Assessing urban quality: a proposal for a MCDA evaluation framework

The paper focuses on the assessment of urban design quality and sustainable urban spaces. In particular, the study is concentrated on the evaluation of urban quality provided by a good design of open spaces, including green areas, walkable areas and squares. In fact, despite the advancement of research during the past two decades and empirical evidence about the relationship among quality of life, quality of open spaces and urban sustainability, there is still a lack of studies on urban quality assessment. This paper brings forward a multidimensional methodology for assessing the quality of open spaces. More precisely, the contribution of this research is the proposal of a multidimensional and multi-methodological framework for assigning a numerical score to the quality of open spaces. The Multi-Attribute Value Theory has been used for addressing the problem under investigation with the aim of defining a synthetic index for the measurement of the urban quality of open spaces on the basis of different attributes, namely (a) accessibility; (b) liveability; (c) vitality and (d) identity. The methodology has been applied on a recently renovated district in the city of Milan, Italy. The proposed multi-methodological framework provides a robust basis for running different kind of analysis and for supporting policy and investment decisions both in the private and in the public sector.