The Applicability of the Urban Digital Twin in the Detailed Choices of the Urban Plan

In recent years, the idea of building urban digital twins (UDT) representing entire cities has increasingly attracted the attention of various disciplinary sectors. The UDT turns out to be the inevitable consequence of the digital transformation, configuring itself as the most innovative tool in the panorama of city studies, capable of providing decision-makers with simulation analyzes based on the monitoring of considerable quantities of data, allowing for a better allocation of public resources and helping to tackle problems such as noise, air pollution and traffic congestion. However, UDT use only a limited number of variables and rarely include the processes that determine the functioning of a city in terms of social and economic functions. Following a framework of the UDT concept and after having contextualized this tool within the scientific debate, the present contribution aims to evaluate whether the UDT is a suitable tool, as well than to guide urban policies, even to accept the forecasts of urban planning tools at a detailed scale. We wonder about its possible applications, in the decision-making phase, for the control of territorial surfaces of urban transformation and/or regeneration, both from a physical point of view, for example by supporting decision-makers on where to build buildings, plants and infrastructures, thus pursuing long-term actions, both from a functional point of view, making medium and short-term decisions based on a constantly updated vision of the city.