Stefano Moroni
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 1680263 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Stefano Moroni |
| PRENOMES | Stefano |
| SOBRENOME | Moroni |
| ASSINATURA | MORONI S |
| AFILIAÇÕES | Politecnico di Milano |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3542-2073 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 53 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 291 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 53 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2004 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 9 |
Responsibility and planning amid growing urban complexity and AI proliferation
This paper focuses on issues pertaining to the risks and responsibilities associated with growing complexity and the spread of AI technologies in the urban context. Arguing that such risks are often systemic, it analyses three structural responsibility problems, each linked to a distinct form of dispersion. The problem of many hands concerns the difficulty of attributing responsibility due to the dispersion of agency among the multiple actors inv…
Normative Information. Bridging Information Theory and the Philosophy of Normativity
Generally, the focus in the theory of information is almost exclusively on information that can be termed declarative, descriptive, factual, constative, or apophantic, by which is meant information that has a semantic content that can be true or false. Examples of carriers of apophantic information are train timetables, bank account statements, and medical reports. However, alongside apophantic information, there is another type of information th…
Urban decision-making is not so much a matter of intelligence, artificial or otherwise. A discussion of AI starting from cost-benefit analysis
It has long been assumed that effective decision-making presupposes the presence of a rational decision-maker and reliable information about alternatives, preferences and uncertainty. Unfortunately, the reality is quite different, particularly when one considers public decision-making in urban areas. In other words, and according to Herbert Simon's well-known formula, no decision-maker can operate without a form of “bounded rationality”. This is …
Self-organizing orders, urban studies and planning theory
The notion of ‘order’ has been central in 20th-century attempts to explain complex phenomena. The notion of order in the case of complex phenomena has been generally associated with the idea of ‘selforganization’; that is, the spontaneous emergence of coordinating patterns in complex systems. In briefly re-considering the idea of order, this article focuses on ‘self-organizing orders’ and the implication of this issue not only for a theory of the…
Spatial justice
This article specifies in what ways space is involved in justice issues • It explores the subject of justice, conceptions of justice, distributive issues • It discusses five cases of spatial justice
Energy communities, distributed generation, renewable sources
Revisiting subsidiarity
The discussion on “territorial governance” has gained traction in the last decade. The issue of territorial governance is particularly important because it invites us to revisit certain traditional ideas concerning institutions, their tasks, and the scale and level of intervention. In this regard, a crucial concept is that of “subsidiarity”. The concept of “subsidiarity” is widely used both in the academic literature and in the public debate, as …
Rules without regulation and regulation without rules
In everyday discourse, and also in the academic literature, the expressions “regulatory interventions” (i.e. interventions intended to regulate behaviours) and “normative interventions” (i.e. interventions which set norms/rules) are usually assumed to be synonymous. From this perspective, any regulatory intervention is also normative, and vice versa. This article investigates the relationship between regulation and rules/norms in order to verify …
Distinguishing ‘planning’ from the ‘plan’. Institutional and professional implications of taking urban complexity seriously
In the twentieth century, “planning” as a (public) activity and the “plan” as an instrument came to coincide. According to this perspective, planners are professionals specialised primarily in conceiving and designing plans. This article suggests that we should reject the overlap between planning and plan, recognising the latter as just one of the tools that planners can use – and for very specific purposes. The article starts by distinguishing b…
Regulatory Artifacts
Generally, when thinking of artifacts, one imagines “technical artifacts”. Technical artifacts are those artifacts that perform a mere causal function. Their purpose is to instrumentally help and support an action, not to change behaviour. However, technical artifacts do not exhaust the set of artifacts. Alongside technical artifacts there are also artifacts that we can call “cognitive artifacts”. Cognitive artifacts are all those artifacts that …
Planning and meta-planning to cope with disruptive events
The Covid-19 pandemic has been analysed and discussed from many disciplinary perspectives. An aspect that still needs critical exploration is the role—that is, the modes and forms—of regulatory interventions during the pandemic. It is interesting to note in this regard that, in many studies, regulatory measures are labelled “non-pharmaceutical interventions”, as if they do not have any specificity on their own and only represent a theoretically r…
What can urban policies and planning really learn from John Rawls? A multi-strata view of institutional action and a canvas conception of the just city
One of the most influential theories of justice in planning theory and practice has been, without doubt, that of John Rawls. The very idea of the just city is indebted to Rawls’s view. However, the way in which Rawlsian theory of justice has been imported into planning often seems debatable. This article aims to discuss this aspect critically. The objective is not merely to discuss certain planning approaches inspired by Rawls; it is also to inve…
The city as an information system
Regolare con artefatti
Regulation through artifacts. When we think about artifacts, we usually consider objects such as, for example, a nutcracker, a screwdriver, a bicycle, a table, a fountain pen, a toothbrush, a food mixer; that is, material objects designed and constructed to perform a ‘technical functiom’. However, there are also artifacts with which we normatively regulate behaviors. Imagine, for example, driving a car along an urban road. We would constantly enc…
Adaptive and anti-adaptive neighbourhoods
Recent work on ‘anti-adaptive’ neighbourhoods has highlighted a number of common features, including scale of design, number of designers, mono-functionality, percentage of public space, planning rules and system of ownership. This article aims to provide a more general conceptual analysis of adaptability and anti-adaptability in terms of degrees of individual choice, where an individual’s choice set is understood as a combination of individual f…
Types of Technological Innovation in the Face of Uncertainty
Technological innovation is almost always investigated from an economic perspective; with few exceptions, the specific technological and social nature of innovation is often ignored. We argue that a novel way to characterise and make sense of different types of technological innovation is to start considering uncertainty. This seems plausible since technological development and innovation almost always occur under conditions of uncertainty. We re…
Structural preconditions for adaptive urban areas
Deontic artifacts. Investigating the normativity of objects
Since the middle of the last century, normative language has been much studied. In particular, the normative function performed by certain sentences and by certain speech acts has been investigated in depth. Still, the normative function performed by certain physical artifacts designed and built to regulate human behaviors has not yet been thoroughly investigated. We propose to call this specific type of artifacts with normative intent ‘deontic a…
Multiple functions of drawings
In the twentieth century, the functions of written or spoken language were extensively studied. The functions of drawings were studied less. This was largely due to a kind of ‘verbal-centrism’ that dominated the general discussions on the mechanisms of interaction and communication. This article explores the various possible functions of drawings, focusing on architecture, urban design and planning. It initially attempts to build a typology of th…
Multiple agents and self-organisation in complex cities
Building obsolescence in the evolving city. Reframing property vacancy and abandonment in the light of urban dynamics and complexity
This conceptual article analyses how both policymakers and academics often discuss the state of buildings. Property vacancy and abandonment are generally approached statically, in an undifferentiated way and responded to with ad hoc public policies. However, there is great variety in the causes and effects of a building's state of affairs. This article adopts a more complex and dynamic view of building obsolescence to better understand the develo…
Rule‐free regulation
Regulation can occur “with (specific) rules/norms” or “without (specific) rules/norms”. Numerous studies have been devoted to the first option. To the point where “regulation” and “rules” have often been seen to coincide in some academic research, and also in everyday ways of thinking. We deal with the second option in this article: regulation without rules/norms. Namely, a type of regulation by which it is intended to influence others' behaviour…
The role of planning and the role of planners
Framework rules for self-organizing cities
Self-organization is a key mechanism through which cities spontaneously and dynamically evolve and adjust to changing circumstances. It entails an emerging process: place-based actions and interactions of an unrestricted number of urban agents produce certain physical, social and economic patterns at a global level that in turn coordinate the expectations and actions of actors at the local level. \nWhile providing cities with the capacity to adap…
Forms of self-organization
The implications of self-organizing phenomena for planning strategies and interventions are a relatively new topic of research that is gaining increasing traction with urban planners and the emerging literature. The problem is that the concept of self-organization is at present applied in a variety of different ways in the contemporary planning debate, a fact that has generated misunderstandings, dubious definitions, and questionable practical su…
Complexity and the inherent limits of explanation and prediction
The purpose of this article is to explore what kind of (land-use) regulation is more compatible with a radical acceptance of the idea of the complexity of socio-spatial systems and of the intrinsic limits of explanation and prediction. The article applies insights from complexity sciences to planning practice, critically comparing different land-use regulatory instruments (in particular, patterning-instruments and framework-instruments). The main…
The complex nexus between informality and the law
Rethinking the theory and practice of land-use regulation
It is often held that planning theory has little influence on planning practice. Some speak of an evident ‘theory-practice gap’. In reality, the opposite seems to be the case. The so-called ‘theorypractice gap’ is not the main issue at all; the real question is ‘which theory for what kind of practice’? Assuming this view, the article presents two different theories of public regulation: the teleocratic approach and the nomocratic approach.They ca…
Planning, liberty and the rule of law
The article aims to demonstrate that neither the British planning system nor Continental planning systems adhere perfectly to the classical (liberal) ideal of the rule of law. It suggests a different approach to the regulation of land use more in line with this ideal, based on the assumption that it is not only relevant but also one that cannot be renounced. The objective is to show that the more complex an (urban) system becomes, the greater is …
The just city. Three background issues
In the fields of planning theory and human geography, there is a growing discussion of the just city. The impression is that in order to continue the discussion of the crucial issue of the just city, certain methodological considerations and precautions are necessary. The article is focused on three in particular: (a) (urban) institutions as the first subject of justice, (b) the incomplete overlap between social justice and distributive justice, …
Typology of Spaces and Topology of Toleration
The aim of this paper is primarily to lay down a convincing typology of spaces in connection with property rights and management. Instead of the two main ownership models (private and public property) usually pinpointed, we argue that it is more fitting to speak of a plurality of property regimes. So, in this work, we identify and explain six sub-categories: i) stricto sensu public spaces; ii) special public spaces; iii) privately run public spac…
An evolutionary theory of institutions and a dynamic approach to reform
As is well known, many social sciences have recently attempted a sort of ‘institutional turn’ by recognizing the centrality of the institutional framework, when dealing with social and economic phenomena. Interest in such an approach has also begun to emerge in planning theory. But the passage from understanding the decisive role of institutional frameworks to suggesting how to design and modify those frameworks, is sometimes, in planning literat…
Zoning-integrative and zoning-alternative transferable development rights
Action and the city. Emergence, complexity, planning
Building obsolescence in the evolving city. Reframing property vacancy and abandonment in the light of urban dynamics and complexity
This conceptual article analyses how both policymakers and academics often discuss the state of buildings. Property vacancy and abandonment are generally approached statically, in an undifferentiated way and responded to with ad hoc public policies. However, there is great variety in the causes and effects of a building's state of affairs. This article adopts a more complex and dynamic view of building obsolescence to better understand the develo…
Unnatural sprawl
Simple Planning Rules for Complex Urban Problems
In the course of the nineteenth century, many countries attempted to simplify their regulatory systems; since then, however, the entire legal apparatus has become ever more complex, being based on the (debatable) notion that law must mirror the growing complexity of society. Owing to this presumption, complex land-use and building issues have rapidly generated a host of equally intricate rules. However, some critics have argued that complex syste…
Property as a human right and property as a special title. Rediscussing private ownership of land
Planning, pluralism and religious diversity
Towards a Reconstruction of the Public Interest Criterion
The justification for planning intervention has traditionally centred on the concept of the public interest. The situation is completely different today. Even though there are still some planning theorists trying to defend the idea of the public interest, and even though there are some planning practitioners still referring to the idea of the public interest, this traditional idea is today under severe attack. The purpose of this article is to ex…
Multiple agents and self-organisation in complex cities
Graphic rules in planning
This article is focused on the rules that we create using drawings (designs, pictures, paintings, etc.) which will be termed ‘graphic rules’. Its attention is therefore not simply on the use of images in normative documents but also ‘as law’. We will delve into one of these types of graphic rules: that is, graphic rules used in urban planning. The fact that graphic rules are widespread in planning practices, and indeed typical of them, makes rule…
Structural preconditions for adaptive urban areas
What can urban policies and planning really learn from John Rawls? A multi-strata view of institutional action and a canvas conception of the just city
One of the most influential theories of justice in planning theory and practice has been, without doubt, that of John Rawls. The very idea of the just city is indebted to Rawls’s view. However, the way in which Rawlsian theory of justice has been imported into planning often seems debatable. This article aims to discuss this aspect critically. The objective is not merely to discuss certain planning approaches inspired by Rawls; it is also to inve…
Constitutional and post-constitutional problems
In the field of planning theory the discussion often seems to assume that all problems – for example, ethical or political ones – pertain to a single level or dimension. In fact, different and clearly separate “levels”, which raise problems of different kinds, can be distinguished. A “multi-level” approach therefore seems necessary. The underlying idea is that it is essential to distinguish more sharply between two analytical levels: the constitu…
Individual motivations, emergent complexity and the just city
How to make norms with drawings
A widespread opinion holds that norms and codes of conduct as such can only be established via words, that is, in some lexical form. This perspective can be criticized: some norms produced by human acts are not word-based at all. For example, many norms are actually conveyed through graphics (e. g. road signs and land-use maps), sounds (e. g. the referee's whistle), a silent gesture (the traffic warden's signal to halt). In this article, we will …
Energy communities, distributed generation, renewable sources
Rule‐free regulation
Regulation can occur “with (specific) rules/norms” or “without (specific) rules/norms”. Numerous studies have been devoted to the first option. To the point where “regulation” and “rules” have often been seen to coincide in some academic research, and also in everyday ways of thinking. We deal with the second option in this article: regulation without rules/norms. Namely, a type of regulation by which it is intended to influence others' behaviour…
Planning, law, ownership
Towards a Reconstruction of the Public Interest Criterion
The justification for planning intervention has traditionally centred on the concept of the public interest. The situation is completely different today. Even though there are still some planning theorists trying to defend the idea of the public interest, and even though there are some planning practitioners still referring to the idea of the public interest, this traditional idea is today under severe attack. The purpose of this article is to ex…
Introduction
Planning, liberty and the rule of law
The article aims to demonstrate that neither the British planning system nor Continental planning systems adhere perfectly to the classical (liberal) ideal of the rule of law. It suggests a different approach to the regulation of land use more in line with this ideal, based on the assumption that it is not only relevant but also one that cannot be renounced. The objective is to show that the more complex an (urban) system becomes, the greater is …
Rethinking the theory and practice of land-use regulation
It is often held that planning theory has little influence on planning practice. Some speak of an evident ‘theory-practice gap’. In reality, the opposite seems to be the case. The so-called ‘theorypractice gap’ is not the main issue at all; the real question is ‘which theory for what kind of practice’? Assuming this view, the article presents two different theories of public regulation: the teleocratic approach and the nomocratic approach.They ca…
An evolutionary theory of institutions and a dynamic approach to reform
As is well known, many social sciences have recently attempted a sort of ‘institutional turn’ by recognizing the centrality of the institutional framework, when dealing with social and economic phenomena. Interest in such an approach has also begun to emerge in planning theory. But the passage from understanding the decisive role of institutional frameworks to suggesting how to design and modify those frameworks, is sometimes, in planning literat…
The role of deliberate intervention on organizations and institutions
Contractual Communities in the Self-Organising City
Both "land-use regulation" and "territorial collective services" have traditionally been accomplished in cities through coercive efforts of public administrations. Recently, land-use regulation and collective service provision regimes have emerged within "contractual communities": territory-based organisations (usually, but not exclusively residential) such as homeowners' associations. This book examines the problems and opportunities of contract…
Typology of Spaces and Topology of Toleration
The aim of this paper is primarily to lay down a convincing typology of spaces in connection with property rights and management. Instead of the two main ownership models (private and public property) usually pinpointed, we argue that it is more fitting to speak of a plurality of property regimes. So, in this work, we identify and explain six sub-categories: i) stricto sensu public spaces; ii) special public spaces; iii) privately run public spac…
The complex nexus between informality and the law
Municipal regulations and the use of public space
The article discusses the regulation of public space with specific reference to municipal by-laws. It focuses on the case of municipal “ordinances” in Italy. The basic features of the municipal by-laws will be described, and their application in recent years will be analysed. This will be followed by a critique of their particular implications concerning the use of space, with emphasis on the issue of regulating behaviour in public spaces on the …
Complexity and the inherent limits of explanation and prediction
The purpose of this article is to explore what kind of (land-use) regulation is more compatible with a radical acceptance of the idea of the complexity of socio-spatial systems and of the intrinsic limits of explanation and prediction. The article applies insights from complexity sciences to planning practice, critically comparing different land-use regulatory instruments (in particular, patterning-instruments and framework-instruments). The main…
Introduction
“In various ways, places help to define what is good or bad conduct. ... The place of an act is part of our understanding of what is right, just and appropriate.” (Smith, )“It is a serious mistake to
Do malls contribute to the privatisation of public space and the erosion of the public sphere? Reconsidering the role of shopping centres
Urban density after Jane Jacobs
In the early part of the twentieth century, planning theory and practice always voiced strong opposition to density. The error of this insistence was persuasively argued by Jane Jacobs in the 1960s. Subsequently, planning theory and practice came to recognise the importance of density, but this return to favour requires remaining constantly alert to the possible dangers and pitfalls. Critically considering the traditional and contemporary urban p…
Graphic rules in planning
This article is focused on the rules that we create using drawings (designs, pictures, paintings, etc.) which will be termed ‘graphic rules’. Its attention is therefore not simply on the use of images in normative documents but also ‘as law’. We will delve into one of these types of graphic rules: that is, graphic rules used in urban planning. The fact that graphic rules are widespread in planning practices, and indeed typical of them, makes rule…
Zoning-integrative and zoning-alternative transferable development rights
Planning, pluralism and religious diversity
Constitutional and post-constitutional problems
In the field of planning theory the discussion often seems to assume that all problems – for example, ethical or political ones – pertain to a single level or dimension. In fact, different and clearly separate “levels”, which raise problems of different kinds, can be distinguished. A “multi-level” approach therefore seems necessary. The underlying idea is that it is essential to distinguish more sharply between two analytical levels: the constitu…
Planning, law, ownership
Simple Planning Rules for Complex Urban Problems
In the course of the nineteenth century, many countries attempted to simplify their regulatory systems; since then, however, the entire legal apparatus has become ever more complex, being based on the (debatable) notion that law must mirror the growing complexity of society. Owing to this presumption, complex land-use and building issues have rapidly generated a host of equally intricate rules. However, some critics have argued that complex syste…
Property as a human right and property as a special title. Rediscussing private ownership of land
Individual motivations, emergent complexity and the just city
The just city. Three background issues
In the fields of planning theory and human geography, there is a growing discussion of the just city. The impression is that in order to continue the discussion of the crucial issue of the just city, certain methodological considerations and precautions are necessary. The article is focused on three in particular: (a) (urban) institutions as the first subject of justice, (b) the incomplete overlap between social justice and distributive justice, …
Unnatural sprawl
Action and the city. Emergence, complexity, planning
Political science (33 obras) · Sociology (32 obras) · Computer Science (28 obras) · Law (28 obras) · Epistemology (23 obras) · Law (21 obras) · Engineering (19 obras) · Economics (18 obras) · Law and economics (17 obras) · Business (14 obras)