Public Participation with Fuzzy Cognitive Maps to Assess Safety Perception in Urban Regeneration

In urban regeneration it is essential to promote civic engagement through public participatory processes because stakeholder involvement ensures democracy, legitimacy and effectiveness of decisions. Nevertheless, this entails dealing with a mass of fragmented qualitative information which, in the case of the public's perception of safety, is intangible, uncertain and ambiguous. Experts need supportive methods to process this in order to make it more understandable and manageable. This paper discusses the work conducted in a case study of urban regeneration of a degraded, historical central square in the city of Bari (Italy). It presents a process designed with Scenario Workshop consultations and conducted by leveraging the Fuzzy Cognitive Map approach to model shared knowledge. This aimed to achieve a collaborative problem-solving decision-making environment to address differing intentions in situations where means and ends are confused. The development of what-if intervention scenarios enabled the evaluation of counter-intuitive cause-effect links, the recognition of critical causal loops and unintended consequences and the identification of feasible choices. The results demonstrate the suitability of the proposed process as a decision support system in the field of urban policy making to facilitate learning and negotiation, allowing for innovative solutions to emerge and for the empowerment of local communities.