Cities and Infrastructure. the Impact of Reforms and of Cohesion Policy on the South. Build Requirements Innovative Action and Building Project Feasibility

Abstract Cities and infrastructure (tangible and intangible-knowledge networks, energy) play a central role in every socio-economic relaunch strategy of our country's territory and their importance is confirmed within the large deck in a Masterplan strategic vision to build over the impulse screwed by the Government. The large European cities, and many Italian cities of the Centre-North, are located in the large European dimension of flows and free mobility of goods and people with new trains, ports and new networks will determine relations outside Europe. Shopping at the South – roughly at 35% to 2013 has been falling – that the enlarged public sector per capita is highest for a decade in the Centre-North. Among the SOEs ANAS, for example, invests in the South (6 regions plus two islands) about 70% in 2013, while Railways does not invest more time (14%). To build such a strategy, since we will not be able to bridge the structural programming within the latter gup not having made use of the previous ones, we must reverse the approach method: from immaterial to the territorial effects of concurrently by quality and competition and start the right to mobility as a condition of a modern society. In this sense we can point to some actions where competition is still open in Europe disorders and/or renegotiate the country's positions in the European area

Residual Strength Parameters From a Slope Instability

The study attempts to determine the in situ shear strength parameters of a stiff clay from a back analys1s of a well documented landslide. The relatively small extension of the instability, as well as the homogeneity of the clay formation and the defined slip surface, allows a consistent evaluation of shear strength parameters. The study is also supported by ring shear tests, and microscopic analysis performed on undisturbed thin sections, by means of scanning electron microscopy. The results of back analysis are in good agreement with laboratory tests and microscopy observations

Municipal Planning Instruments in the New Metropolitan Dimension. The Resilience of Indicators to Measure the Performance of Cities in the New Administrative and Territorial Dominions

Abstract The concept of resilience evokes the approach to change and adapt effectively necessary to continue to ensure prospects for sustainability in the face of environmental change, economic and social factors that have rapidly invested territories and the living environment of local communities. It will come to define resilient cities,if the same will be redesigned so that it can absorb external shocks of different nature (natural and anthropogenic disasters,climate change, the economy and social changes) and answer these requests/renewing and contingencies adapting to the changing product. In light of this resilience it can be considered an enabling factor being the third millennium city. It is a performance indicator and more. The dynamics that we live in a time asynchrony in relation to responses and mitigations that cities offer, put us in front of incalculable challenges. How many and what challenges may be accepted by the planning instruments and how to give effective responses in terms of reorganization of the mission of the plan when you open a new horizon (metropolitan) of territoriality of the analyzed processes

Predicting the Saturated Hydraulic Conductivity of Clayey Soils and Clayey or Silty Sands

Predictive models able to provide a reliable estimate of hydraulic conductivity can be useful in various geotechnical applications. Since most of the existing predictive methods for saturated hydraulic conductivity estimation are valid only for a limited range of soils or can be applied under certain restrictive conditions, a new method applicable to clayey soils and clayey or silty sands having a wide range of values of soil index properties is proposed in this study. For this purpose, 329 saturated hydraulic conductivity values, obtained by laboratory tests carried out on different soils, were collected in a database and used to develop five equations using a multiple regression approach. Each equation correlates the hydraulic conductivity with one or more geotechnical parameters. An equation was developed that predicts, within an order of magnitude, the saturated hydraulic conductivity in the range from 1.2 × 10−11 to 3.9 × 10−6 m/s, based on simple geotechnical parameters (i.e., clay content, void ratio, plastic limit, and silt content)

The Strategic Dimension of the Straits Area According to the New National Metropolitan Spatial Planning and to the European Space: Strategic Corridor Platform Project

For some time now, following the constitutional reform, the debate on the metropolitan city has been reignited. The topic has been at the centre of attention given that cohesion policies attribute to metropolitan cities a key role in planning and the constitutional reform seems to have given an answer to the spending review which wipes out the provinces and formally identifies the European Strategy under the form of a programmatic suitability of intermediate metropolitan level. This level should counterbalance the municipal egoism which provides a distorted interpretation of subsidiarity which has marked planning since the revising of Title V. Very few are acquainted with the implications and complexities of these entangled mechanisms which will fail if all conditions are not met whether they be effective, nominal or opportunity related. This explains why the term Metropolitan City is preferred to conurbation, agglomeration or metropolitan area. Metropolitan Area and City do not coincide the area is in a portion of territorial recognition which entails attractive and competitive factors, the city is identified as such only if within the territorial organization that explains why the creation of both must be ensured: the city must be promoted in terms of competition, with or without a demographic dimension, by fostering the shared political project and by creating relational and productive conditions to attract and offer services and what else is necessary. What makes the difference is how to build and what to build. The strategy and the role of the future Metropolitan City of Reggio Calabria and Messina stem from two different regulations and from the attempt to integrate interregional functions through the project I put forward: the strategic corridor platform of the Straits area. The platform is a non-confined territorial dimension which encompasses the two metropolitan cities and shares relational functions and understandings with the vast territory. It fully exploits the possibilities and available reforms in order to organize and provide the territory with competitive and functional dimensions so as to compete in Europe and in the Mediterranean. The prototype-project, the first part of the study has already been published, fosters an idea of governance and urban system which will devise, through future cohesion policies and multidimensional strategies, a single strategic vision of the territory able to dialogue at a local and Euro-Mediterranean level with the new scale economies and meet the challenges of 2020-2050. Without going into detail, the project proposes and organizes the intangible functions of the Area (new assets and networking) so as to satisfy the demand for services and infrastructures physical and non-physical (functional and international indicator)

nickel removal by zero valent iron lapillus mixtures in column systems

Abstract The remediation of contaminated groundwater, through permeable reactive barrier (PRB) technology, has raised strong interest in the field of environmental geotechnics. The use of granular mixtures composed of zero valent iron (ZVI) together with an inert and/or porous material is a new strategy for preventing the decrease in hydraulic conductivity of PRBs composed of pure ZVI alone. In this paper, granular mixtures composed of ZVI and lapillus in different weight ratios were tested for nickel removal through column tests. The newly proposed material, lapillus, is a low-cost material (a by-product of pumice mining), readily available and efficient for nickel removal, as is shown by the benchmark column tests carried out in this paper. The weight ratio between ZVI and lapillus, the flow velocity and the initial contaminant concentration were the factors investigated in this paper since they can strongly influence the long-term removal efficiency and hydraulic behaviour of a PRB. The column tests results were analysed in terms of hydraulic conductivity, nickel removal efficiency and the distribution of the removed nickel along the column over time. The test results clearly showed the great potential of the proposed ZVI/lapillus granular mixtures in terms of both removal efficiency and long-term hydraulic conductivity

Ambiguous effects of regional regulations on zero land consumption and on verticality in architecture

The aim of this paper is to highlight that the primary goal of certain regional planning laws – i.e., to limit land consumption – is contradicted by the legislative provisions they contain, which state that the maximum acceptable land consumption should comply with the previous General Regulatory Plan. Moreover, the paper is intended to suggest what innovative regional planning strategies should be adopted. The goal to promote “vertical” development, through strategies of densification and volumetric replacements fostered by reward policies, is not commonly found in regional laws, which, instead of reducing “horizontality”, confirm the surfaces established by the previous General Regulatory Plan stating that they “may be confirmed and/or adapted as urbanized areas and as areas intended for residential purposes, in the new preliminary document” (own translation) (Regional Planning Law 19/02 – Region Calabria)