Planning Sustainable and Resilient Cities: The Role of Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA)

Before being implemented, urban plans must pass an impact assessment to verify the effective support of the program for the sustainable development of a territory from an environmental point of view. In this domain, the contribution of Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) in supporting sustainable and resilient planning processes is crucial. However, in urban and neighborhood contexts, where different forces and entities influence the decision-making process, it is essential to add social, economic and environmental aspects to the sustainability assessment. This chapter explores the role of several evaluation tools that can consider different and innovative assessment dimensions and issues related to the urban planning field. This analysis concerns the case of the revision of the Municipal Plan of the City of Turin to contribute to testing protocols for the sustainability of the Plan, tools to analyze and evaluate urban resilience, and procedures to estimate Ecosystem Services (ES). According to the point of view of the governance of urban transformations, the final result of this preliminary research concerns the illustration of the role of assessment tools to measure urban sustainability to respect the environment, promote public health and well-being of citizens, and enhance economic productivity.