Isabella Maria Lami

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

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 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.

Choice architecture concerns different forms and procedures to present and handle a decision problem. It is a paradigm around which many theoretical results have been collected within behavioural psychology and experimental economics and many successful applications have been implemented in the domains of health, finance and social choices. In this work, we propose an application of the basic idea of architecture choice that is designing decision support procedures for complex problems, with a focus on housing realm.

We propose a development of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) permitting to use the methodology also for decision problems with a very large number of alternatives and several criteria.

The article illustrates a piece of research concerning the development and application of display platforms (Spatial Decision Support System - SDSS) able to integrate assessment methods of financial and economic nature. The aim of the proposed SDSS platform is to support the development of urban scenarios focusing attention on improving energy conditions at district level in service of public and private policies.

Our cities represent the crucial nodes of interventionto improve living conditions and promote sustainability.Therefore, the current pandemic, combined with theclimate emergency, translates into an urban emergency.In light of the devastating effects of Covid-19 and therethinking of the concept of sustainability, the goal ofdeveloping inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainablecities and human settlements pursued by theSustainable Development Goal 11 may now requirerevision in terms of the indicators used for it

To achieve the international emission reduction targets, current researches underline the need to overcome the dominant techno-centric approaches to energy transition, in favor of analyses that explore in more detail those practices and organizational assets that play a role in favoring a transition towards a low-carbon society. In this light, the article focuses on governance practices and, in particular, on the different tools and actors involved across variable scales and temporalities.