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The development of sustainable cities involves improving the performance of the built environment and its effects on its context as one of the multiple intervention points. Indeed, outlining and implementing building artefacts does not constitute a simple act of generating a physical place, but represents a process that cannot ignore the positive and/or negative impacts that these transformations can have on the environment and societies in which it is embedded. Since in a profit-driven logic, a private investor's interest in environmental and social values may be limited in favour of economic value, a positive push towards urban sustainability can be found in government-promoted fiscal building incentives. Indeed, these tools offer direct actions for more favourable urban conditions, supporting private entities in meeting the intervention costs. This paper aims to define a theoretical evaluation framework through which the "sustainable" value creation potential of building incentives can be assessed. Through this framework, the research analysed the main Italian building incentives, observing how they support the creation of economic, environmental, and social values for the benefit of society, the environment, and urban areas. This paper discusses the usefulness of the framework in supporting public actors in the potential revision, definition, and communication of such incentive policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable development of cities constitutes nowadays a worldwide goal. Therefore, the related urban and architectural choices must fulfil sustainable objectives. In this context, sustainability assessment presents itself as a key and fundamental element to guide decision‐making processes, orienting choices towards actions that make the built environment more sustainable. Among the several existing assessment tools and methods, multi‐criteria decision analysis (MCDA) are part of the most widely used approaches to support sustainable decisions. Therefore, this article aims to understand what makes sustainability assessment through MCDA suitable or unsuitable to support decision‐making processes in the context of sustainable urban and architectural design and observe how available MCDA methods support this purpose. To do this, a literature review related to MCDA methods in sustainable urban and architectural context has been performed. Descriptive statistics and tables are provided to point out the main trends according to specific research questions. In this sense, it is intended to highlight some potential gaps and points of reflection for future research developments that can support sustainable urban and architectural development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainability is an inherent urban and architectural problem. It is simultaneously characterized by many different dimensions, pursuing heterogeneous and often conflicting objectives. To help address these complexities in a structured way, this paper illustrates an integrated assessment framework to tackle social sustainability, in order to support the decision-making process towards sustainable architecture. This integrated decision support framework was applied to a case study concerning a new cultural centre at the Politecnico di Torino in Italy. The aim of this paper is to propose a decision support methodological framework for the analysis, graphical visualization and evaluation of social sustainability of architectural projects. It combines three methods: first, Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats (SWOT) analysis, to get a guided understanding of the project and detect the best design strategies; second, the Stakeholder Analysis (SA), to develop a strategic view of the actors involved; third, the Social Return of the Investment (SROI) as a methodological tool for social impact assessment. This framework, presented through the discussion of some project solutions, helps us to analyse the architectural material effect of social sustainability and answer the question: Are we investing properly and creating spaces sufficiently functional to build better conditions for our community and our city? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]