TRACK 6 METHODS: Digital innovations of inclusive planning 
Michele Campagna (University of Cagliari, Italy)
Jenni Partanen (Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia) 
Aubrey Toldi (Politecnico di Milano, Italy)

New global and local urgent challenges are affecting with unprecedented magnitude communities, settlements, and the environment. Climate change, population growth, loss of biodiversity, migrations, and most recently pandemic are only some of the major issue we should address urgently and effectively. To cope with these major challenges innovation is required with regards both to the planning processes and to design strategies.  

The transition towards a green economy, as well as pervasive digital uptake are seen by many as a unavoidable paradigm shift to address structurally the relationships between human activities and the environment aiming at building a sustainable future at the global and local levels, trough effective subsidiarity, collaboration, communication, cooperation and mutual learning,  participation and inclusiveness, responsibility and transparency.  

Scholars, researchers and practitioners  are invited at presenting their latest experiences and discussing on how new technologies may innovate future spatial planning research, education, and practice focusing both on digital technologies as support to more communicative planning, decision-making, and governance (e.g., Planning Support Systems), as well as the introduction of new technologies for changes in the design (e.g. innovation in green, blue, grey infrastructure, as well as in housing, industry, and other systems).  

 All the dimensions of the technology innovation in planning research, education, and practice are relevant to this track: from representation to forecasting and simulation, from analysis to evaluation, from design to impact assessment, from collaboration to participation and co-design, from negotiation in decision-making. 

Keywords: geodesign, planning support systems, digital (big) data, co-design, spatial modelling, digital twins, smart cities, smart technologies for the (built) environment.