Data Evidence-Based Transformative Actions in Historic Urban Context. The Bologna University Area Case Study

The rapidly growing use of digital technologies in urban contexts is generating a huge and increasing amount of data, providing real-time information about the urban environment and its inhabitants. The unprecedented availability of data allows us to not only improve advanced knowledge and gain a deeper understanding of urban dynamics, but also enact data evidence-based transformative processes and actions in the direction of smarter, more sustainable, resilient, and socially equitable cities. In this context, the literature on smart cities has recently expressed the need to more deeply involve urban visions and communities in the process of regeneration. This paper aims to analyze how big data can be useful in understanding the effectiveness of small pilot actions of regeneration and reactivation in valuable cultural heritage (CH) urban environments. Pilot actions were developed in the context of the European Union funded project “ROCK—Regeneration and Optimization of cultural heritage in Creative and Knowledge cities” (GA730280). The paper analyses data collected by the ROCK City People Flow tool, in different use and time conditions, in two central squares of Bologna (Italy), in order to rate event successes, spatial transformation effects, and regeneration tactics responses. Data confirm the complexity of interpreting phenomena in such contexts but also provide useful indications for future planning.