Planning Knowledge and Process for Strategies of Participatory River Contracts

This chapter presents a model of strategic planning for river contracts. The main challenge to face is the collection of multidisciplinary requirements coming from the different domains that can contribute to the analysis of the river basin, thus overcoming shortfalls and problems that can arise in the process and stimulating change management scenarios. In this complex setting, the planner’s perspective seems to be the most appropriate to call sciences to offer their contribute for the aims of the program because they must fit in a multi-actor decision process aimed to pragmatic actions. According to this perspective, some other questions are added to the consolidated knowledge on the river basin: from the study of the hydrographic network and reports on soil quality to the analysis of urban and social systems, a focus on connections and interactions, and a study on economic activities. This knowledge comes from heterogeneous sources, such as information officially produced by government bodies, found in the scientific literature, or resulting from oral stories and interviews. From the sharing of this framework by public and private actors the river contract starts and develops with an action plan that participants commit to carry out signing an agreement. Through a wide list of cases many recovery potentials are identified and strategic redevelopment paths indicated.