THE THEORY OF “CONTAGION” IN SPATIAL PLANNING: NEW PATHS TOWARD COLLABORATIVE PLANNING FOR TRANSITION

The contribution is focused on planning as a technological device for supporting spatial choices of “techno-social” systems, where single social components assembled in large number can give rise – according to the various forces and elements at play – to different macroscopic and dynamical behaviors, opening the path to quantitative computational approaches and forecasting power. The hypothesis at the base of this paper is the need to bridge planning theories with digital anthropology and analytical and computational models for the co-evolution and interdependence of large-scale social, technological and biological networks. The interchange between these disciplines opens interesting path toward the innovation of traditional spatial planning, by enhancing new operating and involving planning processes that are now referred to and relegated to strategic planning within soft planning spaces. Referring to the modeling of contagion processes in structured populations, the contribution proposes to look at the dynamics and evolution of information and social networks as new ways for enhancing participation, engagement and –in general terms – collaborative governance in spatial planning, in order to frame adaptive spaces and connected behaviors of social systems.