Sustainability is an inherent urban and architectural problem. It is simultaneously characterized by many different dimensions, pursuing heterogeneous and often conflicting objectives. To help address these complexities in a structured way, this paper illustrates an integrated assessment framework to tackle social sustainability, in order to support the decision-making process towards sustainable architecture. This integrated decision support framework was applied to a case study concerning a new cultural centre at the Politecnico di Torino in Italy. The aim of this paper is to propose a decision support methodological framework for the analysis, graphical visualization and evaluation of social sustainability of architectural projects. It combines three methods: first, Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats (SWOT) analysis, to get a guided understanding of the project and detect the best design strategies; second, the Stakeholder Analysis (SA), to develop a strategic view of the actors involved; third, the Social Return of the Investment (SROI) as a methodological tool for social impact assessment. This framework, presented through the discussion of some project solutions, helps us to analyse the architectural material effect of social sustainability and answer the question: Are we investing properly and creating spaces sufficiently functional to build better conditions for our community and our city?

Sustainable development of cities constitutes nowadays a worldwide goal. Therefore, the related urban and architectural choices must fulfil sustainable objectives. In this context, sustainability assessment presents itself as a key and fundamental element to guide decision‐making processes, orienting choices towards actions that make the built environment more sustainable. Among the several existing assessment tools and methods, multi‐criteria decision analysis (MCDA) are part of the most widely used approaches to support sustainable decisions. Therefore, this article aims to understand what makes sustainability assessment through MCDA suitable or unsuitable to support decision‐making processes in the context of sustainable urban and architectural design and observe how available MCDA methods support this purpose. To do this, a literature review related to MCDA methods in sustainable urban and architectural context has been performed. Descriptive statistics and tables are provided to point out the main trends according to specific research questions. In this sense, it is intended to highlight some potential gaps and points of reflection for future research developments that can support sustainable urban and architectural development.

This paper explores the enhancement of adaptive reuse (AR) of buildings through the lens of the sustainability protocols within the context of circular economy (CE) in Italy. Cities and the built environment can play a key role in the transition to a CE, especially considering the documented negative global impact due to resource consumption and waste generation. This is recognised among the principles of circularity defined by the European Commission towards a general strategy for a sustainable built environment, which encourages initiatives of building reuse and land consumption reduction. It has been proven that the AR of vacant buildings can bring environmental, social, and economic benefits towards an urban strategy based on CE principles by generating useful values to support innovative development dynamics. In this perspective, the sustainability protocols can be identified as useful tools to pursue strategies for spreading the culture of sustainable build environment. Considering the huge vacant Italian architectural heritage, this paper aims to analyze how the most widely used sustainability protocols in the Italian context currently address the enhancement of the reuse of buildings, to improve environmental, social, and economic quality in the built environment. We discuss the results highlighting how and which sustainability protocols better intercept these issues, providing grounds for future development.

Within a global strategy for the pursuit of Sustainable Development, the governments are responsible for following, developing, and reviewing the 2030 Agenda at global, national, and regional levels. However, it is possible to observe a lack, acknowledged by the scientific debate, of effective implementation of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In this context, the paper intends to contribute to addressing this gap in methodological and operational terms, focusing on SDG11, and more specifically on two of its targets: 11.1 (Affordable Housing) and 11.3 (Inclusive and Sustainable Urbanization). In this sense, the research focuses on cities as crucial points of intervention to tackle global challenges since they represent the places with greatest concentration of population. This paper proposes a new set of indicators for monitoring targets 11.1 and 11.3 of SDG11 capable of supporting public policymakers in observing the Italian territory. More specifically, the research provides: i) the state of the art of the existing indicators of the targets in analysis; ii) the selection criteria and gaps to be considered for reviewing indicators; iii) the modalities of implementation; iv) a new set of indicators to support the development of urban policies.