Multidimensional approaches to evaluate urban planning scenarios

Abstract

The evaluation of urban planning practices may be thought as a way to represent and communicate a project or a plan as an object open to judgment as well as an opportunity for capacity building. An urban plan is therefore defined as neither right nor wrong due merely to the results it may generate but, above all, to the capacities that it is able of constructing and implementing in settled, involved communities. In this paper, this approach guides the analysis of a Plan for the community services of a medium sized city in the south of Italy, driven by some urban planning scenarios evaluated by a multicriteria assessment. The paper is introduced by the description of the objectives of the work, followed by an account of the methodological aspects founding the study. In the third section the case study is described in its principal aspects and finally some conclusions are made in the last section highlighting first results and future research development. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.