Building sustainable futures for post-industrial regeneration: the Case of Taranto, Italy

In Italy, planning processes are often introduced by a Program of strategic objectives, drawn up in conjunction with the initial phases of a Strategic environmental assessment. This combination of preliminary processes offers significant space for strategic approaches and even strategic plans, particularly at the local level. This paper deals with Taranto, a socially and environmentally problematic and decaying industrial city in southern Italy. The present research shows and discusses the starting context of a recent, innovative strategic planning process, dealing with the complexity of the Taranto context through a scenario-building approach, hybridized with a cognitive-map-based interaction model.