Public Participation GIS for re-development support in European Historic City Centres

Many European towns and Cities have ancient origin and their historic centres may be considered important resources to be preserved. They store European Cultural Heritage in their high artistic and historic valuable assets and local identities they represent. A knowledge -based creative approach is required to foster re-development actions capable to enhance quality of life and to stem strong pressure of globalisation forces. Developments in ICT (Information Communication Technologies) and the change towards a European new economy in the last decade has given favourable ground for the rapid growth of a new Information Society within which new forms of democracy started to take place. European Institution foster the implementation of new form of e-government according to principles of subsidiarity, transparency and public participation. Recent research trends find interesting issues for further development in the access of public information and in the development of online public participation processes in spatial planning and decision-making. In this case Information is characterised by a strong relevance of the spatial dimension. Nowadays IT offers a wide range of tools for online Geographic Information (GI) management. Different client-server architectures allow design and development of online-GIS suitable for specialist and the wider lay-public. In this way it is possible to offer user-friendly Information to stakeholders with different technical background and different interests. However, in the study of these innovative process doubts and questions rise due to socio-cultural conditions rather than technology. In the light of these considerations the authors aim to discuss some methodological issues about online GIS design for historic city centres re-development planning and management support. The City of Cagliari, Italy case study is presented and some general issues for further research development are proposed. 1. SOME ISSUES ON HISTORIC CENTRES RE-DEVELOPMENT Nowadays in Europe some 80% of the population live in town and cities. In these urban areas many centres shows serious symptoms of physical and social degradation. In the last decades after the slowing down of centrifugal urban sprawls, exploded during the PostWWII, many European town and cities faced a renewed interest for their historic centres. Upper class residence, commercial business, services still find in the historic centres preference for locational choices. Actions urge to adapt the ancient urban fabric of historic centres to actual need and quality of life standards. The need of urban renewal demanded by the historic centres redevelopment process has to be paralleled by social and economic revitalization. Moreover we should conceive re-development process as physical as well as social in order to augment quality of life and to preserve local identities, which are a relevant part of the European Cultural Heritage and contribute themselves to quality of life enhancement. In Europe often settlement birth dates back to roman and even pre-roman origins; it means that many actual town and cities have evolved slowly trough time till the recent fast acceleration. Monuments, archaeological assets, history, urban fabric, as well as community’s lifestyles are only few of the factors we should take into account when planning into the historic centres. Which approach should we use in planning and governing historic centres re-development? Conservation or transformation? Is there any universal recipe for better act? European Spatial Development Perspectives (Commission of the European Communities, 1999) suggests only a minor part of assets worth to be preserved according to protection measures, while the rest may be transformed according to a creative approach. After the urgent evaluation of risk factors and the management of critical situation we should propose a creative approach bearing in mind that spatial development influence Cultural Heritage transmission to future generations. Whatever might be the approach, re-development process should be based on a deep knowledge and understanding of the urban environment from the socio-cultural, economic, physical and legal points of view, which actions have to be coherent with. In this framework Information and Communication Technologies (ITC) may offer an operational and strategic support in knowledge-base construction and management for the re-development process. To this end Multimedia Geographic Information Systems can be implemented in a networked environment in order to support analytic and negotiative phases of planning and decision-making. While every planning process involves a set of stakeholders, which have different interests and background, which have to negotiate alternative solutions, the historic centres re-development often demands the dwellers direct intervention in order to perform the actions. Effective combination of tools and techniques can be used aiming at closing the “gap of understanding” between technical specialists and all the other re-development actors.