Francesca Abastante

The ecologic issue highlighted by the Encyclical letter Laudato Si’ (Francesco 2015) is a complex problem involving environmental, economic and social aspects.

This chapter is about defining and testing a multi-methodological framework able to measure the “walkability” in the urban practice perspective, based on assessment indicators and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Nowadays, cities are facing a complex challenge concerning sustainability, which is fueling the search for new development solutions. Among others, one of the most important problems is how to make cities sustainable and resilient, as stressed by the Sustainable Development Goal 11 (SDG11) highlighted by the United Nations through the 2030 Agenda.

The urban decision processes should be optimized according to the current “green” context. Despite the literature advocate for an open availability of data to facilitate higher quality science and a more effective science-policy boundary, one of the main challenges when dealing with energy processes is the absence of accurate data. This paper aims at illustrating a stakeholder-oriented approach based on Multi-Criteria Analyses (MCA) in defining the set of evaluation criteria and their relevance in supporting the development of “what-if” urban energy retrofitting scenarios.

Proposing effective strategies in a sustainable development perspective is the focus of considerable debates, which often develop into uncertain and vulnerable decision contexts. Numbers and quantitative information in fact often dominate the process of decision-making but they are not easily comprehensible through quick and simple reasoning. Nonetheless, the huge quantities of data that describe our cities and regions could provide excellent bases to analyze spatial data in order to assess territories and simulate future development scenarios.

This research proposes an application of a MultiCriteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) in the adaptive reuse framework, which is able to structure the complex decision process required for the effective reuse of an historic district. Nowadays, many cities are facing an economic, financial, social and urban decline. This is particularly true when thinking about historic districts, which are usually characterized by high unique cultural values but, at the same time, show difficult characteristics in terms of comfort and security.

The paper investigates the combined use of storytelling and the Simos-Roy-Figueira (SRF) method to support the identification of the most important decision criteria in a decision process concerning a valorization strategy for a UNESCO’s MaB reserve. The approach is illustrated with an Italian case study (“CollinaPo”), describing one of the four focus groups where it has been applied, as part of a training course to discover and valorize the values and peculiarities of the area.

One of the most important problems to face over the past thirty years is how to make cities sustainable and resilient, with the overall changes that are affecting cities, resulting from the constant urbanization of the current century. In this perspective, designing walking networks is important to create a functional and multi-modal city in transport choices and make urban settlements sustainable and inclusive, because a sustainable city is also a walkable city. This is what the UN also aims for, among other topics, in its SDGs’ 2030 Agenda.

One of the crucial issues of the contemporary city is the enormous heritage of unused buildings and areas. Their reuse can contribute to new social and economic profits, to create new values within society and to avoid the considerable waste generated by their demolition and reconstruction. To tackle this issue an approach of adaptive reuse is proposed, i.e.