A paradigm interpreting the city and the analytic network process for the management of urban transformations

When urban and environmental transformations occur in areas where the equilibrium between nature and culture is complex and fragile, public administrations could decide to induce private investments using several tools, such as financial contributions to those projects of refurbishment that better respect the purpose of improving the environmental quality and of preserving the local architecture. Multicriteria models may support public decision process regarding this issue, but it is essential to adopt a scientific paradigm that provides a major theoretical reference. This study proposes the development of a network model based on the scientific paradigm by Rizzo and the Analytic Network Process. The first one has been chosen because of its interpretation of the city as autopoietic organization, dissipative structure and political-administrative system, the second one because of its holistic representation of the decision problem in which the interactions between all the elements are made explicit. The network model has been applied to a case study that consists in ranking some alternative refurbishments of buildings in Favignana (Egadi islands, Italy) in order to grant public financial contributions.