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Thinking Through Complex Values

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Making Strategies in Spatial Planning

Part of the book series: Urban and Landscape Perspectives ((URBANLAND,volume 9))

Abstract

This chapter explores how ‘thinking through complex values’ can support the structuring of integrated decision-making by orienting it towards the elaboration of strategic goals and actions able to create new values from the plurality of knowledge and the specificity of the context. With its normative, spatial, temporal, cultural, social and cognitive features, the context becomes the frame in which planning responses and behaviours can be shaped.

In its first part, this chapter explores the connection between values, knowledge and strategies, focusing on their interdependencies. The second part of the chapter discusses the role of evaluation within an integrated perspective, which is seen as an ‘opportunity’ to elaborate strategies and ‘organize hopes’ in spatial planning; the integrated perspective considers evaluation as an activity embedded in the planning process and supporting many other activities in that process, each time playing a different role. The third part of the chapter focuses on three case studies, in which the evaluation process was structured in an integrated perspective guided by complex value-focused thinking and based on a ‘combinatorial philosophy’. The three cases represent different attempts to identify complex values as premises for the process at hand and to exploit the plurality and diversity of knowledge in order to identify situated strategies. Finally, this chapter reflects the strengths and weaknesses of integrated approaches and highlights the need to view evaluation and planning as reciprocally embedded, mutually shaping activities.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Grazia Concilio and Valeria Monno, warm friends and generous colleagues: this chapter refers to reflections and comments developed in our collaborative work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Conservation of Architectural and Environmental Heritage, University of Naples Federico II, 80132, Naples, Italy

    Maria Cerreta

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  1. Maria Cerreta
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Correspondence to Maria Cerreta .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dipto. Conservazione dei Beni, Architettonici e Ambientali, Università di Napoli Federico II, Via Roma 402, Napoli, 80132, Italy

    Maria Cerreta

  2. Fac. Architettura, Dipto. Architettura e Pianificazione, Politecnico di Milano, Via Bonardi 3, Milano, 20133, Italy

    Grazia Concilio

  3. , Department of Architecture and Town Plan, Polytechnic of Bari, Via Orabona 4, Bari, 70125, Italy

    Valeria Monno

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Cerreta, M. (2010). Thinking Through Complex Values. In: Cerreta, M., Concilio, G., Monno, V. (eds) Making Strategies in Spatial Planning. Urban and Landscape Perspectives, vol 9. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3106-8_21

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