New spatial decision support systems for sustainable urban and regional development

Policy makers are frequently challenged by the need to achieve sustainable development in cities and regions. Current decision-making processes are based on evaluation support systems which are unable to tackle the problem as they cannot take a holistic approach or a full account of actors. The purpose of this paper is to present a new generation of evaluation systems to support decision making in planning and regeneration processes which involve expert participation. These systems ensure network representation of the issues involved and visualization of multiple scenarios.

A literature review is used for both revising existing evaluation tools in urban planning and the built environment and highlighting the need to give stakeholders (industry, cities, operators, etc.) new tools for collaborative or individual decisions and to facilitate scaling up solutions. An overview of the new generation of decision support systems, named Multicriteria Spatial Decision Support Systems (MC-SDSS) is provided and real case studies are analyzed to show their ability to tackle the problem.

Recent research findings highlight that decisions in urban planning should be supported by collaborative and inclusive processes. Otherwise, they will fail. The case studies illustrated in this study highlight the usefulness of MC-SDSS for the successful resolution of complex problems, thanks to the visualization facilities and a network representation of the scenarios.

The case studies are limited to the Italian context.

These SDSS are able to empower planners and decision makers to better understand the interaction between city design, social preferences, economic issues and policy incentives. Therefore, they have been employed in several case studies related to territorial planning and regeneration processes.

This study provides three case studies and a review of the new MC-SDSS methodology which involve the Analytic Network Process technique to support decision-making in urban and regional planning.