PlaceMaker: supporting sustainable urban planning

The mutations in interpersonal relationships and intergenerational gaps, with the ensuing new demands, technological development, mass migrations and globalisation, have transformed the spaces in the urban landscape; new types of place have arisen and the use made of existing spaces has been modified. Recognising the value of a place as a fundamental component in urban identity serves as a reference point both in terms of the wishes of the collectivity and in safeguarding and constructing the sustainable urban image. Traditional cartography proves unable to identify and represent the complex contemporary place-identity; researchers have therefore imported from other disciplines ways to see, explain and represent urban complexity, constructing specific methods of transversal, multilevel decodification and analysis and testing new maps, multimedia images, hypertext and software. Mapping involves six main categories, featuring virtual, lateral, nomadic, multiscale, configurational and complex-sensitive approaches: these approaches are not separate entities but intersect at several points, revealing the main elements characterising contemporary urban identity. Starting from these premises, the aim of this work, carried out in the framework of a Convention between Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche and Dipartimento di Progettazione Urbana Università di Napoli Federico II, is to investigate the new methodological approaches and tools for analysing the urban area and landscape and propose the analytical method PlaceMaker as part of a complex-sensitive approach. Furthermore we shall illustrate the software currently being developed for use with the PlaceMaker method and some significant experiments already carried out in order to demonstrate its potential.