Assessing spatial benefits of urban regeneration programs in a highly vulnerable urban context: A case study in Catania, Italy

The relationship between sustainable urban development and environmental sustainability is crucial to every strategy of urban transformation, renewal and regeneration. In particular, urban regeneration entails programmes of urban transformation that involve the rehabilitation of existing parts of a city, reuse previously built-up area and abandoned buildings, and redevelop blighted urban spaces to increase urban sustainability. Few existing studies have evaluated the real environmental outcomes and effectiveness of regeneration programmes in terms of physical variables such as newly provided green spaces, access to public transportation, climate change or seismic-risk reduction. This paper proposes a method for spatially quantifying the benefits of regenerating areas with reference to environmental and urban factors, such as reduction of seismic risk, increase in accessibility and diversity of land use. Each aspect is evaluated by spatial indicators, calculated at different geographical units that steadily increase in size, in order to understand the effects of a single regeneration area and of a number of concurrent areas. The work focuses on the municipality of Catania (Italy), a high-density urban context, with a general lack of green spaces, and high levels seismic risk exposure. Results show that positive benefits can be extended from regeneration areas to contiguous relevant portions of the city, and that even a limited number of regeneration areas can produce relevant benefits. These benefits rely on the combination of characteristics of regeneration areas and urban environments in which they are located, such as population density, presence/accessibility of urban services, and land-use diversity. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.