Social impact and urban quality: graphic representation tools for interpretation and integrated design

The contribution proposes an ongoing part of a larger work that will be completed in the coming months. The pretext is the update of the evaluation of the social return on investment index carried out in 2015 by the Turin- based Fondazione Sviluppo e Crescita CRT with Politecnico di Torino. In 2021 it will be ten years of activity for Sharing, the first example of social housing in Turin, and so we have decided to give an up-to-date reading of the social return by defining an assessment model that on the one hand makes the process of data collection and analysis more rapid, and on the other includes in the study variables of a broader context, at the scale of the neighbourhood, incorporating parameters and indicators of urban quality and resilience, always read through the filter of social impact. The evaluation model being prepared is intended to be light and simple to apply, while maintaining transparency, representativeness and significance. The objective is twofold: on the one hand to read the evolution of this node within the urban fabric in which it lives. On the other hand, to define an evaluation tool that can operate in the monitoring of different interventions (which will obviously also need to have variables sewn up case by case), but that can also provide elements to identify in advance, ex ante, those social and territorial realities that could support the success of the investment in terms of social impact. This is a field in which social impact must be linked together with local actions and urban infrastructure triggers, involving public and private actors. The survey and the urban project see illustrious references in the research; in particular, significant perceptual approaches will be highlighted through authors, visual approaches linked to the reading of urban space, scenes collected apparently in an extemporary manner, in a rush, dense with layers of reading, as well as analytical approaches, which break down the image of the city and operate synthesis at different levels of interpretation. The research group's attention is also focused on the codes of representation, the graphic language that gives access to knowledge and enables the conception and realisation of conscious projects. Urban survey is a lively field of research, sensitive to innovation in methods and tools of investigation. Access to an ever- increasing range of data makes it possible to answer complex questions about the use of urban space and the social impact of its quality.