Kilburn High Road Revisited

Drawing on John Agnew’s (1987) theoretical framework for the analysis of place (location, locale and sense of place) and on Doreen Massey’s (1991) interpretation of Kilburn High Road (London), the contribution develops an analysis of the notion of place in the case study of Kilburn High Road by comparing the semantics emerging from Doreen Massey’s interpretation of Kilburn High Road in the late Nineties with those from a selection of noisy and unstructured volunteered geographic information collected from Flickr photos and Tweets harvested in 2014–2015. The comparison shows how sense of place is dynamic and changing over time and explores Kilburn High Road through the categories of location, locale and sense of place derived from the qualitative analysis of VGI content and annotations. The contribution shows how VGI can contribute to discovering the unique relationship between people and place which takes the form given by Doreen Massey to Kilburn High Road and then moves on to the many forms given by people experiencing Kilburn High Road through a photo, a Tweet or a simple narrative. Finally, the paper suggests that the analysis of VGI content can contribute to detect the relevant features of street life, from infrastructure to citizens’ perceptions, which should be taken into account for a more human-centered approach in planning or service management

The power of visual representations and the growing aestheticization of food: an interdisciplinary analysis of Airbnb visual content in Siena

The paper aims at exploring the role played by visual content in the processes of place touristification and commodification that are initiated and accelerated by online platforms. The analysis addresses the photographs through which Airbnb hosts illustrate and promote their accommodations, focusing on food images as the most fertile terrain for the inquiry, by virtue of the density of its aesthetic, social, geographical, and cultural meanings, constantly evoked by the photos. The analysis is based on a corpus of 250 listings located in the Municipality of Siena (Tuscany, Italy) present on Airbnb between November 2020 and February 2022, and 3960 photographs of the interiors uploaded by hosts. To this end, the authors develop an interdisciplinary method of investigation that synergistically integrates the geographical approach with interpretative models applied in the fields of semiotics and visual studies. The city of Siena is itself an excellent case study. Thanks to its small size, it was possible to map the entire set of accommodations present in the territory during the indicated period, which makes the corpus homogeneous and exhaustive; as a major tourist attraction in Tuscany and nationwide, the link between food, tourism and local identity is particularly strong and therefore worthy of study. Based on the outcomes, the conclusions show the effects and dynamics of a process of image normalization that differs profoundly from the promise of authentic and unique tourist experiences summed up in the platform’s slogan “living like a local

Public geography e citizen science: pratiche di partecipazione per la ricerca-azione

The paper addresses the relationships between geography and the emerging domain of citizen science as a possible scenario for the strengthening of public geography. Drawing from the Manifesto of Public Geography published in 2018 and from the following contributions, the paper highlights how core geographical concepts (space, place, location, distributions, territorial systems) are applied in citizen science activities and how the principles of citizen science, such as participation and field work can fertilize future paths for a public geography. The paper describes the phases and methods of citizen science and then explains that the relationship with geography is built on core spatial dimensions, the creation crowdsourced information and place making

Citizens and institutions as information prosumers. The case study of italian municipalities on Twitter

The paper develops an analysis of the distribution, diffusion and performance of the official profiles on Twitter adopted by the Italian municipalities (comuni) up to November 2013. It aims to identify the patterns of spatial distribution and the drivers of the diffusion of Twitter profiles; the performance of the profiles through an aggregated index, called the Twitter performance index (Twiperindex), which evaluates the profiles’ activity with reference to the gravitational areas of the municipalities in order to enable comparisons of the activity of municipalities with different demographic sizes and functional roles

The potential of Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) in future transport systems

As transport systems are pushed to the limits in many cities, governments have tried to resolve problems of traffic and congestion by increasing capacity. Miller (2013) contends the need to identify new capabilities (instead of capacity) of the transport infrastructure in order to increase efficiency without extending the physical infrastructure. Kenyon and Lyons (2003) identified integrated traveller information as a facilitator for better transport decisions. Today, with further developments in the use of geographic information systems (GIS) and a greater disposition by the public to provide volunteered geographic information (VGI), the potential of information is not only integrated across modes but also user-generated, real-time and available on smartphones anywhere. This geographic information plays today an important role in sectors such as politics, businesses and entertainment, and presumably this would extend to transport in revealing people’s preferences for mobility and therefore be useful for decision-making. The widespread availability of networks and smartphones offer new opportunities supported by apps and crowdsourcing through social media such as the successful traffic and navigation app Waze, car sharing programmes such as Zipcar, and ride sharing systems such as Uber. This study aims to develop insights into the potential of governments to use voluntary (crowdsourced) geographic information effectively to achieve sustainable mobility. A review of the literature and existing technology informs this article. Further research into this area is identified and presented at the end of the paper.peer-reviewe

Interfacing the space of flows and the space of places in the platform society: ten years of Airbnb in Florence

Questo articolo prende in prestito i concetti di spazio dei flussi e spazio dei luoghi avanzati da Castells (1996) per sostenere che le piattaforme digitali svolgono il ruolo chiave di interfaccia, di medium, tra lo spazio dei luoghi e lo spazio dei flussi. Le piattaforme digitali, come Airbnb, possono infatti essere considerate come ‘orchestratori di reti’ che gestiscono i flussi di dati e informazioni prodotti dagli utenti (ospiti e Host) attraverso la piattaforma stessa. Per dimostrare come la combinazione di reti e luoghi impatti lo spazio urbano, abbiamo analizzato Airbnb come “un’interfaccia tra comunicazione elettronica e interazione fisica” e dimostrato l’utilità delle idee di Castells per esplorare l’impatto della piattaforma alla scala intra-urbana. Il contributo sviluppa un’analisi spazio-temporale di 12.126 annunci georeferenziati e 651.515 recensioni lasciate dagli utenti di Airbnb sulla piattaforma dal 2010 al 2019 a Firenze (Italia). In questo contesto, le recensioni agiscono come una camera d’eco per lo spazio dei flussi, forgiando alcune aree specifiche della città che soddisfano i requisiti della comunità Airbnb. Inoltre, la progressiva trasformazione di appartamenti privati in nodi della rete turistica globale crea una divisione spaziale sempre più frammentata tra porzioni di città connesse a livello globale e altri spazi geograficamente contigui ma non connessi. Tale processo è geograficamente disomogeneo e riproduce modelli ben noti di concentrazione del valore, in cui i simboli creano una realtà urbana virtualmente contraffatta, destinata ad imitare il luogo proiettato nella piattaforma

Camera con ananas: Immagini di cibo, immaginari di luogo nella piattaforma Airbnb

Il presente contributo verte sulle fotografe che illustrano gli alloggi offerti su Airbnb a Siena e nei suoi dintorni, concentran dosi in particolare sulle fgure alimentari e gastronomiche al fne di rifettere sui processi di turistifcazione del territorio innescati e accelerati dalle piattaforme

OBIETTIVO 11: Rendere le città e gli insediamenti umani inclusivi, sicuri, duraturi e sostenibili. Città e sostenibilità: dai target del SDG n. 11 alle policy

L’ambito urbano è un teatro privilegiato per esplorare le sfide che lo sviluppo sostenibile impone sia dal punto di vista ambientale che socio-economico. Le città  sono state da sempre la culla della cultura e delle innovazioni, il fulcro delle attività economiche e politiche, svolgendo un ruolo attrattivo per la popolazione che vi si stabilisce in modo pi  o meno permanente. Proprio per la loro portata demografica, le città sono tuttavia anche il teatro di gravi processi non sostenibili come l’imponente domanda di risorse e di energia, la congestione e l’inquinamento, la produzione di rifiuti; non ultime le diseguaglianze socio-economiche che anche su scala urbana si manifestano in modo chiaro, talvolta violento. Il capitolo parte dagli spunti offerti dai target del SDG 11 “Rendere le città e gli insediamenti umani inclusivi, sicuri, duraturi e sostenibili” per analizzare, in primo luogo, le principali problematiche che caratterizzano gli insediamenti e lo sviluppo urbano contemporaneo: la crescente popolazione urbana a livello mondiale, le disparità economiche e insediative, l’accessibilità  ai servizi di base, la qualità  della vita, lo smaltimento dei rifiuti, il patrimonio culturale e naturale e la governance urbana. Il capitolo offre infine, senza pretese di esaustività, un panorama di alcune possibili risposte alle problematiche esposte facendo riferimento sia ad esperienze specifiche in contesti urbani diversi (dalla megalopoli alla piccola città), sia al concetto di smartness e alla pianificazione partecipata

Quando il voto parla di disagio e della crisi del sogno europeo. Opinioni sulla brexit

I risultati del referendum avvenuto nel Regno Unito il 23 giugno 2016, denominato Brexit (“British exit”), hanno animato all’indomani dell’evento un intenso dibattito e copiosi sono stati i tentativi di esplorare gli esiti, in parte inaspettati, in relazione alle caratteristiche socio-demografiche della popolazione del Regno Unito piuttosto che alla appartenenza politica dei votanti. La domanda che ci poniamo è se l’espressione di voto del Brexit abbia davvero a che fare con l’Unione Europea o non sia stata forse la manifestazione di altri fenomeni. Se non siano, quindi, altre le dimensioni che hanno influenzato la scelta, come il benessere, la sicurezza, lo stato di salute delle economie locali

Citizens and institutions as information prosumers. The case study of italian municipalities on Twitter

The aim of this paper is to address changes in public communication following the advent of Internet social networking tools and the emerging web 2.0 technologies which are providing new ways of sharing information and knowledge. In particular public administrations are called upon to reinvent the governance of public affairs and to update the means for interacting with their communities. The paper develops an analysis of the distribution, diffusion and performance of the official profiles on Twitter adopted by the Italian municipalities (comuni) up to November 2013. It aims to identify the patterns of spatial distribution and the drivers of the diffusion of Twitter profiles; the performance of the profiles through an aggregated index, called the Twitter performance index (Twiperindex), which evaluates the profiles’ activity with reference to the gravitational areas of the municipalities in order to enable comparisons of the activity of municipalities with different demographic sizes and functional roles. The results show that only a small portion of innovative municipalities have adopted Twitter to enhance e-participation and e-governance and that the drivers of the diffusion seem to be related either to past experiences and existing conditions (i.e. civic networks, digital infrastructures) developed over time or to strong local community awareness. The better performances are achieved mainly by small and medium-sized municipalities. Of course, the phenomenon is very new and fluid, therefore this analysis should be considered as a first step in ongoing research which aims to grasp the dynamics of these new means of public communication