Smart Evaluation and Integrated Design in Regional Development

Smart Evaluation and Integrated Design in Regional Development puts forward an alternative approach to evaluation in spatial planning - one that focuses on ’territory’ and ’landscape’. The book introduces an innovative evaluation approach namely Territorial Integrated Evaluation (TIE) a meta-evaluation methodology for designing regional development scenarios. A research team from the Politecnico di Torino applied this methodology experimentally to the practices of spatial planning in Trentino in order to aid the Province in a process of institutional innovation that is still going on today. TIE defines territorial scenarios serving the need for regional economic development as well as the conservation of nature and landscape. A cross-border region Trentino has a special need to harmonize economic development with the exceptional and internationally renowned value of its landscape which includes the Dolomites a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Therefore TIE set out to design regional development scenarios that integrated various topics - retail tourism infrastructures nature and landscape. By testing out TIE in practice in this extraordinarily dynamic institutional context the book makes a significant contribution to the discussion about newly emerging approaches to spatial planning that involve multidisciplinary vision new paradigms in regional development and institutional learning and capability in decision-making.