain, without considerations about possible spatial variations. Nowadays, this appears to be a serious limit, considering the development of Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI), which makes a large amount of spatial data available, and the development of spatial statistical techniques implemented in GIS, with combined together offer unprecedented opportunity for the spatialization of CIs.

Nowadays, conservation of old town centres is one of the main goals of several planning processes. For this reason, planning and historic centres' preservation can be considered synergetic concept (Frank &Petersen, 2002) and activities. Old city centres lost the role of residence and centres of services, so it important to trigger a process of reuse of historic centres through promotion of influence that residents have on social, economic and cultural vitality of the human fabric. Indeed, the role of residents in the requalification of historic centres is not sufficiently considered and it is understimated. Residents have an important role given that they can assure a high quality of life in historic centres, as they are the most important owners of the inner city, both because they have an interest in a high quality of life in the area where they live, and an economic interest related to the requalification given that the value of a building in a redeveloped area is higher than in a degradate zone.

Rivers provide to society many important goods and benefits. Some of these ecosystem services depend on the river flow regime, which has been deeply modified by human structures and activities. These alterations have a direct influence on biodiversity, natural habitat and on the supply of river ecosystem services. The release of water from storage hydropower plants generates rapid flow and stage fluctuations (hydropeaking) in the receiving water bodies at a variety of sub-daily time-scales. In this thesis, we describe an approach to quantify such variations, which is easy to apply, requires stream flow data at a readily available resolution, and allows for the comparison of hydropeaking flow alteration amongst several gauged stations. Hydropeaking flow alteration is quantified by adopting a rigorous statistical approach and using two indicators related to flow magnitude and rate of change. We utilised a comprehensive stream-flow dataset of 105 gauging stations from Italy, Switzerland and Norway to develop and test our method. Next, we introduce a modelling approach to evaluate the spatial and temporal variations of a discharge-related ecosystem service, the rafting. The application of hydraulic and habitat models allowed to define spatially thresholds of suitability in each river reach and the application of an hydrological model allowed to assess temporally the suitability for the rafting navigability in different discharge conditions. We applied the method to the Noce River, an Alpine River in Northern Italy affected by hydropeaking. Our analysis showed that in this river, the water releases are fundamental to maintain high flow conditions required for rafting, which can be granted only by hydropower production especially in summer months. Together with present discharge conditions, our approach allows to analyse also the effects of an additional withdrawal which locally has a negative impact on river suitability. Finally, the application of the methodology was extended to include in the analysis the fish habitat and the small hydropower production, along with the rafting. The effects of hydropeaking on these ecosystem services were assessed in space and time. Hydropeaking has a strong influence on rafting navigability and less obvious consequences on the other services. Different management scenarios of the water releases from the hydropower plants were produce, with the aim to evaluate spatially the reciprocal effects of optimizing each ecosystem services. Only the scenario of rafting optimization will significantly increase rafting navigability, while the effects of other scenarios are less evident. Moreover, two additional increasing withdrawals have been simulated to evaluate their impacts on the services. The small hydropower withdrawals will have a negative impact on rafting and fish habitat, while the preservation of requirements for rafting will greatly affect the small hydropower production. This ecosystems-services based approach can be integrated in the decision-making process to evaluate river management alternatives.

Ecosystem Services (ESs) are the goods and services supplied by ecosystems. In order to fully understand their contribution to human wellbeing, there is a need to identify them, assess their supply, recognise areas where they appear together repeatedly and analyse the interactions that may exist among them. Most of these tasks are also specifically required by the European Biodiversity Strategy for 2020, which asks Member States, by 2014, to identify key ESs and to spatially assess their supply and demand (European Commission, 2011). Nevertheless, these are difficult tasks and to date they have been only partly performed: existing studies in fact have typically focused on a small sub-set of ESs and made use of information that poorly reflects the actual variability of the ESs distribution across a region. The present research aims to fill these gaps, by developing methods involving a wide set of ESs and providing a detailed ESs assessment, based on spatial and statistical analyses. The methods have been tested on an Alpine region of Italy, Trentino. The Alps present a heterogeneous landscape, resulting from the combination of natural and urbanized environments, that allows the supply of a wide range of ESs. The research has four specific objectives. The first objective focuses on the selection and the representation over specific spatial units of the real supply of multiple ESs. Operatively, 51 experts from the local administrative offices and research institutes have been involved in the selection of the most important ESs and spatial indicators for the case study. The experts identified 25 ESs and 57 representative spatial indicators (1 to 5 indicators for each service), and provided data for indicators mapping. To consider the heterogeneity of the ESs supply across the region, indicators were mapped over 20 different spatial units, including: land cover classes, cadastral parcels, fishing zones and catchments.The second objective is to develop and test a statistical method for identifying key indicators that are spatially-explicit and able to measure the biophysical, socio-cultural and economic values of ESs (both in terms of stock and flow). Spearman pairwise correlation analysis was performed among the indicators of the same service in order to identify the highly correlated ones, hence deemed to provide redundant information. Key indicators were selected among the lowly correlated ones. 35 indicators were selected for the case study (out of the 57 initial indicators). The analysis showed that there is a minimum number of key indicators for each ES. Accordingly, three general rules were identified for the selection: (i) if the supply of an ES is regulated, both its biophysical-stock and biophysical-flow indicators must be selected, (ii) if multiple stock (flow) biophysical indicators for a single ES are mapped over different spatial units, all stock (flow) indicators must be maintained, (iii) socio-cultural or economic indicators are always selected as key indicators. The third objective is to develop and test a statistical method for defining bundles of ESs, as sets of spatially correlated services. Principal Component Analysis was used to summarize the information of the 35 indicators, while hierarchical clustering was applied to identify 11 ESs clusters. Clusters were turned into bundles by analyzing the spatial variability of the services due to biophysical (e.g. morphological conditions) and human (e.g. land use) factors. The results of the analysis show that in Trentino multiple ESs can be grouped in a few number of bundles with a complex shape. In particular, areas with poor ESs supply are grouped in one single bundle and the largest bundle follows the spatial distribution of a single land cover class: i.e. forest.The fourth objective is to develop a method to study interactions among ESs, by combining statistical and spatial analyses. In fact, the supply of a given ES is correlated with the supply of other ESs and it is affected by multiple external factors. Correlations may be positive when an increase in the supply of one service corresponds to higher supplies of other services (i.e. synergies), or negative when an increase in the supply of one service corresponds to lower supplies of other services (i.e. tradeoffs). The degree of interactions among 35 key indicators is determined by performing a Spearman pairwise correlation analysis. The latter enabled to identify six patterns of ESs interactions, one pattern of tradeoffs and five of synergies. The analysis showed that the local land use management has not compromised the capacity of ecosystems to provide regulating services while supplying the provisioning ones. The external factors causing the variability of the services across the region were identified and explained by means of spatial and Spearman correlation analyses among the ESs principal components. Principal components were turned into drivers of change by analyzing the spatial variability of the ESs due to biophysical (e.g. forest density) and human (e.g. land use) factors. Land use management was found as the external factor that causes the greatest variability of the ESs distribution across the region. Within forest areas, forest management activities that involve loss of vegetation were found as the main drivers of ESs change. This research aimed to consider a wide set of ESs and information able to reflect the actual variability of the services distribution across a region. It proposed a scientifically sound methodology to deal with the main issues of the ESs spatial assessment, that may reveal efficiently applicable in other geographical areas where ESs are heterogeneously supplied.

This thesis explores the concept of equity and proposes methods to make it operational in decision-making focused on promoting sustainability. The conceptual approach developed in the research draws on the recognition that the two notions of equity and sustainability are tightly intertwined in the sustainable development debate. As George (1999) claimed, sustainable development is founded on and fully embodied by intra-generational and inter-generational equity, which might be described as transactions of rights between and across generations, respectively. In spite of this, the implications on equity are still poorly addressed in strategic decisions. This led to the identification of the three main objectives of this research. The first objective is to understand the extent to which sustainability issues are addressed in current practice, focusing on Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) experiences of spatial planning and Oil & Gas development. To this purpose, a framework is developed to analyse the degree of consideration of sustainability principles in SEA, and demonstrate its application to a sample of SEA of Italian urban plans. This framework links Gibson's (2006) sustainability principles to a number of guidance criteria and eventually to review questions, giving particular emphasis to the key concepts of intra- and inter-generational equity. The framework was applied to review the Environmental Report of a sample of urban plans of major Italian cities. The results of this review shows that, even if sustainability is commonly considered as a pivotal concept, there is still work to be done in order to effectively integrate sustainability principles into SEA. Regarding the proposed framework, the review confirms the significance of clarifying equity concerns in the light of sustainability in view of operationalizing intra- and inter-generational equity in decision-making. The second objective is to identify criteria and indicators to measure intra- and inter-generational equity, against which present state and future trends can be assessed. A conceptual framework for identifying the different implications related to the use of different values and perceptions on equity is built. Subsequently, a set of equity perspectives to guide the assessment of strategic actions through the lens of intra- and inter-generational equity is proposed and discussed. This set includes four equity perspectives, compatible with each other with covered significant sustainability issues, and minimizing conflict, namely opportunity, distributional fairness, distributional fairness across generations and justice for an imperfect world. The review of equity perspectives allows identifying a set of equity criteria that might be useful in focusing assessment on crucial and integrative sustainability issues. These criteria are reasonably inclusive of essential general intra- and inter-generational equity considerations that account for sustainability over space and time. However, criteria need to be specific to the context of analysis. This is addressed in this study by selecting a specific sector of investigation that offered significant insights for dealing with sustainability in decision-making. The attention was directed to the Oil & Gas sector for the scope of challenges and positive chances posed to sustainability. For this purpose, the research work specifically fleshes out how current SEA of Oil & Gas sector practice addresses sustainability. A framework for reviewing SEA practice helped to explore to what extent current SEA for the Oil & Gas sector contributes, procedurally and substantively, to sustainability oriented decisions. 11 case studies related to both off-shore and on-shore Oil & Gas developments are reviewed against this framework. The results show that case studies were more oriented to analyse opportunities derived from Oil & Gas development without fleshing out other potential developmental alternatives. Additionally, even if the SEA reports claim to pursuit a common strategic intent to equally share benefit derived from Oil & Gas development, they do not generally provide a means to tackle this aspect. This part of the investigation allowed also to support the identification and selection of aspects, elements, suggestions and best practise that would assist in defining contest-specific equity criteria and indicators for decision-making in the Oil & Gas sector. This leads to the third objective of the thesis: testing the applicability of the proposed methods to a case study, dealing with complex decisions at strategic level. A case study on Oil & Gas development in the Basilicata region (Southern Italy) was selected: the Val d’Agri oil field, Western Europe’s biggest onshore oil field. Scenario storylines, representing interactions among environmental, social and economic concerns, are constructed and applied against the framework. Specifically, short-term and medium-long term scenarios are developed by varying geographical scopes, ranging from the regional scale to two nested local areas surrounding the Oil & Gas activities. Scenarios are then assessed against the set of intra- and inter-generational criteria identified by selecting appropriate indicators adapted to context and available data. Indicators are valued according to a quali-quantitative analysis that assisted in examining and comparing trade-off between human and environmental systems under the different scenarios. The results helped to identify opportunity and risk of different scenarios at strategic level. None of the scenarios provided “the best solution” in term of aggregated equity scores or perfect win-win solutions for each equity perspective. In the long-term, none of the territorial levels (local and regional) seemed to acquire significant increase in equity benefits, not even one at expenses of each other. According to the assumptions, this might suggest that incremental benefits of Oil & Gas development are concentrated outside the three level considered. Nevertheless, the case study shows that approaching to decision with more attention to a sustainable management of the environment and involving institutions at different levels might be a key role in achieving more wide-spread and long-term positive results. However, scenarios presented possible significant trends in equity criteria, which were affected by restraints in data collected, as well as, simplifications and approximations in analysis. In this exercise, it was assumed that all equity criteria within each temporal dimension receive equal weights and that all three geographical levels were equally weighted too. Introducing participatory mechanisms might be useful for supporting interpretations of implications potentially affecting generations at different temporal and territorial scale, satisfying possible needs of other equity criteria, and establishing priorities in perspectives on equity adopted. In this sense, the equity framework proposed might be a suitable tool for supporting and guiding deliberative processes. Analogously, the spatio-temporal decision matrix, framed through the lens of equity for assessing scenarios against equity criteria, might represent a simple yet flexible framework for analysing and discussing concurrently temporal and spatial implications of plausible storylines.

In an attempt to make concrete linkages between neighborhood change and the boundary-making paradigm, this field and historical study of a New York City'€™s neighborhood, addresses the influences of displacement, housing- abandonment and resettlement in Super-gentrification processes on 1) the types of institutions that emerged to represent different class interests; 2) the types of social groups that came to inhabit the neighborhood; 3) the pattern of that evolution over time; 4) the particular goals, values, and morals that such community organizations evolved; and 5) the social status displays carried out in cultured consumption in housing and leisure. Employing a multi-methodological and theoretical approach, the study follows the evolution and development of neighborhood change over forty years through the analysis of social groups and their community organizations (looking at archival documents for the past and by in-depth interviews, shadowing and ethnographic observation for the present time), census data analysis, archival/documental research, and visual data. Community organizations emerged, on the one hand, to represent different class interests - improvement, mandated, ideological -€“ and to emphasize liberal progressive values, on the other. This emergence followed historical and geographical patterns of accelerating gentrification. The study argues that four waves of gentrification showed up across the time and tended to concentrate in four different neighborhood areas, where the incoming groups formed parallel boundary shifts. Accordingly, I found that different waves of gentrification were associated with the emergence of different types of Gentrifiers over time, and this had to do with the changing role of post-industrial cities within the American economy, the processes of government/local institution interventions in the neighborhood housing market, the changes in class interests, morals and ideologies, and the increased aestheticized re-scriptings of neighborhood housing choices and lifestyles. Such aesthetic appreciation operated for gentrifiers as a visible marker of social status. As residential displacement, the disappearance of "old"€ local stores, and their replacement of upscale shops entailed forms of social inequality that enhanced the lifestyle of new waves of gentrifiers (raising housing values and rents) while, at the same time, forced out morally (by alienation) or practically (by displacement) long-term residents, who helped produce the neighborhood socio-cultural fabric. Diversity and aesthetic appeal seemed to underlie the motives of wealthier, well-educated newcomers to move into the neighborhood. Interestingly, those have not been changing throughout the different waves of gentrifiers who came to inhabit the community in the last 40 years. However - during the process of Super-gentrification -€“ I found that the more they populate the neighborhood, the more it becomes homogenized and less richly diverse, still quite progressive but in a different way. I would say, in a privileged progressive way. Despite the fact that the moral order of these institutions has always been the one of community solidarity, culture, education, and growth, I observed at the same time the playing out of the most common paradox of gentrifiers. The desire of diversity and the producing of difference. This is, I believe, the central problem of gentrification: the balance between, or the combination of, pleasure and power. Balancing pleasure and power is a social, political, and moral problem. It brings together many of the concerns about gentrification, the desire for (and the loss of) diversity, and expresses the central thesis of this study.

The research is aimed at studying and identifying the different processes for the development of disadvantaged areas, in terms of economy and production and due to distance from the major centers of development, starting with the introduction of new concepts and integrated visions. The result of this research is the definition of a reading methodology of the territory that can identify the future vision aims to creative local development. The territory policies, derived from the identification of local potentiality and their correct use, allows growth focused on solid and lasting actions. Sustainable development is an endogenous process which depends on the ability of the territory to transform a burst of growth in concrete actions to achieve it. In this context, it is possible to combine the intangible resources, such as governance, culture and social organization, to facilitate the emergence of agreements between the actors involved and to obtain legitimacy and acknowledgement of these processes. Ladder of this analysis is the urban dimension where are concentrate the majority of social problems and the opportunities to resolve them. Indeed the research is addressed to those cities that have the ability to create the conditions of government, technology and infrastructure needed to produce social innovation and to solve problems related to growth, integration and quality of life through processes of inclusion and awareness of the different actors: citizens, businesses and associations. These cities are considered smart cities. The current crisis is not only limited to the happening processes but it also refers to the models and methodologies apply until nowadays. However, currently there is a growing movement that argues that the city can be intelligent in a different way: by investing in innovation. The innovation is normally associated with the creation of sophisticated processes, but is also represented by the simple process improvement in order to achieve results in less time, with higher quality, lower cost and so on. To achieve innovation (social and urban) that is relied by this movement the basis must be the "creativity". In this context, "creativity and innovation" are presented as possible solutions to the need widely recognized of a paradigm shift for the territories. Creativity is the ability and opportunity to test innovative tools that allow to create development processes; Innovation is defined as the consciousness and the ability to realize the ideas, leading them to material achievements; Social Innovation is aimed at promoting an integrated society and processes of collective intelligence, Territorial Intelligence is aimed at transform the individuals intelligence and skills into collectives expertise for the integration of new practices to support the development; finally the Creative City is the scale of intervention and the new paradigm for development, to built a future vision and apply innovative tools in the planning process of the city starting from urban creativity. Being creative develop is not just making a good architectural design but it means finding a new way to solve a problem, regardless of its nature. However, not all territories are prepared to deal with the processes of openness and change, or to assume these new paradigms. An example is represented by Latin American cities, where local and regional authorities are called (and almost mandatory) to face new challenges, including the creation or strengthening their ability to compete and to transform the local production systems. These two aspects must be connected to the local policies. The proposal for a methodology of reading the territory arise from the need to determine how creativity, innovation and territorial policies can be integrated in a positive way towards the definition of strategies that stimulate positive processes in the cities and that will lead not only to economic growth but also to an environmental quality of life increase for the entire community. The definition of such strategies must be based on the construction of a vision for the territories that can be used as a guideline for the future. Innovation, city, creativity, society, community, development, sustainability, intelligence are all concepts that interact, generating new fields of action and leading to recognize the need to rethink, re-think of the city as an environment for primordial development of man, re-thinking development, its consequences and its feasibility, and especially re-think society, community and the relationships that are generated.

This PhD research focuses on the Italian case and analyses the possibility of integrating energy planning with spatial planning, the effectiveness of plan implementation mechanisms, and the prospect of replacing public-led interventions with market tools. Recent innovations in the legislative framework support the inclusion of energy saving and climate change adaptation and mitigation goals in plan implementation procedures.