• Energy Research

The paper aims to evaluate criteria for appraising the existing urban transformation projects in view of the social dimension of sustainability. Within the case study of the recovery project of “G. Prandina” barrack in Padua, north-east of Italy, the paper compares two different Italian rating systems to evaluate neighborhood sustainability: “GBC Quartieri” and “ITACA Scala Urbana”. The GBC Quartieri rating system, with a point scheme, allots credits for neighborhood design features, and integrates the environment, infrastructures, and buildings for the creation of sustainable communities with a relationship net and a pre-existence connection. The “ITACA Scala Urbana” procedure consists of a multicriteria evaluation of the environmental sustainability and the compilation of a group of worksheets, one for each different internal performance indicator. The results show the main differences and analogies among the different tools, and this analysis confirms that new neighborhood protocols originating from building rating systems dedicate little space to social aspects and to the concept of inclusion, instead of the newly developed neighborhood protocols. Through this examination, the research can also conclude that the identification of common macro-areas is present, which highlights the different levels of importance given to the various features connected to social sustainability in neighborhood transformation.

The attraction of the place, the perception of services, the awareness, and the tourist satisfaction play an important role to motivate a tourist to visit and revisit a destination. Sustainability has also been receiving increasing attention and require also to promote inter-generational and intragenerational equity, to guarantee the cultural integrity and social cohesion of the communities, and to protect the environment and ecosystems. In this context, nautical tourism assesses some impacts to the economy, with the construction of port and the relative infrastructures and with all services to the boat, to the society and the local community that participate to the development and choices, and to the environment with significant potential risks. This paper focusses on small ports and marinas and investigates the real situation about services offered and the related possible tourism satisfaction for a socio-cultural sustainable development. In addition, FRAMESPORT project (FRAMEwork initiative fostering the sustainable development of Adriatic-Ionian Small PORTs) assists to these objectives collecting relevant experiences and feedbacks and developing a strategic guidance. For this reason, it has collected data from people connected to Italian and Croatian docks and are analyzed with statistic methods and georeferenced maps. The significance of the study is to understand similarities and differences of tourism in these two States and provide suggestions for a socio-cultural sustainable development. TeMA - Journal of Land Use, Mobility and Environment, Vol 16 No 1 (2023): The city challenges and external agents. Methods, tools and best practices