Saving soil and financial feasibility. A model to support public-private partnerships in the regeneration of abandoned areas

The European Union aims at the zeroing of the soil consumption by 2050. Among the short-term strategies outlined by the member States of the European Commission, the highest potentialities concern the recovery of the existing building assets, in particular of the abandoned areas. The regeneration of these properties, however, involves considerable costs and high risks, and therefore it almost always requires the activation of a public-private partnership and the negotiation of the solutions to be implemented. Borrowing the theory and the algorithms of operational research, the model outlined and tested in this research aims at determining a range of combinations of urban planning parameters, to be attributed to the abandoned areas, capable of reflecting the fair distribution of the burdens and of the financial conveniences, that constitute the basis reference for the bargaining between the public and private subjects. The model is applied to a real case study, concerning the urban regeneration of an abandoned area located in a city in Southern Italy. Obtained by simulating various possible goals of the Public Administration, the outputs confirm the potentialities and the flexibility of the proposed model.