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Let’s try and look at what’s happening in our cities, in our landscape; if we think about it, the disaster we have before our eyes is often a problem linked to a lack of care, to carelessness and disaffection. There’s a way of inhabiting that is indifferent to others and to everything else. Our frail condition needs care. It is fundamental for us to re-establish care as a central point in our way of thinking and acting. It’s a great change for sure: the architect, miraculous healer, becomes an attentive and patient caregiver.

The link between city and food constitutes an axis of innovative intervention to direct the national policy agenda towards more resilient models. It implies a recognition of agro-ecosystems and of agricultural production, not as antithetical activities in urban areas, but as phenomena able to play a key role in the development of metro systems (Marino, Cavallo, 2014). In this sense, the oxymoron "urban agriculture" is representative of a new possibility for the forgotten spaces, as an internal reactivation of virtuous mechanisms for urban regeneration, towards an identity reconstruction.  In this context, urban gardens represent spatial experiments, halfway between public and private, useful for ecological, urban and social reconnection of territorial systems.

This research wants to check how the valuers' choices can change when the judgments are taken on a hypothetical level, because it does not exist a comparable asset.

For this purpose, a multi-attribute model was used, specifically, an Analytic Hierarchy Process_AHP. The multi-criteria analysis is a multidisciplinary approach that aims to analyse a problem from different perspectives, such as, that economic, social, aesthetic, historical and administrative.

The multi-criteria analysis, therefore, is structured to support the decision-making, to identify areas with more or less opportunities, highlight the priorities and the differences between the options and define the best resource allocation to reach the initial goal.

It may be useful to identify the values, formulate objectives, identify alternatives, analyse the impacts and build a valuation model.

The AHP tool can be applied in the resolution of estimation problems, and in the context of the analysis of the enhancement projects of public assets, including interventions on cultural, environmental resources.

It is based on the assumption that the asset value can be expressed as a function of their characteristics, called criteria and sub-criteria. It is a decision support system based on multiple criteria, capable of treating a large number of different factors. The first step of this method involves the construction of a hierarchy of dominance. This is a reticular structure composed of two or more levels. The first level contains the goal, in this case, it is the impact of individual characteristics on the value of a Venetian Villa.

The valuation was realized using a panel of experts about historical assets, in particular Venetian Villas. They completed a questionnaire that was based on pairwise comparison of each criteria and sub-criteria, and, thanks to the combination of the average scores, it has been possible to build the hierarchy of incidence for each variable. The elements of each pair are compared in order to determine which of them is most important in relation to the element in higher-level.

As part of the ongoing debate on the sustainable development of cities, the theme of the recovery and re-use of disused urban buildings has a specific role.

The proposed contribution presents a project for the recovery and rehabilitation of a disused building - formerly a cinema in the historical centre of Catania – and its repurposing into a residence for university students.

Our study started with an in-depth analysis of the historical and structural features of the building as well as of its preservation status, and then moved on to identify the required performances in terms of structural safety, environmental comfort and ease of access.

Reversibility of the technological solutions adopted and maximum functional flexibility were guiding principles in the design of the project.

With a view to inclusive design, the proposed approach meets both the existing size requirements for university residences and the principles of environmental sustainability, suggesting the dismantlement only of the structures which are incongruous with the new use of the building.

Finally, the project successfully combines the functional restoration of the architectural container with the improvement of its energy and structural performances, while carefully preserving the technical and formal qualities of the original building envelops.