Creating Sustainable Urban Landscape: Mapping with PlaceMaker

The new urban features are not easily identifiable and cannot be easily represented through traditional cartography and tools of representation. In order to explain such new sites and give new terms, several researchers have tested new methodologies, maps, multimedia images, hypertext and software that can render this complexity and permit readability. Starting from those premises, the aim of this study, carried out in the framework of a convention between Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche and Dipartimento di Progettazione Urbana e di Urbanistica, Università di Napoli Federico II, is to illustrate new methodological approaches for analysing and representing contemporary urban landscapes. In particular, in the context of the complex–sensitive approach and PlaceMaker method of analysis, a new software tool, currently under development, is presented. The PlaceMaker method identifies the elements of the urban landscape which contribute to the identification of places and are able to influence the cultural and sustainable city construction; such elements and the complexity of the places are represented in a complex map. Experimentation of the method has shown the necessity of the proposed PlaceMaker software tool, which is able to support the collection and management of a multimedia database, the implementation of the phases of PlaceMaker method, the construction of the interactive complex map, and the calculation of indices useful for the project of sustainable urban landscapes.