Abstract Summary
The systemic approach and complexity theory now allow the city to be interpreted as a dynamically complex system in which each element is interacting with the others. This makes it complex to jointly evaluate the phenomena related to the different subsystems that can be identified in the urban system: the socio-anthropic subsystem, the geo-morphological subsystem, the functional subsystem, and the physical subsystem. Such an assessment is necessary to optimize the use of resources in the policies and the actions of the government of urban and territorial transformations from a sustainable perspective. Data from the Global Footprint Network highlight how resource consumption is increasingly high and rapid and does not allow for the regeneration of resources for the planet’s annual needs and, in a broader sense, for the needs of future generations. This study aims to identify an integrated paradigm for the analysis and monitoring of urban systems based on the concept of "systemic entropy," which enables to identify, in a georeferenced manner, the urban areas characterized by major dyscrasias, for which policies and intervention actions can be appropriately developed. Based on the interpretation of the city as a "dynamic dissipative system" elaborated by Ilya Prigogine and on the extensive scientific literature that has followed, an experimental methodology has been developed that allows us to highlight critical issues for each urban subsystem while assessing its level of systemic entropy. Systemic entropy is defined as a measure of the state of disorder or degradation of the urban subsystem (or the whole system), generated by the misuse of resources and which can be traced to a general condition of "unsustainability." The procedure linearly combines normalized values related to a number of entropy indicators. These indicators are also elaborated with reference to the numerous studies in the literature about indicators of urban sustainability in its three key areas: social, economic, and environmental. The procedure developed was tested on a specific urban context, the Fuorigrotta neighbourhood in Naples. On that specific urban context, the procedure made it possible to highlight the most entropic areas, to define the causes and to develop a ranking based on the priority of intervention needed. As for the steps of the procedure: first, entropy indicators were calculated for each subsystem; then the values related to entropy levels, the results of which informed the creation of a decision support tool that can guide decision makers and administrators toward the implementation of integrated sustainability-oriented strategies. In conclusion, the study highlighted the potential of a method for defining systemic entropy in the development of operational decision support tools for public administrations that can optimize the use of resources to foster sustainability-oriented urban problem solving.
