Visualizing space-based interactions among distributed agents: Environmental planning at the inner-city scale

Since from the 1980s, computer science and artificial intelligence have focused on environmental planning, with high interest in analysing real and virtual cognitive agents at work. This is true for procedures, long-range planning, operational planning, as well as factors and scenarios of future events, future risks, multi-agent organisation, and resource-based planning. This long-range, large-scale, strategy-driven interest has generally prevented short-term planning, low-scale and detailed planning from being explored with an intelligent-planning approach. This paper shows a case of small-scale innercity planning for environmental and development issues in an urban context, with a sustainably sound approach. In this concern, a system architecture has been set up, to support the interaction of local social, economic, financial agents by a web-based geo-graphic interface able to visualize, share, channel substantial information in the planning process with a space-based approach. The details of setup methodologies and results are analyzed, trying to find potentials and critical characters of a georeferenced cooperative work, particularly attentive to the role of space-based cognitions and discourses in multi-agent interactions.