Public choices and decision-making processes: a case study on sustainable mobility

The definition of a decision process, which implies the capacity to implement and realize an action involving all the actors interested, is crucial not only for taking adequate political decisions but even mainly for getting a democratic control of the decisions themselves.From a strategic planning point of view, decision process on public issues should be essentially considered as a process of participation, which involves political decision-makers as well as all the administrative organizations which have to realize the decisions taken and citizens and more generally all the stakeholders who will be impacted in a positive or negative way by such decisions. If this is the case, important issues arise: which is the methodology that should be followed to assess all the alternative solutions to adopt? How are analyzed the effects and the impacts of political decisions? How are evaluated the consequences of a set of actions?To answer to all these questions, Decision Support Systems (DSSs) have been developed. They include measurement tools such as cost-benefit analysis as well as relational methods of “rational analysis” such as multicriteria analysis. DSSs’ allow decision makers to implement the best choices and decisions with the aim of reaching a Pareto improvement for the territory considered. Though these tools may be implemented to any socio-political decisions, in these last years the democratic and, therefore, political pressure has led to adopt DSSs’ mainly for two specific themes: the environment and the sustainable mobility.Moreover, in the agenda of European institutions and local and national administrative governments,1sustainable mobility is become a high priority. In this framework, the methodology proposed combines twodifferent approaches. On the one hand, the “classic” or top-down approach based on statistical data analysis is considered where the main target is the definition of some synthetic indicators, while on the other hand, the bottom-up approach is adopted, which is based on the Strategic Environment Assessment (SEA) framework and on citizens’ participation. This decision process as defined, should be followed for implementing specific and appropriate solutions at local level and for taking into consideration the peculiarities of the territory considered. Finally, a case-study regarding the ex-13th District of the Municipality of Rome is presented.