Steering Net Zero Land Take Urban Growth. A Decision Support Method Applied to the City of Castelfranco Emilia, Italy

The primary aim of the research is to provide a flexible and easy-to-apply method which makes it possible to identify the most suitable areas to be densified and the most critical ones, where the priority is to maintain green spaces. The method is structured into 5 main phases: collection of relevant indicators, their categorization and weighting through the involvement of experts, normalization and the calculation of synthetic indexes through GIS. The method has been applied on the territory of the medium-sized municipality of Castelfranco Emilia in the Emilia Romagna region, where the Regional urban planning law is forcing municipalities to design urban plans with a clear target of net zero land take by 2050 but can be easily scaled to different contexts. The results clearly show which urban areas are most suitable to be densified and their characteristics hampering or favoring densification.