Combining Revealed and Stated Preferences to design a new urban park in a metropolitan area of North-Western Italy

Abstract

Inclusive and participatory decision-making is a sustainable option for governments and decision-makers to support real transformation and planning of policies and actions. Investigating and gathering the various views and opinions of stakeholders and citizens is particularly effective because it opens up a range of possibilities in co-constructing the city of the future. Among urban areas requiring planning, Urban Green Infrastructures (UGIs) represent spaces designed to improve the character of neighborhoods, as well as to increase the well-being of users. To achieve these goals, planners should adopt a design approach in which UGIs projects are shaped by local community concerns rather than by market conventions in urban design. Focusing on green recreational areas, this study employs an integrated approach combining Revealed (RP) and Stated Preferences (SP) to investigate citizens' preferences regarding urban parks. In particular, the experiment combines Travel Cost Method (TCM) and Discrete Choice Experiment (DCE) for supporting a requalification project in an ex-industrial area of Turin (Italy). In this way, it was possible to understand which facilities can contribute to increasing the citizens’ well-being and the overall efficiency of the UGIs provision and maintenance. The proposed methodology represents an operational and replicable procedure to support different renewal projects in which citizens' opinions are crucial for developing long-term sustainable socio-ecological plans and actions.