Participatory Approach to Planning Urban Resilience to Climate Change: Brescia, Genoa, and Matera—Three Case Studies from Italy Compared

Urban resilience must consider the ability of cities to cope with the effects of climate change. Community awareness raising and sustainable urban drainage systems (SUDs) are often mentioned in the literature as effective adaptation actions while the success of these solutions is highly context-dependent and improved planning procedures are urgently needed. In this framework, the URCA! project represents a good practice aiming to strengthen the resilience of urban areas by promoting the implementation of SUDs in territorial planning. The main objective of the present research deals with the role of participation in promoting the use of SUDs and their uptake in town planning and land management involving local communities, students, experts, local authorities, and enterprises. To this end, the research adopts a participatory approach to SUDs urban planning for three case studies in Italy selected under the criterion of maximum variation (Brescia, Genoa, and Matera). For the three case studies, participatory approaches are at different stages of development thus requiring appropriate ways of interacting and resulting in different impacts on decisions. Preliminary results, drivers, and barriers in the application of the participatory approach are discussed and compared in order to bring innovation into planning practices, stimulating a revision of typical governance mechanisms

A comparative cycling path selection for sustainable tourism in Franciacorta. An integrated AHP-ELECTRE method

Cycle tourism is a form of sustainable itinerant tourism expanding in Italy and the rest of the world, with prospects for growth in coming years. Europe and North America have already developed a wide range of cycling infrastructures tied to tourism experiences. Benefits induced are generally recognised: first, it is a sustainable solution that increases local economics while conserving the environment; second, it guarantees advantages on social connections, amusement, and physical and mental health. However, it requires an adequate network to enjoy destinations as historical and landscape peculiarities. Currently, literature provides some methods for planning itineraries dedicated to cycle tourism. Despite that, there is less attention on how evaluating existing or already planned tourist itineraries. This study covers this gap, by applying an integrated method to assess bicycle connections for tourism experiences within municipalities. Since this evaluation may contain many conflicting criteria (e.g., preferences of public administrator, technical and economic viability) and possible alternatives, this study frames the method as a multi-criteria decision-making problem (MCDM). Specifically, at first, the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) is adopted to calculate weights for each criterium; next, the ELimination Et Choix Traduisant la REalitè (ELECTRE) method is applied to provide a (possible) priority ranking of cycling tourist paths among alternatives, by computing indices of discordance and concordance between pairs of alternatives. The framework is applied to the Franciacorta area (North-East Italy), a national and international tourist relevance territory encompassing 22 municipalities. This study may be useful for public administrators to rationalise and prioritise cycling routes

Rappresentare l’armatura culturale del territorio con QGIS: l’esperienza del PTRA della Franciacorta

Landscape features are the result of interrelated actions of man-and-nature and can provide ecosystem services that need to be protected. Since urban planning policies can impact negatively on the conservation of cultural ecosystem services, urban plans must map them and make provision for their protection. For the Plan of Franciacorta (22 municipalities in Lombardy), we chose QGIS to set up a geo-database and map cultural heritage information. QGIS can provide more flexibility than a typical map, thanks to its graphics tools. To plan the development of actions to protect the landscape and suggest a range of planning opportunities for municipalities, an integrated representation of the landscape and protected ecological elements can highlight some critical issues: municipal borders can prove an obstacle in the implementation of supra-municipal projects and protected areas can include enclaves potentially vulnerable to urban pressures. Such maps have proved useful in guiding the planning choices in the development of the landscape protection schemes. The geo-location of critical aspects has brought out a range of inter-municipal planning opportunities

Linee nel paesaggio: un approccio possibile al progetto di infrastrutture a rete

Gli enti locali si trovano a dare risposte alle istanze del territorio che vedono frequente contrasto tra esigenze di tutela e usi del territorio a fronte anche di una difficoltà oggettiva nell’applicazione fattiva sotto il profilo pianificatorio e di governo del territorio dei principi della Convenzione europea sul paesaggio. Il progetto di infrastrutture a rete induce una riflessione tra la necessità di tutela del paesaggio e la necessità di connessioni fondamentali per il mantenimento della competitività delle economie locali