Scenarios in urban planning and the multi-criteria method. A meaningful experience in Italy: Piano idea implemented in Jesi (An) 2004.

Building scenarios for the development of an urban area or wider area means working to focus on a possible future. It consists in the development of one or more theories concerning the possible evolution of the urban and territorial system from the current state to a future state in a time lapse of 15, 20 or even 25 years. These theories have to be based on an in-depth knowledge of the current situation and a comprehensive study of the possible evolution of the main system variable. It is known that in some cases one or more scenarios were built to be assessed according to specific procedures. People have often considered useful to verify the degree of feasibility of outlined scenarios through a participatory process. We think it is useful to analyse the features of one meaningful experience implemented in the past years in Jesi AN “Jesi Piano Idea” which developed a scenario based on the analysis of the current situation and predictions of possible developments. Within the process to identify scenarios, assessment is a tool decision-makers have to choose the best strategies that can be developed. On a territorial and urban scale, the multi-criteria analysis allows us to deal with and solve complex and multi-dimensional evaluation issues, where all public and private players have to be taken into consideration. In particular, based on a range of criteria selected by stakeholders as meaningful, these techniques allow the definition of a ranking of possible alternative scenarios and, among these, the identification of the one to develop. The objective of the paper is to check, within the definition of territorial development scenarios, the applicability of the multi-criteria analysis to two different stages: to the definition of evaluation criteria and the identification of the best solution.