La vivienda en bloque como método de recomposición del espacio urbano. El trabajo de la Corporación de la Vivienda en Santiago de Chile (1953-1970).

Durante el gobierno del presidente Jorge Alessandri Rodríguez se dictó, en 1959, el Decreto con Fuerza de Ley Nº2, “instrumento legal destinado a movilizar, encauzar y fomentar los recursos estatales e institucionales, el ahorro y el crédito público y privado en favor de la vivienda popular”. La Corporación de Vivienda (CORVI) asume la acción técnica y ejecutiva de esta legislación y se convierte en la encargada de poner en práctica el Plan Habitacional Chileno. La serie de proyectos desarrollados por la Corvi ejemplifican las líneas programáticas que dicha Corporación desarrollo a lo largo de todo Chile. No sólo se intento renovar el parque residencial, a través de las políticas impulsadas por el gobierno, si no que también se intentaron establecer pautas que dieran orientación en la planificación y desarrollo del crecimiento de las ciudades. Para poder contextualizar estas estrategias aplicadas por la CORVI, la Tesis analizará todos los grandes proyectos de vivienda desarrollados en Santiago de Chile. La gran mayoría de las intervenciones utilizan construcciones en forma de bloques lineales. Ellos sintetizan el trabajo realizado por la Corvi durante dos décadas en la aplicación de este tipo de estrategias urbanas (1953 – 1970). Las obras, en su análisis, ejemplifican un concepto: “el proyecto como parte de la ciudad”. Las obras seleccionadas no se muestran como obras autónomas sino como un sistema de proyectos que buscan recuperar áreas de la ciudad y de su conjunto. Los casos seleccionados son las Unidades Vecinales Portales, Exequiel Gonzalez Cortes (Villa Olímpica), Villa Presidente Frei y el primer prototipo de Remodelación, la Remodelación Republica, todos desarrollados entre los años 1953 y 1970. Cada uno se inserta en un área de ciudad degradada o en proceso de consolidación urbana y responde con un planteamiento propio. Pero en todos se estudia la relación del conjunto con su entorno, de acuerdo con una idea de ciudad. En ellos se desarrollan estrategias que corrigen patologías propias del lugar, o bien establecen pautas para la consolidación del área de ciudad donde se emplazan. Esta variable urbana es, por tanto, no sólo una componente importante de cómo se plantea cada proyecto, sino que refleja una idea de ciudad. El proyecto no se entiende como un objeto, sino como un sistema enlazado a una trama urbana existente. Este conjunto de obras responde a una necesidad de grado superior a la de generar vivienda, responde a la necesidad de hacer ciudad, y cada obra experimenta métodos diferenciados de recomposición urbana. Cada obra establece una estrategia propia de gradación en la escala urbana del proyecto, que, a su vez, se vincula a los requerimientos técnicos y espaciales de la vivienda. El campo de estudio se cierra con el proyecto Remodelación República, ya que en las siguientes Remodelaciones se disocian roles. El planteamiento urbanístico es desarrollado por los organismos del estado, que, al entregar en cada nueva obra un master plan previo, limitan el trabajo de los arquitectos a la resolución del edificio, es decir al objeto arquitectónico como elemento autónomo. La tesis documenta y analiza por primera vez los proyectos de las Unidades Vecinales y Remodelación antes mencionados, lo cual permite realizar el análisis de cada obra y de la ciudad en su conjunto. Se contextualizan las obras en la evolución histórica de la urbe de Santiago, para permitir un análisis urbano integral de los casos. El resultado es una reflexión sobre las metodologías y estrategias urbanas aplicadas durante este periodo, que pone en valor el breve pero intenso trabajo de la arquitectura y urbanismo del Movimiento Moderno en Chile.In 1959, during the tenure of President Jorge Alessandri Rodriguez, the Law-Ranking Decree No. 2 was issued “legal instrument destined to mobilizing, harnessing and enhancing the resources of the state and its institutions, public and private savings and credit for the affordable housing”. The housing Corporation (CORVI) assumed the technical and executive action of this legislation and became responsible for implementing the Chilean Housing Plan. The series of projects developed by CORVI exemplify the programmatic guidelines that said Corporation developed throughout Chile. Through the policies promoted by the government, not only was attempted to renew the housing stock, but also tried to establish guidelines to orient the planning and development of cities. To contextualize these policies utilized by CORVI, the thesis will analyze all the major housing projects developed in Santiago, Chile. The vast majority of interventions were built in the form of linear blocks. They synthesize the work of CORVI during two decades in implementing this type of urban strategies (1953 - 1970). The works, in their analysis, exemplify a concept: "the project as part of the city." The selected works are not portrayed as autonomous buildings but as a system of projects seeking to recover areas of the city and its whole. The selected cases are Neighborhood Units Portales, Exequiel Gonzalez Cortes (Olympic Village), Villa President Frei and the first prototype of Remodeling, Republica Street Remodeling, all developed between 1953 and 1970. Each one is inserted into an area of degraded city or in the process of urban consolidation and responds with a unique approach. But in all these cases the relationship of the whole project with its environment is studied in accordance to an idea of city. In these cases strategies were developed to correct the pathologies inherent to their places, as well as to the establishment of guidelines to consolidate the area of the city where they were located. This urban variable is therefore not only an important component of how each project is thought out, but also reflects an idea of the city. The project is not understood as an object, but as a system linked to an existing urban fabric. This body of work responds to a need that is greater than generating housing, it responds to the need to make city and each case experiment with different methods of urban restructuring. Each project provides its own strategy of molding to the urban scale of the project which, in turn, is linked to the technical and spatial requirements of the homes. The field of study closes with the Republica Street Remodeling project, as in the following Remodelings the roles dissociate. The urban approach is developed by state agencies, which, sets for each new project a master plan that limit the work of the architects to the resolution of the building, i.e. the architectural object as a standalone. The thesis documents and analyzes for the first time the Neighborhood Unit and Remodeling projects above mentioned, which allows the analysis of each work and the city as a whole. The works are contextualized in the historical evolution of the city of Santiago, to enable an integrated urban analysis of the cases. The result is a reflection on the methodologies and urban strategies implemented during this period, which adds value to the brief but intense work of architecture and urbanism of the Modern Movement in Chile

Policy and project, generators of urban life facts: two comparative cases of CORVI work, from 1950 to 1970

El artículo establece una mirada comparativa entre dos visiones de ciudad moderna desarrolladas por la Corporación de Vivienda (CORVI, 1953-1976), entre las décadas de 1950 y 1970. Para ello, se constituye una visión cruzada entre dos modelos de intervención urbana y de producción residencial gestionada por dicho organismo. Se realiza un paralelo entre dos estrategias de proyecto urbano, la Unidad Vecinal y la Remodelación, las que debieron responder a problemáticas urbanas distintas, pero que comparten una manera de entender la relación entre ciudad y vivienda a partir de los ideales del urbanismo moderno. En este contexto, se comparan dos obras representativas de la CORVI: “Villa Presidente Frei” (Santiago, 1964-1968), última unidad vecinal gestionada por esta institución, y la “Remodelación República” (Santiago, 1964-1968), primera obra concebida bajo el concepto de remodelación urbana. De esta manera, se identifican dos factores principales que generan dichos hechos de vida urbana: política y proyecto.The article establishes a comparative view among two visions of a modern city developed by the Housing Corporation (CORVI, 1953-1976), from the 1950s to 1970s. For this purpose, a cross vision is constituted between two models of urban intervention and residential production managed by CORVI. A parallel between two urban project strategies shows different response to urban problems, but the same way of understanding the relationship between city and housing, based on the modern urbanism criteria. In this context, two representative works of the CORVI are compared: “Villa Presidente Frei” (Santiago, 1964-1968), the last neighbourhood unit managed by this institution, and the “Remodelación República” (Santiago, 1964-1968), first work conceived under the urban remodelling concept. In this way, two main factors that generate these urban life facts are identified: policy and project.Peer Reviewe

A microseismic study in a low seismicity area of Italy: the Città di Castello 2000-2001 experiment

Recent seismological studies contribute to better understand the first order characteristics of earthquake occurrence in Italy, identifying the potential sites for moderate to large size earthquakes. Ad hoc passive seismic experiments performed in these areas provide information to focus on the location and geometry of the active faults more closely. This information is relevant for assessing seismic hazard and for accurately constraining possible ground shaking scenarios. The area around the Città di Castello Basin, in the Northern Apennines (Central Italy), is characterized by the absence of instrumental seismicity (M > 2.5), it is adjacent to faults ruptured by recent and historical earthquakes. To better understand the tectonics of the area, we installed a dense network of seismic stations equipped with broadband and short period seismometers collecting data continuously for 8 months (October 2000-May 2001). The processing of ~ 900 Gbyte of data revealed a consistent background seismicity consisting of very low magnitude earthquakes (ML < 3.2). Preliminary locations of about 2200 local earthquakes show that the area can be divided into two regions with different seismic behaviour: an area to the NW, in between Sansepolcro and Città di Castello, where seismicity is not present. An area toward the SE, in between Città di Castello, Umbertide and Gubbio, where we detected a high microseismicity activity. These findings suggest a probable different mechanical behaviour of the two regions. In the latter area, the seismicity is confined between 0 and 8 km of depth revealing a rather well defined east-dipping, low angle fault 35 km wide that cuts through the entire upper crust down to 12-15 km depth. Beside an apparent structural complexity, fault plane solutions of background seismicity reveal a homogeneous pattern of deformation with a clear NE-SW extension

SISMIKO:emergency network deployment and data sharing for the 2016 central Italy seismic sequence

At 01:36 UTC (03:36 local time) on August 24th 2016, an earthquake Mw 6.0 struck an extensive sector of the central Apennines (coordinates: latitude 42.70° N, longitude 13.23° E, 8.0 km depth). The earthquake caused about 300 casualties and severe damage to the historical buildings and economic activity in an area located near the borders of the Umbria, Lazio, Abruzzo and Marche regions. The Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV) located in few minutes the hypocenter near Accumoli, a small town in the province of Rieti. In the hours after the quake, dozens of events were recorded by the National Seismic Network (Rete Sismica Nazionale, RSN) of the INGV, many of which had a ML > 3.0. The density and coverage of the RSN in the epicentral area meant the epicenter and magnitude of the main event and subsequent shocks that followed it in the early hours of the seismic sequence were well constrained. However, in order to better constrain the localizations of the aftershock hypocenters, especially the depths, a denser seismic monitoring network was needed. Just after the mainshock, SISMIKO, the coordinating body of the emergency seismic network at INGV, was activated in order to install a temporary seismic network integrated with the existing permanent network in the epicentral area. From August the 24th to the 30th, SISMIKO deployed eighteen seismic stations, generally six components (equipped with both velocimeter and accelerometer), with thirteen of the seismic station transmitting in real-time to the INGV seismic monitoring room in Rome. The design and geometry of the temporary network was decided in consolation with other groups who were deploying seismic stations in the region, namely EMERSITO (a group studying site-effects), and the emergency Italian strong motion network (RAN) managed by the National Civil Protection Department (DPC). Further 25 BB temporary seismic stations were deployed by colleagues of the British Geological Survey (BGS) and the School of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh in collaboration with INGV. All data acquired from SISMIKO stations, are quickly available at the European Integrated Data Archive (EIDA). The data acquired by the SISMIKO stations were included in the preliminary analysis that was performed by the Bollettino Sismico Italiano (BSI), the Centro Nazionale Terremoti (CNT) staff working in Ancona, and the INGV-MI, described below

Le attività del gruppo operativo INGV "SISMIKO" durante la sequenza sismica "Amatrice 2016",

SISMIKO è un gruppo operativo dell’Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV) che coordina tutte le Reti Sismiche Mobili INGVPublishedLecce3T. Sorgente sismica4T. Sismicità dell'Italia8T. Sismologia in tempo reale1SR TERREMOTI - Sorveglianza Sismica e Allerta Tsunami2SR TERREMOTI - Gestione delle emergenze sismiche e da maremoto3SR TERREMOTI - Attività dei Centr

An econometric analysis of household consumption patterns : a comparative study based on New Zealand and Italian household budget data : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of PhD in Economics at Massey University

Econometric analysis of household expenditure is a very important area of economic inquiry because the estimated demand parameters are particularly useful in many behavioural aspects of demand forecasting and in welfare issues. This paper analyses and compares expenditure patterns in New Zealand and Italy by estimating preference-consistent complete demand systems directly derived from utility or cost functions of increasing complexity. Because demographic factors have been recognised as essential components of empirical models of household consumption since the early studies by Engel, we use information on the number of children in the household to test for demographic effects on demand, and check whether similar economic conclusions and model acceptance decisions are supported by the two different sets of data we use, which, for both countries, are derived from household consumption surveys pooled across several time periods. We approach the problem of how to introduce demographic variables into the demand models' analytical framework in a variety of ways, from the simple addition of a few demographic variables to the long established Linear Expenditure System (LES), on to the theoretically more advanced technique of introducing the demographic variables directly into the demand system via the utility function, as we do in the case of the Demographic Cost Scaling model introduced in Chapter 4. The estimated models have been compared and tested to identify the ones that are more likely to describe and interpret the data correctly. The ones that are selected are then used to compute the price, income and demographic variable elasticities, both for the whole sample of households considered in the surveys as well as for households of specific size. The computed elasticities have been analysed and checked for consistency with the tenets of the theory of consumer behaviour, and whenever found to be in contradiction to them, efforts are made to find out whether this was due to social or economic reasons, specific to the economies of the countries under study, or, more simply, to model or data inadequacies. Because most of the demand models considered in this study are highly non-linear, and their parameters have to be estimated by iterative methods, we took great care to check the iterative performance of the estimation algorithms we used by making sure that, when estimating a model's parameters from the data at hand, the iterative procedure always converged to the same set of parameter estimates from all, or most, of the sets of parameter values we had selected to start the estimation procedure with. Most of all we checked carefully that the models' iterative estimation procedures did not show sensitive dependence on initial conditions - generating a different set of parameter estimates for every set of starting values, even similar ones (these types of systems, impossible to control or predict, are also called chaotic). Although many of the demand models we have analysed showed chaotic behaviour during estimation, which reflected their inadequacy to explain the empirical data, the parameter estimates resulting from the estimation procedure itself often appeared to have good statistical properties. Therefore, it became apparent that the behaviour of a model estimation procedure should be considered very carefully when choosing, among different non-linear models, the most appropriate ones to describe and explain a set of data, because such models are likely to reveal any existing model inadequacies better than the customary statistical tests performed after the model has been estimated. In fact, we found that a well behaved iterative estimation process almost always provides parameter estimates which satisfy statistical criteria, and fulfil the model economic expectations. Another empirical problem we had to resolve was to try and find some guidelines on how far, in household consumption studies, commodities should and could be aggregated into broader categories. This of course is a very important issue as demographically augmented models, because of their complexity, are often estimated with respect to only a few highly aggregated commodity groups, under the implicit assumption of "separability". We checked whether or not such a high level of aggregation allows meaningful empirical analysis of consumer behaviour, and found that, at least in the case of Italy, increasing the number of consumption categories from four to six did not increase the explanatory power of the models. There are two more interesting theoretical results we have obtained in this study: one is the rejection by all models, and for both countries, of the hypothesis of incomelinearity of the Engel curves; and the second is the empirical rejection, again by all models and for both countries, of the negative semi-definitiveness of the Slutsky matrix. This, latter, is a theoretical requirement which is seldom fulfilled in practice. The introduction of demographic variables into the demand models made it necessary to convert households of different size and composition to equivalent units, before their consumption patterns could be properly compared. To this end we computed, for both New Zealand and Italy, constant-utility household consumption equivalence scales, to convert the expenditures of households of different compositions and sizes to standardised consumption units, based on the consumption of a "reference household". To estimate such equivalence scales, we used both an expanded version of the Linear Expenditure System, discussed and estimated in Chapter 2, and, with less success, the DT-RNLPS model, explained and estimated in Chapter 4. The resulting commodity-specific equivalence scales are, to our knowledge, the first of their kind estimated with New Zealand household expenditure data. The main problem encountered persistently in our work has been the inadequacy of the data which, for both countries, only reported cell averages, instead of individual household observations and, in the case of Italy give no information on household composition, only the number of members in a household. This drawback in regard to the adequacy and appropriateness of the available data makes our results in some areas open to question. But, one of the useful contributions our study makes lies in its drawing attention to the nature of the statistical information base provided by household budgets, both in Italy and New Zealand. Improvements in data collection and presentation can only take place if researchers communicate their difficulties to the statistical agencies responsible. Studies such as the present one are therefore an invaluable part of the interface between data gathering, presentation, and use

Estimating the Cost of Children from New Zealand Quasi-unit Record Data of Household Consumption.

This paper utilizes quasi-unit record data on expenditures and incomes of New Zealand households of different demographic profiles to estimate alternative versions of a preference-consistent complete demand system. From the estimated models, it computes the households' expenditure elasticities and the equivalence scales required by households of different demographic profiles to attain comparable utility levels. Copyright 2001 by The Economic Society of Australia.

Equivalence scales and consumption inequality: a study of household consumption patterns in Italy

This paper utilises unit record survey data on expenditures and incomes of Italian households of different demographic profiles to estimate consumption equivalence scales which measure the relative levels of spending required by households of different composition to attain given levels of utility. The equivalence scales have been obtained from the parameters of few alternative version of a rank 3 complete demand system with demand shifters.Among the demographic variables included in the models, the type of housing tenure and the age of children have special relevance. We have also computed the expenditure elasticities for the most common types of households and analysed how deflating expenditure with the equivalence scales affects consumption inequality among households. The analysis is developed within the framework of hypothesised utility maximising behaviour of households