New Governance through digital platforms and the Old Urban 2 Planning process in Italy

Current acceleration in digital innovations, unexpected challenges in our social interac9 tions, acceleration to virtualization, limitation in our physical spaces, and unpredictable changes in 10 our Old lifestyles as originated from the COVID-19 global pandemic 2020 continue to provide us 11 with a framework, rapidly updating under our eyes, of the modifications our world is undergoing 12 by pursuing into a New “digital age”. Or, as many scholars say nowadays, into the New Normal! 13 These are shared and deep changes that concretely stress their effects on how ideally a city should 14 function. Forcing us to reflect on the capability to achieve shared choices and visions for the future 15 by taking vantage from both the New digital platforms and New suddenly opened paths. 16 In the pages of this article authors, through different but shared viewpoints, propose an answer to 17 the topic of "Governance 3.0", addressing the attempt of a radical change of those paradigms, now 18 consolidated, within which the spatial dimensions, in which we live and act, are shaped. Also ana19 lyzing the relationship between Technocracy and Democracy as defined by Khanna, it is argued 20 that it is possible to realize new forecasts and acquire a more democratic and participatory (inclu21 sive) dimension of Governance, also thanks to new digital technologies, by exploring the general 22 unconscious "feeling" of people, through anonymous data collection and without any direct or in23 direct interference with it. The analysis of the "Sentiment", already developed in other fields but 24 easily exportable within the urban discipline, can be considered as the beginning of hybrid practices 25 where digital and analogic find a compromise to make the "Urbs" more attractive and inclusive, 26 while the "Civitas", connected to the Internet, can contribute to the optimization of services, of the 27 "Polis" and a new social/spatial reorganization. 28


Introduction
The development of digital technologies applied to urban planning can contribute to 51 modify the usage patterns of the city and the governance processes of urbanized territo-52 ries, whereas the spatial effects on planning are still mainly linked to analogical instru-53 ments and physical processes. Furthermore, the reduction of both distance and time nec-54 essary to evaluate the effects of the applied digital practices stand in contrast to the de-55 crease of time and the spaces dedicated to physical encounters, such as they have been 56 reshaped for more than one year, due to the global post-emergency condition and its cur-57 rent related pandemic urban effects. Indeed, whether on one side we are experiencing 58 those set of not-medical answers as expressed in the social and spatial limitations; on the 59 other hand, new -or refurbished-Digital Platforms have hugely accelerated and expanded 60 our social and spatial virtualization by amplifying the networks of our relationships (any 61 kind of them) thanks to the given answers and the "usual" availability and spreading of 62 devices and sensors. In other words, new data fluxes are adding to the traditional analog-63 ical fluxes of both people and goods, and both fluxes together made more complex the 64 current framework of understanding the urban organization and management. This 65 thanks also to the establishment of new digital practices which attempt is to go beyond 66 the reductive sensory system approach (quantitative path) in search of a more humanized 67 interpretation (qualitative path). Also considering that technologies (in particular, the dig-68 ital ones) may generate futures with no roots -where upgrading technical implementa-69 tions produce heaps of undeletable rising residues which hide the past [1]-one might feel 70 the threat of an overly technical approach, even more, when it extends its inherent neces-71 sity in the planning of its obsolescence to the city and the society [2]. Without falling back 72 to the Luddite radicalism i [3][4], the extension of digital technology, even in the city plan-73 ning field, are renovating twentieth-century anxieties, especially when it threatens in im-74 posing a total control of functional data produced by the society and the individuals. The 75 hypermnesic intent of leaving nothing out and of memorizing everything reminds us 76 Funes, the known Borges' character, whose unsustainable precise memory, intended as 77 vaster waste storage [5], is being dangerously updated by the global digitalization, which 78 is giving an economic value to data through the neo-liberal big data concentration [6]. 79 Besides, the evolution, the free availability and spread of "personal sensors" technology 80 introduces new enforceable areas associating themselves with the human in its physicality 81 [7]. In this way, relational possibilities expand, as anticipated in the visionary drifts on 82 post-human singularities [8] and faced nowadays through current due-to-pandemic ex-83 perience but risking becoming foreshadowed in "replacement mode" of reality [9]. 84 This is, therefore, a direction in new issues scientific exploration that put a strain on 85 the closer relationship between technological innovation and development, which allows 86 to re-modulate building and urban cycles through continuous relationships updating and 87  Then, digital city-management through the interconnection of instruments (personal 93 devices, sensors, apps, interfaces, platforms), as well as of objectives and actions promoted 94 by the public and private bodies (companies, communities, individuals) can really help to 95 i The Luddites were a secret oath-based organization of English textile workers in the 19th century, a radical faction which destroyed textile machinery as a form of protest. The group are believed to have taken their name from Ned Ludd, a weaver from Anstey, near Leicester. They protested manufacturers who used machines in what they called "a fraudulent and deceitful manner" to get around human standard labor practices. find new competitive advantages by pursuing processes of systematization of knowledge 96 strictly connected to the city managers policies [13]. 97 By summarizing, digital technologies are redesigning new conceptual keys in which 98 the traditional static language of old urban planning tools can offer the "hook" to current 99 contemporaneity through the increase in the use and the huge spreading of new interfaces 100 geo-data. This may allow new objective predictions and analysis also thanks to continu-101 ous circular verification of knowledge as applied by exploring the general unconscious 102 "sentiment" of people, through the anonymous data-collection and without any direct in-103 terference with it. Even if the efficiency and effectiveness of such innovation have to be 104 weighed against ethical, legislative, legal, and procedural burdens yet. 105 Therefore, the "sentiment" analysis, already developed into other field but easily ex-106 portable within the urban discipline [14], it may be considered as the onset of hybrid prac-107 tices where the digital and the analogical find a compromise to make the "urbs" more at-108 tractive and inclusive, while the "civitas", connected to the Internet, can contribute to op-109 timizing the services, of the "polis" and to a new social/spatial re-organization. Aristotle's 110 thought, according to whom the city is a political thought translated in spaces, is thus 111 actualized by considering that the contemporary city is still currently a "scattered totality" 112 [15] but nowadays held together by the sudden digital acceleration post-2020 effects. 113

114
The development of digital technologies applied to urban planning can contribute to 115 changing the use models of the city and the governance processes of urbanized territories: 116 the "smart city" directs investments in both tangible and intangible communication infra-117 structures, concerning the human and social capital, to achieve a better quality of life and 118 long-term sustainability in urban development. The goal of a new urban construction pro-119 cess of urban space could be also expanded to include more demanding objectives such 120 as better relationships among decision-makers and citizens with a reference to "democ-121 racy, technology, technocracy". The keywords' debates have to be directed towards re-122 searches that identifies the actual relations that still exist among them because none of 123 them remotely could be able to control a sustainable urban development and a coherent 124 definition of the urban spaces with the desired quality of level of life. 125 Parag Khanna [28] in his recent text "Technocracy in America" said that technocracy 126 is the keyword, which instantly explicates the novelty of the topic about the governance 127 of cities, in the USA. The author analyses various forms of governance (representative 128 democracy, direct or not, ideological leadership, dictatorships, technocracy, etc.) and ar-129 gues that a technocratic government should be based on an experts' analysis and long-130 term planning, rather than on typical improvisations of populism. He emphasizes that, 131 often, forms of government based on representation prevail over the ones based on the 132 administration of public affairs, which could quickly meet the necessary services to citi-133 zens using certain data. In this way, he argues the necessity to give the same weight to 134 "figures and democracy". Governments should respond to the needs of citizens effec-135 tively, with long-term scenarios, bringing together democratic inclusiveness and "techno-136 cratic" efficiency.

137
In Western democracies, the phenomenon of urban governance has always been ac-138 companied by numerous analyses and by the collection of city and territorial data, 139 scarcely used in actual realizations. Firstly, ruling classes are less prepared and willing to 140 change their decision-making behaviour and therefore rely on traditional applications 141 that guarantee more profitable mediation among political parties. Without a democratic 142 profile in the process, smart city both planning and design can be invalid. The meaning of 143 cities through increasing forms of urban efficiency and human capital is no longer 144 sufficient to clarify the deeper meaning of democracy. "Digital transformation as an eco-145 system… it cannot be done, harbinger if not governed, of… terrible discrimination…. of 146 great violation of rights… divesting monopolies…" [29]. 148 The objective of the research, the results of which are described in this article, is 149 linked to the profound revision of the plan-forming process, even to mediate the opposi-150 tion of the interested actors. 151 The projects that make substantial changes to the spatial planning are more likely to 152 encounter opposition from stakeholders in local communities; therefore, they risk extend-153 ing the implementation time excessively, to the point of running the risk of having an old 154 project being implemented for both the technology used and, even worse, no longer 155 matching the needs of the territory. 156 The methodology proposed in this study intends to intervene directly in the phase of 157 identifying the development strategies for the city and, therefore, on the relief of the needs 158 of the community and of its territory. 159 In particular, the study proposes the adoption of the "Sentiment Analysis" tool to 160 innovate the planning process. 161 The adoption of the Sentiment Analysis, never tried before in the urban planning 162 field, could guarantee the identification of the real needs of the local communities up-163 stream and, therefore, the success of the intervention. 164 The term Sentiment Analysis (SA) indicates the process of surveying the opinions of 165 users, on specifically selected topics, directly from a large amount of data already availa-166 ble on the web. The idea is to use the vast amount of data found on blogs and social media 167 -especially Facebook and Twitter -to analyze feelings (i.e., people's moods) on any chosen 168 topic. It is therefore a system capable of managing, interpreting and synthesizing every-169 thing that is expressed on the net, thanks to a "logarithm". When we talk about urban planning, in Italy, we still think of the "General city Plan" 173 (acronym: PRG) so as if the physical, immaterial, and virtual transformations of the terri-174 tory were governable, still exclusively, through conventional analogical land-use plan-175 ning, that legacy of those -controversial but the winner -modern movement's principles 176 and ideas of the city [16]. In its original purpose, urban planning was not only the practice 177 of regulating land use but a vaster set of practices: those of continuous and conscious 178 change in the state of both the land and the city [17]. These practices are implemented, 179 with different degrees of awareness, by different urban actors; among others: the politi-180 cians, the individual citizens, the city managers, the representatives of civil society, the 181 economic actors, both the formal and informal groups of interest, concerning some gen-182 eral or niche topics, etc. 183 The complexity of social systems has accentuated the interdependence of local actors 184 and weakened the representation of parties and trade unions, while direct forms of social 185 representation have been strengthened, such as neighbourhood committees, environmen-186 tal movements, consumer groups, youth movements, non-governmental organizations, 187 third sector producers and others that pursue specific objectives that aim to influence ter-188 ritorial government policies. The participatory urban planning implies that local institu-189 tions are oriented towards a new concept of territorial governance that tends to involve 190 all the actors (governance) following an open, adaptive, and reversible system model. At 191 the traditional venues of the elected as municipal, regional and district councils, formal 192 and informal forums for comparison and orientation can be added, such as social 193 roundtables, neighbourhood laboratories, direction boards, strategic plans, which aim to 194 directly compare the territorial interests at stake, subsequently delegating to representa-195 tive democracy the task of acknowledging or rejecting the indications taken (bottom-up 196 approach). Since the 1990s, many of the European cities have bet on shared planning, shifting 199 the attention towards the art of listening [18] the different urban actors involved: "Urban 200 planning thus becomes an important opportunity to publicly discuss the political choices" 201 [19]. The question that urban designers and city administrators have been asking them-202 selves, in an increasingly pressing way in recent years, is whether spatial planning and 203 urban governance can be participated in, and how. 204 Spatial planning and territorial governance would represent an opportunity for a 205 cultural, and not just political and economic, debate on the future vision of the city and its 206 territory. Formally, in Italy, most of the codified spatial design procedures guarantee citi-207 zens the possibility of presenting post-observations about the undergoing plan, but almost 208 always in the last phase following the drafting of the final project. It is therefore a form of 209 closing consultation, after the identification of both the plan's guidelines and even the 210 drafting of the same plan. Without prejudice to the guaranteed footstep in terms of citi-211 zens' rights, the most enlightened administrations have often noticed those limits of the 212 normative process in the level of effective involvement of the "last users" of any urban 213 transformations, sometimes by experimenting, with spontaneity and self-regulation, 214 adaptive forms of deliberative participation at the city scale. 215 Although most of the European practices -labelled as pioneering cases in terms of 216 effective participation in the transformations of the city by citizens -are very different 217 from the standard procedures envisaged in Italy by the conventional urban instrument, 218 the PRG; the point should be emphasized that the participatory approach to governance 219 can also be expressed within most of the current regions' legislative frameworks. Indeed, 220 the current model of participation in urban and territorial planning has progressively 221 shifted over the last twenty years from representative democracy to deliberative democ-222 racy. 223 In western contemporary democracies, a limited but growing number of public 224 choices is made through processes that show remarkable similarities to the ideal situation, 225 such as described by the theorists of deliberative democracy. To refer to these practices, 226 terms such as «concertation», «partnership», «participation», «consultation», «govern-227 ance» are usually used. 228 This is a normative model, proposed by political philosophers, which sets out the 229 conditions that must be met for a "good" democratic process to take place.

230
The conditions are essentially two: the first is that all those involved in the conse-231 quences of the decision might take part on an equal footing; the second is that the interac-232 tion between the participants might be based on comparing impartial topics. 233 Institutions can approach deliberative participation essentially in two ways: the first 234 is to release a real proxy, leaving the solution of the problem/s to the direct negotiation 235 between the subjects involved and resuming, in some ways, the options that will arise 236 from this comparison; the second is to attribute a purely advisory value to the results of 237 the comparison, by reserving the last word, but by binding it, in some way, "dangerously" 238 to those results.  At this point one might ask why institutions give up, partially or temporarily, to re-242 solve the issue according to the canonical procedures, choosing to play the role of promot-243 ers of a confrontation and guarantors of its correctness. This happens when they under-244 stand that they do not have enough strength or legitimacy to resolve and to manage the 245 dispute, or to find a satisfactory mediation for all the parties. When they fear, that is, they 246 are unable to find favour by some social groups and in any case when they intend to man-247 age or prevent conflicts. 248 Other forms of participation, consolidated in practice, are those that aim to find ideas 249 and suggestions from those directly involved, obtaining the non-secondary effect of the 250 empowerment of local actors, fundamental to build a common strategic horizon and to 251 engage all actors in the final success of objectives. 252 These forms of local concertation have become widespread over the last twenty 253 years, especially in Italy, with the "Patti Territoriali", the strategic planning and partici-254 patory urban planning. 255 In these cases, the involvement of a plurality of actors in the definition of plans, pro-256 grams or projects, also derives from the need to establish integrated policies -i.e.: to tackle 257 complex problems -from multiple points of view at the same time, overcoming the sepa-258 ration between disciplines or between administrative sectors. The model of deliberative 259 democracy is essentially based on two crucial aspects that determine, depending on how 260 they are interpreted in practice, the full success of the model: inclusion and deliberation. . But how can this 264 noble prescription really be put into practice? Perhaps because a complete application is 265 impossible in practice and probably neither desirable ii ; but it is not impossible to imagine 266 approaching it with some grades of approximation. 267 Based on the analysed experiences, inclusion is not presented primarily as a demo-268 cratic value, rather as a guarantee of legitimacy and effectiveness. The principle of inclu-269 sion can be guaranteed through two different methods: by drawing lots or by involving 270 stakeholders. The first methodology aims to make plain citizens discuss specific issues of 271 public interest, offering them the opportunity to meet with experts. Sometimes the objec-272 tive is simply to detect the opinions of the participants and to show how they have 273 changed during the deliberative process; this is the case of deliberative opinion polls pro-274 posed and implemented by James Fishkin (1991Fishkin ( , 1997 [21] iii . The advantages of this tech-275 nique are that it is not discretionary, it allows the participation of those who have not yet 276 developed an idea on the subject in question and therefore can start profitable and open 277 dialogic processes. 278 On the other hand, however, this formula, although it manages to guarantee the dis-279 tribution of preferences in the population, does not represent its intensity and could even 280 exclude the most extreme points iv . Finally, on a statistical level, the sample used (usually 281 15 to 20 people) cannot be representative. 282 The second methodology v consists of constituting an assembly composed of repre-283 sentatives of the main points of view. 284 In this technique, even the most extreme positions, which can be compared with the 285 opposite ones, can find a place. In these cases, the dialogue could not succeed but, a solu-286 tion reached in such conditions would be endowed with a very strong legitimacy. For 287 example, the "Patti Territoriali" are often accompanied by "territorial animation" activi-288 ties from which they try to understand which local users can be involved in the consulta-289 tion. Strategic plans are often preceded by various types of diagnostic investigations, 290

The central issues of innovation
ii Because an overcrowding may compromise the quality of the resolution. aimed at ascertaining the nature of the problems and the identity of the possible partici-291 pants. Urban redevelopment projects begin to take shape, mostly through research-listen-292 ing surveys managed through different techniques that focus on the themes and users 293 with which to work [22]. 294 But also, the active research of the participants can, in turn, not be enough, because 295 there may be interests that have no chance of making their voice heard anyway. It is above 296 all the case of the concern of future generations, which however should be considered in 297 any project that has environmental implications, or almost all.

299
According to theories of deliberative democracy, a decision is legitimate if it is the 300 result of "a dialogic process in which the participants compare their reasons in order to 301 resolve problematic situations" [23], this type of technique in Italy is called concertation. 302 The consultation tool is used, for example, for the definition of a plan vi . However, this is 303 not an aggregation process; the use of majority voting is the point of failure of the tech-304 nique. In these cases, they prefer to deal with it to reach a shared solution vii . In some areas, 305 rather than arriving at the vote, one even prefers to dissolve the table. 306 "Negotiate and argue" [24] are two distinct processes on the analytical level. In ne-307 gotiation, the parties tend not to need to justify their positions, rather they try to imple-308 ment a "balance of their interests" and to give life to a compromise. In the deliberations, 309 the parties reach instead to a "rationally reasoned consent". The negotiated agreement (or 310 compromise) is accepted by the parties for respectively different reasons. The agreement 311 that emerges from the resolution rests on reasons that convince all the parties, in the same 312 way [25]. "The first is placed within the strategic action, the second within the communi-313 cative action" [26].

314
The advantage of deliberation, therefore, is not only that in which the parties can find 315 a position of excellent Pareto, but it is mainly the opportunity that the comparison can 316 produce an innovative mutually advantageous solution. The result coming from the are-317 nas can fluctuate between negotiation and deliberation. Currently, according to the legislation in force in Italy, for projects or plans that make 321 important changes to the urban layout, it is the Mayor and his Executive who choose the 322 development strategies of the city and therefore commissions the internal or external tech-323 nicians (planner) to draft the scheme of a preliminary project of the plan. 324 325 Figure 1. The current Italian "old" praxis in the development and approval of an urban "PRG". 326 vi The term, very generally, indicates that the parties will try to reach an agreement. vii The strategic plans and the "Agenda 21" processes have a composition sufficiently varied to allow communication based on topics, but they are strongly exposed to the risk of an opportunistic integration, in which the final result from the juxtaposition of the requests formulated by all the participants. Territorial pacts and other forms of concertation for local development tend even more clearly towards the negotiating pole, since the participants are less numerous and the interests at stake are stronger.
On that preliminary project, the Town Council, as a body composed of elected rep-327 resentatives of citizenship, expresses its opinion and suggestions before drafting the final 328 project (Figure 1). 329 It is understood that the Italian legislation provides at any stage the possibility for 330 the citizen to highlight any violations of the law. Italian law has, as its fundamental prin-331 ciple, equality between citizens and, therefore, even the law on urban planning protects 332 and follows this principle. 333 However, in recent years, the need to involve citizens already from the beginning of 334 the process for the drafting of the Plan has been highlighted, through various forms of 335 proposed participation, most of which are not codified, as we have previously empha-336 sized. The practice, therefore, added in the facts a further step to the project process (Fig-337 ure 2) to improve, not only the quality of the final plan but also, through the sharing of 338 choices, the concrete possibilities of the plan implementation. As already explained above, the projects that make substantial changes to the spatial 342 planning are more likely to encounter opposition from stakeholders in local communities; 343 therefore, they risk extending the implementation time excessively, to the point of running 344 the risk of having an old project being implemented for both the technology used and, 345 even worse, no longer matching the needs of the territory. 346 In particular, the methodology proposed in this study intends to intervene directly 347 in the phase of identifying the development strategies for the city and, therefore, on the 348 relief of the needs of the community and of its territory (Figure 3).  The adoption of Sentiment Analysis, never tested before in urban planning, could 353 guarantee the identification of the real needs of the upstream local communities and, 354 therefore, the success of the intervention. 355 The term Sentiment Analysis (SA) indicates the process of detecting the opinions of 356 users, on specifically selected topics, directly from a large amount of data already present 357 on the web. The idea is to use the large amount of data found on blogs and social media -358 especially Facebook and Twitter -to analyse sentiments (i.e.: the mood of people) on any 359 chosen theme. It is therefore a system able to manages, interpret, and synthesize every-360 thing that is expressed on the network, thanks to a "logarithm".
Two US scientists from Harvard University [27], in 2010, set up an algorithm to ana-362 lyse the online satisfaction grade of products and services. The equation [P (S) = P (S / D) 363 x P (D)] which is at the basis of the research, was then used by various scholars and de-364 veloped for different application contexts. 365 An Italian example is that of Voices from the Blogs (VfB), a research project born in 366 2011 and developed by three researchers of the State University of Milan. The objective of 367 the Milanese' research group was to operate in the field of election results forecasts. The 368 average error between the expected data and the real ones has been less than 2%, this 369 gives the instrument a high degree of reliability. 370 If we consider that the population on the web consists of less than one-third of the 371 world population, one wonders how this figure can bring such low error margins. This 372 happens because the decision-making process through which any individual forms his 373 thought (opinion) is influenced by the opinions expressed by "thought leaders" as well as 374 by ordinary people in the workplace, in the family, during recreational activities, and so 375 on. For these reasons, anyone who expresses an opinion on the web -through a post, a 376 tweet, or a comment -unconsciously acts as a spokesperson for a broader and more wide-377 spread opinion, already matured in places of socialization, physical or virtual, through 378 unconscious contamination of thought. On the other hand, the data coming from the find-379 ings made through the SA are generally very reliable and can provide those who use them 380 with a relatively reliable knowledge of the users' opinion.

381
The reliability of this tool makes the SA one of the most delved topics of research in 382 today's computing world. On the web there is already a large amount of available data 383 (Twitter, Facebook, bulletin boards, blogs, and forums); these fragments of text contain a 384 great wealth of information useful to companies and individuals who want to monitor 385 their reputation and get timely feedback on their products, services, and actions. Those 386 fragments of text (input) that represent the opinions of the users can be divided into two 387 macro-categories: (a) Objective inputs, which contain information on the facts; (b) Subjec-388 tive inputs, which contain opinions, beliefs, and opinions. 389 The case of subjective Inputs is certainly the most complex to analyse. The opinions 390 expressed by users are articulated within a single thought that, in most cases, includes a 391 whole series of different aspects that, if well discretized, can offer qualitative cataloguing 392 by categories on the topic viii . 393 In practice, to analyse the sentiment present on the web, you can use various types 394 of algorithms. In input, we have a corpus of documents of any format (Pdf, HTML, XML, 395 Word, etc.). The documents of this corpus are converted into text and are pre-treated 396 through the use of linguistic tools. At this point, we move on to the main component of 397 the system, which is the document analysis module, which uses linguistic resources to 398 indicate sentimental annotations. The annotations can be attached to the complete docu-399 ment, to the single sentence or the single aspect. 400 This data can be reprocessed in output for the SA end-user and can be displayed in 401 various ways, through graphs, tables, diagrams, etc. it is easy to understand how this sys-402 tem can provide an effective and innovative application methodology, able in supporting 403 the process of participation in spatial planning and territorial governance.

404
Author Contributions: Conceptualization, Fabio Naselli; Data curation, Fabio Naselli; Formal anal-405 ysis, Cinzia Bellone and Fabio Andreassi; Investigation, Cinzia Bellone and Fabio Andreassi; 406 viii As an example, here is an online review of a hotel: "The master bedroom suite was spacious, clean and well furnished. The staff was very helpful. Heating and air conditioning worked well. The sofa bed was the best I have ever seen. The bed was very comfortable. The building and the rooms were very well soundproofed. The area is great for shopping, restaurants, and metro access. The only complaint has to do with high-speed Internet access, which is only available on floors 8-12". Overall, the review is very positive, but refers to several aspects of the structure, including heating, air conditioning, staff courtesy, bed, neighborhood, and Internet access. The SA systems are able to provide a score for the entire review, as well as to analyze the feeling of every single aspect of the structure.