Planning with PlaceMaker: complex indices for sustainable projects

Questions connected to urban analysis study aspects that are not univocally translatable into objective facts with particular regard to three issues: the scientificity, and so the objectivity of the results, and the repeatability of the method in different contexts; the updating capability, and so the possibility of adding new data, to modify the existing data and to obtain other results; the times, and so the sustainable possibility of using the results with respect to the evolution of a sustainable programming and town planning process. To answer these questions the method of analysis called PlaceMaker and the associated software, actually under development, have the following main characteristics: flexibility, facility and rapidity of use, a strong graphical impact, and indexing of the results. PlaceMaker is a method for analysing the contemporary urban landscape that is designed to identify the elements that do not feature in traditional mapping and which constitute the contemporary identity of the places, representing them in a complex map that renders those places intelligible. 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 construction of complex indices starting from data and symbols related to the place-identity. In order to support the study and the project of the sustainable urban landscapes, the symbols created for the elaboration of the complex map, the final result of the analysis, are translated by the PlaceMaker software into numerical indices. Owing to these characteristics, the prime users of PlaceMaker are urban planners, administrators, citizens and all people involved in construction of a sustainable city. To complete the work suitable case studies are presented.