This paper advocates the need for transformative planning practices to cope with contemporary crises of climate change and intensifying economic inequality that regions, city-regions, and cities are increasingly confronted with. In-depth examination of planning processes is useful to grasp some crucial promises and problems of transformative planning and open up new possibilities for practice. Accordingly, the paper includes an investigation into the Territory-Landscape plan-making process developed in the Apulia region, Italy. This explicitly and intentionally aimed at promoting a radical discontinuity in regional planning culture and practice by changing the well-established relationship between territory-landscape protection and spatial planning. The process revealed that ‘landscape’ could function as a constructive picklock for proposing an alternative to the development-as-growth model firmly entrenched in the region, and envisioning desirable futures focused on the concept of ‘local self-sustainable development’. This implies subverting the hegemony of the ‘economic’ that has reduced dwellers to consumers, and the territory to a mere physical support for any kind of land transformation and urban development which exclude dwellers participation. Using the lens of transformative theory and building on an interpretive research approach that included also direct experience, the paper provides insights on changes in vision and concepts, discourses and practices, approach and instruments experienced in such a planning process. In conclusion, it reflects on lessons learned, and highlights some difficulties and contradictions with which the way towards transformative planning is paved for researchers engaged in turning their ideas into significant achievements in the real world.

Planning systems have changed little from the traditional models of the 1970s. They focus mainly on maintaining the existing social-spatial order rather than challenging and transforming it. This is done through a focus on carefully stage-managed processes with subtly but clearly defined parameters of what is open for debate suspending alternative ways of interpretation. These systems fail to capture the dynamics and tensions of relations coexisting in particular places. We argue for a more imaginative and inclusive strategic spatial planning. Core issues for this strategic planning are: imagination to broaden the scope of the possible, social justice, and legitimacy. In the tradition of empowerment planning, co-production, as a mobilizing practice of collective political organization, is introduced. For us, the emancipatory narrative of co-production fulfills a legitimating function. All this calls for a transformative agenda and must revolve around the construction of great new fictions that create real possibilities for different futures. Our three core issues force planners to extend their thinking into other epistemological worlds.

Nowadays, erosion and flooding risks represent a serious threat to coastal areas and this trend will be worsened due to climate change. The increasing concentration of population in coastal areas has a negative impact on the coastal ecosystem due to change in land use and the exploitation of natural resources, which has also increased exposure to coastal hazards. Risk assessment is hence a primary topic in coastal areas and are often affected by mismanagement and competition of interest between stakeholders. This paper presents an integrated model for coastal risk assessment as well as its application on a test site in the Puglia Region (Southern Italy). An innovative approach has been developed combining a traditional index-based model, exploiting a Drivers-Pressures-State-Impact-Response framework (DPSIR), with stakeholder’s and policy makers’ engagement by using the Future Workshop method and complementary individual working sessions structured through the use of Fuzzy-Cognitive Maps. The study shows that stakeholders’ and policy makers’ risk perception play a key role in coastal risk management and that the integration of physical risk with social perception is relevant to develop more effective management following the basics of Integrated Coastal Zone Management.

This study focused on implementation of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11 indicators, at local scale, useful in monitoring urban social resilience. For this purpose, the study focused on updating the distribution map of the migrant population regularly residing in Bari and a neighboring town in Southern Italy. The area is exposed to increasing migration fluxes. The method implemented was based on the integration of Sentinel-2 imagery and updated census information dated 1 January 2019. The study explored a vector-based variant of the dasymetric mapping approach previously used by the Joint Research Center (JRC) within the Data for Integration initiative (D4I). The dasymetric variant implemented can disaggregate data from census areas into a uniform spatial grid by preserving the information complexity of each output grid cell and ensure lower computational costs. The spatial distribution map of regular migrant population obtained, along with other updated ancillary data, were used to quantify, at local level, SDG 11 indicators. In particular, the map of regular migrant population living in inadequate housing (SDG 11.1.1) and the ratio of land consumption rate to regular migrant population growth rate (SDG 11.3.1) were implemented as specific categories of SDG 11 in 2018. At the local level, the regular migrant population density map and the SDG 11 indicator values were provided for each 100 × 100 m cell of an output grid. Obtained for 2018, the spatial distribution map revealed in Bari a high increase of regular migrant population in the same two zones of the city already evidenced in 2011. These zones are located in central parts of the city characterized by urban decay and abandoned buildings. In all remaining city zones, only a slight generalized increase was evidenced. Thus, these findings stress the need for adequate policies to reduce the ongoing process of residential urban segregation. The total of disaggregated values of migrant population evidenced an increase of 44.5% in regular migrant population. The indicators obtained could support urban planners and decision makers not only in the increasing migration pressure management, but also in the local level monitoring of Agenda 2030 progress related to SDG 11.

Local and Regional Authorities require indicators at the intra-urban scale to design adequate policies to foster the achievement of the objectives of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11. Updated high-resolution population density and settlement maps are the basic input products for such indicators and their sub-indicators. When provided at the intra-urban scale, these essential variables can facilitate the extraction of population flows, including both local and regular migrant components. This paper discusses a modification of the dasymetric method implemented in our previous work, aimed at improving the population density estimation. The novelties of our paper include the introduction of building height information and site-specific weight values for population density correction. Based on the proposed improvements, selected indicators/sub-indicators of four SDG 11 targets were updated or newly implemented. The output density map error values are provided in terms of the mean absolute error, root mean square error and mean absolute percentage indicators. The values obtained (i.e., 2.3 and 4.1 people, and 8.6%, respectively) were lower than those of the previous dasymetric method. The findings suggest that the new methodology can provide updated information about population fluxes and processes occurring over the period 2011–2020 in the study site—Bari city in southern Italy.