**1. Introduction**

Urban areas are ecosystems characterized by natural and artificial elements such as buildings, roofs, underground pipes, and green areas that are mainly related to human well-being. The urban ecosystem is not self-regulating but is "regulated" by humans [1–3]. The urban area is, therefore, a complex socio-ecological system where various communities can overlap and interact to a greater or lesser extent and co-evolve with their environment through change, instability, and mutual adaptation [2,4]. Therefore, the evolution of an urban ecosystem is influenced by social decisions or needs and by stakeholders' heterogeneity (for instance, culture, education, religion, vision, interest) [5–8]. These institutional levels include decision-makers like administrative and public institutions that plan the socio-ecological system at di fferent scales: "ecosystems in urban areas", "urban areas within ecosystems", and "urban areas within regional/global ecosystems". At di fferent scales, the boundaries of the urban ecosystem are not always well defined or clear, and therefore, boundaries of a survey area are defined considering the topic and interactions to be analyzed and on practical considerations. [5,9]. Institutional levels are hierarchical and consist of vertical relations between actors of the top and bottom of the levels. Therefore, the urban area has to be planned like a socio-ecological system where the urban ecosystems and institutional levels interact with each other in a multi-scale analysis. The urban planning and design have to create a synergy between di fferent institutional levels (Figure 1) [10–13].

**Figure 1.** Schematic representation of the relationship between urban ecosystem scales and institutional levels in the socio-ecological system [5,6,9].

In many industrialized cities, urban planning must address the phenomenon of "shrinking cities" [14]. These cities have experienced a significant de-urbanization linked to the loss of functionality of some urban areas or buildings due to the decline of the manufacturing industry, migration, and depopulation [15,16]. Consequently, urban areas are characterized by free or temporarily not used urban spaces as a result of technological, economic, and social evolution. In many cases, these urban areas could be brownfield sites: "streets with vacant storefronts, underutilized social and technical infrastructures, and neglected parks and squares" [16,17].

Identifying new functions in urban spaces—either built or otherwise—in a transitioning economy and society is the main focus of resilient thinking, which has to recognize the complex and non-linear dynamic of economic and socio-ecological interactions [18–20].

Currently, the main urban planning and design use the top-down approach, where planners are considered "the experts" who put forward the proposal and then share it with others, mainly the decision-makers that can approve or reject the urban plan [13,21–24]. This generates stakeholders' conflicts in the type of use of the urban space, environmental protection, the interest of residents, labor conditions, economic development, and the identities of urban areas [8,25,26].

The planning of the urban space has to be considered a "public a ffair", aiming to envisage the right use of urban spaces considering the socio-ecological and cultural context of reference and solving conflicts in the choices or preferences in the use of destination of the urban space between stakeholder groups. Being able to evaluate the "awareness, value judgments, behavior, and attitudes" of the citizen in relation to urban space is an important task for a successful plan of urban transformations [27–30]. To create a social and shared vision of possible scenarios that can transform the territory, a prominent role must be given to stakeholders' needs, opinions, and interests, but also fears and doubts, in order to include their vision in the development of the urban space that they use [31–33].

Therefore, urban planning needs to combine bottom-up and top-down approaches, including stakeholder's participation with strategic spatial planning at di fferent urban levels [34]. Public participation helps to understand the aspirations of stakeholders on possible urban development. Moreover, perception stimulates di fferent stakeholders to develop ideas and proposals based on their knowledge, attitudes, and habits, providing greater awareness of their role in urban development. It is an action in urban design useful for increasing the ability to make e ffective planning choices [30]. For this reason, scholars consider stakeholder participation as one of the main aspects to take into consideration in order to guarantee the quality of urban planning [35,36].

On the one hand, there are many examples of bottom-up and top-down approaches in policy activities that are mainly focused on the managemen<sup>t</sup> of natural resources or services (e.g., energy policy, climate change, watershed management, mobility, agricultural, environmental) on municipal, regional, national, and international programs. On the other hand, these approaches are less frequently used on small urban land use planning and design [37–39]. Although these approaches have attempted to include community stakeholders, this has often proved problematic, and planning guidelines do not ye<sup>t</sup> consider design principles that foster social learning, knowledge exchange, and power-sharing [7,40–42]. Mainly, public participation may not always yield a mutually acceptable solution, especially when the interests of stakeholders are diverse and conflicting [38]. Often, top-down and bottom-up urban planning approaches are sometimes considered incompatible because they can produce conflict and fragmentation in the built new environment vision between di fferent urban levels and stakeholders [13,43,44].

This work wants to develop a planning-process of the urban space transformation able to create feedback between di fferent stakeholders at di fferent institutional scales to reduce the mismatch between governance levels and the scales at which people benefit from urban space: from the need of the single individual to the development vision of the decision-makers [5,6,45]. Starting from a practical case study, we propose a combination of a bottom-up and top-down methodology capable of developing a participated urban plan, harmonizing the various stakeholders' interests that act at the di fferent administrative levels and integrating ecological and socio-economic components in the context in which it is inserted [31,45].

Mainly, the study is focused on the Plan of the Urban University Center (PUUC), involving the creation of new university lecture halls in a university urban space that was the research site of tobacco production. Considering that the University represents the main stakeholder, as it is the owner of the urban space, the planners tried to satisfy university needs with the urban transformation vision of the decision-makers (top-down), also taking into account the aspirations of the citizens that act in the context area of the PUUC (bottom-up).

We hope to identify the best solutions for the use of urban spaces to integrate the citizens' visions with those of the planners and of the di fferent public institutions that have an administrative role in choosing the final destination of the area.

#### **2. Materials and Methods**

#### *2.1. Study Area*

The study area is a free space of the university center in the Municipality of Lecce, Apulian region, South of Italy (Figure 2). The presence of the university has greatly influenced the economy of the district, favoring the opening of numerous commercial activities, such as bars, take-aways, restaurants, bookshops, and pubs. Furthermore, the real estate business linked to the rental or sale of student apartments has benefited from the situation. From the cultural and social point of view, the free urban space is located within the former Agricultural Research Center (ex CRA), which was used in the past for tobacco research activities. Currently, the ex CRA is employed for university lectures. The urban free space of interest is characterized by herbaceous vegetation with no ecological value (Figure 2B).

**Figure 2.** (**A**) Municipality of Lecce and location of the study area; (**B**) study area with reference to the context of the former Agricultural Research Center (ex CRA).

Near the ex CRA, there is a large green urban park, the cemetery of Lecce (classified as a historical asset for its architecture), and the Monastery of the Olivetans (founded at the end of the XII century, and currently used by the Department of Historical Studies of the University). To the west of the ex CRA, there is a main road, the Castle Charles V, and the ancient city walls. The north and south parts of the ex CRA have no significant neighboring elements.

#### *2.2. Focus of the Planning Question*

The Italian Inter-Ministerial Committee for the Economic Planning (CIPE) has identified and allocated resources in favor of interventions of strategic national and regional importance for the implementation of the national plan for the South's strategic priority: "Innovation, research, and competitiveness". One of the projects included in the plan for the South is located within the "Urban University Center of the ex CRA". Mainly, in an area of about 11,186 square meters, the university developed an urban plan involving the construction of a new building of about 3100 square meters for educational activities, a parking area of 1734 square meters, and a recreational green area of 6322 square meters. The new area will be realized near other university buildings, and together they will form a widespread urban university campus. The budget for the execution of the plan is EUR 8,000,000.

During the first phase of the planning activity, some regional authorities expressed a favorable opinion of the new PUUC because the plan did not cause negative environmental impact. However, the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, through the Superintendence, was the main institution that opposed the university urban plan. The Superintendence considers that the PUUC will alter the harmony between existing buildings and the identity of the area, and hence it only promotes the development of a green lung.

Considering the institutional conflict, this research wanted to develop bottom-up and top-down participation processes approach able to orient future use of free urban spaces.

#### *2.3. Design Approach*

This study was developed considering bottom-up and top-down approaches in the socio-ecological system [46,47]. Mainly, the stakeholders' participation process was designed considering di fferent roles in the transformation of the socio-ecological system. The designers of the University and Superintendence are considered decision-makers that can directly choose the typology of the transformations (top-down). The citizens are considered as users of the urban space on which the choices of the decision-makers are reflected. However, at the same time, the citizens can revolt against the choice of decision-makers and condition the final result (bottom-up).

The work is organized as follows (Figure 3):


**Figure 3.** The conceptual work models that we have developed for the top-down and bottom-up approaches.

#### *2.4. Bottom-Up Activity: Questionnaire Survey*

The study was planned by taking into consideration the microscale, which encompasses the urban space, the structure of buildings, the relationship between them, and their interaction with other elements of the neighborhoods [48].

The work used face to face questionnaires to gather information about what citizens "feel, hope, wish, approve, or disapprove" for the future use or transformation of the identified urban space [49,50].

The survey was developed so as to include di fferent types of citizens and users, such as students and people who live or work near the area where the project should be developed. This is important in order to explore their opinions and preferences on the possible uses of the free space of the ex CRA. Questionnaires were administered from 15 April 15 2018 to 30 May 2018, both in the morning and in the afternoon during working days and holidays. This was necessary to better characterize the typology of individuals who frequent the area of interest.

The questionnaires were delivered in three di fferent places: the "ex CRA" area, the parking lot in front of the area of interest, and in the urban park "Belloluogo" (Figure 4), as these are the principal hotspot areas of the neighborhood in the context of the urban space of interest.

**Figure 4.** Localization of the points of administration of questionnaires, historical elements, and urban university sites.

We used Sierra's formula to detect the sample size of the number of individuals to interview [50]:

$$\text{Sample Size} = \frac{4 \ast N \ast p \ast (1 - p)}{E^2 (N - 1) + 4 \ast p \ast (1 - p)}$$

where *N* is the number of inhabitants; *E* is tolerated error; *p* is the portion of the variable in the population" [39].
