The smart city. Critical reading of a multiform phenomenon

Sempre più frequentemente la smart city è al centro dei discorsi delle differenti discipline. Cosa s’intende, però, con l’espressione “città intelligente”? A quali ambiti si riferisce l’intelligenza annunciata? In questo elaborato ci si sofferma specificamente sullo studio della smart city declinata secondo i suoi principali obiettivi sociali, al fine di individuare e sottoporre ad analisi critica le variabili costituenti il rapporto tra città intelligente e intenti annunciati. Come coniugare, cioè, i molteplici obiettivi della smart city? All’interno di quali categorie pensare la relazione tra città intelligente e obiettivi quali l’inclusione e lo sviluppo sociale? Attraverso che tipo di misure raggiungere tali finalità? Ci si sofferma, quindi, sul criterio dell’efficienza come cifra fondamentale della rappresentazione della città intelligente e sulle criticità che l’equazione smart city=efficienza comporta in termini di coesione del tessuto sociale. L’analisi si focalizza, inoltre, sui criteri del bene comune e della relazionalità come possibili categorie in grado di coadiuvare le dinamiche del processo inclusivo

Invariant envelopes of holomorphy in the complexification of a Hermitian symmetric space

In this paper we investigate invariant domains in $\, \Xi^+$, a distinguished $\,G$-invariant, Stein domain in the complexification of an irreducible Hermitian symmetric space $\,G/K$. The domain $\,\Xi^+$, recently introduced by Kr\"otz and Opdam, contains the crown domain $\,\Xi\,$ and it is maximal with respect to properness of the $\,G$-action. In the tube case, it also contains $\,S^+$, an invariant Stein domain arising from the compactly causal structure of a symmetric orbit in the boundary of $\,\Xi$. We prove that the envelope of holomorphy of an invariant domain in $\,\Xi^+$, which is contained neither in $\,\Xi\,$ nor in $\,S^+$, is univalent and coincides with $\,\Xi^+$. This fact, together with known results concerning $\,\Xi\,$ and $\,S^+$, proves the univalence of the envelope of holomorphy of an arbitrary invariant domain in $\,\Xi^+\,$ and completes the classification of invariant Stein domains therein.Comment: 24 page

Maximal Complexifications of Certain Riemannian Homogeneous Manifolds

A characterization of maximal domains of existence of adapted complex structures for Riemannian homogeneous manifolds under certain extensibility assumptions on their geodesic flow is given. This is applied to generalized Heisenberg groups and naturally reductive Riemannian homogeneous spaces. As an application it is shown that the case of generalized Heisenberg groups yields examples of maximal domains of definition for the adapted complex structure which are are neither holomorphically separable, nor holomorphically convex.Comment: 18 pages, LaTeX-fil

Adaptive gravitational softening in GADGET

Cosmological simulations of structure formation follow the collisionless evolution of dark matter starting from a nearly homogeneous field at early times down to the highly clustered configuration at redshift zero. The density field is sampled by a number of particles in number infinitely smaller than those believed to be its actual components and this limits the mass and spatial scales over which we can trust the results of a simulation. Softening of the gravitational force is introduced in collisionless simulations to limit the importance of close encounters between these particles. The scale of softening is generally fixed and chosen as a compromise between the need for high spatial resolution and the need to limit the particle noise. In the scenario of cosmological simulations, where the density field evolves to a highly inhomogeneous state, this compromise results in an appropriate choice only for a certain class of objects, the others being subject to either a biased or a noisy dynamical description. We have implemented adaptive gravitational softening lengths in the cosmological simulation code GADGET; the formalism allows the softening scale to vary in space and time according to the density of the environment, at the price of modifying the equation of motion for the particles in order to be consistent with the new dependencies introduced in the system's Lagrangian. We have applied the technique to a number of test cases and to a set of cosmological simulations of structure formation. We conclude that the use of adaptive softening enhances the clustering of particles at small scales, a result visible in the amplitude of the correlation function and in the inner profile of massive objects, thereby anticipating the results expected from much higher resolution simulations.Comment: 15 pages, 21 figures, 1 table. Accepted for publication in MNRA