Managing Knowledge in Urban Planning: Can Memory Support Systems Help?

When dealing with environmental plans, participation is considered crucial but hard work still has to be done in order to make participatory knowledge really operative. Tools and approaches to knowledge management are required that make participatory knowledge, which is produced, shared, and used along the planning action, available to the action itself. Starting from an experience of participatory planning in the context of Torre Guaceto natural Park, authors first reflect on the possible meaning of knowledge management in the planning process; secondly authors envisage the relevance of memory support systems in such processes as means to capture the argumentation chains which, explaining the action, are produced along the action and supporting it. Finally the paper presents the first results of a research project aiming at developing a memory support system dedicated to the Torre Guaceto Park Agency.