Innovative participatory evaluation processes: The case of the ministry of defense real-estate assets in Italy

The introduction of Public Deliberative Practices approach is not recent among all decision-making processes that are—directly or through associations representing collective interests—oriented to community involvement. Although the use of these practices is consensus-oriented, the pursuit of specific knowledge and choice democratization, involving communities and their territories together with man-made environments, become ever more important since it offers opportunities for discussions that designers, planners, promoters of processes are often reluctant to undertake. Now that Pope Francis claims that “A consensus should always be reached between the different stakeholders, who can offer a variety of approaches, solutions and alternatives”, the evolution of decision-making processes, forged over the past 10–20 years finds a new opportunity for legitimation. The theme of the Ministry of Defense’s actions concerning the disposal and development of the built heritage—widely debated during recent years—is likely to be one of the paradigms of transparency within the declined decision-making process, in particular, in relation to the Participatory Spaces Planning. The goals of the Ministry of Defense for the property sector are the rationalization and development of military infrastructures—in line with art. 26, DL 133/2014, so-called “Sblocca Italia”—through the optimization of the ones still needed and the allocation to other purposes of those not essential anymore. Once accepted, this scenario for urban and economic regeneration, aimed at increasing social welfare and quality of life, is necessary to establish a path for transformation, including participatory-planning processes starting from citizens’ involvement. The recent and quick progress of Information Construction Technology (ICT) Systems that facilitate a successful organization of information allows the optimization of the decisional process and the achievement of more readable and, if possible, more sharable results between public entities and private citizens.