Age Inequalities of Accessibility to Essential Urban Services. The Case Study of Primary Health Care in the City of Milan for Older People.

The population in urban areas is getting older because of a significant demographic change. In 2019, the OECD indicates that the share of people aged over 65 reached 17.8% and is expected to climb to 25.1% in 2050. Older people present age-associated limitations that influence mobility capacities with the occurrence of social isolation, loneliness, and depression. Moreover, aging is associated to an increased vulnerability and dependence on medical care services. Since everyone should have the opportunity to access to essential services equally, especially people who need them the most, to accomplish practices and maintain relationships that people take to be necessary for normal social participation. Hence, more age-friendly approaches are needed to shape ageing cities. In this study, a GIS-based procedure was developed in order to assess accessibility to primary healthcare services and to support decision-makers to better allocate resources, for local welfare policies restructuring. The accessibility measure considers the local healthcare provision, the land use structure and the characteristic of the multimodal transportation network. The methodology was applied to the city of Milan, con- sidering its Health Protection Agency (ATS) that provides healthcare assistance to the elderly dwelling in the city. The outputs show that entire neighbourhoods’ elderly population suffers from very poor accessibility to primary health services, especially in the city suburbs, and that the methodology could be effective in urban planning strategies to promote better quality of life for the elderly

Urban Planning for Transit-Oriented Development: An application in the Naples metropolitan area.

Transit-oriented development (TOD) is a planning strategy that aims to concentrate jobs, housing, and services around mass transit stations to make cities more sustainable, productive, and liveable. There is no one-size-fits-all strategy, and TOD principles cannot be uniformly applied across an entire city or transit network. This paper provides an innovative methodology to assess areas around transit nodes and supports decision-makers in identifying critical assets for investment. The developed methodology utilises Bertolini’s node-place model (1996), classifying station nodes according to their transit characteristics (transit features) and the quality of the spaces (open areas) and the built environment (built development). The proposed methodology is applied to the Naples metropolitan area (Italy), which includes 92 municipalities and over 3 million inhabitants. The study identified significant transit corridors and urban hotspots within the study area, where integrated transport and urban strategies would effectively promote more sustainable development

Measuring spatial accessibility to urban services for older adults: an application to healthcare facilities in Milan

This study proposes a Geographic Information Systems-based methodology to measure accessibility to urban services from the elderly perspective to support urban planning processes. Specifically, it seeks to understand and clarify how the urban environment can influence the quality of life for older adults, mostly through pedestrian and public transport networks, locations of essential urban services, and the organisation of their resources. In light of a significant demographic change, policymakers will have to promote age-friendly urban planning approaches to guarantee equal access to services and activities. We propose a methodology to measure accessibility to healthcare provision services that considers land-use and mobility features and older adults' behavioural traits. The method belongs to the family of 2SFCA—2 steps floating catchment area—which evaluate accessibility as the combination of both supply and demand of urban services. Therefore, we have introduced innovative elements to shape actual mobility opportunities for the elderly and their travel choices. The methodology was applied to Milan's city to measure accessibility to the Health Protection Agency (ATS) services, which is responsible for healthcare assistance to the elderly dwelling in the city. The outputs show that a significant share of older people (almost 40%) suffer from poor accessibility to primary health services and that they mostly live in the city periphery. Moreover, the application to a case study has shown that the methodology could identify the critical aspects needed to aid urban planning to achieve a high quality of life for elderly people

GIS-Based Spatial Analysis for the Integrated Transport-Land Use-Energy Planning: An Application to the Great London Area

This work focuses on examining the possible advantages for the urban sustainability, derived from the integration of transport, land use and energy systems. The main aim is to develop a GIS-based method that can help decision makers, either public or private, improving the economic, social and environmental sustainability of urban areas through an integrated transformation approach. As a result, it was possible to provide a spatial analysis technique based on seven synthetic variables and on the application of a cluster method able to identify the portions of urban areas where investments and urban integrated transformation processes can be more suitable, according to the dynamic relationships among transport, land use and energy systems. The methodology was applied to the Great London Area and lead to significant results: the cluster classes follow the transport railway network evolution within the study area boundary. The paper is organized as follow: in section 1 the integration of transport, land use and energy planning is investigated; following the introduction, in section 2, the GIS-based method is presented, followed by a description of the application to the Great London Area; in section 4, findings of the methodology are explained. In the last section, results and future developments are discussed

L’accessibilità urbana multimodale ai servizi sanitari primari per gli anziani.Una proposta di metodo

La popolazione anziana è oggi molto più in salute rispetto alle generazioni passate, a causa dei sostanziali miglioramenti nell’alimentazione, nei servizi sanitari e nelle cure mediche; allo stesso tempo, l’invecchiamento è associato a una maggiore vulnerabilità e dipendenza dai servizi di assistenza sanitaria

Multimodal accessibility to primary health services for the elderly : a case study of Naples, Italy

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Le ageing cities tra passato e futuro. Strategie, metodi e proposte per migliorare l’accessibilità degli anziani ai servizi urbani

[Italiano]: Il volume raccoglie le conclusioni di un lavoro di ricerca che costituisce il naturale quanto autonomo sviluppo dei risultati del progetto MOBILAGE – Mobility and ageing: daily life and welfare supportive networks at the neighborhood level, finanziato nel biennio 2018-2020 da Fondazione Cariplo (Gant N° 2017-0942) e concluso nel giugno 2020. La questione ageing cities negli ultimi tempi ha assunto la connotazione di vera e propria emergenza soprattutto in ragione dei trend di crescita della popolazione anziana nelle città industrializzate. Il tema, di estrema rilevanza sia nel dibattito scientifico che nella prassi operativa nazionale e internazionale, si configura come una delle sfide/opportunità per ripensare/ridisegnare le città migliorando la qualità di vita degli anziani. Il gruppo di ricerca impegnato in questo lavoro, sotto la guida di Carmela Gargiulo, è costituito da giovani ricercatori che afferiscono al laboratorio TeMALab del Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile, Edile e Ambientale (DICEA) dell’Università di Napoli Federico II ./[English]: The volume gathers the conclusions of a research work that constitutes the natural as well as autonomous development of the project MOBILAGE - Mobility and ageing: daily life and welfare supportive networks at the neighborhood level, funded by Fondazione Cariplo in the biennium 2018-2020 (Gant N° 2017-0942) and finished in June 2020. The ageing cities have recently taken on the connotation of an absolute emergency due to the upward trends in the elderly population in industrialized cities. The issue, extremely significant both in the scientific debate and in national and international operational practice, is one of the challenges/opportunities to rethink/redesign cities, with a view to improving the quality of life of the elderly. The research group consists of young researchers, under the guidance of Carmela Gargiulo, who belong to the TemaLab Laboratory of the Department of Civil, Building and Environmental Engineering (DICEA) of the University of Naples Federico II

Some results of a radon survey in 207 Serbian schools

In this paper the results of radon concentration measurements performed in 207 schools in 7 communities of Southern Serbia are presented. The annual radon concentration varied from 17 Bqm-3 to 428 Bq m-3 with a median value of 96 Bq m-3. The arithmetic mean (AM) of the 207 annual averages was 118 Bq m-3 with a standard deviation (SD) of 78 Bq m-3. The best distribution fitting of radon concentration by log-normal function was obtained. The log-normal parameters are the following: geometric mean (GM) = Bq m-3, geometric standard deviation (GSD) = 1.9. In addition, a spatial distribution of the indoor radon concentration over the investigated areas is observed.JRC.E.8-Nuclear securit

A Metabolomic Approach to the Study of Wine Micro-Oxygenation

Wine micro-oxygenation is a globally used treatment and its effects were studied here by analysing by untargeted LC-MS the wine metabolomic fingerprint. Eight different procedural variations, marked by the addition of oxygen (four levels) and iron (two levels) were applied to Sangiovese wine, before and after malolactic fermentation