The city-port context involves a decisive reality for the economic development of territories and nations, capable of significantly influencing the conditions of well-being and quality of life, and of making the Circular City Model (CCM) operational, preserving and enhancing seas and marine resources in a sustainable way. This can be achieved through the construction of appropriate production and consumption models, with attention to relations with the urban and territorial system. This paper presents an adaptive decision-making process for Naples (Italy) commercial port’s development strategies, aimed at re-establishing a sustainable city-port relationship and making Circular Economy (CE) principles operative. The approach has aimed at implementing a CCM by operationalizing European recommendations provided within both the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) framework—specifically focusing on goals 9, 11 and 12—and the Maritime Spatial Planning European Directive 2014/89, to face conflicts about the overlapping areas of the city-port through multidimensional evaluations’ principles and tools. In this perspective, a four-step methodological framework has been structured applying a place-based approach with mixed evaluation methods, eliciting soft and hard knowledge domains, which have been expressed and assessed by a core set of Sustainability Indicators (SI), linked to SDGs. The contribution outcomes have been centred on the assessment of three design alternatives for the East Naples port and the development of a hybrid regeneration scenario consistent with CE and sustainability principles. The structured decision-making process has allowed us to test how an adaptive approach can expand the knowledge base underpinning policy design and decisions to achieve better outcomes and cultivate a broad civic and technical engagement, that can enhance the legitimacy and transparency of policies.

The Faro Convention introduces an innovative concept of cultural heritage by recognising the importance of the community that is formed around the cultural asset to be enhanced. This concept is consistent with the New European Agenda for Culture, especially the European Year Cultural Heritage (EYCH) Initiative 9 “Heritage for all: citizen participation and social innovation”, that promotes a broader understanding of heritage, placing people and communities at the centre and involving them in making decisions about heritage valorisation. The cultural heritage acquires the meaning of common good and has been configured as “cultural commons”, expression of values shared by the heritage community and of the process activated to enhance it. In this perspective, the paper presents a proposal for the integration of the evaluation process identified by the Faro Convention, explaining the appropriate indicators useful for analysing the specificity of the valorisation processes and making them comparable. The methodological proposal was tested for the experience of the Friends of Molo San Vincenzo Heritage Community, activated in Naples, Italy.

The concept of risk has become increasingly complex, and has been used not only in relation to the natural features of a region, but also to its socio-economic context. In this conceptualization, the latter directly influences the capacity of a community to cope with, recover from, and adapt to natural hazards. Conceiving vulnerability as a measure of a socio-ecological system’s resilience, and at the same time, as a multidimensional variable that changes in space and time, makes the study of the different ways in which natural hazards impact on society all the more urgent. This is particularly true for developing countries, where risk related to natural hazards affects populations and areas that must deal with stress conditions, such as humanitarian, social and military emergencies. This article presents a methodology for the analysis of social vulnerability, defined and experimented in the context of the international cooperation project “Estudio de la amenaza sísmica y vulnerabilidad física del Gran Santo Domingo”. The methodology, implemented through the employment of a Geographic Information System, led to the elaboration of a “Social Vulnerability Index” and a “Social Vulnerability Map”. These seek to describe the current condition of vulnerability of the city of Santo Domingo de Guzmán (Distrito Nacional) in the Dominican Republic (DR), and are used to define context-related vulnerability scenarios, as well as to indicate the adequate set of mitigation objectives and actions. The results highlight the importance of using social vulnerability study as the point of departure for defining seismic-risk mitigation policies, emergency management, and territorial planning in order to reduce the impacts of disasters.

Port–city ecosystems face pressing challenges, such as land regeneration and environmental conservation, while striving to foster conscientious governance models among stakeholders. An innovative solution to address these issues lies in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), acknowledged by sustainability frameworks as essential for sustainable urban development. Although ICT is regularly employed by ports for logistics and traffic management, its untapped potential for urban planning is substantial. Starting from studies conducted on port planning and management and the use of ICT as a decision support system, this research seeks to explore the feasibility of devising an innovative model to facilitate deliberative decision-making for the regeneration of port–city interaction areas. This study adopts the InterACT approach to support planning efforts by constructing an open and implementable Geographic Information System (GIS). This approach has been tested on the Port of Naples in Italy to provide the Port System Authority (AdSP) of the Central Tyrrhenian Sea with strategic guidance as part of their efforts to draft a new Port Master Plan. The initial achievements encompass the establishment of an operational database to facilitate stakeholders within the Port, in conjunction with the implementation of a deliberative decision-making process enriched by ICT. Additionally, a tool was devised to seamlessly combine visualization and spatial data integration, thus fostering engagement and collaboration between port and urban stakeholders.

The city-port involves a decisive reality for the economic development of the territories and nations, capable of significantly influencing the conditions of well-being and quality of life, and of making the Circular City Model operational, preserving and enhancing seas and marine resources in a sustainable way, through the construction of appropriate production and consumption models, with attention to relations with the urban and territorial system. The Circular Economy paradigm identifies the ideal context in the city-port to rethink traditional development models and make ports driver areas for the regeneration of the city and metropolitan territories, in compliance with the EU Directive 2014/89 which considers maritime spatial planning as a tool for public authorities and stakeholders to achieve an integrated approach, promoting the development of maritime and coastal economies and the sustainable use of resources. The paper, starting from these assumptions, presents an adaptive decision-making process for the strategies development of the Naples (Italy) commercial port, aimed at re-establishing a sustainable city-port relationship and making operative Circular Economy principles.

According to the current European and Italian scenario related to urban regeneration, cultural and landscape heritage valorization is being enhanced by the activation of innovative processes and new emerging approaches. These involve the development of methodologies and tools that can address decision-making processes based on creative practices consistent with a concept named “low-entropy economy” in this paper. The low-entropy economy represents an economic approach based on the minimization of physical urban transformation and the enhancement of the existing heritage. In this perspective, the research aims to develop the Cultural Heritage Low Entropy Enhancement (CHLEE) approach by exploring how some frugal experiences have promoted cultural heritage enhancement and related complex values through a program of temporary uses and activities able to produce new values, where the human experience is essential. A crucial role is represented by the heterogeneity of creative practices that contribute to identifying and implementing innovative management and governance models. The analysis of creative practices, based upon the ex post evaluation of some Italian case studies across the PROMETHEE-GAIA multicriteria method, is able to show how these experiences build innovation ecosystems and improve the ex ante evaluation for new strategies and policies, underlining strengths, weaknesses, and milestones that shape creative experiences as drivers of urban competitiveness.