Framing territorial regeneration decisions: Purpose, perspective and scope

Abstract

Territorial planning has been recognized as an inherently wicked problem situation or ill-defined problem, with also an intrinsic spatial nature (i.e. a non-homogeneous spatial distribution of territorial characteristics, impacts associated to alternative solutions and stakeholders).The first and most important phase of any planning and decision making process consists in framing the project/decision situation, which should lead to a clear understanding of the problem/opportunity that needs to be addressed, as well as a clear understanding of what needs to be achieved. This paper proposes and tests an integrated and spatially explicit framework based on the three key components of purpose, perspective and scope to support the framing stage of territorial planning and regeneration processes. While this framework represents a consolidated approach for decision aiding across different domains of applications, it constitutes a novel approach for territorial regeneration processes. The proposed framework has been deployed to support the planning and regeneration process in a World Heritage site in Northern Italy. Results show that an integrated, spatially explicit and collaborative framework, based on the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), SWOT analysis, Multi Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) and stakeholders’ analysis, can effectively support the identification and definition of (i) the top priority for a certain territorial context (i.e. purpose of the intervention), (ii) who to involve in the process and when (i.e. perspective) and the geographical boundaries of the subsequent decision efforts (i.e. the scope of the planning and decision making process). By borrowing cutting edge approaches from the decision analysis domain and introducing them in the field of territorial regeneration processes, this work bridges together urban planning, behavioral decision analysis and multi methodology research.