New Paradigms for City Management and Planning. From Open Data Knowledge Sharing Platforms to e-Participation in Italy

For several years, society has been transforming itself into a virtual society, at different intensities and speeds. The health emergency we are experiencing has accelerated this change also in the Public Administration, one of the contexts that have always presented major challenges in the field of digitalization, but which can benefit more from it in terms of simplification and transparency of processes. The intrinsic capacity of the virtual society, to be detached from spatial constraints in the construction of knowledge and the capacity for renewal, assumes a central role in solving problems due to the coexistence of interests and positions of even extremely different nature (different stakeholders). One of the areas that could benefit from a digital transition is planning, specifically concerning participatory processes. Recalling one of the principles of the Charter of Public Space, according to which the design of public space should involve, through participatory processes, every single citizen, it is useful to consider that the wider the perimeter of participation, the wider the possibility of obtaining indications that are genuinely shared within civil society. The adoption of ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) in urban planning and transformation processes refers to the so-called e-planning, a new discipline that consists of different information systems to facilitate planning activities by improving accessibility and information, guidance and services related to planning (Chen et al. in Handbook of research on e-planning: ICTs for urban development and monitoring. IGI Global, 2010). This innovative way of planning can also allow the achievement of a greater number of city-users, building an in-depth knowledge of the territory both from an objective technical point of view, through the mapping of spaces and their technical characteristics (through BIM and GIS technologies) and through participatory processes, which can define a pattern of the needs of all subjects which insist on the territory, optimizing the definition of hypothetical scenarios. The research is proposed as a moment of advancement in disciplinary practices aimed at experiencing new frontiers of participatory planning. The use of ICT tools, whose operational impacts integrate and improve current and future scenarios, allows verifying an operational model that, through the interaction and interoperability between the different actors, can manage the uses and transformations of the territory in the process of urban regeneration.