Performance-Based Planning for Sustainable Cities. Innovative Approaches and Practices in Italy

Urban areas are socio-ecological systems, whose interactions between environment and human activities tend to become increasingly complex due to global challenges, such as climate change and resource depletion. In particular, cities play a key role in the fight against climate change, as they can reduce their significant contribution to global GHG emissions, offering the inhabitants significant local benefits also in terms of local economic development and job creation, in a virtuous process including both economic and social sustainability, and boosting resilience. Within this complex framework, the paper is part of a research in progress focused on the possible contribution of urban planning to the implementation and localization of the Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and of the New Urban Agenda, and its main objective is to better understand whether a Performance-based Planning (PBP) approach may contribute to making cities more sustainable and resilient, according to the SDG 11. Through two significant case studies, the cities of Bolzano and Pordenone, both in the North of Italy, it shows how PBP may be integrated into the existing urban planning tools to meet the needs of better urban quality, environmental, ecological mitigation, adaptation, and quality of urban and architectural design, thus opening up future scenarios of great interest for innovation in urban planning and territorial governance.