An MCA Proposal with ANP and Veto Thresholds to Support Decision-Making in Former Railway Track Regeneration Initiatives

In the last decade, the regeneration of railway infrastructure has started to be recognized as a new and tangible opportunity for redevelopment and the achievement of urban, landscape, and architectural rehabilitation. This opportunity arose with the generational shift in transport systems, which started in the second half of the 20th century and has involved countries and regions in heterogeneous socio-economic contexts. This heritage of soils, bridges, and service rooms has progressively separated from the territory and its functions, ultimately becoming detached from its context. Indeed, their transformation implies a change of perspective: they used to stand as an ancillary venue to urban contexts; instead, the need for a diffuse urban fabric, implying a multiplicity of centers, can turn them into new hubs for different purposes. Thus, it is necessary to compare different transformation opportunities while acknowledging the specific features of each reclaimable disused infrastructure. This paper aims to define specific criteria to support this typology of evaluations, to be implemented with Multi-Criteria Analyses (MCA), and in particular ANP, to choose the optimal regeneration strategies of former railway tracks.