Part IV

A Decision-Support System
Chapter 18
The DSS and Its Possible Applications

Rosalba D’Onofrio, Massimo Sargolini, and Michele Talia

Acting amid uncertainty is a perennial situation in territorial planning, having

always dealt with the inevitable relativity of assessments and choices regarding
settlement transformations (Camagni and Lombardo 1999). Today, however, the
complexity of territorial government when facing insecurity on different scales
characterizes the historical period in which we live and requires a rethinking of the
ways of carrying out territorial government activities that must deal with a continu-
ous evolution situation. This not only requires rapidity and a capacity for updating
and deciding between different options but also the willingness to address a multi-
tude of new actors that have recently entered the decision-making process.
To reuse an appropriate definition by Ulrich Beck (1986), we can say that the
systematic crisis triggered by the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 and the
failure of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in 2007 have definitively immersed the
world in a “global risk society”. As a consequence, the strongly perturbed season we
are experiencing starting at least from these dramatic events tends to be increasingly
characterized by spreading awareness that resounding changes continue to come,
although the direction of these changes is destined to remain almost always
undetermined.1
The environmental and territorial changes underway and the consequent criti-
calities for which the territorial government should respond in a timely manner can
be traced to some main categories:
• The absence of updated cognitive frameworks related to the current changes,
with criticalities particularly evident in the case of climate change

1
An investigation of the possible implications of the advance of the risk society and the effects it
has had on the decision-making process is contained in Michele Talia’s contribution to this volume
(“Urban-Planning Tactics and Strategies in New Decision-Making Process”), as well as in Beck’s
essay cited in the Bibliography.
R. D’Onofrio (*) • M. Sargolini • M. Talia
School of Architecture and Design, University of Camerino, Ascoli Piceno, Italy
e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2018 213

R. Cocci Grifoni et al., Quality of Life in Urban Landscapes,
The Urban Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65581-9_18
214 R. D’Onofrio et al.

• The lack of a full awareness of the negative consequences that public policies can
produce on territorial and landscape systems
• Insufficient consideration of the negative effects related to land consumption
(which in turn lead to other effects/impacts such as compromising air quality or
weakening drainage capacity, etc.)
• An inability to carefully monitor the territorial and social imbalances determined
by the urbanization process
• The difficulty of making a rigorous, updated account of resource waste associ-
ated with new lifestyles and the consumption that results from it
• A tendency to underestimate growing inequalities in the distribution of wealth
and access to urban services
• The weakness of public policies in considering the growing dissatisfaction of
citizens about the widespread quality of the landscape, the quality of life, and the
services that the city is capable of guaranteeing
In addressing such marked criticalities, of which landscape degradation is only
the most evident manifestation of the current crisis in this development model, it is
rather probable that the theory of decision-making, at least in its most traditional
form, can be rather ineffective. In fact, until recently, it was represented as a frame-
work of knowledge and related methodologies capable of making a careful decision
starting with the comparison of different alternatives and considering the possible
consequences. By virtue of this formulation, the decision moved within a “context
of stability” in which each choice led to a determined consequence and received,
according to the case, full legitimacy or explicit confutation. Today, this problem/
decision/action sequence has changed profoundly, if not only because a single
decision-maker can be subject to multiple problems and concurring options and a
single problem can be perceived in different ways by different decision-makers. It
follows that we are no longer faced with a linear decision-making sequence but a
cyclic learning path; the subject follows an iterative path leading from the problem
to solutions, which in turn preclude new questions and possible further problems.
In this perspective, the “decision-making arena” is much more crowded than in
the past. In fact, public decision-makers are accompanied by many subjects (experts
in different sectors, private businesses, investors, public entities, citizens, trade
associations, etc.), which, when participating in the discussion, act as players in the
process. Bringing the theory of decision-making alongside the implementation of
planning processes, it is possible to highlight a close network of interactions that
can be recomposed and summarized into four main activities:
(a) Framing the problem and the policies, plans, or projects to be addressed
(b) Developing a structured, calibrated system of indicators to estimate the effects
due to each decision and to motivate the selection of priorities
(c) Construction/implementation of alternative scenarios in order to recover the
integrated worth of the different lines of intervention
(d) Reformulating the plan’s objectives in light of the changes seen (reframing),
with the scope as well as of activating decision-making processes and obtaining
profitable interaction between medium- and long-term choices
18 The DSS and Its Possible Applications 215

The procedural character of implementing the decision-making “path” in this

way within the planning process is seen in the possibility of knowledge being
“renewable” and therefore not exhausted when developing a preliminary interpreta-
tional protocol. On the contrary, it precludes an iterative use once the decision-
support system is fully implemented (Talia 2003).
In applying this decision-making model, one must deal with a high degree of
administrative, managerial, economic, social, and environmental complexity and
with the need to initiate a path for involvement and mediation among different
groups of public and private subjects. The aim is to assess the possible solutions not
only in terms of satisfying the predetermined objectives but also in relation to the
different impacts that these intervention paradigms can have when interacting more
directly with the actors and contexts. Therefore, for example, a process to construct
environmental and landscape policies for a determined territory will lead to the defi-
nition of a set of actions/reactions/interactions within which different types of logic
and interests from the different actors involved are compared. This can generate
unintended, even positive, conflicts and effects (Hirschman 1991).
Even before being generated by the juxtaposition of actors involved in the con-
cluding stages of the decision-making process, the conflict can anyway trigger the
same means of reading and interpreting a territory, which often highlights a contrast
between local and expert knowledge. Combining these two sources of the cognitive
process implies the conviction that technical problems are hardly ever disconnected
from the social context that generated them. It is likewise appropriate to ensure that
most participants in the process are actively involved and contribute to forming col-
lective decisions that, precisely in this way, are legitimate from different points of
view.
Due to this modus operandi, there is not only a greater possibility of eliminating
conflict and finding effective solutions to the problems but also of increasing citi-
zens’ trust and renewing the credibility of public institutions. Broad involvement
can in many cases favour the same applicability and acceptability of assessment
procedures in the case of sensitive questions. Allowing citizens to intervene in
choosing the sets of indicators used to assess policies and projects, for example, can
help local administrations to better define the problems and find adequate solutions.
As well, the citizens themselves can better represent their requests following this
solicitation. In this particular case, well-structured involvement is even more impor-
tant when the planning process should be renegotiated and/or reconsidered in view
of unexpected events or modifications occurring in the list of priorities stated by the
government institutions.
Where inevitable, the conflict should be understood in a proactive and creative
key, disconnected from the destructive or paralysing logic that may characterize it
(Nel lo 2007). This can be thought of as an open discussion that leads to the devel-
opment of a territorial project starting from the shared cultural concept of the con-
text. On the one hand, a conflict may generate a discussion and the possibility of
bringing the population to questions that pertain more directly to the formulation of
resource-management policies. On the other hand, a permanent widespread state of
hostility and mistrust may lead to an inability to control local power and,
216 R. D’Onofrio et al.

consequently, to the deterioration of management policies with the resulting degra-

dation of resources available to the subjects of the plan (Castro and Nielsen 2003).
To avoid this trend, the daily involvement of institutional actors and politics (in the
most general sense) is necessary; they should be ready to welcome ideas and the
push for proposals from local communities.
The idea supporting this involvement is based on a “win-win” formula according
to which each actor participating in the conflict, despite the type of interest he
defends or the content of her request, can draw benefits from the conflict itself or,
even better, from the negotiating process. The negotiation phase, in fact, aims to
reach an agreement among the parties that guarantees advantages and opportunities
for all (proponents and opponents) and which motivates actors in the conflict to
reason, within a real debate, about the interests in play.
Using formulations from game theory, it is convenient to remember that, to lead
to a positive outcome for all participants (or at least most of them), each transaction
should translate into a non-zero sum. This means entrusting planning with the task
of promoting measures and interventions to produce considerable added value,
which could be redistributed during negotiation. This in turn means reaching a com-
promise, setting aside the initial questions that often generate prejudicial juxtaposi-
tion—and therefore conflict—and basing the decision exclusively on the possibility
of obtaining advantages that, without an agreement among the parties, would not be
obtained.
A decision-support system that expects the involvement of all parties to attenuate
conflicts should be able to develop intelligent tools capable of “dealing with knowl-
edge” (Fig. 18.1) and the relationships generated in a multiplayer environment.
Recourse to shared indicators for interpreting the territory, policies, and projects
moves precisely in this direction, even if the choice of indicators corresponds to
uncertain interpretational models that can often lead to discordant interpretations.
This does not mean they can be overlooked.
Inconvenient setbacks can arise when using one system of indicators rather than
another; promoting decisions without preventive information is like flying blind.
Faced with this risk, it is necessary to avoid any rigidity and plan by “learning on the
job”. In fact, a complex system suggests the application of procedures imprinted
with enhancing experience and pragmatism but leads to errors and failures that can
be limited, thanks to learning, which is developed starting from a rigorous cost-
benefit assessment for each intervention.
Bossel, a member of the Balaton Group, i.e. an international group of experts
that has worked to favour sustainable development since 1981, maintains that orga-
nizations that depend on the consensus of their members mostly tend to select long
lists of indicators. These lists contain, in extraordinary detail, questions on which
they agree while mostly leaving out controversial questions, thus losing the extreme
richness of cognitive processes that in many cases are entrusted to the many-sided,
varied content of different, if not outright diverging, orientations.
Following the same approach for this research, the choice was made to include
not only the indicators of urban quality and the landscape which are entrusted to
registering physical parameters and on which there is now reasonable consensus but
18 The DSS and Its Possible Applications 217

Fig. 18.1 The DSS process

also indicators of a different nature, based on the subjective perception of phenom-

ena for which it is possible to estimate quality rather than quantity.
If, in fact, it is now certain that physical variables can also contribute to the quali-
tative definition of a territorial context, it is likewise unquestionable that the same
indicators cannot “read” certain factors of quality of life such as harmony, beauty,
balance, satisfaction, health, the sense of safety, or well-being. To the many people
who usually object that the parameters used to analysed these fundamental ques-
tions are neither trustworthy nor replicable, one can respond that this is an error of
reduction: no individual judgement will be equal for all, but the judgement of all
members in a community will be solid, stable, and repeatable, assuming the same
authority as a physical measurement. In addition, the assessments that can be
expressed on this apparently unstable basis become dynamic for this reason. They
acquire a capacity to adapt and evolve and a sensitivity to changes that measure-
ments related to the physical state of a determined settlement context are not capa-
ble of expressing.
The choice made in this research, which is illustrated in detail in Chap. 5, is
related to building a system of indicators capable of satisfactorily and synthetically
representing the “measure” of quality of life. The construction proceeds via a top-
down approach whereby various experts select some indicators suitable for param-
eterization, as well as a bottom-up approach to integrate and combine the indicators
that, on the level of phenomenology of the relevant processes, are deemed by the
local community to be important for the quality of life of the urban landscape. In the
current state of the research presented in this volume, the relevant investigations
regarding these non-formalizable indicators have not been made.
218 R. D’Onofrio et al.

The initial selection (Chap. 5) was followed by a further selection that can be
implemented with the contribution of local communities and which will relate to the
policies, plans, and projects that were selected by the research group through a spe-
cific forum. A sort of combined top-down and bottom-up approach is therefore pro-
posed, which is also capable of embodying a long-term vision of the development
model. The active involvement of local communities will be fundamental in
responding effectively to the needs of the places, thereby avoiding recourse to exter-
nal or even self-referential logic.
Up to now, this model has been applied only to the city of Ancona (Italy).
However, with the appropriate optimization and recalibration, it can be applied to
other medium-sized cities in Europe, constituting valid support to allow public
administrations, planners, and local communities to evaluate the impacts of differ-
ent policies on the quality of life in the city and the quality of the landscape and to
optimize the results obtained by its application.
The development of the model was organized into four large fundamental areas
(D'Onofrio and Talia 2014):
1. Framing the problem through the selection of policies, plans, and projects
expressed by the urban system studied within institutional planning documents,
plans, and projects being activated (see Chap. 23).
2. Developing a structured, calibrated system of indicators of urban quality, as
described in Chap. 2.
3. Constructing/implementing alternative scenarios by verifying possible develop-
ment paths and lines of action deriving from the programming tools promoted by
the cities or other proposals emerging from the interaction with the public admin-
istration through:
(a) An evaluation system relying on a mathematical algorithm that simultane-
ously and contextually assesses different indicators (composed of multiple
variables) that can be formally defined and represented. For brevity, we refer
to this first part of the output as the Tool.
(b) An interpretation and assessment system that relies on the active participa-
tion of local communities and “interested populations” (European Landscape
Convention/ELC 2000, Florence) and uses indicators that cannot be formal-
ized in a mathematical algorithm. For brevity, we refer to this second part of
the output as the Forum. The Tool uses indicators that evaluate the environ-
mental performance of the city. The mathematical algorithm within the Tool
relates the different indicators (by pairs) in order to identify a range of pos-
sible balances among them, which could orient a wide range of different
possible scenarios. The indicators selected regard the “environmental per-
formance” of the city, which influences the quality of the urban landscape
and the quality of life of city inhabitants. In the Forum, indicators pertaining
to the stratified values and symbols of the places, the imagination, and col-
lective identification are “chosen” and “presented” to the stakeholders, local
community representatives, and the “interested population”. This second
family regards the “performance” of the city and influences the quality of the
18 The DSS and Its Possible Applications 219

landscape and of life. They cannot be formalized, and they are not consid-
ered by the mathematical algorithm in the Tool. By “going back to go for-
ward”, their use allows points of contact and sets of possible scenarios to be
established with the Tool.
4. Reformulating the objectives and choices made (reframing). This methodologi-
cal setting, which works by formulating development scenarios in relation to the
effects on the quality of life and the landscape, makes clear that the choices made
regarding policies and projects expressed by a given territory should not be
assimilated in a conclusive act or a current state of equilibrium. Rather, it should
be an open process that can be modified based on the behaviour of the actors in
play and their changing needs, and it should be ever ready to explore new hypoth-
eses according to that same elasticity that allows us to understand the territory as
a continuum, which is also made of juxtapositions and discord. The landscape in
this context becomes an opportunity for communication between the population
and the territory, where the transition from reading and knowledge of the places
to defining the objectives of quality of life is translated into a conscious, shared
act that is refined through expert knowledge and the expectations and desires of
the local communities.

References

Beck U (1986) Risikogesellschaft: Auf dem Weg in eine andere Moderne. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt
am Main (2000, trad. It., La società del rischio: verso una seconda modernità, Carocci, Rome)
Camagni R, Lombardo S (eds) (1999) La città metropolitana: strategie per il governo e la pianifi-
cazione. Alinea, Florence
Castro P, Nielsen E (2003) Natural resource conflict management case studies: an analysis of
power, participation and protected areas. Syracuse University and FAO
COE, Council of Europe (2000) European Landscape Convention, Florence
D’Onofrio R, Talia M (2014) Monitoring DSS. In: Sargolini M, Gambino R (eds) Mountain land-
scapes. A decision support system for the accessibility. LIST, Trento
Hirschman AO (1991) The rhetoric of reaction: perversity, futility, jeopardy. The Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press, Cambridge
Nel lo O (2007) Aquí, no! La conflictividad territorial de base local. In: Inforgeo, pp 29–36
Talia M (2003) La pianificazione del territorio: conoscenze, politiche procedure e strumenti per il
governo delle trasformazioni insediative. Il Sole 24 Ore, Milan
Chapter 19
The QLandQLife Tool

Mariano Pierantozzi and Roberta Cocci Grifoni

The City as a Complex System

In recent decades, the city and the broader concept of the territory have experienced
a metamorphosis: from usable physical resources and controllable, designable space
to a new interpretation of the urban system. This system is complex, so the inade-
quacy of linear planning becomes clear when faced with an increasingly strong need
for multiple intelligible responses. The ideal of the city as a “single element” has
been substituted by the concept of “system city”, going beyond the model of a city
that can be decomposed and simplified to attain an interpretation of the system as a
“complex unit”.
By definition, the system is composed of elements and relationships, connec-
tions, interactions, and interrelationships. It follows that the rules of composition
cannot be guided by the simple property of addition (as in the case of a set) but, to
respect the connections among multiple elements, these rules must be relational in
order to also consider the limits and conditions of the environment of which the
system forms a part. The study of the city and territory therefore needs a systemic
approach capable of contemporaneously expressing units and multiplicities, diver-
sities, totalities, organization, and complexities. From an operational point of view,
it is necessary to intersect different areas of knowledge, creating a short circuit
among various disciplines that come together with regard to the urban dimension.
The theoretical short circuit necessarily implies an operational short circuit, which
is even more difficult, since it calls for the efficient interaction of professional fig-
ures that have always been widely separated and noninteracting. These include
urban planners, ecologists, designers, architects, energy technicians, engineers,
legal experts, sociologists, entrepreneurs, economists, etc. The need to proceed
through a transdisciplinary approach, crossing the borders between the different

M. Pierantozzi (*) • R.C. Grifoni

School of Architecture and Design, University of Camerino, Ascoli Piceno, Italy
e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2018 221

R. Cocci Grifoni et al., Quality of Life in Urban Landscapes,
The Urban Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65581-9_19
222 M. Pierantozzi and R.C. Grifoni

areas of scientific knowledge in the field of urban sustainability, means closing the
persistent strong caesura between scientific knowledge and the other types of skills
that “city users” possess (citizens, professionals, public administrators).
Current urban complexity therefore means choosing an approach that can pro-
pose new interpretive modes, such as the analysis of cycles and environmental net-
works in relation to infrastructure, energy, and settlement networks in the city, the
limits of urban growth in relation to the carrying capacity applied in the urban area,
environmental comfort in relation to the quality of life in the urban area, the unbal-
anced “open city” thermodynamic system, climate change, and related conse-
quences on the local scale. To this end, it seems particularly useful to experiment
with integrated dynamic models alongside operational planning tools by character-
izing the weather/climate of the city and its different parts, analysing the city as a
function of its geometrical factors, and assessing land permeability, its use, and
perceived thermal comfort (Cocci Grifoni et al. 2011). Beyond making the process
of correct planning more effective in preventing negative impacts tied to extreme
weather events from repeating themselves, these models aim for a more systematic
integration of environmental, technological, and socioeconomic components along
a path of developing databases and available resources on the local level.
It is good to favour an approach that can identify the best compromise between
needs that cannot all be maximized at the same time. The best solution will be cho-
sen by the decider, who deems it closest to the “ideal” for that space-time context,
which “encompasses” all the different objectives and leads to a level that is deemed
satisfactory. In fact, it is evident that the simultaneous maximization of all the objec-
tives of urban sustainability will never be possible because maximizing one objec-
tive leads to the simultaneous minimization of others. Therefore, it is necessary to
compare multiple alternatives in order to identify the best compromise (a dynamic
equilibrium) among needs which cannot be maximized simultaneously: functional-
ity, visual/perceptive quality, landscape quality, energy efficiency, environmental
quality, energy savings, construction/maintenance/management costs, outdoor ther-
mal comfort, etc.

Parametric Optimization

In many research fields, mathematical optimization implies identifying the best ele-
ment (with some reference criteria) selected from sets containing possible alterna-
tives. For this reason, the first step in the optimization process is to choose the
objective function. The objective function can be maximized or minimized and indi-
cates how much each individual variable influences the optimization problem.
Any optimization problem is fundamentally composed of three parts: the simula-
tion model, one or more objective functions, and an optimization algorithm. In our
case, we used two tools that allowed the model to be constructed: a multiplatform
symbolic and numerical calculation environment (Wolfram Mathematica) for the
simulations and a platform for the multi-objective and multidisciplinary optimization
19 The QLandQLife Tool 223

based on determining the Pareto frontier (ModeFRONTIER, Esteco) for the mini-
mization algorithms.
Mathematica is a symbolic computation model used in various fields such as
engineering, mathematics, physics, etc. It is a powerful and versatile tool that allows
objective functions to be calculated. ModeFRONTIER was used instead for the
parametric simulations. This is a multidisciplinary, multi-objective platform capa-
ble of performing both preliminary statistical analysis and analysis related to the
optimization.
In the series of operations, Mathematica calculates all the objective functions
defined within the case study, for example, comfort (predicted percentage dissatis-
fied, PPD), urban density (compacity), and land use (building impact reduction,
RIE). This data flow is sent to ModeFRONTIER, which optimizes the various func-
tions with its own minimization algorithms. The two programs therefore work in
parallel and communicate via internal protocols.
The optimization phase may be either single- or multi-objective. The attempt to
use any single-objective problem or system of problems can be reduced to applying
an algorithm that investigates the gradient of a function to establish its minimum or
maximum. The multi-objective case is different; here the optimization algorithm
should identify not only one solution but a set of solutions along a trade-off curve
known as the Pareto frontier.
The Pareto frontier is defined as the set of best solutions that are not strictly
dominated by other solutions, as represented in Fig. 19.1 (solution A dominates
solution B if it performs better than B). Optimization using the Pareto frontier can
be seen as a concept that formalizes the trade-off among different possible objec-
tives, even when they are mutually contradictory. A solution is Pareto-optimal when
Pareto improvement of the system is not possible, i.e. when one objective cannot be
improved without worsening at least one of the others. A set of Pareto-optimal
solutions constitutes the Pareto frontier, and all movements along the frontier repre-
sent the trade-off between objective functions.
In general, the set of solutions along the Pareto frontier can be composed of an
infinite number of points, but the optimization should be restricted so that solutions
can be chosen. It is also possible to consider a range of variability to identify the best
solution that also considers other conditions and limits not considered within the
optimization process. The choice of the best solution is not always simple and varies
from case to case, but there are different techniques to select the representative
points of the frontier. One common strategy that is also used here is a non-dominated
genetic algorithm, for example, NSGA II (Deb et al. 2002). This algorithm was
developed as an improvement over the preceding NSGA, one of the first multi-
objective genetic algorithms, to resolve some of its weakest points, e.g. the enor-
mous computational complexity, the lack of elitism, and the need to specify a
sharing parameter.
For our research, multi-objective optimization was fundamental since multiple
parameters pertaining to different fields of research (architecture, physics, biology,
psychology, etc.) were considered. These parameters are often contradictory in that
it is sometimes necessary to maximize one and minimize another. For example,
224 M. Pierantozzi and R.C. Grifoni

Fig. 19.1 Example of a Pareto frontier

environmental comfort should be maximized by minimizing land consumption and

energy use. This is why it is necessary to build a model with different objectives and
to be able to parameterize them with mathematical functions. If the objectives can-
not be parameterized through mathematical functions (formalizable), it is necessary
to use another approach based on a range of possibilities, indications that can be
translated into quantitative levels (e.g. pleasant, unpleasant, safe, unsafe, etc.) in
order to be able connect/correlate these levels with values of formalizable parame-
ters through neural network algorithms.
The initial goal of our research was to identify which of the multiple parameters
in play among the various disciplines could be expressed using mathematical func-
tions and interrelationships. The initial screening required a lot of time, but it served
to relate the various disciplines and all the players in the system. In the case of
Ancona (as illustrated in Part IV), this development led to the identification of two
fundamental parameters: environmental comfort and sky view factor. The first is
calculated keeping in mind all the thermal/environmental parameters and the physi-
cal state of the person. Environmental comfort is defined as the particular condition
of well-being (as a function of sensory perception of an individual in an environ-
ment) determined by temperature, radiant temperature, and the physical activity of
the person.
Environmental comfort is identified with the mental/physical well-being of peo-
ple living in an environment and is a sensation that depends on determined environ-
mental conditions that are in large part modifiable and therefore fall under the
responsibility of the designer, for example, in the design, realization, and manage-
ment phases of a green building. This parameter is very useful since it can be quanti-
fied numerically using normalized mathematical algorithms. It is defined by the
American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers
(ASHRAE) as the particular state of mind that expresses satisfaction with the sur-
rounding environment.
19 The QLandQLife Tool 225

According to Fanger’s studies and theories (Fanger 1970), thermal hygrometric

well-being in an environment is described according to relationships established
between the subjective and environmental variables. The subjective variables relate
to the activity that the individual does within the environment, the type of clothes,
and his or her metabolic activity, which transforms the chemical energy produced
by food into thermal energy. All of these values are set by UNI EN ISO 7730.
One factor closely related to predicted mean vote (PMV) is the predicted per-
centage of dissatisfied people (PPD), a numerical index from 0 to 100 that measures
the degree of dissatisfaction of an individual in an environment. Since the PMV is
centred on an ideal value (zero), the PPD increases immediately, providing a degree
of percent dissatisfaction. These two indices allow one to understand whether an
environment is welcoming and satisfying or not.
Going further, this mainly physical index is closely related to a geometric param-
eter that considers the environmental conformation: the sky view factor (SVF). This
is a dimensionless parameter whose value ranges from 0 to 1. It indicates the portion
of sky visible from a given observation point. Different SVFs indicate different radi-
ation and energy budgets. In this way, the distance between buildings, their height,
and the disposition of the various buildings can be related. This parameter therefore
encompasses the urban conformation of the partition of the city analysed.
The relationship between environmental comfort and sky view factor therefore
relates parameters that are apparently very different but which together can provide
very interesting information. By varying the geometrical conformation, the environ-
mental comfort of the surrounding space is modified, thereby allowing choices to be
made that consider the complexity of feeling comfortable in a space.

References

Cocci Grifoni R, D'Onofrio R, Sargolini M (2011) In search of new paradigms to interpret and
design the contemporary city. WIT Trans Ecol Environ 155:47–58
Deb K, Pratap A, Agarwal S, Meyarivan T (2002) A fast and elitist multiobjective genetic algo-
rithm: NSGA-II. IEEE Trans. Evol Comput 6:182–197. https://doi.org/10.1109/4235.996017
Fanger PO (1970) Thermal comfort: analysis and applications in environmental engineering.
McGraw-Hill, New York. https://books.google.it/books?id=mUFSAAAAMAAJ
Chapter 20
The QLandQLife Forum

Rosalba D’Onofrio and Massimo Sargolini

The expectations and desires of populations regarding the quality of their living
environment place them in a strategic position to plan urban choices in their terri-
tory. It is extremely important that actions to protect and enhance the landscape and
to improve the quality of life in urban areas fall within an overall strategy of local
development that identifies the priorities for intervention and the consequent actions
to perform with the community’s contribution.
There are various ways to involve citizens in public choices. Participation has
myriad faces and tends to be situated along a continuum represented by two poles
that Luigi Bobbio defines as the model of “pressure” and the model of “debate”
(Bobbio and Pomatto 2007). The pressure model considers participation as a tool
designed to give to social subjects who are weak or traditionally excluded the
chance to speak, mostly through social movements or associations that represent
them. The relationship that forms is substantially twofold. On one end are the citi-
zens, or their less privileged counterparts, whose interests are assumed to be gener-
ally homogeneous; public administrators are on the other end. In the participatory
process, public administrations are asked to respond to the needs of the weakest
social groups. The debate model starts instead from the assumption that society is
pluralist. In this case, participation is a confrontation—dialogic in nature—among
citizens that have differing or contradictory ideas, viewpoints, or interests. The goal
is to develop common solutions, find points of understanding, or at least clarify the
terms of the conflict and find common ground.
This second approach is what was used in the QLandQLife research. It
approached the ideal of “deliberative democracy” according to which the essence of
democracy does not consist in counting votes among pre-constituted positions but
in a discussion based on arguments (deliberation) among all the subjects involved.

R. D’Onofrio (*) • M. Sargolini

School of Architecture and Design, University of Camerino, Ascoli Piceno, Italy
e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2018 227

R. Cocci Grifoni et al., Quality of Life in Urban Landscapes,
The Urban Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65581-9_20
228 R. D’Onofrio and M. Sargolini

This approach ensures both the use of “reasoned debate” and the inclusion of all
interested parties and viewpoints that are touched on by the topic of discussion.
However, participation does not consist only in a relationship between citizens
and public decision-makers. Another important relationship is the one established
between citizens and experts, between “lay people and specialists”. In cases of
urban renewal, for example, there is a constant interaction between citizens and
planners (architects, urban planners, public administration technicians, experts in
the sector, representatives from transport agencies, etc.). In consensus conferences,
participants form an opinion by listening to and questioning the experts. A sort of
“hybrid forum” therefore develops (Callon et al. 2001) in which the two types of
knowledge come together and are integrated, thereby opening the possibility for
reciprocal learning. On the one hand, lay people should relate data from their expe-
riences to the most general and abstract categories of the specialists. On the other
hand, experts should realize the practical knowledge that citizens possess. In addi-
tion, public administrators need experts, but they also need to listen to the potential
targets of their policies: the citizens. Beyond often having a framework of the situ-
ation (direct knowledge of a certain problem) that is useful for orienting the choices,
citizens are often capable of producing original solutions, implementing a sort of
citizen expertise (Bulsei and Podestà 2014).
It is interesting to note that the relationships between specialists and lay people
can be structured according to different means. The most traditional structure is the
one in which there is a net division of tasks between lay people and specialists; the
latter express a technical judgement of admissibility regarding the former’s requests.
A second means of relating, which is particularly widespread in urban renewal proj-
ects, consists of the technician-citizen-technician cycle. Technicians (in this case
designers) develop the project, citizens discuss it, and the technicians rework the
project in light of the observations made. Specialists are given the first and last
word, and the capacity of citizens to affect planning choices is subject to the sensi-
tivity of the designers, who must decide how and to what degree to integrate lay
knowledge within their project.
The opposite structure is realized in “citizen juries” and “deliberative polling”.
In this case, the circuit is more of the citizen-technician-citizen type (Mansbridge
et al. 2010). Citizens come together and ask questions, the technicians respond, and
the citizens express their positions in light of the meeting with specialists; the last
word is given to the lay people. In fact, it is the citizens who decide if and how to
integrate the results of the technical expertise within their vision of the problem.
Both of these means are based on a net distinction of roles. Lay people and spe-
cialists interact but maintain some distance. There are, however, cases in which the
relationship is closer and the interaction occurs within a single context. This is the
case of numerous design laboratories that are being developed in urban renewal
processes. This mixed structure is what most closely reaches the notion of hybrid
forum.
20 The QLandQLife Forum 229

Construction of the QLandQLife Forum

The first mechanism of the QLandQLife Forum consists in selecting the participants.
Participation is free; the door is open. Any citizen can choose to enter the process or
remain outside. This is certainly the form of selection that most respects individual
freedom. However, the “open door” method encounters two large difficulties. The
first regards the number of participants. Experience shows that people willing to
participate are a miniscule fraction of the total population. But this is not mainly a
problem of numbers; it is above all a problem of the non-uniformity of involvement
(Vargas Céspedes and Zamuner 2006). In fact, despite the great freedom to enter the
arena, it is probable that the threshold is crossed only by certain types of people:
activists, citizens involved in specific friendship, political, or associative networks
accustomed to participation (Röcke and Sintomer 2006). It is very probable that
those with greater personal or work needs wind up self-excluding themselves, and it
is therefore very difficult that a forum based on self-selection will reflect all the dif-
ferent points of view present in the population. But there is not only the risk of self-
excluding passive citizens. There is also the more serious risk of political
self-exclusion, in the sense that it discourages the participation of people pertaining
to political networks different from the governing majority in the city in question.
Therefore, due to the inconvenience of self-selection, it is better to substitute
“targeted selection”. In this case, the area is not unconditionally open to all. Instead,
a circumscribed space is identified that reflects as widely as possible the interests
and viewpoints present in the society of reference. Sintomer speaks about a micro-
cosm in this respect (Sintomer 2007). This choice, however, assumes the existence
of an external agent that is interested in constructing this discussion site and dis-
posed to tracking down, patiently and without prejudice, the different interests (even
minor ones) that could contribute to addressing the problem. The result of this effort
will always be imperfect, but there are cases in which the composition of the micro-
cosm seems to be reasonably inclusive given the cultural and social conditions in
which it operates. Numerous cases of stakeholder partnerships pertain to this type,
in which subjects with contrasting visions or interests sit around a table to search for
common solutions, for example, on thorny topics regarding the environment
(Poncelet 2001; Innes and Booher 2003).
The microcosm can also be built in another way. It is possible to select a random
sample of the population (Sintomer 2007, p. 103) or a mini-public (Fung 2003). In
this case, we are no longer dealing with activists, natural leaders, or active citizens
but with common citizens, including those that would never cross the doorway into
an assembly or run for a social office. The extraction can occur through a random
sample of citizens or by quotas that consider specific socio-demographic characteris-
tics (e.g. sex, age, education level, zone of residence, etc.). If the group of participants
chosen is rather large (on the order of hundreds), the criteria of legitimacy can be
deemed to consist in an effective sociological representation of the population. If the
aim is to give those who are normally excluded the chance to speak, there is no doubt
that selection by random drawing constitutes a particularly pertinent answer. This
230 R. D’Onofrio and M. Sargolini

system allows a mix of people that is particularly varied with respect to profession,
age, and social environment (obviously ensuring equal numbers of women and men)
to be united around a single table or in a single room, which is not a given in any other
participatory type. The idea behind this approach is that any citizen in a position to
interact with others and absorb the necessary information is able to express positions
on any public problem and to build intelligent solutions with others.
The method of random selection (Carson and Martin 1999) is at the basis of
many experiences: juries of peers, deliberative surveys, consensus conferences, etc.
(Sintomer 2007). The different selection methods tend to generate different arenas.
Some are mainly formed of active or competent citizens who express well-defined
and knowledgeable positions and who sometimes have a constituency they must
answer to (it is probable that this situation is more likely with focused selection or
voluntary participation). On the other hand, some arenas are formed mainly of com-
mon citizens that express positions that are less determined and often less knowl-
edgeable (as is more likely when the selection is random). According to the
distinction made by Achong Fung (2003), the discussion will be “warm” in the first
case and “cold” in the second. In any case, all selection methods have drawbacks;
they are often combined in order to reduce problems.
The discussions held in the microcosm can be expanded upon with various
means in order to involve, even if less intensely, the broader public, for example, the
macrocosm formed of various associations present in the city (Podziba 2006). The
act of involving tens, hundreds, or thousands of people, making them work together
to dialogue and address conflicts, and creating a context in which they can freely
express themselves and enrich their own points of view to eventually find common
ground is not an easy thing to do. It is for this reason that participatory processes
need to use specific methods to address these difficulties and create situations
favourable to expressing needs and debating.
These methods assign a decided importance to the definition of specific rules of
behaviours that participants in the decision-making arena should respect. The cre-
ation of circumscribed public spaces or specific deliberative arenas is suggested
(Bobbio 2002), in which a reduced number of participants can interact in a direct,
structured way. The deliberative setting can include different types of prescriptions,
for example, a limited time for interaction, the way in which the problems are pre-
sented, the spatial position of the participants, the division of work into small groups
and phases, communication among participants, etc. Deliberative methods are
based on small group discussions in which people are not obliged to articulate inter-
ventions but can be limited to expressing their thought in a few words, counter what
others say, have the floor many times in the same session, or interrupt at will.

The Phases of the Forum

To construct shared choices within the Forum, it is necessary to act in phases, inte-
grating and synthesizing the methodologies of strategic and participatory matrices.
We use a table to clarify the phases of initiating the forum (Fig. 20.1).
20 The QLandQLife Forum 231

Fig. 20.1 The phases of the forum

Phase A

Shared construction of knowledge about the territory, programming, and current

designs; the definition of planning themes emerging from the territorial investiga-
tion; and the selection of all interest holders and subjects interested in the territory

Phase B

Selection of non-formalizable indicators and the chosen ranges of formalizable

indicators after consulting with the population. Formalizable indicators are indica-
tors that evaluate the environmental performance of the city and influence the qual-
ity of the urban landscape and the quality of life of city inhabitants; they can be
formalized in a mathematical algorithm. Non-formalizable indicators are “chosen”
and “presented” to the stakeholders, local community representatives, and the
“interested population”. These also regard the “performance” of the city and influ-
ence the quality of the landscape and quality of life, but since they are based on
metaphorical processes, they cannot be formalized or translated into measurements.
By “going back to go forward”, their use allows points of contact and sets of pos-
sible scenarios to be established with the Tool.

Phase C

Evaluation of the different development scenarios from existing planning and what
emerges from the Forum.

Phase D

Selection of the optimal development scenario in which the results of the formally
defined process (Tool) are combined with the expectations and desires of the com-
munity assessed based on non-formalizable indicators.
232 R. D’Onofrio and M. Sargolini

Phase E

Monitoring the results (reframing) by creating a permanent observatory to assess

the effects of policies on the quality of life of the population.

References

Bobbio L (2002) Le arene deliberative. In: Rivista italiana di politiche pubbliche, no. 3, pp 5–29
Bobbio L and Pomatto G (2007) Il coinvolgimento dei cittadini nelle scelte pubbliche. In:
Meridiana, no. 58, pp 45–67
Bulsei GL, Podestà N (2014) L'ascolto del territorio. Aracne, Rome
Callon M, Lascoumes P, Barthe Y (2001) Agir dans un monde incertain. Essai sur la démocratie
technique. Seuil, Paris
Carson L, Martin B (1999) Random selection in politics. Praeger, Westport
Fung A (2003) Recipes for public spheres: eight institutional design choices and their conse-
quences. J Polit Philos 11:338–367
Innes JE, Booher DE (2003) Collaborative policymaking: governance through dialogue. In: Hajer
M, Wagenaar H (eds) Deliberative policy analysis. Understanding governance in the network
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Mansbridge J et al (2010) The place of self-interest and the role of power in deliberative democ-
racy. J Polit Philos 18(1):64
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Bruno Mondatori, Milan
Poncelet EC (2001) Personal transfromation in multistakeholder environmental partnerships.
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esiti delle giurie civiche berlinesi. In: Democrazia e diritto, no. 3, pp 87–100
Sintomer Y (2007) Le pouvoir au peuple. Jurys citoyens, tirage au sort et démocratie participative.
La découverte, Paris
Vargas Céspedes JP and Zamuner DA (2006) Dalla retorica partecipativa alla realtà quotidiana: lo
stato attuale della democrazia partecipativa in America centrale. In: Democrazia e diritto, no.
3, pp 24–41
Chapter 21
For a New Urban Governance

Rosalba D’Onofrio, Massimo Sargolini, and Michele Talia

The economic/financial recession that has affected the cities and economy of the
west is forcing a rethinking about the current model of development and planning a
return to governance policies based on enhancing territorial, local, and urban capital.
It is not possible for this to occur in terms of further growth, accumulation, and the
consumption of scarce resources. Instead, it is necessary to design polycentric,
denser cities, regulating the reuse of land to a multifunctional dimension, reconfigur-
ing spaces, and producing more resilient, adaptive, and quality urban fabrics. Cities,
in that they are social organizations created to be functional for humans’ many
needs, could become the space in which citizens find answers to their demands for
well-being and quality of life. In this sense, cities have found it necessary to address
some substantial questions in new and creative ways. These questions relate to:
– Waste reduction and a more efficient use of resources (human capital, land, land-
scape worth, environmental quality, energy)
– Conservation and the hydrogeological balance of the land
– Greater sobriety and effectiveness in urban planning
– Reorganization of material and immaterial infrastructure networks
– Involving a larger number of subjects and new players in transformation and
regeneration processes
– Building ethics of collective goods to ensure real sustainability in enhancement
processes and the use of these goods to block their irreversible consumption
– Redefining behaviours, habits, and lifestyles of inhabitants and operators
imprinted with a more conscious, responsible use of their territory.
Faced with such difficult challenges, it is necessary to implement a vast range of
skills and research orientations that can develop a shared, organic, and interdisciplinary
vision. It is also necessary to redefine territorial and urban-planning tools capable of

R. D’Onofrio (*) • M. Sargolini • M. Talia

School of Architecture and Design, University of Camerino, Ascoli Piceno, Italy
e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2018 233

R. Cocci Grifoni et al., Quality of Life in Urban Landscapes,
The Urban Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65581-9_21
234 R. D’Onofrio et al.

addressing and resolving such articulated, complex questions, placing humans at the
centre of development and the quality of living environments. To do this, the per-
spective of new urban governance should be adopted, as the result of institutional
action of numerous actors with public authorities but also the result of the interaction
among multiple actors (public, private, tertiary, etc.). The season of large transfor-
mation interventions having passed,1 the future will see the activation of a few large
works and a myriad of small projects that are feasible and on a scale appropriate for
the partitioned multitude of economic, social, and public subjects that move in the
urban arena amid a framework of scarce financial and environmental resources. In
this situation, one should necessarily work with a skilled combination of numerous
small-scale projects, but within definite strategies intended as systems of well-cali-
brated spatial and economic choices.
In this changing perspective, the urban-planning discipline is aiming for a resolute
change in the planning system by virtue of which the most important goals can also
be pursued without subjecting society and the urban environment to a high percentage
of risk. There is therefore a need to use tactics capable of favouring the observation
and monitoring of results produced by low-intensity exploratory actions before
involving subjects and actors in more ambitious, long-term interventions (Talia 2016).
So that this scenario can be realized, it is necessary that the new urban gover-
nance be focused on some central aspects: the protagonism of the local community;
the multidimensional vocation of the spaces; the sharing of a city and territorial
project that acts as the glue among the different subjects involved in the name of
“shared values” (Peraro and Vecchiato 2007); and the control of time, avoiding the
lengthiness of recent urban renewal projects.
Starting from this premise, a model of multilevel, multi-stakeholder governance
can grow, in which the institutions, businesses, civil society, and citizens come
together daily to design the city around a shared paradigm aimed at increasing the
quality of life of all. In this governance model, citizens not only have needs but also
skills and resources (NextPolis 2015).
Numerous innovative ideas of the city have been developed in recent years: the
smart city, the Goodcity, the solar city, Green Town, the City of Tomorrow, the resil-
ient city, Cittaslow (slow city), and the SENSEable city. While developing socially
and urbanistically innovative proposals that are also replicable and functional for
the well-being of citizens, these models do not create a frame of reference for urban
design that brings together all the actors in the urban scene to discuss and pursue
common goals. In addition, strategies aimed a greater inclusion of citizens, and the
expansion of the networks of players involved, in both a horizontal and vertical
sense, tends to lead to a dispersion of decision-making power and the resizing of
public authority. Instead, they should favour forms of participation on behalf of
economic players, civil society, mayors, and chambers of commerce characterized
by interdependence and non-vertex relationships that resemble a network.

1
This development model was associated with the realization of large projects (Urban Development
Projects, UDP) that affected the transformation of specific parts of the urban territory destined for
prestigious residences, shopping centres, and exhibition centres in contrast to and separated from
areas that were abandoned or of lower prestige.
21 For a New Urban Governance 235

It is likewise evident that the cooperative relationship can assume different

modes based on the dominant, equal, or abstentious position assumed by the insti-
tutional actors with respect to coordinating the decision-making process. Kantor
(2010) describes four cases: coordination by authority, which corresponds to a
model with a strong central government; market coordination, regulated by incen-
tives and sanctions that characterize economic competition; and pluralist coordina-
tion, based on the competition among groups that create strategic alliances to
maximize their own interests, especially in contexts where the decision-making
authority is very decentralized and distributed. In this case, incidentally, the local
government, rather than managing the decision-making process, tends to second the
configurations assumed by emerging interests, which therefore risks limiting the
negotiation process. Finally, there is consensual coordination, in which relation-
ships among the different actors are characterized by reciprocal trust and the sharing
of ideas, norms, and values.
The characteristics of this last decision-making model would seem to directly
favour the desired systematic results, allowing for (a) recourse to unanimous deci-
sions and the consequent minimization of external costs and the need for coercion,
with positive effects on the governability of the system; (b) recourse to the specific
expert contribution of the different participating actors in order to facilitate the reso-
lution of eventual problems; and (c) the promotion of the reciprocal recognition of
actors and the improvement of interpersonal trust, with the consequent increase in
social capital stock and legitimacy available to the democratic political system. In
this situation, beyond identifying the actors (both collective and individual) taking
part in the decision-making process, it is also strategic to reconstruct formal and
informal relationships between the actors and the lines along which alliances are
created. A good level of cooperation and its institutionalization are a function of the
endurance of networks related to collective identity and the actions of individual
actors that are inserted in these networks (Burroni et al. 2009).
As should now be evident, the prototype we have subject to verification in our
research (QLandQLife) aims to contribute to building precisely this type of decision-
making process. It learns from a vast range of actors in order to favour the represen-
tation of different interests, reducing the distance between government and the local
environment and also allowing for the reduction of informational asymmetries
(transparency) and the growth of responsibility and accountability. The advantages
of applying this model could regard, firstly, the reduction of informational asym-
metries that characterize the relationship between public entities, experts, and ben-
eficiaries/users of the policies and the proposed and subsequently implemented
projects.
Secondly, the attenuation or the effective treatment of conflicts may be even
more important, considering that a certain level of territorial conflict is anyway
functional to achieving correct spatial management. This is precisely due to the
contradiction between different approaches that make projects and overall visions
of the territory emerge and which, in a situation of generalized consensus, would
struggle to be seen. Conflict about the territory therefore represents a virtual con-
structive situation in which the aspects to strengthen, integrate, or rather incentivize
can be extrapolated from politics and technical knowledge.
236 R. D’Onofrio et al.

Thirdly, it is possible that the correct application of the model presented in this
volume can favour wider participation and the concrete involvement of interested
subjects. The efficiency and effectiveness of urban policies and intervention proj-
ects are in fact directly related to the ability of actors to adapt their own actions to
the situation they are called to discuss, with an awareness and responsibility that can
be crucial in reinforcing community identity and belonging. In fact, local develop-
ment, as well as the self-sustainability of the territory, requires the expression of
active citizenship and an accentuated propensity for collaboration as the basis on
which to express the founding principles of self-government.
Lastly, the presence of a plurality of interest holders called to comment on the
different development scenarios tends to coincide with an increase in the capacity to
control and self-control the organizational structures, which can therefore prevent
the risk that interpretations and benefits of individual parts can prevail. For this
reason, it is increasingly important to support learning processes by virtue of which
the different actors can acquire skills and knowledge to survive and adapt in an
increasingly complex, articulated, and dynamic environment.
It is likewise evident that the need for a multilevel, multi-stakeholder approach is
more onerous when comparing more traditional models of decision-making; it is
certainly appropriate to guarantee shared development strategies. In this way, the
oppositional view of public/private tends to be abandoned in favour of the idea of
community use of the city, creating at the same time the conditions for effective
negotiation among different social groups and their respective agendas, through
which new forms of social integration and cohesion are produced. Moving away
from an idea of resilience exclusively or eminently focused on reducing disasters
(UNISDR 2014) or adapting to catastrophes—which has seen wide national and
international agreement in recent years—it is necessary to imagine broader strate-
gies that include formulas capable of ensuring a more widespread sharing and a
more marked social acceptability. The need to respond to social/environmental
challenges with the creation of social processes and resilient urban planning struc-
tures indicates the road for fluid city governance. Through planning that starts with
real needs and contexts, the concept of resilience itself can be reinterpreted.

References

Burroni L et al (eds) (2009) Città metropolitane e politiche urbane. Firenze University Press,
Florence
Kantor P (2010) The coherence of disorder: a realist approach to the politics of city regions. Polity 42:4
NextPolis (2015) NextPolis. Idee per la #cittàdidomani. Marsilio, Venice
Peraro F, Vecchiato G (eds) (2007) Responsabilità sociale del territorio. Manuale operativo di
sviluppo sostenibile e best practices. Franco Angeli, Milan
Talia M (ed) (2016) Un nuovo ciclo della pianificazione urbanistica tra tattica e strategia. Planum, Rome
UNISDR (2014) International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, A/RES/69/219. https://www.
unisdr.org/we/inform/resolutionsreports/disaster-reduction-mandate
Chapter 22
Communication and Dissemination
of the Model

Marta Magagnini

Taking my quarters
at coolness
I repose
(Bashō Matsuo)

In Japanese poetry, haikus are characterized by a precise technique for their com-
position. These guidelines/rules define a method to generate synthetic images of
reality evoked by places and figures in nature. The choice of synthesis and attach-
ment to the state of things are also at the basis of the QLandQLife project. The anal-
ogy is obviously a little forced, but it could, however, appear like a revelation
reading Bashō’s precise haiku, which echoes some keywords in the QLandQLife
research: living, comfort, thermal hygrometric comfort. The use of the haiku as an
epigraph to open this text is therefore a strategy to communicate the project, such
that in the stupor due to the subversion of the language, the power of the image
arrives strong and clear (Fig. 22.1).
The question of communication often erroneously constitutes the last “duty” of
a scientific project, to be fulfilled diffidently almost outside the research process. In
reality, nothing in the activity of science itself can be produced if the terms of com-
munication are not introduced. First, this is because no discovery, or at least no
result, that claims to be innovative makes sense if it cannot be divulged. Second,
without a shared language, the research, intended as a continuous series of steps that
witness the transformation of an updated result, is not possible in and of itself. This
has always been valid, especially in complex, interdisciplinary projects, where
everyone should share their own language and knowledge with colleagues in order
to begin manipulating the largest amount of data possible to obtain innovative
results.

M. Magagnini (*)
School of Architecture and Design, University of Camerino, Ascoli Piceno, Italy
e-mail: [email protected]

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2018 237

R. Cocci Grifoni et al., Quality of Life in Urban Landscapes,
The Urban Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65581-9_22
238 M. Magagnini

Fig. 22.1 Texture of the world, graphical project by the student Aleandro Romandini

The set of operations in “communicating” a scientific research project follows

according to two main phases: (1) internal communication throughout the develop-
ment of the project and (2) dissemination, i.e. the publication of the results outside
the research group at the end of the project. There are also basically two models of
communication: (a) unidirectional models of transmitting the content and (b) the
system in which each participant “informs and reciprocates” as in Dolci’s vision
(1988) and in the English system of bidirectional communication of experiences.
For our transdisciplinary project, the first phase was fundamental in creating the
necessary language to be shared by the different research groups. The individual
languages were made explicit in order to “discretize” the terms of the conversation:
the definition of indicators. Each research group selected, proposed, and described
the basic parameters for their speculative activity in order to recognize the peculiar-
ity that they did not overlap but rather interfaced with parameters in other research,
thereby becoming, rightfully seen and shared, input for the general analysis model.
Throughout the length of the project, internal meetings were held before and after
important events in the project, both within the individual research groups and col-
lectively with all participants. These were open to the outside, although always in an
academic environment: an international seminar with internal and external speakers
invited from foreign universities, which was useful for acquiring greater terms of
comparison. The objective was mainly to overcome any perception of “otherness”
among the different groups and to involve everyone in making what was heteroge-
neous uniform, in the awareness that everyone belonged to the same rather broad
working table dedicated to the same fundamental theme.
22 Communication and Dissemination of the Model 239

The documents and video materials were shared online and made available for
everyone in each phase of the work. The idea of sharing is at the basis of the entire
communication process, which is inspired by participatory models that can be
implemented due to the involvement of the user in the process of defining the model.
“Curiously, today one speaks a lot about participation, meant as a tool of democratic
development, but one rarely speaks about dissemination as an essential condition to
understand and therefore to participate. Democracy cannot be based on the igno-
rance of problems, because one of its great objectives is precisely to make citizens
responsible and aware, so they can exercise their rights, making the best use of their
ability to understand” (Angela 1983).
Also in the phase of end communication, the task is to be inspired by participa-
tory processes. Precisely for this reason, a forum was activated that involves (see
Chap. 24) citizens, professionals, and administrations. The parametric model pur-
sued by the QLandQLife project has an intrinsically participatory nature: its predic-
tive attitude depends on the specific characteristics and interpretation of data that
the user inserts. This iterative design is characterized by successive modifications
based on feedback and the personalization of use (e.g. suggested by the Forum). The
new computer-based tool requires that data input and output are modulated for each
use before a run can begin. The procedure cannot begin without the intersection of
the datum and its interpretation, the parameter, and the use that the user makes of it.
The nature of testing the procedure is also related to the logo, developed as an
identifying image to synthetically communicate the project (Fig. 22.2). Already in
and of itself, the choice of the project title contains an effective communication
solution: alliteration. The QLandQLife logo could not help but recall the Q of “qual-
ity”, together with the l of both “land” and “life”, accompanied by a check on the
intensity of “quality”.
The indicator of intensity contained in the l is an image that from electronics has
moved to informatics: the moving symbol of loading a web page, software, video-
game, or images and videos now pertains to the collective imagination. When view-
ing the logo of the project, even the uninformed observer intuitively recognizes the
progress bar and assumes the presence of a computer-based object. Therefore, com-
munication within the research groups began immediately with the project’s incep-
tion and has lasted throughout, with the possibility of future developments so
plausible as to impose continued activity with constant, programmed periodicity in
order to avoid interrupting the flow of information, which, by its nature, is continu-
ously updated in the individual areas.
Significant communication towards the exterior, instead, still remains in the proj-
ect phase, waiting to be activated, even in forms different from the traditional pub-
lication of monographs or scientific articles in the field. The project of communication
outside the project therefore includes three types of products: (1) online and paper
publication of all contributions, reports, and any other product of the project; (2) the
creation of a user-friendly interface for the computer-based product that the
QLandQLife project promotes for use by public administrations; and (3) the cre-
ation and spread of visual products for social media marketing, an aspect that also
constitutes a strategy to verify and monitor the external validation of the project.
240 M. Magagnini

Fig. 22.2 Studies for the logo for the QLandQLife project

The language of dissemination has a hybrid nature: it remains in the area of sci-
entific language but needs to be translated for communication, which requires figu-
rative thought for it to be fixed in the listeners; it therefore necessarily flows into a
form of visualization. This step is required by science itself, for example, in chem-
istry and the formulas that transform "methanol" into CH4, and then into a series of
signs that depict the intermolecular bonds, and again into the three-dimensional
representation of the molecule. Another example is deoxyribonucleic acid, better
known as DNA, which we all now recognize as a three-dimensional double helix
(Pawels 2006). Historically, therefore, the publication of results cannot overlook the
aid of graphical visualizations. The use of new technologies has expanded the offer-
ing of new media, while mass media have offered ad hoc platforms and palimpsests
to publish scientific information (Cavallo and Spadoni 2010).
Which medium should be used to create visual products, documentaries, inter-
views, video lessons, or the products of representation? Any technique is valid, but
according to Gombrich, design techniques constitute a more effective strategy than
reproduction (photographs, videos) for scientific communication because "a selec-
tive representation that indicates its own principles of selection will be more infor-
mative than the replica. Anatomical drawings are a case in point. A realistic picture
of a dissection not only would arouse aversion but also might easily fail to show the
aspects that are to be demonstrated. […] Leonardo Da Vinci's anatomical studies are
early examples of deliberate suppression of certain features for the sake of concep-
tual clarity. […] Such a rendering may be described as a transition from a represen-
tation to diagrammatic mapping, and the value of the latter process for the
communication of information needs no emphasis". (Gombrich and Woodfield
1996, pp 51–52). Conversely, and precisely by virtue of our cognitive system based
primarily on vision, realistic representation allows the observer to believe that we
are dealing with real facts and to definitively recognize the narrative content.
The ideal for good communication would therefore appear to be a visual product
that contains both characteristics: the synthetic selection of the drawing and the real-
ism of the photograph. For this reason, one of the communication strategies most
adopted currently (as an example, the videos for scientific popularization edited by the
magazine Internazionale) is collage. The solution of collage as a technique to create
static or animated images is also completely adequate for communicating the
22 Communication and Dissemination of the Model 241

Fig. 22.3 Taking my quarters/at coolness/I repose. (Analogical collage, copyright courtesy Marta
Magagnini 2014

QLandQLife project, not only for what was described above but also for another rea-
son. With respect to the signifier/signified, the collage reflects the heterogeneous
nature of the research groups, their scientific matter, and in particular the final indica-
tors used by the model. The collage is none other than the realization of a unique image
but starting from fragments and materials from different sources (Magagnini 2014).
In conclusion, where scientific communication historically made use of illustra-
tions created with a welldefined technique, allowing for the description and narra-
tion of selected elements of the whole system (Tufte 1997), when the domain is a
composition, the representation is also fragmented and opened to a dialogue among
the elements. This text closes with an image (Fig. 22.3) that illustrates the initial
epigraph, creating a further subversion of the language in the desire for a synesthetic
synthesis of the intentions of our project.

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