Urban Productive Landscapes: designing nature for re-acting Neoliberal City

none1noThis publication from Springer "Urban book Series" discusses the effects of Neo-Liberal policies on the transformations of architectural and urban practices and education in the transition from the era of “professionalism” to “post-professionalism.” Further, it develops a political and critical perspective on contemporary practices of architecture and urbanism, their implementation, political effects and social results.In the world of urbanism, architecture and landscape, new paradigms are currently change the way people think about or interact with economic crisis, quality of life and self-made practices. In a scenario where the scale and pace of market-driven urbanization and ephemeral landscapes of pop-up settlements are challenging the notion of permanence as a basic planning principle, the regeneration of the city in the 21th century aims to the definition of multi-level approaches associated with emergent socio-spatial challenges. Many of the most promising ideas in this field are that of the reformulation, reclamation and recycle of variable patterns of open spaces as real generators of urban life. This paper presents a theoretical framework, understanding how urban regeneration processes, through the "bottom up" redevelopment of residual spaces, can represent an attempt to reduce degradation of peri-urban fragile environments and to find environmentally compatible ways of increasing the definition of urban productive landscapes.mixedSommariva E.Sommariva, E

Potential effects of TiO2 nanoparticles and TiCl4 in saltwater to Phaeodactylum tricornutum and Artemia franciscana

Nanosized titanium dioxide (nTiO2) is widespread in many commercial products and several authors investigated its ecotoxicity effects focusing mainly on freshwater environments. Data on saltwater species are still lacking or present contradicting results. We compared for the first time the toxicity of TiCl4 and nTiO2 considering standard toxicity tests with microalgae Phaeodactylum tricornutum (growth inhibition test, 1.8–90 mg/L) and crustacean Artemia franciscana (mortality test, 0.5–64 mg/L). For A. franciscana, two alternative scenarios were considered beside standard protocol: i) darkness; and ii) starvation. About microalgae, results evidenced that effects of TiCl4 (EC50 = 63 mg/L) were greater than nTiO2 (no EC50), but IC10 and IC20 were significantly lower suggesting that nTiO2 is more harmful than TiCl4 at lower concentrations. The effects of TiCl4 to crustaceans larvae in all exposure scenarios were lower compared to nTiO2 (EC50(96 h) = 15 mg/L - standard protocol). During toxicity testing, the absence of light generally lowered nTiO2 effects while starvation increased the toxicity of both TiCl4 and nTiO2