Urban Regeneration Strategies According to Circular Economy: A Multi-criteria Decision Aiding Approach

As part of urban regeneration programs the implementation of policies consistent with a circular city model, social inclusion and the involvement of the local community are key factors for solving problems in urban contexts. In this context it is necessary to increase the resilience of the cities, favoring the regeneration of the existing real estate assets, in particular degraded and abandoned areas and their transformation into new junctions of interactions and actions capable of triggering local development, according to a circular economy model. Today the choices made regarding urban regeneration interventions are rarely supported by operational logics and methodologies capable of effectively rationalizing the selection processes. In the perspective of the optimal allocation of increasingly scarce resources, the proposed assessment framework is based on various methodological assessments, capable of supporting a complex, adaptive, inclusive and site-specific conflict-based decision-making process. The purpose of the study is to support decision makers in defining of alternative future scenarios capable of generating benefits in terms of cultural enhancement, social inclusion and economic development from a circular economy perspective. Through a specific set of indicators, selected considering the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the scoreboard contributes to the definition of alternative scenarios, in order to lead to the choice of the shared scenario, evaluated in terms of both multi-group and multi-criteria. The methodological framework was tested for the urban regeneration of an area located in the municipality of Catanzaro in Southern Italy.