Abstract
This Introduction concerns structural physical urban projects specifically focussing on the strategic role of the evaluation in regeneration projects of urban distressed areas. The analysis framework is the Laudato si’ Encyclical concerning the contemporary urban issue and the question of poverty. It fosters the following specific points in facing the urban distressed areas question: the need to integrate the environmental and social issues; the peculiarity of urban decay as a social issue; the interpretation of the city as a common good; and an explicit support to the weakest’s participation in public decision-making. The analysis develops along three main axes: first, the identification of the main cultural, political, economic and social characteristics of present inhabitants of urban distressed areas—in comparison with those living in the rest of the city—underlining their subordinate role. Secondly the acknowledgement of the importance and ambiguity of the physical-environmental transformation projects in these areas (because although they may be useful and well-intentioned, they may seriously harm the weakest inhabitants) with a special attention to the role of the public administration in decision-making related to their governance processes. Finally, it is suggested an increasing attention on these projects evaluation since it is, at the same time, the main instrument to legitimise in front of the public opinion the public administration’s and the market’s transformation projects and, the inhabitants’ fundamental tool to understand, from their point of view, the consequences of the project.
English translation by Marta Berni.
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Notes
- 1.
This displacement is referred to the phenomenon of gentrification.
- 2.
Namely, the quick adaptation processes to the uncontrolled globalization, the semi-permanent states of war in Mediterranean and African basins, the migration flows, the environmental degradation on a planetary scale, the abandonment of welfare, etc.
- 3.
- 4.
Namely, declassed middle classes, the permanently unemployed working class, young people who have no part in the labor market, etc.
- 5.
Namely, immigrants, marginalized people, physical and social deviants, etc.
- 6.
«C’est un garçon sans importance collective, c’est juste un individu» (Celine 1948).
- 7.
This category essentially includes strategic projects directly or indirectly promoted and developed by the State, all the public-private partnership projects in between, variously named in the literature and in the regulations of the European Union and National states (Bult-Spiering et al. 2006).
- 8.
Possible examples are the role of the local public administration as a guarantor of the environmental and urban quality of the project promoted by private investors, or as an arbitrator between the economic interests of the promoters and those of the inhabitants of the suburbs.
- 9.
According to the on line free dictionary, legitimation means “being in accordance with established or accepted rules and standards” or being valid or justifiable (https://www.thefreedictionary.com/legitimation).
- 10.
Possible cases are different kinds of institutional and programmatic compatibility, the impacts on the urban territory and economy, on environmental quality, and on the health of the community, etc.
- 11.
Depending on the importance of the intervention or the fragility of the natural and artificial environment, EIA and SEA may also be carried out, but these must still be considered as exceptional assessments.
- 12.
This means that, as the evaluation is not concerned with the project political content, it can underestimate its social content.
- 13.
As far as costs and results are concerned see Flyvbjerg et al. (2003).
- 14.
In this case, the (legitimation and/or evaluation) standard is a generally valid rule or model even if not necessarily complete and coherent. In fact, the English Oxford living Dictionary on line defines it as “Something used as a measure, norm, or model in comparative evaluations”.
- 15.
In this case, the term “guarantee” means that no social group or urban area are favored.
- 16.
For example, cost-benefit analysis—which, together with environmental and health analyses, is the most used public evaluation technique for urban transformation projects—refers to the citizen as a consumer (Urbinati 2016).
- 17.
It is key to note that, when the public administration defines its own standard of institutional legitimation, it may adopt a “double standard”, that is, it may use different standards in similar situations. For example, it may apply standard of efficiency to locate an incinerator in the outskirt and a standard of health safeguard to close the historic city centre to private cars. The use of a double standard may produce social conflicts if the inhabitant of the periphery feel themselves discriminated.
- 18.
In this regard, Bobbio (1985) highlights how citizens’ incompetence in the face of increasingly complex problems matched with the simultaneous need of specialized skills (accessible only to experts) to evaluating technical solutions is one of the causes of the current crisis in democracy.
- 19.
Obviously, this position raises the question of how to arrive at a common and shared judgment on the project among all the participants in the decision-making process. On this subject see Bentivegna (1997).
- 20.
These points are especially relevant when the objects of the evaluation are “projects with exclusive effects” namely, project aimed to increase the efficiency of the city as a whole, often located in distressed areas due to contingent reasons (low area prices, need for large spaces, high contestation levels, etc.), whose effects strongly conflict with the interests of the inhabitants as they increase the territorial diseconomies of these already structurally fragile areas.
- 21.
On the opposite, insider actors are those who can participate in the process by right or might. They are endowed with some kind of decision power, such as public officials, bureaucrats, policy makers, and, to an extent, professionals involved in the process.
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Bentivegna, V. (2018). The Evaluation of Structural-Physical Projects in Urban Distressed Areas. In: Mondini, G., Fattinnanzi, E., Oppio, A., Bottero, M., Stanghellini, S. (eds) Integrated Evaluation for the Management of Contemporary Cities. SIEV 2016. Green Energy and Technology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78271-3_2
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