New Metropolitan Perspectives

Innovation districts are emerging as local economic development strategies in diverse cities around the world. They have however, been criticized for being non-participative top-down initiatives that encourage gentrification and economic polarization. Ruta N, a public organization, is leading the transformation of the innovation district of Medellin (Colombia), dubbed as Medellinnovation District. The paper investigates the programs that are being implemented in the Medellinnovation District in order to mitigate the negative externalities that such strategy can generate. The research methodology is based on a case study approach, using Medellinnovation District as a significant and high-impact case. The paper finds that the programs that Ruta N is implementing can be regrouped into two categories: attraction and absorption. The programs under attraction aim to attract knowledge companies and workers to the innovation district. The programs under absorption aim to activate the absorptive capacity of the residents living in the innovation district in order to make them full participants of the development of the innovation district.

Spatial Data Infrastructures constitute an organisational and technological bet on the part of Public Administrations to make available the geographic information they collect or generate to institutions and citizens. In Spain, various initiatives have been developed at state, regional, local and cross-border levels, which have been integrated into the Spatial Data Infrastructure of Spain. In the case of Santiago de Compostela, a World Heritage historic city, two experiences have taken place: the Heritage Information System (SIP, by its Spanish acronym) and recently the Geoportal of Santiago de Compostela City Council. This work aims to present the experience of both initiatives as tools for heritage management and public knowledge. An evaluation of the design and functionality of the SIP over the 7 years since its implementation has also been carried out. For this purpose, four indicators have been established: use of international and European standards, compatibility, proactivity, and synergies between documentation centers. The study found that despite the functionality that the SIP had in its creation, the lack of foresight to maintain its systematization and updating led to it being outdated. However, the Geoportal of Santiago de Compostela City Council was created as a new tool for disseminating and managing heritage and council services among institutions, professionals and citizens.

The objective of this work is to analyze the structure, organization and attributions that characterize the Metropolitan Cities or Areas present in certain European Union countries. This is a complex path, developed taking into account the considerable differences between the historical experiences, the institutional structures and the economic-social conditions that have characterized the various forms in which the metropolitan experience was “built” in the various national contexts. In this research work we present the results of an analysis that took care of the city and of the relationships between the urban transformation paths and the processes of socio-economic development at the local level, the expansion of the same and the strategies of development. First of all we tried to analyze contemporary trends dominating the urban development and the real dynamics that underline the changes occurred in urban planning especially in recent years. Economic and social changes at the international level, have heavily influenced the evolution and unfolding of the urban dimension and this work, first proposes a theoretical and interpretative framework of urban reality that changes and subsequently it focuses on Europe and Italy, in order to investigate institutional aspects, normative indications, settlement models, public policies adopted and examples of realized practices, which have intervened on urban transformations and related processes of development. The aim is to offer a reasoned contribution to the possible and significant models of organization and governance of metropolitan areas in Europe, with ideas or solutions to outline our metropolitan model.

From the beginning of the 21st century, following major European and global initiatives such as the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005) [1, 2] and The Economics of Ecosystem and Biodiversity [3], the approach of Ecosystem Services could be considered an effective way to rebuild the traditional approach oriented to identify the impacts of territorial transformations in decision making processes. This research is oriented to contribute to the wider methodological framework of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment [1]. Starting from this, the present work contributes to build interpretative models for the evaluation of a relevant part of the fourth class of ecosystem services: the territorial touristic attractiveness. The INVEST model, an open source toolkit, has been applied to assess the attractiveness of the Basilicata Region considering both natural and cultural heritage in order to highlight strengths and weaknesses of the investigated methodology, compared with Strategic development perspectives (also defined Smart Specialization Strategy).

Health monitoring, crisis prevention and support for everyday activities represents an emerging field of application at a national level, with particular reference to fragile individuals, the elderly and people with chronic diseases. An important aspect that should be explored by the end of this decade is how the technologies of artificial intelligence, as applied in the health context, might ultimately improve the quality of the current system and whether the work done as part of the efforts now being made is optimised and sufficient to achieve new objectives. In particular, the ability to process large quantities of data will act as a catalyst, triggering an extremely high number of benefits in the health and wellness sector in terms of prevention, diagnosis and individual treatment.

The Po Plain (Italy) is a complex mixture of urban and rural landscapes. Between Lombardy and Piedmont, the rural zone includes the largest rice crop area in Europe, accounting for 40% and 90% of the European and Italian rice production, respectively. The monitoring of this crop system is important by both environmental and economic points of view, because of its impacts on ecosystems, society and markets. In particular, the near real time (NRT) provision of information about crop status at farm scale is relevant for different players (i.e. farmers, consultants, policy makers, insurance companies). In this study, a Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI), implemented for the provision and dissemination of NRT crop status information, is presented. These information, derived from very high resolution satellite imagery, can be helpful to support loss adjusters in their workflows. The SDI architecture is designed as a seamless solution from satellite data download to presentation of added value information, which are retrieved and displayed on a mobile device, directly in the field.

Usually, rural landscape characterization is implemented through geomatics techniques and subsequent production and analysis of geospatial data. Thanks to internet diffusion, practitioners and researchers can share data in the World Wide Web. Data sharing process can improve participatory planning processes and allow an easy comparison between different landscape areas. Sharing can be done with varying degrees of interoperability and different software tools, proprietary or open source. A widespread way to share geospatial data and metadata is by Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) taking advantage on Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards. Anyway, the sharing of data by OGC service lacks in data harmonization and in semantic enablement, making difficult compare, search and analyze data given by different sources. Different data schemas and linguistic barrier hinder the usefulness of data obtained from different sources. In this study we present a novel data workflow implemented for sharing in an interoperable, harmonized and semantically enriched way multi-temporal land cover datasets collected in a previous landscape characterization researches.

The goal of this paper refers to the potential in using new Sentinel-2 (S-2) remote sensing imagery and in situ surveying for mapping Cork oak (Quercus suber L.) woodlands in Calabria Region (Southern Italy), comparing them to other satellite platforms such as Landsat 8 operational land imager (L8 OLI). Considering that S-2 spectral bands are particularly suitable for estimating different vegetation cover characteristics, we propose a methodology for mapping the actual consistence of this habitat, using the vegetation spectral reflectance to evaluate cork oak spectral response. A set of different S-2 and L8 OLI scenes where freely downloaded and pre-processed (topographic and atmospheric correction, band anomaly detection) in order to better investigate cork oak spectral signature. Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and ND Red Edge index where calculated to obtain a high spectral resolution vegetation mask. Digital Elevation Model (DEM), signature training sets, Ground Control Points (GCPs) and ancillary data where used to perform a supervised classification of both S-2 and L8 OLI images. Furthermore, an accuracy assessment was applied to the classified images in order to evaluate user’s and producer’s accuracies. S-2 provides a great opportunity for global vegetation monitoring due to its enhanced spatial, spectral and temporal characteristics compared with Landsat.

The Multi-Spectral Instrument (MSI) aboard the ESA Sentinel-2 (S-2) allows satellite the Normalized Different Vegetation Index (NDVI) to be measured at much higher spatial resolution (10 m) than has been previously possible with space-borne sensors such as Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer aboard ENVISAT or Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus aboard Landsat. Therefore, multi-spectral analysis of remote sensing data today represents an efficient tool for monitoring vegetation in a Mediterranean environment, where spatial resolution often represents a limiting factor due to high fragmentation and spatial distribution of forest stand.The aim of this study has been to map the health conditions of the Castelporziano coastal pinewood forest (Roma). To this aim, we used a diachronic NDVI index, provided by ESA Sentinel-2 images and field observations, to monitor the health status in a historic pinewood forest that has recently been affected by a rapid diffusion of pests (Tomicus destruens Woll.). The monitoring performed allowed us to map the pinewood forest in risk classes and at the same time to provide data concerning the localization of areas showing a strong decline. Thus, we provide information useful for the correct management and planning of forestry thinning to preserve those areas of the pinewood forest not involved in the decline process.

This study was intended to frame current changes of city and citizens in the new virtual contexts. This research analyzed different citizens need attitudes whether it occurs in a traditional or virtual context. Here we presented the first results, which may well explain the new strategies and modalities of city to join the new green urban planning and meet the new citizens’ demand, by means of different tools and media. More specifically, the research carried out on the social media application for quality of metropolitan life. Information obtained has helped leading municipality towards a correct planning strategy in the different environments, traditional and virtual, also considering the impact of social media. In particular, the word-of-mouth mechanism among citizen seems to have gained a more and more relevant role in the information process of the virtual community, representing a strong generator of messages and experiences in the virtual and traditional environments.

In the 21st century globalised economy, innovation is a crucial factor within strategies targeted at growing and sustaining competitiveness of regions and cities. Accordingly, the creation of knowledge process, along with sharing and commercialisation, became an effective response to the pressures generated by globalisation in order to increase the competitive advantage. The emerging trend of innovation-led urban planning initiatives provides strong evidence of how cities are implementing strategies to promote innovation mainstreaming. Hence, these innovation-oriented policies, which are targeted at reshaping cities, are currently translated in the creation of innovation districts. This paper aims at identifying the actors who foster the innovation process at urban level, and analysing their influence throughout the innovation district life cycle. Firstly, the authors assess the role played by public and private sector in the different stages of innovation district development, by adapting the Urban Land Institute conceptual framework in the Innovation Life Cycle District Assessment. Secondly, empirical research works are defined in order to test the ILCDA. The Boston Innovation District and the IDEA District are the two case studies under investigation, by pointing out the policies and planning initiatives undertaken in the Seaport area of Boston and in Downtown San Diego, respectively. Findings from this research highlight the level of public private partnership effectiveness in supporting the development of innovation districts. Useful lessons can be drawn in encouraging planners and policy-makers towards undertaking combined actions at the different stages of the development process.

The cities of the Mediterranean basin are treasure chests of stories, memories and symbols: they are the essential nodes of communication and migratory currents between populations. Western culture took birth from the traditional city, the centre point of all the contaminations and all trade networks. Ports and cities are historically strongly linked, although some markedly different relationships exist between them. The strength of these links depends on local and global circumstances, and peculiar local challenges.Authors focus on the Mediterranean dimension of European coastal cities, and in particular on those of the so-called Arco Latino, as representatives of an exported and exportable model of city, with typical recognizable characteristics that are capable to define the identity of places. Arco Latino is a complex system in which socio-cultural, economic and ecological environments are dynamically interrelated.In particular, the paper aims to describe the main resilient features and peculiarities of “port cities” and “cities with port” in the Arco Latino area, resilience being meant as the ability to absorb, adapt to and/or rapidly recover from internal and/or external stresses due to the continuous change in citizens’ needs and/or from potential disruptive events.

Tourism is becoming one of the world’s largest growing industries with a continuous growth of around 4% per year for seven years straight according to UNWTO. Consequently, interest in utilizing the potential of tourism to boost economic development has grown dramatically. And although tourism’s beneficial impact on the fostering country’s economic growth and the developmental force tourism generates is undeniable, non-strategic development of tourism industry can result in negative outcomes. The extractive character of the tourist industry poses a challenge to urban policies which have to avert negative outcomes, control the expansion of the tourist industry while responding to a particular set of problems which vary depending on the given political, economic, socio-cultural, environmental context. The article utilizes literature analysis in order to illustrate the role of spatial models, as an extension of those policies, in mediating the tourist-host conflict.

This study explores the potential of the multiple values and considerable resources that characterize a territory related to the Tyrrhenian cultural landscape in Southern Italy. The approach presented here is an experimentation that employs evaluative experiences tested in similar contexts. The aim of this study is to outline incremental and adaptive decision-making processes that focus on the identification of values and needs and are supported by a bottom-up decision-making process. Evaluation is defined as a multidimensional, dynamic, incremental and cyclical learning process, in which integrated assessment techniques are combined with public participation techniques in order to outline shared and transparent intervention scenarios.

The increase in energy exploitation and air pollution have forced the European Union to deal with energy saving and CO₂ emissions reduction. With specific reference to buildings, important targets by 2050 have been established, implementing 2020 energy saving goals, and the concept of NZEB (nearly zero energy building) has emerged. In this context, clear understanding of buildings energy performances achieves primary importance and the inclusion of new variables in the analysis such as the user behavior can offer some insights into the solution of the discrepancy between predicted and real energy performances. In the research, an apartment block settled in Turin (Northern Italy) is selected as case study, energy retrofit measures formulated and evaluated including different users’ lifestyles by means of Cost-Benefit Analysis.

Nowadays energy transition is a recurring topic, which describes the process of an energy system moving from fossil-based sources towards renewables. The transition can unfold at different levels, from the single initiative of a local community to a complex cross-border agreement. The latter type is well represented by EUSALP, the European macro-regional strategy for the Alpine region. One of its aims is to transform its territory into a model region for energy efficiency and renewable energy. To support a well-informed decision making process, this study provides the first insight about the status quo of energy balances in EUSALP, at local as well as aggregated level. Moreover, it offers an overview on the various energy targets defined by the territorial units that constitute the EUSALP region. Data has been retrieved via a bottom-up quality-oriented process consisting of (i) a survey targeted at responsible person in local energy departments; and (ii) data control and harmonization. We found that the EUSALP region is actually a model region only in clean power production, whereas starting point as well as energy targets of territories are highly heterogeneous. We also identified the need of more harmonized data collection methodologies. We conclude that this bottom-up process can support and legitimate policy makers in cross-border cooperation activities under a smart macro-regional energy strategy, which pursues an increment in energy savings, renewable energy production and a broad engagement of relevant stakeholders.

Geographically Weighted Regression is a statistical technique for real estate market analysis, particularly adequate in order to identify homogeneous areas and to define the marginal contribution that the geographical location gives to the market value of the properties. In this paper a GWR has been applied, in order to verify the robustness of the real estate sample, this for the subsequent individuation of progressive real estate sub-samples in able to detect and to identify possible potential market premium in real estate exchange and rent markets for green buildings [21–28]. The model has been built on a large real estate dataset, related to the trades of residential real estate units in the city of Reggio Calabria (Calabria region, Southern Italy).

Infrastructures represent the element able to reunite territories, giving back their identity. In this paper, we propose the results of the research RES NOVAE (Reti, Edifici, Strade, Nuovi Obiettivi Virtuosi per l’Ambiente e l’Energia), made by University of Calabria and other public/private partners with the aim of defining an upgrade of the meaning of infrastructures. The project describes the realization of Cosenza Augmented city, integrating the energy smart grid, focus of the technological research, with a more complex social infrastructure. In this new model of city, citizens are the main users of urban intelligence. The social infrastructure is built on points and connections that weave projects and cities. Some points are physical, others are virtual. These new elements will allow the transformation from a classic Smart City to a model based on human dimension: Open Source city.

Given the necessity of strengthening the transition towards a smarter, more sustainable low-carbon future, Smart Cities are considered a powerful tool. However, Smart City projects involving the refurbishment of existing buildings carry key barriers to implementation. The most prominent ones are: (i) a wide time discrepancy between appreciable environmental and economic benefits and immediate costs of action and (ii) economic benefits that might not accrue to who bears the cost of the intervention. This research provides a clue to solving this impasse based on the concept of multiple-benefits evaluation stemming from a shift in perspective from mitigation costs to development opportunities. We considered the costs of interventions on the European building stock under the Smart City projects to assess the multiple-benefits delivered to society. Starting from the monetary aspects of single projects, we identified multipliers to assess three different types of multiple-benefits: (i) Energy savings; (ii) Health and well-being; and iii.) Employment. Our findings indicate that in a time span of 14 years (2005–2018), an amount of about 260 million Euros invested in such projects lead to: (i) an accumulated saving potential of approximately 40 kilotons of oil equivalent, corresponding to 465 GWh; (ii) a reduction in air pollution corresponding to a value of 3 million Euros in avoided costs; and (iii) the creation of around 1,000 jobs with an average duration of 5 years. Considering that most of such investments occurred during the latest economic recession, the impact of the aforementioned multi-benefits appears to be not negligible.

This diagnostic study explores the use of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) to highlight the visibility of the maritime heritage as a complementary product of The Way of St. James. In order to achieve this objective, a case study was carried out on two stages of The Portuguese Coastal Way, Baiona and Combarro, in the province of Pontevedra (Galicia, Spain). Three types of sources were used to analyse the suitability of the ICTs and their content to promote the maritime cultural heritage. The identified problems were synthesized into three diagnostics. The results show that despite the progress made by the responsible institutions towards using ICTs to promote heritage, there are dysfunctions that hinder the potential of these tools for economic and cultural valorisation of Galician maritime cultural heritage.

The Metropolitan city of Roma Capitale (Italy) represents a vast area, which purposes are not only institutional but also specific functions, such as the promotion and coordination of economic and social development. The park areas included in the Metropolitan area are able to provide ecosystem services and resources such as agricultural and forest products. The rational exploitation of biomass resources produced around the Metropolitan area can be an opportunity to replace fossil fuels, make the city more climate friendly and, at the same time, to relaunch the sustainable management of forest that are often abandoned and prone to degradation risk. The goal of this paper is to investigate and update the actual distribution of the main forest types of the Bracciano-Martignano Regional Natural Park, through GIS and Remote Sensing techniques, in order to assess the biomass potential present in the forest areas. Results confirmed the importance of Sentinel-2 satellite data for vegetation applications, allowing to map species and surfaces as well as to carry out other studies at regional scale with a high overall accuracy. The forest types distribution analysis performed inside the park showed that there are about 20,000 t of woody biomass per year available, indicating that rationale forest management can be strategic to deal both with forest degradation and city energy supply.

In the Phlegraean Fields, in the Metropolitan City of Naples, the interactions between local geological phenomena and the urban development that has taken place in the city of Pozzuoli since the Greek occupation, have inevitably had an impact on the way of life of the local population and on the use of the city’s built heritage over time.In order to set a cultural strategy able to valorize the exceptional worth of the city and to understand its dynamics over time, it is necessary to create a narrative that guides visitors and locals to understand these interactions and the integrity of the landscape.The paper describes a methodology carried out to collect, analyze and synthesize information in order to identify the cultural resources, to understand them within their context and to create links between these elements. Firstly, it is crucial to constitute a cultural inventory based on several resources coming from conventional and non-conventional data, such as geo-tagged social media data. The result is a database that contains information pertaining to all forms of cultural resources, uploaded in a graphic map generated using GIS software.The aim of the project is to make freely available supporting material designed for public authority, to be used by the municipality to promote Pozzuoli’s cultural, economic and touristic potential.

During the last decades, the urge to support Regions’ competitive positioning within the knowledge-based global economy has been perceived as a priority. Given this emerging need, the concept of regional clusters has become increasingly central to support the decision-making process and guide economic development strategies. This paper aims at contributing to the debate on the role of clusters as the key engine of regions economic development, with a specific focus on local clusters. This argument is discussed through actualizing the study on the case of the San Diego Metropolitan Statistical Area (SD MSA), California. Firstly, an insightful review of relevant works on the topic of clusters is offered. Secondly, the attention shifts on the Case of the SD MSA, which is investigated through a twofold methodological approach, validated in compliance to the MAPS LED project. Accordingly, a sample of highly performing local cluster is selected and studied both quantitatively (using indicators) and spatially (through the GIS mapping). Ultimately, the study offers a comprehensive picture about San Diego local economy by coupling quantitative and spatial analysis. In addition, the study offers insights to policy makers on the potentials of clusters spatialisation as a supportive tool for effective decision-making.

The need for training and guidance to be provided synergistically as part of the same path is well accepted.Identification of the level of learning and commitment, individual aptitude and aspirations cannot be left only to the choices of individuals and their parents. In personal, family and social terms, the investment, not only economic-financial but also in terms of cultural and professional growth and social advancement is too high and strategically important to be implemented without the support necessary to reduce the risk of failure or wasted effort (dropping out, delays etc.).

In this paper a hedonic price function built through a semiparametric additive model is tried out for the real estate market analysis of the central area of Reggio Calabria. The semiparametric model uses Penalized Spline functions and aims to achieve an improvement in the prediction of the market prices of housing properties in the central area of Reggio Calabria. More in particular, the final objective of the research is to detect and to identify possible potential market premium in real estate exchange and rent markets for green buildings. This is the first preliminary phase for the unavoidable verification of the robustness of the real estate sample, or for the subsequent individuation of progressive real estate sub-samples.

In recent years the urge to sharpen strategic public actions, in the way of boosting regional economic performances, has become an imperative. Accordingly, the concept of Smart Specialization Strategy (S3) has attracted growing consideration, by bringing to light an innovative, place-based policy framework for regional economic development. Although S3 policies has been widely examined by many scholars, nonetheless some implementation gaps remain under addressed. The key issue where the debate is still open relates to the operationalization of the Entrepreneurial Discovery Process (EDP). The EDP is a crucial stage in S3 policy design, since it drives to identify priorities by focusing on exploration and experimentation of new opportunities to transfer them in a clustering phase. Considering this backdrop, the paper seeks to contribute in bridging the S3 implementation gaps by investigating the potentials of the Cluster Life Cycle (CLC) analysis to guide the operationalization of the EDP. The paper presents and discusses a conceptual model towards highlighting if, and how stage-specific features of clusters (in terms of dynamism, cooperation among firms, diversity of knowledge and actors, and spatial significance) provide potential input in the operationalization of EDP, to enhance S3 implementation. Ultimately, the authors find that EDP implementation could significantly benefit the framework conditions of dynamism, cooperation, variety provided by some specific stages of the CLC.

The purpose of this study is to assess the feasibility of an integrated multi-dimensional and multi-level approach that supports decision-makers in planning, designing and managing complex urban regeneration plans. The mixed methodological approach and the combined effect of various assessment tools provide rational arguments for using scarce public resources to determine intervention priorities and the most effective alternatives among different options. The definition of shared objectives and development scenarios can reduce problems and guarantee economic development over time. The integrated model applied to five areas of strategic value for urban regeneration of the metropolitan area of Reggio Calabria (Southern Italy) highlights the potential of this model. The methodological framework combines different tools: Stakeholder Analysis and Cognitive Maps to identify interests, objectives and values; and a Multi-Criteria Analysis to define the most effective and shared alternatives in order to determine the order of priority of public intervention.

The present paper proposes a reading of urban abusiveness that has affected Italian cities in recent decades, distinguishing it from the unauthorized building. It addresses the phenomenon within the broader issues of physical planning of the territory, in the awareness of the strong environmental impact it determines. Urban abusiveness has a strong influence on the land’s layout and on the consumption, use and protection of the soil, and heavily shapes the redevelopment of many southern Italian cities. The paper is organized in three parts: the first one will focus on recognition of urban abusiveness, that is, with urban/territorial effects, distinguishing it from the phenomenon of unauthorized building; the second one will propose a procedure, based on the overlay-mapping technique, capable of representing the urban-scale phenomenon and the third one proposes guidelines for the drafting of the urban plan (or other territory planning tool), which focuses on the urban regeneration of the settlements affected by this phenomenon.

Urban renewals (URs) were identified as a “wicked problem situations” in the original article which introduced the concept. Recently, transforming urban historic areas has become increasingly complex because of a number of reasons (including the property fragmentation, the values’ creation mechanisms, the regulatory framework, the multitude of public and private stakeholders with divergent perspectives and values). In this paper it is argued that problem situations related to URs have become ‘super-wicked’, borrowing the term from the literature on climate change and introducing it urban planning and evaluation realm. In this sense, it is possible to distinguish a series of issues that can grouped in three main features: (i) the measurable dimension of the problem, mainly related to the physical and spatial dimension of that peculiar economic good represented by the urban tissue; (ii) the specificity of the decisional processes in this realm; (iii) the normative dimension.

Definition of city as a complex system opens up to a series of problems that involve the legitimacy of the design of the technocratic plan. The plan nowadays cannot be considered as a black-box tool, but it might be considered as an open process, able to adapt to the needs of citizens and to the socio-economic and environmental contexts. As many scholars underlined, the plan is sequence of phases that must be programmed and that considers the project as a possible scenario, not a definitive one. In a complex and flexible city, the planner (here considered both as the urban studies expert and the political decision maker) has the role to create the conditions for the development of the city, and for creating or maintaining the possibilities of evolution of the citizens who live in a certain territory. In this sense, the strategic aspects of the city plan and its programmatic role, have a relation more with the rules system than with the design one; but it is also very clear that the human space in urban context is made of physically well defined elements. Basing on the most commonly cited example of anti-planning city organization, the MVRDV project Oosterwold, authors underline the importance of the physical and geographical components inside the rules of a plan, nevertheless recognizing the difficulty to establish detailed boundaries to a complex and flexible city.

The present study tries to analyze the phenomenon of informal settlements in a specific territory. The choice is due to the fact that the above phenomenon has a strong territorial impact, as well as a strong influence on the use and consumption of the land. In Italy the problem of informal settlements is so old and consistent that three building amnesties have not solved it. The aim of the study is to analyze the phenomenon under both the perspectives: urban planning and local finance. A specific methodology, based on the overlapping of different maps, is implemented here. This allows figuring out the phenomenon of illegal settlements in the municipality of Giugliano, in the Metropolitan city of Naples. Giugliano in Campania is the third municipality in Campania Region for the number of inhabitants. The rapid increasing of population has caused an unplanned development, especially in the suburbs and along the coast, two areas that are frequently characterized by the scarcity of infrastructures and public facilities. By analyzing the municipal budgets of the last years, and, in particular, by analyzing the revenues deriving from the retrospective building permits, it is possible to evaluate the activity of the administrations in the sustainable urban management of the informal settlements. By simulating the regularization for some well identified informal settlements (in Giugliano the district of Casacelle with 21.000 inhabitants and almost all illegal) it is possible to demonstrate the effectiveness and the efficiency of the ‘sanatorium’ instrument, highlighting its potential from both the local finance and the sustainable planning perspective.

The paper discusses two interrelate aspects that have been emerging in the current phase of Smart Specialisation Strategies (S3) implementation, that is the concept of dynamic location advantages (cluster) and the change in social demand for urban transformation (urbanization). Both concepts contribute to redefine the role of the city in the innovation policy, athwart renovating the tools of urban policy and planning, underlined also by the Urban Agenda 2030. However, it is also widely recognized from combining Schumpeter (1934) and Jacobs (1969) that the concept of dynamic location advantages finds at city level the conditions to launch real change in regenerating local economic areas and valorize local assets. From these considerations, it follows that it is crucial to investigate how cluster-oriented policies and urban policy and planning are related in transforming cities. The aim of the paper is to figure out how the connection of urban policy with place-based innovation approach allows at reaching the knowledge convergence to activate informational spill-overs through zoning and urban planning tools. The paper examines the case of the Kendall Square area in Cambridge (MAPS-LED project-Horizon2020), which is analyzed through the lens of urban planning and zoning adopted for the area. The development of the Kendall Square area is characterized by a mixed-use approach, and innovation spaces are included as a zoning requirement for the foreseen development of the area. Conclusions highlight how urban planning and zoning are pushing factors in supporting the innovation-oriented demand of socio-economic and physical transformation.

Starting from the Ivan Blečić and Arnaldo Cecchini book “Verso una pianificazione antifragile” [1], this paper will identify main arguments that: (i) help to deal with the conflicts of a complex society that weakens the connections between pieces of society; (ii) recognize in Z. Bauman thought the elements of concern that characterize the liquidity of our society and its negative connection with urban and regional planning; (iii) highlight in “anti-fragile planning” an innovation instance for the discipline promoting new approaches that starting from the reduction of territorial vulnerability (resistent), are able to promote the regeneration of utility functions (resilient) by involving local communities in a collective form of creativity strategic development form. In one word: anti-fragile.

The recent economic global crisis has raised the default rate of mortgage loans. Real estate assets -buildings or areas- set as collateral for mortgages encounter numerous difficulties during the liquidation phase. They can remain in disuse without meeting any possible purchaser or they can be sold at an auctioned price much lower than the book value. However, some developers may see investment opportunities in these areas and undertake processes of value extraction. These subjects undertake processes of value extraction from these areas. This research aims to investigate whether the strategies and experiences of urban transformation can find valid strategies for the valorisation of these assets. Information derived from transformation works on unfinished buildings have been used as data set. For the purposes of the investigation, the stalled real estate investments were the closest representative comparable to the characteristics of real estate collaterals in non performing loans. The result is the elaboration of a grounded theory that theorizes three intervention guidelines for these assets, not based only on market indicators but also exploiting the potential of urban planning tools such as the transfer of development rights.

The Politique de la Ville, grounded on an idea of equality that has not withdrawn despite political changes and economic downturns, was launched in the late 1970s, aiming at reducing territorial inequalities within disadvantaged neighborhoods dating back to the second post-war period.In the Communauté urbaine of Lyon recently established as a Métropole and provided with a Strategic Plan (SCOT), several challenging generations of PdV have been set up addressing the traditional domains of social housing and urban environment and supporting widespread access to education and cultural facilities. In the deprived neighborhood of La Duchère, high standard urban renewal was deemed able to break down the invisible barriers of the social stigma by attracting new people and activities and promoting social inclusion.Beyond the questionable and controversial displacement of the previous inhabitants, the long-standing mobilization of the PdV in La Duchère features the ideal fieldwork to assess whether and to what extent alongside current regeneration tools intangible assets have been releasing benefits to the community.

With reference to the public-private partnership procedures for the enhancement of the public property assets, in this paper an innovative methodology for assessing the financial conveniences of the parties involved (private investor and Public Administration) is proposed. The developed method borrows the most widely-used evaluation criteria for the verification of the investment financial sustainability, and through basic logical assumptions, it allows to define combinations of the financial performance indicators easily interpretable by the parties involved and to be used in the negotiation phases. The aim is to provide a rapid tool for the verification of the investment financial viability, through an original interpretation of the classic DCFA evaluation criteria, that could be more relevant to the typology of public-private partnership agreements for the territorial regeneration.

Within the ethos of Smart Specialisation Strategies (S3), the EU regions seek to “discover specificities” in their territories to be harnessed in order to gain significant competitive advantages. This paper offers an illustration of a niche market which grew up in the North American context turning into a remarkable economic asset. First, we assess the consistency of the craft breweries instance with the “innovative milieu” concept. From this perspective, three spatial-based economic approaches, such as clusters and regional innovation ecosystems, are compared and debated. Second, we shed light on the tools implemented by the public to boost this industry sector. The methodology follows a qualitative approach, harnessing both secondary and primary data, specifically interviews with key informants. The results shed light on a multi-faceted business-friendly ecosystem which encompasses a quadruple helix array of actors. Nonetheless, the attitude of the public sector has proven keen to identify and tackle needs and hindrances.

Across US the most intriguing interpretation of ‘Smart Strategies’ and the emerging model that embodies the idea of recreating an innovative urban ecosystem is well represented by the concept of ‘Innovation District’, a ‘geographic area where leading-edge anchor institutions and companies cluster and connect with start-ups, business incubators, and accelerators’. The city of Boston represents a paradigmatic case of flexible integration between urban economic redevelopment initiatives, changeable partnership architecture and exploitation of the potential of social innovation-related regeneration. The inspiration model of the ‘Innovation District’ of South Boston Seaport is referred to the 22@ Barcelona project, an initiative conceived in 2000 for regenerating an abandoned industrial site - ‘El Poblenou’- with new thriving mixed use urban activities. This can be considered controversial and almost paradoxical given the fact that the Europe 2020 official Agenda is deeply committed in applying the Smart Specialisation Strategy for creating virtuous ecosystem in European urban regions following the US policy models and innovation clusters. The major challenge for an effective Smart Strategy style interpretation is related to the potential ‘territorialisation’ of urban redevelopment visions. The ‘consciousness of places’ with their local cultures can become a key-driver for embedded innovation. The ‘place-based’ approach allows to build virtuous regeneration projects including the potential of territorial ‘dna’ related to the local communities for identifying, recovering and increasing the values of local cultural specificities.

The paper highlights the key findings of the research activities conducted under the MAPS-LED project, in examining how the place acquires a specific connotation in designing “tailored policy” for innovation and knowledge spill-overs. The contribution of the Project, in the current debate on the innovation policy, concerns the explanation of how territorial strategies can be part of regional innovation strategies for Smart Specialisation Strategies (S3). The MAPS-LED spatial oriented approach to US cluster highlighted the relevance of the urban dimension in concentrating knowledge resources and linking them to economic activities. The research focused on the occurrence of “innovation spaces” in the places characterized by the presence of Cluster, in order to identify specific urban areas (target areas) in which analyzing the interaction of cluster with the urban fabric, to make evident the emerging factor of a new demand of innovation-oriented physical transformation. Through the lens of the general framework of the Project, innovation spaces have been surveyed using on-line questionnaires distributed in different public and private innovation centers. The findings provide interesting insights on the role played by innovation spaces in the urban and the economic environment. Networking activities, services provided and the support of local place-based policies turn out to be key elements in spreading innovation in specific places and handler of the urban transformation demand. The quantitative approach to spatialize innovation joint with the qualitative approach through interviews led to connect Place, Knowledge and Innovation as main categories of output indicators to set the entrepreneurial discovery process as evidence-based and horizontal policy.

This paper focuses on the interaction between land use planning and infrastructure provision, and offers an overview of the methods that are used in different development contexts to share the costs of local infrastructures and facilities between the public and the private sector. Over the last forty years or so, in the face of intense fiscal pressure and a drastic reduction in the transfer of resources from the central government, local authorities have increasingly been searching for alternative means to fund the provision of off-site infrastructures and facilities.Starting from the analysis of the Urban Developments Agreements carried out in Lombardy Region over the last 15 years, the paper provides an overview of the surplus value capture mechanism, as it result from land use change and development with the aim of pointing out the issue of its allocation between public and private parties.

The aim of the paper is to reflect on the link between social innovation and urban development. Starting from the recognition of social innovations as collective energies and intelligences, increasingly shaping urban systems, the paper states that the growing dimension of these experiences indicates the emergence of a phenomenon that deserves to be investigated, in order to understand its innovation in organizational systems, design capabilities and growth ambitions. Building on the assumption that social innovation practices can become lever of transformation of the traditional city planning approaches and practices, the paper highlights the crucial role of intermediate place in fostering social innovation, replacing and integrating complex planning, triggering processes of mutual institutional learning, and challenging public authorities in rethinking their intervention in more adaptable forms. The paper seeks to investigate, through the analysis of intermediate places of innovation, how to promote the implementation of new urban models, which deepen the link between social practices and urban and territorial development. The aim is to explore the role of the specific intermediate places and their capacity to become nexus for innovation in urban policies, planning tools and the territory, through the analysis of two models of intermediate place, Urban Living Lab and Community HUBs, which are useful bridges, able to answer to the transition from social innovation to transformative innovation.

This paper does not describe the results of a specific research but presents a reflection on the possible urban scenarios based on sustainable development in all its possible aspects. In terms of city and territory as complex, open and dynamic systems, various aspects are tackled: from the need for participatory processes, to issues of urban security, to the coexistence of diversity, to illegal construction and so on.Despite globalization and the tendency towards social and urban homologation, local contexts still present significant differences; they derive from the different historical stratifications, from the current social and economic conditions, from the local administrative capacity and efficiency. The skills, effectiveness and efficiency of government and governance are also different, not only in different countries but also within the same country. For the above reasons, the reflection, although of a general nature, makes particular reference to the conditions of urban systems in southern Italy, united by: urban degradation and widespread building, illegal construction, organized crime, recent immigration, deficient control of the territory, and so on.

Since ancient times the hospital has always been helping shape urban individuality, mainly affecting the territory development. In the best cases hospital has designed an intelligent system of synergies and integrations with other territorial and urban functions. The work focuses on the analysis in particular of pediatric hospital buildings. The objective of the research is to ensure higher quality and efficiency for these hospital buildings, in order to obstruct the ongoing obsolescence processes and guarantee an essential service to the territory. In the hospital design sector, the quality of the space is necessary not only to ensure more exceptional comfort for the users but has beneficial effects on the children healing process. Therefore the research proposes by using a multi-criteria methodology a method for assessing the quality of pediatric hospital structures at three different levels of investigation (Urban System, Building System, and Internal Space System). The originality of the work consists of recognizing the quality as a function of three specific criteria/objectives: Humanization, Sustainability and Flexibility. This new integrated multidisciplinary approach aims at representing a useful model to support systematically the appropriate design choices.

In Italy, Campania is known to be one of the regions with the highest number of illegal settlements. Specifically, such illegal settlements occur mainly in the Napoli and Caserta provinces. Castel Volturno is one of the municipalities has been recognized to play a negative role in this current issue. Castel Volturno, is the area of intervention for the application of a recovery plan for illegal settlements. An analysis of the planning tools in force and preliminary tools exiting, analysis of urban analysis through detailed study of the Kevin Lynch techniques, identification of performance elements on Villaggio Coppola, before moving on to the proposal for the new unauthorized settlement recovery plan. The paper focuses on understanding how to solve the problem of illegal settlements through different possibilities provided by the law; and how to create desirable solutions for administrations and citizens to improve the territory that is often defaced by the careless hand of man, which risks compromising a cultural landscape of inestimable value.

The article analyzes the degree of success achieved by the municipal governments that came to power in Spain after the 2015 elections. In the face of corruption, vulnerability and the neo-liberal growth model that has prevailed since the mid-1980s, they promote a new model of urban governance based on the principles of efficiency, transparency, equity and citizen participation. Principles that laid the foundations of their electoral programs. After two years, it is time to assess if this desire has been fulfilled. Through the Madrid case study this paper will provide an overview of how local authorities are simultaneously addressing the dual pressures of reducing debt as well as restoring the welfare state and the trust of the population. We will explore to what extent they have managed to fulfill their promises, the main problems they have had, how the opposition perceives their urban policies and if they continue to have the support of associations and institutions that originally endorsed them.

Generally, with reference to the geographical variability of real estate values, the observed variables may have non-linear relationships with the response variable. For this reason it’s possible to combine kriging techniques with additive models to obtain the geoadditive models. In this paper a geoadditive model based on penalized spline functions has been applied, in order to obtain improvements respect to usual Kriging techniques and to provide a spatial distribution of real estate unitary values for a central area of the city of Reggio Calabria (Italy). This is the first preliminary phase for the verification of the robustness of the real estate sample, or for the subsequent individuation of progressive real estate sub-samples, for to detect and to identify possible potential market premium in real estate exchange and rent markets for green buildings.

While it is clear that cities are the ideal setting for the rise of the creative class, it is not yet clear how to detect emerging innovation in cities and how to implement it in a sustainable way. This paper builds on and moves forward a research project undertaken on Smart Specialisation Strategy and starts to operationalize a previously theorized novel approach to assess the emerging innovation in cities, based on unveiling factors, tools and triggers allowing cities to enable sustainable innovation-led urban regeneration. The case study of Media City UK has been used to test whether some of the findings emerged from the previous studies would be suitable to allow understanding the potential of an emerging innovation hub and its potential sustainability. Findings from Media City UK show that: conventional indicators can be successfully complemented with dynamic proxies capable to capture the changing nature of innovation; geographical boundaries should be set up as dynamic edges capable to capture the rationale of social innovation in the open networks. It is also recommended to explicitly include equity among the goals to be pursued through innovation-led urban regeneration strategies, to ensure that social innovation -and not just innovation- allows achieving urban inclusive growth.

There is currently growing interest amongst the international community of policy makers about finding solutions for accommodating refugees, who currently concentrate mainly in countries located in the MENA region such as Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Palestine and Libya. Man-made disasters were the main cause for displacing people, whether inside their countries or forced to cross the border. This paper discusses the impact on refugees produced by not adequate accommodations and gathers refugees’ inputs on customizing a suitable place for living. The paper focuses on a case study, the Al Zaatari camp in Jordan, which is the most recent camp of MENA region. The case study is developed through an extensive primary data collection, including interviews with refugees in the Al Zaatari camp. Refugees provided the researchers with their inputs by sharing their needs and desires in a new situation. Further insights were provided by involving NGOs experts and their insights and experiences, through an iteration cycle within the design science method. The main finding from the research is a new perspective opposite to a standardized approach to refugees’ needs, built through listening to what refugees have to say on how to improve their lives in camps.

“Urbanism could be comprehended using three perspectives labelled Visual, Emotional, and Rational” is the comprehensive proposition the paper introduces, asserts its validity, and analyses its potential utilizations. The proposition assures not only that there are three relativistic perspectives that could sufficiently help in having a proper understanding of Urbanism, but it also assures that these three relativistic perspectives are contrasting. By contrasting we mean that having an understanding of one perspective would entail a closer understanding of the others. Urbanism is comprehensible by perceiving its immense notions using the three perspectives, the repository of these perceived notions is accumulated by a companion comprehensive model. There is a desperate need for such comprehensive, highly abstract, proposition rather than relying solely on fragmented concrete low-level propositions for the analysis of complex subject like urban identity. Holistic abstraction is indispensable for proper understanding and prediction of users’ urban cognition depending on their urban identity, and hence for developing socially and culturally sustainable urban designs. For instance, the successfulness of any empirical computational simulation of the users’ urban Cognition-mapping is highly dependent on such comprehensive proposition. Additionally, using the comprehensive model as a standard monolithic tool of analysis would enrich the social comparative studies. A main task of the paper is to examine the validity of the comprehensive proposition by analysing the exhaustive understanding of important urban notions using the three perspectives. During that examination, characteristics of the three perspectives would be disclosed and accumulated using the companion comprehensive model. Our findings conform to theoretical and philosophical ontological foundations.

In the knowledge economy, the rise of new social environments is blurring the conventional separation between the first place (home), the second place (work), and the third place. The paper aims to construct a typology of places in the knowledge economy. The research methodology is based on an exploratory case study approach investigating the social environments in Paris (France) that don’t fit in the traditional typology of places. The paper finds that the new social environments in the knowledge city can combine elements of the first and second place (coliving); of the second and third place (coworking); and of the first and third place (comingling). Furthermore, the combination of elements of the first, second, and third place in new social environments implies the emergence of a new place, the fourth place. The paper contributes to understand how the knowledge economy is changing the nature of places in the global post-industrial city.

The explosion of cluster phenomenon has called for the identification of industrial agglomerations in the UK. The authors have been pointed out only those industries that have higher rates of innovation and better economic results as a function of their presence - defined by the European Union as emerging industries – given that these are fields in which new cross-sectoral linkages are most likely to emerge. This paper, following the methodological approach developed by Porter and adapted to the European Union by the European Cluster Observatory, set two benchmark parameters – Location Quotient and Economic Specialisation - in order to detect the emergence of business agglomerations. The mapping result suggests that United Kingdom has a wide spectrum of cluster of emerging industries and that Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire is the most innovative region in the whole country.

A conceptual theoretical manifestation of “Us/Others” relationship could be traced in fields like identity, where a demarcated boundary is somehow apparent, and societal inclusion of minorities. However, the paper perceives the “Us” and “Others” relationship as a persistent epistemological and psychological relationship that needs explanation. “Us” can’t exist apart from the “Others”. “Others” is not necessarily a person; it is whatsoever beyond “Us”. Consequently, the paper recognizes the “Us/Others” relationship as a point of departure and as an essential step for the achievement of a universal unifying whole that disregards boundaries and sets a common platform of communication that sustains everyone’s conception of Urbanism. For such a universal whole to exist, the boundaries between “Us” and “Others” need to diminish into neutrality. Such neutrality would be conducted based on the abstract understanding of both of “Us” and “Others”. Otherness is a kind of enrichment of the universal whole rather than a weakening factor, and it could be the missing soul of Globalization. As a matter of fact, the universal whole is a monolithic meaning of infinite Otherness’s shapes. During the paper, Otherness would be handled as a tool of analysis for instrumenting the cultural/social sustainable metropolitan/urban transformations. Otherness would be analytically represented as hierarchical instances of the structured continuum of Urbanism, which is disclosed by a specially devised comprehensive tool of analysis. Such monolithic representation of Urbanism and their analytical instances constitute the proposed framework and is expected to comparatively and coherently support the top-down and bottom-up neutral urban analyses and interventions. The paper would firstly exhaust the metaphysical definition of “Us” and “Others”, then secondly would present the possible intervening policies for promoting neutrality as the universal form of Urbanism.

The paper discusses the plural notion of metropolitan territories in Italy by focusing on industrial districts (IDs), which are not included in the national urban agenda. IDs represent today not only important productive systems inserted in global value chains, but also peculiar urban conurbations formed by processes of territorial coalescence, thus requiring adequate representation and attention. In the Sassuolo ceramics district, some changes and challenges have recently stimulated new reflections among local institutions and have finally led to the proposal of the ‘city-district’ idea, which has actually encountered many difficulties and resistances. The paper critically reflects on the feasibility, necessity and possible configuration of this new governance system, firstly by showing that some relevant issues for the competitiveness and sustainability of the ID have already reached a supra-local scale, thus demanding common strategies and policies of territorial improvement and regeneration; secondly, by giving suggestions for its effective implementation.

The relationship between accessibility, as a measure of the fixed location of the property, and land value is well recognized. Space Syntax theory was developed as a set of tools to analyze relationships between structures and functions of cities introducing accessibility measures of the urban grid. Even though admitted that location parameters comprise the most influential factors of urban property value, accessibility measures of centrality, based on network (integration and choice) quantifying urban morphology, have gained little attention in land value literature, despite the fact that urban grid morphology has a crucial role in property market structure. Recently, there has been growing interest for spatial statistics which count for spatial aspects of phenomena such as the land market. The frequently used OLS regression adopted for statistical inference on variables influencing a phenomenon is mostly inefficient for comprehension of spatial phenomena mainly due to instabilities caused by spatial autocorrelation and fixed parameter assumption. GWR extends the classic regression model by allowing spatially varying coefficient estimations while also accounting for spatial autocorrelation. The goal of the research presented herein is to estimate which spatial accessibility radius better explains objective land value and to explore local spatial relationships between geometric accessibility and land values using GWR, Space Syntax theory and GIS techniques, in Xanthi city, a medium sized city in Northern Greece. This research has led to inferences concerning the importance of Space Syntax geometric accessibility in the interpretation of land values, with local patterns of accessibility influence emerging.

We argue that antifragility is a valuable and contentful goal for planning, distinct from resilience. We present a possible conceptualisation and delineate the essential properties of an antifragile planning, its affinities with the capability approach, and discuss the possible sources of its legitimacy within the conception of a liberal-democratic state. Hence the suggestion to incorporate antifragility into both the methodology and the content of planning.

Until 25/30 years ago it was not essential to study the investments in detail to understand where to deposit own savings: the growing markets and the economic boom favored the success of a large portion of investments on the market and in particular for the housing market, where the investment risk was particularly low. In recent years, however, the economic landscape has reversed and there is an increasing need for specific analyses that seek to try to estimate the future development of the value of own tangible property and the assessment of potential income. This work focuses on the risk and profitability of rental real estate investments, looking at average return values according to the different uses of buildings and identifying an average risk value, and then comparing them with securities investments such as ten-year BTPs.

This paper presents an application of multicriteria evaluation to select the property characteristics in order to estimate the most probable market value of a large public property portfolio. The methodology proposed, based on the involvement of key actors of the decision process, aim to support the decision process of value judgment in a more flexible way overcoming the difficulty presented by econometric models due to the scarcity of a large sample data; it is referred to a multi-parameter estimated model and tested on a large property portfolio owned by the Bank of Italy. The application has shown that this type of procedures can be a reliable tool to analyse the real estate values and solve estimation problems concerning consistent real estate assets on which analytical methods and regression models are hardly applicable due to the scarcity of data.

In the last decade, Italian territorial policies have become increasingly characterized by a broad laissez-faire approach, which negates the value and the importance of urban planning and of common goods.The point of departure for the hypothesis formulate in this paper is the ascertainment of an assault on landscape and of an increase in soil consumption. The latter is closely related to the fluctuations of the property markets during the crisis, which are particularly acute in prime areas or in “legally difficult” areas. This tendency is particularly visible in Southern Italy, where economic development has been historically weak. There, the crisis has made some territories available for particularly remunerative real estate investments.As a consequence, urban planning is seen as a hurdle to be overcome with derogations, agreement-based policies, public-private partnerships, housing plans, as well as with past and ongoing emergencies.Data on coastal areas, cities, and towns shows an increase of soil consumption due to dwelling, which is in turn connected to the structural crisis of local public finances and to the connected depletion risk for high-quality landscapes and their identity.Against this background, this paper looks at the other side of unauthorized development, i.e. on the housing stock which, for different reasons, has been legalized. In doing so, it suggests possible solutions for the complex issue of building amnesties.

Izmir is the third most populous city in Turkey and one of the oldest settlements on the Mediterranean basin. It is vital to protect Izmir’s cultural heritage, integrate historically significant areas into modern life, and promote sustainable urban development. To achieve this, the Izmir Metropolitan Municipality has implemented the multidisciplinary “Izmir Tarih (History) Project”, and the participants include local administrations, national public institutions, local public enterprises, non-governmental organizations, the private sector, funding institutions and the local community. This paper discusses the participation process implemented in Izmir and certain projects whose pros and cons will be determined.

The ability of a system to absorb, recover from and successfully adapt to stressing circumstances can be defined as “resilience”. To make cities more resilient toward natural disasters, several international initiatives recommend to consider the risk management not only in emergency conditions.The identification of characteristics that make resilient the cities toward natural disasters and the connection between the resilience goals and the risk management phases (mitigation, preparedness, response, recovery) are the main purposes of the framework implemented in the present work. At this aim, we considered the city as complex, dynamic, self-organizing system, continuously changing under the pressure of perturbing internal or external factors. The framework, structured in a Geographic Information System, is useful at different territorial management scales and can host many types of data. Starting from a critical review of international frameworks, focused on the resilience, four drivers (economic, social, environmental and institutional), several driver descriptors (number: 15) and sub-drivers (number: 36) were identified to improve the resilience and to manage the territory during the risk management phases. This frame allows to overcome the sectorial approaches of territorial management promoting the integration of resilience goals (prevent, prepare for, cope with, respond to, and recover from) and of risk management phases (mitigation, preparedness, response, recovery) into ordinary planning tools.

The following essay is a summary of what has been produced in the activities of the research grant Productive heritage: research of records left on the territory in the broader research project The importance of the company in the development of society: how to read and enhance the cultural heritage inherited from productive activities. The aim of the research is to develop a strategy that has as its objectives the valorization, promotion and communication of the cultural heritage inherited from the disused productive activities which, today, require be re-meant to take on a renewed role in the contemporary fabric.The analysis carried out on a sample of nine case studies allows to investigate regenerative processes whose effectiveness can already be assessed in terms of the ability to assimilate the contradictions characterizing the physical condition of the productive heritage, justified on past logics, compared with the current urban, social, economic context. This capacity, deduced from the comparison between what emerged from the interpretative reading of the sites and the synthesis of the design logic already adopted, is articulated according to some design criteria useful for the subsequent definition of guidelines; these, declined according to the five light actions, reading, mapping, enhancing, re-generating, innovating, build a methodology useful to trigger those re-signification processes capable of assigning a renewed urban quality to large areas of the urban fabric, of generating common spaces and therefore sure of everyday life, to guarantee the presence of places dedicated to new working, culture, and welfare communities.

The temporal evolution of land values is conditioned by the reference macroeconomic framework and, more strictly, by the socio-demographic and productivity characteristics of the territorial study area. If these dependencies are widely recognized in the literature, on the other hand, the correlation levels between the variables at stake, especially in relation to the parameters of the survey area, are not investigated in quantitative terms.With the present paper, we intend to establish the measure of the diachronic correlation between market values of the land (vineyards, olive groves and irrigated crops) and variables able to affect the mechanisms of price formation.Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are used for the processing of cartographic representations useful for visualizing the spatial distribution of data, which pertain to the vast area of the Province of Salerno (Italy). Correlation curves return the measures searched for the time interval from 2000 to today, allowing to highlight the effects of the structural crisis in the years after 2008.The entire analytical path starts from the collection of information and construction of the datasets, passes through the selection of parameters and for the processing of the maps and can establish quantitatively the levels of correlation between market values and territorial variables. Thus, it provides useful elements for future research, aimed at defining an explanatory model of the temporal trend of mercantile appreciations of agricultural soils.

The urban green areas represent a strategic resource for the contemporary city sustainable development. In addition to aesthetic and recreational functions, their presence contributes to increase the environmental quality level by improving the microclimate, preserving the biodiversity and promoting the territory economic growth. However, the interventions execution designed to provide the built areas of the so-called urban forests is rarely indicated as a priority action in the urban spaces planning because often a different allocation of available resources is preferred. In this work, starting from the definition of a indicators set useful for expressing the not only financial, but also social, cultural and environmental components of value of the projects for urban forestry, the aim is to build a multi-criteria economic analysis protocol purposeful at predicting the correct funds distribution between initiatives for realization of urban forests at a district scale. The characterization of the model is carried out through the logical-mathematical tools of the Operational Research developed according to Continuous Linear Programming principles.

The correlation between market values of agricultural land and infrastructural, socio-demographic and productivity characteristics is widely recognized. In the present paper, the Authors intend to establish how the endowment of infrastructures, the levels of income and the demographic density are able to affect the land values of the corresponding territory.The analysis considers the market values of the vineyards, olive groves and irrigated crops, distributed throughout the Province of Salerno (Italy) and relevant for the overall value of agricultural production of the study area. The real estate appraisals, related to the last available survey of 2015, are provided by the Council for Agricultural Research and Analysis of the Agrarian Economy (CREA), for each of the 17 agricultural regions in which the Province is divided. They are at first cartographically represented through Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and then analyzed according to the geo-location both of the main urban centers and of the infrastructural network that characterizes the area. So, the distribution of values is explained in the light of established theories of Economic Geography.Then, the market values of agricultural soils are synchronously correlated with the surveys on the taxable income and the population density, respectively extracted from the data warehouse of the Ministry of Economy and Finance and of Italian Statistical Institute (Istat). Through the data processing and the thematic maps building, the correlations between the involved variables are quantified, in order to establishing functional relations that can be extended to other similar areas.

One of the main problems in the debate around land consumption concerns the need to address actions of urban regeneration towards the restoration of consumed land rather than mere containment of land consumption. The poor appreciation of the value related to those transformations aimed at recovering free areas, imposes an estimative remark aimed at the definition of tools able of comparing the benefits related to ecosystem services and those related to ordinary transformations. A key role needs to be held by local communities that, conveniently involved in the assessment, can help addressing urgencies and emergencies of the studied environment, and at the same time actively participate to the process of territorial, social and cultural transformation.

Location characteristics and accessibility are widely used in real estate research as they are considered to predominantly shape property values. Space syntax is a well-known methodology for urban analysis, elaborating accessibility measures of the urban grid. Even though urban morphology has a crucial role in property market structure, Space Syntax centrality measures integration and choice, which are used to quantifying urban space accessibility, have gained little attention in land value literature. Recently, there has been a growing interest for spatial statistics which embrace all tools needed for studying spatial phenomena such as the land market, so that spatial relationships and spatial patterns can be interpreted. The proposed methodological framework of the present paper attempts to explore the relationship between land value and geometric accessibility measures (global integration and choice), applying a spatial approach which combines LISA indicators and Space Syntax theory in order to visualize local correlation patterns. In order to be tested and validated, the framework is applied to Xanthi, a medium-sized city in Northern Greece. Results indicate significant relationships between geometric accessibility and objective land values, along with differences in the emerging spatial relationship patterns between different parts of the city.

Cities often manifest strong differences in their de-facto informal political cultures. Do these differences have anything to do with their own performance levels? Moreover, if so, what are the precise mechanisms by which they affect performance? Looking at the case of the urban Commons, particularly the Italian Social Centres started at the end of ‘70s, as a proxy of urban informal political culture, and revisiting the mainstream business economics and its conceptual consequents, the present paper surveys the main questions and inherent analytical tool sets. The aim of the paper is to find a good framework for further analysis on Commons and metropolitan perspectives. For the institutionalists, the Commons have to be studied as alternative governance modes laying beyond the State and Market. While, following the dynamic capabilities view they could be treated as evolutionary inter-organizational solutions with a potential in terms of creativity and entrepreneurship. The conclusion summarizes the cases for analysing urban Commons with the dynamic capabilities approach.

This paper reconsiders the idea of the creative city in light of the nomocratic perspective and provides critical reflections on past and current practices. The main argument is that planning should not be based on direct intervention to create a creative city (for instance, by supporting certain economic activities or boosting the attractiveness of specific neighborhoods or places), but rather it should enable its spontaneous emergence by creating the conditions in which creativity can be expressed and experimented in space by the largest part of civil society.

In the scientific debate and political strategies, solving the gap between core and non-core areas is becoming pivotal for achieving a more balanced territorial development. The emerging issues in current scientific literature regard how to reverse marginalisation trend in inner areas by carrying out approaches able to enhance the territorial capital in an endogenous development perspective. For this purpose, strategies for these areas have to look carefully at their strengths, such as a low pollution rate, a more direct access to natural resources and a rooted local identity. In many of these contexts, landscape is a specific asset that should be enhanced as driver to trigger new development dynamics, to achieve local attractiveness and competitiveness starting from multidimensional values recognised to the landscape.In this perspective, collaborative processes can be developed, aimed at involving local communities and stakeholders in recognising landscape resources and values as starting point to enhance place identity in marginalised contexts. Therefore, the interpretation phase should develop a dynamic and collective process, supported by interdisciplinary methods and tools to improve territorial capital and, at the same time, strengthening social cohesion, in order to lay the groundwork for co-planning and co-designing processes.

Based on the classification developed by Tore Sager about recognised modes of activist planning, this article offers a reflection on the figure of the social entrepreneur intended not only as a bridge actor but also as a proactive actor within the planning process in a political and economic scenario strongly affected by the consequences of neoliberism. The work proposes an empirical approach aiming to deepen an Anglo-Saxon experience of a social enterprise acting in one of the 39 deprived areas recognised by the New Deal for Communities and involved in its regeneration process. Evidence from the fieldwork permits reflection on the potential role of the social entrepreneur in a time of austerity urbanism in the UK.

The New Code of Contracts and the new Programming Ministerial Decree state that all unfinished public works must be included by the contracting authorities in their three-year Programme to complete, even downsizing or transforming them by changing their destination, provided that they do not remain unfinished. While the request certainly seems to be acceptable, having committed (for now) public money in an unsuccessful way, one might wonder how credible it is to complete it. First of all for the lack of funds, which for most of them was the reason that interrupted the implementation process; then for the consistency between needs and interventions, for the condition of abandonment and for the period of construction. Can public-private partnerships, even in the new forms provided for by the Code, be a (at least partial) solution to the problem?The paper presents the first results of an ongoing search aiming to define the national situation after the last census in July 2017, to identify the categories of works that are largely “not completed” on national areas and classifies them in hot/cold/ones, and to measure, with a first wide mesh sieve, the suitability and applicability of the PPP instrument.

Cities are multifunctional entities that attract a large variety of differently motivated travelers, and new approaches allowing to evaluate the economic impacts generated by tourists in the age of ICT and sharing economy are now definitely needed. More particularly, the spread of a digitally-enabled peer-to-peer accommodation system such as Airbnb is transforming the hospitality domain: if its economic consequences may affect cities and territories at large, the first stakeholders involved in this new economic dynamic are hosts renting their under-used properties to guests. In this framework, this article aims at providing an overview on Airbnb revenue generation patterns, focusing on Turin (Italy) as a case study. Firstly, the article provides insights about the performance of different types of accommodations (i.e. entire homes/apartments and private rooms), suggesting that hosts may adopt different strategies not only to get the most from their properties and appeal different targets of potential guests, but also depending on the physical attributes of their properties. Then, the article advocates for the implementation of methodological approaches combining quantitative and qualitative perspectives, as to better contextualize data-analysis and deepen the interpretation of this innovative economic phenomenon.

Several interesting methodologies are currently applied to assess multidimensional poverty around the world. Among these methods, the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), developed from the Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative in 2010, has particular strengths in capturing multidimensional poverty described by simultaneous deprivations. The method has been widely applied to developing countries whilst its application to developed countries is still very limited. This paper, following the approach of Alkire Foster [1] and the work of Nicolai Suppa [2] applied to Germany, offers a first comparison for Italy, between the ISTAT monetary measure [3] of poverty and an ad hoc multidimensional poverty index (MPI).

The issue of the local provision of public services has becoming important in Italy due to several changes that have been implemented in the last years by the national government in the regulation of state owned companies and in the regulation of public services (or services of general economic interest). The regulatory role of national or local government and the increasing role played in some large companies managing important services have to be accurately discussed in order to reconcile efficiency of the companies with the need of properly represent the political orientations. Potential conflict of interests on one side but also the need to properly represent the interest of citizens, more than the interest of shareholders, are two issues that are discussed in the paper. A practical example of a small size Italian town is used in order to show the current situation in terms of regulations, planning of the service, pricing and management of the service in the most important sectors. Competition and public interest are not necessarily in conflict, but the whole setup must be reviewed.

When urban and environmental transformations occur in areas where the equilibrium between nature and culture is complex and fragile, public administrations could decide to induce private investments using several tools, such as financial contributions to those projects of refurbishment that better respect the purpose of improving the environmental quality and of preserving the local architecture. Multicriteria models may support public decision process regarding this issue, but it is essential to adopt a scientific paradigm that provides a major theoretical reference. This study proposes the development of a network model based on the scientific paradigm by Rizzo and the Analytic Network Process. The first one has been chosen because of its interpretation of the city as autopoietic organization, dissipative structure and political-administrative system, the second one because of its holistic representation of the decision problem in which the interactions between all the elements are made explicit. The network model has been applied to a case study that consists in ranking some alternative refurbishments of buildings in Favignana (Egadi islands, Italy) in order to grant public financial contributions.

The regeneration of the urban peripheral areas is undoubtedly among the most complex issues with which the Public Administrations are currently facing. Different interests, often conflicting, coming from citizens, entrepreneurs and stakeholders, focus on these areas. In the present research a fuzzy multi-criteria decision model is proposed, as support of the Public Administration in the analysis of different scenarios, referred to different temporal moments. The application to four different urban peripheries located in the metropolitan area of Rome (Italy) highlights the potentialities of this model. The representation of the results through a radar diagram and a histogram makes them easily intelligible also by non-expert subjects.

Cities are complex systems and their changing are continuous. The evolution strictly depends on the relationships among the different aspects which compose the same structure, such as social, economic, political, environmental, historical aspects. The consideration of the complexity, the heterogeneity and reciprocal influences of these different elements becomes fundamental in urban regeneration projects that are characterized by many interconnected elements. Starting from a real project in the city of Pinerolo (Italy), the paper aims to investigate the potentiality of Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCMs) to represent the complexity of urban transformation processes, paying particular attention to the possibility of analyzing different scenarios simulation.

The numerous natural disasters that have devastated the Italian territory have ignited a strong political debate on the need to secure the Italian territory, which has now become fragile due to poor management characterized by decades of building abuses and poor choices of urban development.The disastrous phenomena, at the same time, have highlighted the ineffectiveness of the current municipal emergency plans, which did not favor the management of the interventions by the rescuers because of poor risk assessment and planning in the emergency areas ex ante.In part, the issue was tackled by the competent authorities at the highest levels, which have allocated considerable economic resources throughout the national territory for the implementation of risk prevention and mitigation measures. However, this is not enough if the planning of interventions on the territory is not structured according to a strategic approach that takes into account both the real conditions of vulnerability of the territory and the priorities of the mitigation measures required for the effectiveness of the rescue.A new model of emergency planning, equipped with appropriate assessment tools, can therefore be a valuable measure both to ensure the effectiveness of emergency aid in the case of disasters and to address correct governance of the territory.