Rural landscapes, such as Italian Inner areas, hold rich cultural, ecological, and heritage values. Yet, these peculiar landscapes are characterised by isolation, demographic decline, and limited access to essential services. These conditions present a unique challenge for landscape valuation and traditional assessment methods based on their spatial characteristics. Spatial analysis provides both conceptual and operational tools to navigate the complexity of landscapes. However, current approaches still face significant methodological and theoretical challenges in effectively capturing and representing inner areas’ tangible and intangible values. The heterogeneous nature of existing spatial approaches makes it difficult to directly compare results, while the integration of perceptual data remains difficult due to the limitations of current GIS tools and models. These challenges highlight the need for more comprehensive assessment frameworks capable of overcoming existing limitations and providing a holistic understanding of landscape values.

To address these gaps, this study conducts a comparative analysis of three key landscape valuation frameworks–Ecosystem Services (ES), Landscape Services (LS) and Landscape Character Assessment (LCA). Through a semi-structured literature review, this contribution explores how these frameworks assess landscape values, and examines their respective criteria. Results show that ES and LS frameworks primarily value landscapes based on the benefits they provide to people, while LCA emphasises qualitative aspects such as perception and identity, recognising the intrinsic value of landscapes beyond their functional use. The analysis highlights critical gaps in current approaches, including their predominantly anthropocentric perspective and limited integration of multiple values into decision-making processes. We need for a more inclusive and spatially explicit valuation framework that places landscapes, especially in marginalised areas, at the centre of valuation processes and recognises their multiple, interconnected values. ... Read more

The phenomenon of touristification—the transformation of urban spaces driven by tourism—has increasingly shaped the socio-economic and spatial dynamics of many cities worldwide. This paper presents a comprehensive framework for assessing touristification at the neighbourhood level, with a particular focus on Naples, Italy. Leveraging a Spatial Decision Support System (SDSS), the study integrates both prescriptive and descriptive models to evaluate tourism’s impact on local real estate, short-term rentals and socio-economic status. Key challenges such as the geometric misalignment of mapping units, criteria selection for indicators and data availability are addressed, highlighting invariant factors, conceived as operational opportunities and constraints, to structure a SDSS capable of capturing the complexity of tourism-driven urban transformations. By bridging this gap, this study provides actionable recommendations for policy-makers to manage tourism-related pressures, protect residential accessibility and promote sustainable urban development. ... Read more

Transitioning towards a circular built environment and turning waste into resources have become one of the new sustainability paradigms today. However, a circular transition can be considered a ‘wicked problem’. The multiple dimensions and scales of the circular transition and its substantial spatial implications fit well into the planning approach of Geodesign. The Horizon 2020 funded project “Resource Management in the periurban Areas - Going beyond Urban Metabolism (REPAiR)” implemented an innovative Geodesign approach. Moreover, it explored its capability to support spatial decision-making processes for the circular economy transition of the built environment within urban planning practices. This article aims to understand to what extent a process of Geodesign, which is conducted with the support of a digital tool and a Living Lab approach, can support the creation of localised circular economy strategies and foster the circular economy transition in cities and territories. The analysis explores and compares the results of three European cases -Amsterdam, Hamburg and Naples. It considers the kind of data input required to run the process in every phase, the stakeholders involved and their typology, the specific urban or territorial, planning and governance scales of analysis, and the final output definition after the Geodesign process implementation. The approach outputs constitute a decision support system for easing negotiations between local actors regarding the circularity strategies to implement. The findings reveal an intertwinement between different forms of knowledge included in the process, ranging from sustainability to governance and design, and the actors engaged in planning a circularity transition spatially. However, even using similar starting data, the local information and the starting conditions strongly influence the process and the types of strategies elaborated in each case. ... Read more

This research aims to define an integrated methodological approach for activating and implementing Urban Living Labs focused on cultural resources, landscapes and assets, and their enhancement, shaped by the role of the local community and significant historical sites. The CHANGES project - Cultural Heritage Active Innovation for Next-Gen Sustainable Society - is the context to design a circular Urban Living Lab approach where evaluation acquires a central and enabling role. Social Multi-Criteria Evaluation (SMCE) is suitable for inclusion in this decision-making context, instigating a Collaborative Decision-Making Process within co-design phases that actively engage diverse stakeholders, incorporating preferences and facilitating consensus building. Specifically, SOCRATES represents an interesting multicriteria method to investigate for this purpose as part of a methodology that consists of multiple methods of work, design and research. The methodological proposal is the Heritage Communities Urban Living Labs (HeCo-ULLs) approach, a circular framework recognising multidimensional complex values and the aspiration to generate new, locally rooted, and community-driven values. The proposal incorporates the SOCRATES method across various Urban Living Lab development stages. This methodological approach has to be implemented and validated case-by-case, involving local actors and considering the peculiarities of different cultural heritages and related contexts. ... Read more

Resource consumption and related waste production are still rapidly increasing all over the world, leading to social and environmental challenges and to the production of the so-called ‘wastescapes’. Peri-urban areas—in-between urban and rural territories—are particularly vulnerable and prone to develop into wastescapes because they are generally characterised by mixed functions and/or monofunctional settlements, as well as by fragmentation in a low-density territory that is often crossed by large infrastructure networks. Moreover, peri-urban areas are generally the selected locations for the development of plants for waste management. In this way, they are crossed by waste flows of a different nature, in a landscape of operational infrastructures and wasted landscapes. Implementing Circular Economy (CE) principles, interpreting waste and wastescapes as resources, is a way to significantly reduce raw material and (soil) resource consumption, improving cities’ metabolism. A circular approach can positively affect the spatial, social and environmental performances of peri-urban areas. However, the transition towards a CE presents many challenges. This article outlines an approach to address these challenges, presenting a co-creation process among researchers, experts and stakeholders within Living Labs (LLs) processes. LLs are physical and virtual spaces, aiming at the co-creation of site-specific eco-innovative solutions (EIS) and strategies. In the LLs, public–private–people partnerships are developed by applying an iterative methodology consisting of five phases: Co-Exploring, Co-Design, Co-Production, Co-Decision, and Co-Governance. This article presents a case study approach, analysing the co-creation methodology applied in two peri-urban living labs, located in the Metropolitan Areas of Naples (Italy) and Amsterdam (The Netherlands), within REPAiR Horizon2020 research project.
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Deliverable 3.3 of Work Package 3 concerns an integrated analysis of the two pilot case studies within the REPAiR project, Amsterdam and Naples, from the vantage point of waste production and processing, and the transition to circular societies. It comprises spatial, social and material flow analyses of the two pilot cases, whilst testing an innovative methodology that was introduced and explained in Deliverable 3.1 [D3.1, AKA the Handbook, Geldermans et al., 2017]. The report addresses additions and clarifications to the methodology presented in Deliverable 3.1. After an update on the basis of technical insights and the work developed in practice within the peri-urban living labs (PULL) workshops carried out so far, an improved classification of Wastescapes is presented. Furthermore, a complete process model to map Wastescapes is provided. A smaller scale of the 'sample' area has been introduced to allow a better interaction with the local stakeholders, deepening the context and cutting into the intermediate scale of the ‘focus-area’. Moreover, the notion of Enabling Contexts is applied to rationalise the links between spatial analysis and eco-innovation solutions (WP5). With regard to the Material Flow Analysis, new insights on data collection and processing are addressed, providing more grip on how to successfully conduct such an MFA. The lion’s share of the report is allocated to presenting the results. For both cases, a rudimentary spatial and socio-economic analysis on a national level precedes a detailed regional analysis: for the Netherlands, this concerns the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area, and for Italy the Campania Region and the Metropolitan region of Naples. Embedded in this spatial-social context, the material flow analysis follows six Activity-based Spatial MFA (as introduced in D3.1) steps to pinpoint and analyse waste related challenges and activities. The report finishes with a reflection on the methodology and results. This reflection focuses on four topics in particular: physico-geographical aspects and waste-sensitivity, Waste(scape) dynamics in space & time, modelling of material flows & data intensity, and the relevance of Enabling Contexts, whilst anticipating the follow up cases as well as a wider field of application. ... Read more

REPAiR will provide local and regional authorities with an innovative transdisciplinary open source Geodesign Decision Support Environment (GDSE) developed and implemented in Living Labs (LLs) context, in six metropolitan areas namely Naples, Ghent, Hamburg, Pécs, Łódź and Amsterdam. LLs are physical and virtual environments, in which public-private-people partnerships experiment an iterative method to develop innovations, that include the involvement of end users. In LLs different areas of expertise from diverse partners are needed for a good development of the activities, with the aim to meet the need of the stakeholders by innovation. The innovation concept here is used in the sense of a difference between an existing entity (a product, a policy, a service, etc.) and customers’ expectations. The elements of innovation can be technological factors, better working conditions or methods of entity delivery, etc., because to innovate means to be creative, learning from mistakes. This means also to learn and share information about what went wrong, in order to use it in upcoming phases. LLs are approaches and instruments, at the same time, to improve the innovation capabilities and competitiveness of territories. Thanks to the LL approach, policy makers can face the many socio-economic challenges of their territories, improving social inclusion. Typically useful for the interpretation of complex real life environments, LLs are recognized as users-friendly instruments and processes to promote open innovation in several European regions. In this way complex solutions are identified, tested and transformed into prototypes (Innovation Alcotra, 2013). In other words, an LL is a “user-driven open innovation ecosystem” (EC, 2009) that utilizes the fruitful participation of business, citizens and governments in the research process; this approach is helpful in order to better define the current behaviors and user patterns. Co-creation, one of the main and transversal components of an LL, is the process that produces a product or a service as a result of a cooperation between the collaboration of end-users and other stakeholders that work in the common environment of LL (Innovation Alcotra, 2013). Cities as complex systems, characterized by Urban Metabolism and increasing challenges, demand co-creation (Gemeente Rotterdam, IABR, FABRIC, JCFO, & TNO, 2014). LLs identify sustainable activities that are coherent with the territory and competitive in some ways if compared with global economies, and put them in contact with the ones that already exist in the same area. In REPAiR, Living Labs are organized in six peri-urban areas across Europe, as stated above, as decision support environments where representatives of universities, governance, corporations, local communities and, in addition, individuals make decisions that are based on their role and expertise. In this framework, design professionals, information technologists and scientists give contributions and support the decision-making process related to what to do and how to do that in each case study area. In order to make a decision that must be site specific, it is necessary to identify and compare several opportunities and alternatives that should be developed in the Peri-Urban Living Labs (PULLs), after the knowledge and evaluation of the current situation of the place. The different disciplines involved in the PULL have different methods that can interact, to imagine and select change models that work at different scales simultaneously. ... Read more

dealing with the linkages between sociocultural features and social sensitiveness about general environmental issues, and particularly about waste and resource management. Task 3.3 has a multilevel scope: secondary sociocultural inquiries are focusing on national level specificities, while the primer sociocultural stage of the research and the socioeconomic investigation is done on a local level. The representation and process models developed in WP3 have strong ties with WP4, regarding sustainability impact assessment and evaluation models, and with WP5 concerning eco-innovative solutions and change strategies. Moreover, the models are used as input to the GDSE (WP2) and inform – and are informed by – WP6 with regard to decision models. These interrelations accentuate theimportance of common agreements regarding e.g. delineations, data sourcing and processing. Such issues are dealt with in this handbook, whilst underlining the necessity for continuing alignment between work packages of the REPAiR project. ... Read more