Alessia Mangialardo

Breve C.V.:

Alessia Mangialardo, architect expert in real estate economics and economic evaluation of projects. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher for the IUAV University of Venice and she works on social impact assessment of urban regeneration projects for the Italian Ministry of Culture. She carries out professional activities in the field of real estate economic evaluation and, together with the core evaluation team of the Italian government, she collaborates in the evaluation of the economic impacts of the Naples metro.

«The evaluation of social impact in urban regeneration models based on culture: state of the art and future research paths».

SECTION: Social Innovation, Heritage and Territorial Development. Experiences and sustainability of rural areas and urban needs. Creativity and innovation.

The importance of assessing the impact that cultural enterprises and social innovation projects generate in the territory is a topic at the center of the national and international agenda. To date, there are numerous impact assessment tools developed mainly by private entities and companies for internal purposes and there is no single, officially recognized procedure.

The objective of this research is to analyze the most widely used impact assessment procedures at national and international level in order to assess their strengths and weaknesses and to define an interpretative framework capable of guiding operators in the choice of the best impact assessment method.

If, on the one hand, private investors have been supporting the importance of evaluating social impact in addition to economic impact for years, in Italy the central government and local administrations only began to examine the subject in depth following the Reform of the Third Sector.

The absence of a single evaluation tool and the presence of numerous procedures tailored to the needs of individual companies has generated deep confusion as to which social impact assessment methodologies are most suitable for evaluating the positive externalities generated by third sector projects.

An analysis of a number of impact assessment procedures has shown that the main differences are due to the objectives, the methodology used, the stakeholders involved and the aspects – social, environmental and cultural – to be considered.