The growing impact of the ''analytics'' perspective in recent years, which integrates advanced data-mining and learning methods, is often associated with increasing access to large databases and with decision support systems. Since its origin, the field of analytics has been strongly business-oriented, with a typical focus on data-driven decision processes. In public decisions, however, issues such as individual and social values, culture and public engagement are more important and, to a large extent, characterise the policy cycle of design, testing, implementation, evaluation and review of public policies. Therefore public policy making seems to be a much more socially complex process than has hitherto been considered by most analytics methods and applications. In this paper, we thus suggest a framework for the use of analytics in supporting the policy cycle-and conceptualise it as ''Policy Analytics''.Keywords Analytics Á Policy analysis Á Decision analysis Á Policy cycle Á Decision support

The paper aims at addressing the problem of what makes specific aiding to decide within public policy making problem situations. Under such a perspective it analyses some basic concepts such as "public policy", "deliberation", "legitimation", "accountability" and shows the necessity to expand the concept of rationality which is expected to be behind the acceptability of a public policy. We then analyse the more recent tentative to construct a rational support to policy making, that is the "evidence-based policy making" approach. Despite the innovation introduced with this approach, we show that it basically fails to address the deep reasons for which supporting the design, implementation and assessment of public policies is a hard problem. We finally show that we need to move one step ahead, specialising decision aiding methodology to meet the policy cycle requirements: a demand for policy analytics.

In our cities, the production and consumption of resources are achieved at an unsustainable rate. Combined with an increasing global population and accelerating urbanization, the absence of a new approach will almost certainly have dramatic environmental consequences. Potential solutions are emerging: the concepts of circular economy (CE) and urban metabolism (UM), which contrast the current and traditional linear extract-produce-use-dispose model of the modern economic and urban systems, offer a new approach. In this Primer, we present the principles of CE and UM as well as their origins and definitions, strengths and weaknesses, similarities, and limits. We introduce how these concepts can be used for designing a new urban framework called circular urban metabolism (CUM), which encourages urban planners and decision makers to study, design, and manage sustainable cities. CUM has the potential to unite research fields to promote collaboration across disciplines that operate on the planning, design, and management of cities and their complexities.

To build resilient and climate-neutral cities, it is required to modify current territorial planning processes to make them more sustainable and virtuous. However, the implementation of new strategies and innovative governance models faces multiple obstacles, economic restrictions, and technical gaps. In particular, local governments often find it difficult to build structured transition processes. This article investigates how it is possible to respond effectively to the need of urban contexts to adapt to climate impacts, analyzing the case of the Climate Transition Strategy (CTS) “La Brianza Cambia Clima”, the first in Italy of this kind. Through the technical framework and the methodology described, the CTS can activate inter-municipal transformative actions through the mainstreaming of planning tools, the construction of a medium-long-term vision, and the identification of concrete and widespread actions to be implemented in the territory. This coordinated and shared strategic approach allows one to give stability, coherence, and continuity to adaptation processes involving different stakeholders and sectors of the Public Administration. Finally, it favors the implementation of multidisciplinary policies for territorial resilience on a large scale.