Araldica catalana: lo stemma della città di Alghero

L'autor d'aquest assaig reconstrueix la historia del segell de l'Alguer a partir del juny de 1355, quan el rei d'Aragó Pere III el Cerimoniós concedí a la ciutat el privilegi d'usar-lo amb les característiques heràldiques de la Casa catalana. De la nova concessió savoiana del gener de 1767 per part de Caries Emmanuel III i fins als dies nostres el segell patí parcials modificacions que tanmateix en deixaren inalterat el logos principal o sigui la rama de corall. En fi, el 1991 , l'Executiu municipal alguerès establí la composició última del segell heràldic, clara testimoniança de participació a la cultura i a la llengua catalanes

Alpi Giulie, Cinema, Speleologia

Presentazione dell’Associazione Monte Analogo e dei suoi scopi, con accenni sugli archivi di filmati posseduti: alcune centinaia di DVD del cinema di montagna e grotta, un patrimonio a disposizione di tutti.Presentation of the Monte Analogo Association and its goals, including an outline of the association’s film archives: hundreds of DVDs containing mountain and cave documentaries, a legacy available to all

Urban planning and the market of development rights in Italy: learning from Milan

In recent years, the influence of neoliberal principles has led to an experimental application of new market-oriented approaches in the field of urban studies, in order to achieve different objectives of public interest, from the compensation of land use restrictions to the acquisition of areas for public services. Also in Italy, the use of equalization and non-financial compensation mechanisms has been influenced by internationally consolidated models, such as the Transfer of Development Rights programs (TDR). The key issue concerns the legal autonomy of development rights from land ownership, allowing their trade in the municipal market and thus, in theory, balancing private and public benefits. The scientific debate focuses on the several opportunities, in terms of planning effectiveness and flexibility, but also envisages the risk to generate unfairness, deregulation and other speculations. The paper aims to assess the positive and negative impacts of a generalized use of TDR in the urban governance and in the real estate market, adopting a case study research method. The experience of Milan has been investigated, analyzing the municipal registry of development rights. The results highlight strengths and weaknesses of the market of development rights application, in particular the risk of encouraging real estate speculation, in the same way as financial markets. Conclusions suggest the need of a more effective integration of market-based tools in the planning and regulatory framework, avoiding that their uncontrolled use could weaken the role of public authority in the local government

Building the Urban Bioregion. Governance scenarios for urban and territorial planning

The book focuses on bioregionalist theories and experiences as an alternative way of reading and designing local contexts, based on the recovery of the co-evolutionary relationship between human settlements and territories to achieve a self-sustainable and non-hierarchical system of urban and rural centers, according to Alberto Magnaghi's vision. The work has developed a broader discussion among researchers from different European backgrounds about the ways in which processes related to bioregionalism, looked at in a transdisciplinary way, can lead to interesting applications and analytical insights, that are useful for reviewing and strengthening community self-organization and reflecting on the constitutive foundations of the relationship between communities and their territories. The collaboration between the French school of Bordeaux, the Tuscany school and the Cagliari school gives back a diversified overview of materials and references for the possible application of the bioregionalist model.The contributions discuss many issues related to the governance of metropolitan areas and the management of the urban-rural relationship with suggestions for interpretation and design in a bioregionalist perspective, the themes of urban green, land vulnerability, and agricultural supply chains in rural and peri-urban spaces and new food economies in metropolitan areas

Regional Landscape Planning and Local Planning. Insights from the Italian Context

Landscape has acquired great importance in the urban and territorial policies of European countries after the European Landscape Convention. Italy has a long tradition in the protection of landscape and cultural heritage, characterised by a particular attention to the history and the identity culture of the communities. The main rule in this field, the Code of Cultural Heritage and Landscape of 2004 (Urbani Code), refers to a mix of environmental, cultural, and social factors belonging to different types of natural and urban landscapes that Regional Landscape Plans have to identify, sharing with local communities. The most important innovation concerns the attempt to overcome the binding and regulatory approach, only focused on protection constraints, in order to generate high awareness about the identity value of landscape and to encourage a more democratic community participation in the landscape policies. The ineffectiveness of landscape policies is often due to the lack of sharing of the landscape vision and planning approaches established at regional level, with local authorities and settled communities. This paper reflects on the topic of inter-institutional collaboration between national, regional, and local authorities, by focusing on the process of adaptation of urban local plans to the regional landscape plans and comparing different regional contexts. The article highlights a strong delay in the approval of regional landscape plans and a relevant inter-institutional conflict in the co-planning phase with the national authority, leading to the ineffectiveness of landscape plans in the transfer of regional landscape planning guidelines to the local landscape scale, with relevant consequences on territorial government, between conservative measures and transformation drivers

Non financial compensation for the redevelopment of the historic urban landscape: the case study of Villasor in Sardinia (Italy)

In Europe, the debate on the recovery of the historic centres has been developed, over the years, around the balance between conservation and transformation needs in order to meet the new demands of the contemporary world. In the field of urban planning, the strictly conservative and binding approach has gradually been supported by flexible and consensual mechanisms that act as a stimulus to private initiative in the redevelopment and regeneration of the historic urban landscape. The consolidated Italian experience in the policies for the protection and enhancement of historical settlements is being significantly innovated after the entry into force of the Urbani Code, which extends the character of landscape heritage to the historic urban fabric, transferring to the regional authorities the task of establishing the specific regulations for its use and transformation. The Region of Sardinia has achieved an important role in the implementation of policies for the recovery and redevelopment of the historic centres identified by the Regional Landscape Plan (RLP). The common and consolidated practice is still characterized by the use of traditional regulative instruments, in particular the detailed plan, which provide rules for the requalification of the compromised urban fabrics through a set of rules and guidelines to be applied to the replacement of recent buildings and the renovation of urban patterns that for density, ratios between solids and voids, heights, alignments and elevations are incompatible with the values of the context. The constraint and binding approach is effective in the conservation strategies but often inadequate to implement actions of integrated redevelopment of urban fabric altered by new buildings in contrast with the historic urban landscape features, also due to the global crisis situation and the shortage of public funding. The paper proposes the use of the non-financial compensation tool, based on the granting of bonus development rights to realising on site or in alternative locations, in order to encourage urban regeneration projects that also involve the replacement of buildings incompatible with historical urban landscape morphological patterns. The integration of a methodology for assessing the financial feasibility of the demolition and reconstruction of the incompatible structures in the planning process, as tested in the case study of Villasor municipality, has allowed the elaboration of a model to support the use of a compensation mechanism for the redevelopment of historical settlement values. In this perspective, the paper aims to investigate the opportunities provided by market-oriented and flexible approaches to support and promote private urban regeneration projects. In particular, it illustrates the experimental results of a methodology for the analysis of the urban fabric that takes into account the factors influencing the feasibility of the intervention of demolition and reconstruction of the incompatible buildings. Finally a model for the assessment of any bonus in terms of additional building capacity is suggested, to be granted to private operators as an incentive to ensure the cost-effectiveness of the project

Mind the Gap: Why the Landscape Planning System in Sardinia Does Not Work

In Italy, after the introduction of the Code of Cultural Heritage and Landscape in 2004, the Regional Landscape Plan (RLP) has acquired a coordination role in the urban planning system, for the implementation of policies for landscape protection and valorisation. The case study of the RLP of Sardinia is a paradigmatic application to the coastal area of the island, which is considered most vulnerable and subject to settlement pressure. The objectives of preservation and valorisation of the territorial resources should be transferred into local planning instruments by adopting strategies aimed at the preservation of the consolidated urban fabric, at the requalification and completion of the existing built‐up areas according to the principles of land take limitation and increase in urban quality. The paper investigates the state of implementation and the level of integration of landscape contents in the local plans that have been adapted to the RLP, using a qualitative comparative method. In addition, the results of the plan coherence checks, elaborated by the regional monitoring bodies after the adaptation process, have been analysed to identify the common criticalities and weaknesses. The results highlight the lack of effectiveness of the RLP, after more than a decade since its approval, considering the limited number of adequate local plans and the poor quality of their analytical and regulative contents in terms of landscape protection and valorisation. Conclusions suggest some possible ways to revise the RLP, focusing on the participation of local communities and the development of a new landscape culture

Air Quality Trend of PM10. Statistical Models for Assessing the Air Quality Impact of Environmental Policies

A statistical modelling of PM10 concentration (2006–2015) is applied to understand the behaviour, to know the influence of the variables to exposure risk, to treat the missing data to evaluate air quality, and to estimate data for those sites where they are not available. The study area, Castellón region (Spain), is a strategic area in the framework of EU pollution control. A decrease of PM10 is observed for industrial and urban stations. In the case of rural stations, the levels remain constant throughout the study period. The contribution of anthropogenic sources has been estimated through the PM10 background of the study area. The behaviour of PM10 annual trend is tri-modal for industrial and urban stations and bi-modal in the case of rural stations. The EU Normative suggests that 90% of the data per year are necessary to control air quality. Thus, interpolation statistical methods are presented to fill missing data: Linear Interpolation, Exponential Interpolation, and Kalman Smoothing. This study also focuses on testing the goodness of these methods in order to find the ones that better approach the gaps. After analyzing graphically and using the RMSE the last method is confirmed to be the best option

Natural user interfaces for distributed reality

Máster en Image Processing and Computer VisionThe goal of this Master’s Thesis is to implement a Distributed Reality (DR) environment focusing on the sensation and ability to interact with user interfaces, both virtual and real, without any controller or device. This novel experience of reality has already been designed by Nokia Bell-Labs Spain. In this approach, the user is introduced in a virtual or remote real environment being able to observe their own hands and interact with local physical user interfaces. This thesis will try to resolve their limitations and extend their user cases introducing the interaction with virtual user interfaces. The starting point is studying to study the setup which has already been investigated by Nokia composed by the HTC Vive head mount display (HMD) and the stereoscopic Zed Mini Camera. This system allows the users to interact with tracked physical objects observing their own hands in a virtual environment. A key goal of this project is the analysis of the Leap Motion tool that will allow the user to extend the Distributed Reality experience introducing the interaction with virtual objects. Through the Unity cross-platform game engine will be implemented some different virtual user interfaces which result in a natural experience for the user. Mixing both virtual and real interactions we will try to quantify the grade of immersive sensation for the user in the new Distributed Reality

Segmentación espacio-temporal de contexto de un vídeo

El objetivo de este trabajo fin de grado es obtener la segmentación de los objetos contextuales que componen un vídeo. La implementación general consistirá en transferir máscaras de objetos contextuales desde una base de datos a una imagen no observada. Para ello se tomará una gran importancia en la construcción de los data-sets que se emplearán en cada una de las diferentes escenas a analizar. Se tratará de estudiar toda la información que nos aporta una imagen de entrada mediante dos modelos distinguidos con el objetivo de extraer la probabilidad de cada píxel de pertenecer a una de las dos etiquetas que se establecen en este trabajo: contexto o no contexto. Con un modelo de energías se obtendrá la segmentación resultado, que determinará que pixeles de la imagen se corresponden con un objeto contextual. Finalmente la segmentación contextual para un video se extraerá promediando las máscaras obtenidas para los distintos frames que lo componenThe aim of this end-of-degree project is to obtain the segmentation of the contextual objects that compose a video. The general implementation will consist of transferring masks of contextual objects from a database to a not observed image. For this purpose, importance will be attached to the construction of data-sets that will be used in each of the different scenes to be analyzed. The dissertation will consist of studying all the information given by an image of entry through two distinguished models with the aim to extract every pixel’s probability of belonging to one of the two labels that are established in this work: "context" or "not context". Through amodel ofenergies thefinalsegmentation will be obtained, determining which of the pixels on the image correspond with a contextual object. Finally, the contextual segmentation for a video will be acquired by averaging the masks obtained for the different frames that compose it