The New Cispadana Motorway. Impact on Industrial Buildings Property Values

Infrastructures, through externalities, modify the territorial status quo: by creating advantages and disadvantages, they lead to inequalities and territorial cohesion problems, calling for a setup of territorial equalization mechanisms. In this paper, the estimation of the costs and benefits generated from the building of the new Cispadana regional motorway (Emilia-Romagna Region, Italy) is described. The study focuses on the price variations of the industrial buildings property values in the real estate market after the new motorway will be built, aiming at developing a forecasting method, which could be repeatable and applicable to other kinds of externalities. Thanks to the hedonic pricing method, which is recurring in transport literature, using a multiple linear regression model based on ordinary least squares method (OLS), the contribution of the accessibility on the industrial buildings' pricing has been isolated; it was then possible to forecast the rise in the industrial buildings prices that will be due to the accessibility variation produced by the new infrastructure. The purpose of such a procedure is the setup of equalization mechanisms, which can re-balance the territorial effects though he so-called “land value capture” tools. Thanks to a relatively quick phase of development and implementation, the described application could be used as a tool for the ex-ante evaluation of different infrastructure projects and as an ex-post analysis tool for the monitoring of an existing infrastructure. Finally, thanks to the chance to understand the contribution of each territorial feature to the final price of the good, this application could be very useful in participatory planning processes because it could provide a common knowledge base which could be used to support the public administration’s capability of negotiation with the private partner, both in the participatory planning processes and in the public-private partnership procedures

Eco-Industrial Parks and Sustainable Spatial Planning: A Possible Contradiction?

The definition and the subsequent development of eco-industrial parks (EIPs) have been deeply based on the application of industrial ecology theory, which pays specific attention to metabolic exchanges within industrial processes to address a deep reduction of limited resource consumption and a minimization of waste production in the framework of a sustainable development approach. Despite the EIPs configurations being essentially based on the overall idea of sustainability, the problem of defining their proper location inside the territory and the consequent land use model, to minimize land consumption, have not always been central in the wide range of studies and practices concerning the EIPs. Nevertheless, the specific problem of a drastic reduction of land consumption at the EIP planning stage acquires a crucial role and, therefore, needs to be carefully assessed inside the perspective of sustainable urban development. In this framework, the paper firstly aims at facing the nontrivial relationship between the EIPs' theorizations and implementations and the reduction of land consumption by referencing specific studies and shared tools, where new developments have been favored despite the conversion and redevelopment of existing industrial park

Escape to the country: A reaction-driven rural renaissance on a Swedish island post COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic could be driving more households to migrate out of cities and to the countryside, but this might result in an increased demand for access to green space which, in the long run, may cause a widening of social inequalities in rural areas. On the contrary, if planned for, it could provide an opportunity for repopulation and regeneration. This article explores the underlying causes and impacts of current rural in-migration, and further, it touches on how planning can balance development while supporting communities for a rural renaissance. By using a case study area in Sweden, it examines evidence of amenity-driven in-migration flows before and during the pandemic. The findings show an increased usage of part-time housing as a result of demand for space and nature; however, this was made possible through already well functioning infrastructures. Acknowledging that it is crucial to maintain and enhance natural capital, this study suggests that the supply of services and infrastructure is essential to achieve a rural renaissance beyond temporary tourism. As people are increasingly dividing their time between their urban permanent home and their rural second home, this may further suggest that there is a need to improve the connections between urban and rural areas

Mapping RRI Dimensions and Sustainability into Regional Development Policies and Urban Planning Instruments

Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) is an inclusive approach to the research and innovation process. Regional and local authorities are encouraged to take advantages of RRI in order to address the complexity of the interplay between science and society, especially as it affects territorial development policies. However, adopting the RRI approach is not an immediate or linear process. Consciously or not, many territories have already adopted policies and planning instruments that incorporate RRI, generating effects on the spatial scales. The aim of this study is to provide a methodology to map the inclusion of RRI dimensions (i.e., public engagement, open access, gender, ethics, science education) into regional development policies and spatial planning instruments, in order to detect integrated strategies and elements that are sustainable, open, inclusive, anticipative and responsive. The mapping methodology has been applied to three territorial pilot cases. The results provide the territories with a baseline to improve the integration of the RRI approach in their commitments to develop self-sustaining research and innovation ecosystems. Through the lessons learnt from the pilot cases, recommendations are drawn for the integration of RRI in spatial and urban planning policies and tools

Sustainable Waste Management Criteria for Local Urban Plans

The paper illustrates a new approach to waste management aiming at developing strategies and actions to be integrated into municipal planning tools. The local structure plan has been recognized as the planning tool in which to integrate sustainability objectives in the field of waste management. The door-to-door waste collection has been selected as the best strategy for guaranteeing high standards of waste separate collection in the new developments and restoration areas in the Bologna municipality. Following, criteria for dimensioning the space to be reserved for waste collection, both at the apartment and at the block scale and at urban scale have been proposed to be acknowledged into the local building regulations. The proposed approach has been verified through the application to a local development plan in the Bologna municipality and its feasibility has been tested both under the technical and economic point of view

Investigating the Integration of Cultural Heritage Disaster Risk Management into Urban Planning Tools. The Ravenna Case Study

As increasingly recognized by scholars, climate change is posing new challenges in the field of disaster risk management and urban planning. Even though cultural heritage has passed through decades and centuries, it has never experienced such unexpected and variable events as those forecasted by climate change for the foreseeable future, making it a sensitive element of the living environment. By selecting the city of Ravenna and the cultural heritage site of the Santa Croce Church and archaeological area as a case study, the paper aims at providing an insight into the role that urban planning tools have when it comes to improving the resilience of historical areas, coping with climate change through improvements to the disaster risk management of cultural heritage. Starting from a deep analysis of the existing spatial and urban planning tools that operate at different scales on the Ravenna territory, the adaptive capacity of the historical area toward the identified risks was assessed. The results may lead, on the one hand, to improving the integration of cultural heritage risk management into urban planning tools; on the other hand, they contribute to improving the scope and the governance of the heritage management plans in order to cope with climate change risks and their effects

Vertical versus horizontal: theory and practice of urban densification in evolving metropolises

The urban growth, its continuous use of land and the associated problem of soil sealing force urban expansions to search for a sustainable densification. The paper attempts to explore and compare the urban conditions' growth on the fringes of two cities in Asia and Europe - Shenzhen and Vienna - as two opposite realities defining different strategies to control the urban expansion: while Shenzhen use the verticality to create new space, Vienna works on the horizontality and the regeneration, generating a neighbor’s contiguity in the urban areas. The paper discusses and illustrates the two possibilities for dense built environments -horizontality and verticality in the metropolitan form-, as opposite yet possible strategies to achieve dense built environments qualifying urban spaces, infrastructures, buildings. To this aim Hong Kong, and Vienna are compared, to understand differences and attempt at responding to the central research question: Is it possible to identify an optimal urban form? Buildings’ and neighborhood’s typologies have been observed to aim at this understanding. Even though general conclusions cannot be drawn from specific case studies, is the authors' considered opinion that urban textures in the built environments are very much connected with and their successful evolution depends on the strict relation with humans and their activities (working, living, entertaining and dwelling). In this context, appropriate strategies for urban densification, in their different forms, might represent an effective path to meet the new conflicting challenges of sustainability and rapid urban growth

A Spatial Ecosystem Services Assessment to Support Decision and Policy Making: The Case of the City of Bologna

In recent years, both mapping and assessing urban Ecosystem Services (ESs) to support urban planning has been a topic of great debate. This work aims at contributing to this discussion by developing and testing a methodological approach to first assess and map supply and demand of ESs, and then identify areas of priority of intervention. Starting from the existing models, the work develops a tailored approach to map and assess three ESs (water retention and runoff, PM10 removal, and carbon sequestration and storage) that are tested in the city of Bologna and tailored according to available open data. All data are processed in a GIS environment to allow for spatial distribution and visualization of ESs. These maps facilitate defining supply and demands and, consequently, the presence and distribution of ESs deficiencies. Building on mismatches, this paper proposes four clusters by grouping the city’s districts based on predominant land use (built-up, green urban areas) and tree canopy cover. This classification enabled the identification of intervention priority areas and suggestions of relevant nature-based solutions (NBS) to be implemented. The proposed method can serve other urban areas to perform a rapid assessment of their current needs and challenges in terms of ES provision

Spatial justice in relation to the urban amenities distribution in Austin, Texas

In addition to enhancing our theoretical grasp of justice, thinking spatially about it can also reveal important new insights that broaden our practical understanding in order to advance justice and democracy. On the other hand, these opportunities won’t be as obvious if the spatial equities aren't made apparent and strong. Austin city has experienced a fast-urban growing in the past decades. As urban areas grow, the public facilities should increase. The purpose of this paper investigates Facilities in terms of public facilities. Even though we said that the concept of justice is very complex, it is possible to get an understanding of it by using a quantitative method. This paper explores the condition of urban justice and opportunities for accessibility to public facilities for all residents in Austin by using GIS data and the Fuzzy logic model. The facilities and services maps were made in GIS and after the Euclidean Distance and Reclassify function in Arc Map, the Fuzzy Logic model was used to analyze spatial justice. The result shows the facilities are distributed properly. Spatial justice is in the context of Austin and residents enjoy spatial justice

Analysis of flares in the chromosphere and corona of main-and pre-main sequence M-type stars

Despite railway infrastructure was the structural framework on which modern European States were developed, contributing to unify territories and to the establishment of Nations, right from the beginning, the relationship between railway and city has been characterized by physical, functional and social conflicts, mainly because of a lack of integration between infrastructural and urban policies, which have been produced strong conflicts during decades. These critical situations have concentrated on the railway stations surrounding areas, which have started symbolizing the main conflicts that are taking place inside the cities.Similarly to what happened in the XIX century, today railway is a strategic infrastructure for the European territory development, thanks to the introduction of high speed transport systems and the promotion of rail transport as a more sustainable transportation system, which can quickly connect metropolitan central areas, more and more impenetrable by private vehicles, and key functions centres for the contemporary urban systems.In this framework, railway stations are becoming public places representing a complex society which is more and more dedicated to motion; thus they offer an unmissable chance not only to carry out urban development and spatial cohesion policies, but also to compose old tensions caused by the sharing of physical space, which is more and more scarce and valuable, and by ghettoization phenomena which have been produced at local scale, between rail infrastructure and the surrounding urban context. Today, such conflicts are growing and they are involving many actors who express a lot of different interests, needs and expectations, relating to the station areas’ destiny.Starting from the analysis of some conflicting situations between rail stations and the surrounding areas which have took place until today, this paper investigates some recent renewal interventions on Italian and European main railway nodes, their complex dynamics and the role of the most important players involved in these developments.Contemporary main rail stations are addressed as complex systems operating in a condition characterized by a dynamic balance among the different elements which form them; the interpretation of their polysemic nature allows to identify the most suitable design procedures and intervention strategies to make stations the privileged places where to compose the conflicts between contemporary city and railway. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to identify and to analyze crucial issues in order to build new liveable and effective developments. They refer, for instance, to the rail station configuration in order to be at the same time an efficient interchange transportation node and a meaningful and multifunctional city centre, but also to the detection of the most suitable tools and procedures to drive the urban and infrastructural transformations and to the proper involvement in the decision process of the different stakeholders who could be interested in these urban changes.Nonostante l’infrastruttura ferroviaria sia stata l’impalcato infrastrutturale su cui si sono sviluppati i moderni stati europei,  contribuendo fin dagli inizi del secolo scorso all’unificazione di territori ed alla creazione di nazioni (come è stato approfonditamente illustrato anche nel Volume 4, numero 1 di marzo 2011 di questa rivista, in riferimento al caso italiano) il rapporto tra la ferrovia e la città è stato da sempre caratterizzato da episodi di conflittualità, dovuti in gran parte ad una scarsa integrazione tra le politiche infrastrutturali e le politiche urbane, che nel corso dei decenni hanno prodotto forti conflitti di tipo fisico, funzionale e sociale soprattutto nelle zone più prossime alle stazioni ferroviarie che, per questo motivo, sono diventate luoghi simbolo dei principali conflitti che si consumano nelle città. Analogamente a quanto accadde nell’Ottocento, oggi la ferrovia torna ad essere infrastruttura strategica per lo sviluppo dello spazio europeo, grazie all’introduzione di sistemi di trasporto ad alta velocità, alla promozione del trasporto ferroviario come sistema maggiormente sostenibile, ma soprattutto alla capacità di connettere velocemente aree urbane centrali sempre più impenetrabili al mezzo privato e sedi di funzioni nevralgiche degli attuali sistemi urbani. Questi nodi infrastrutturali, configurandosi come luoghi pubblici rappresentativi di una società complessa e sempre più votata al movimento, rappresentano pertanto una occasione imperdibile, non solo per attuare politiche di sviluppo e di coesione territoriale, ma anche per risolvere vecchie tensioni dovute alla condivisione di uno spazio fisico sempre più ristretto e prezioso ed ai fenomeni di ghettizzazione che si sono creati alla scala locale, tra l’infrastruttura ferroviaria ed il contesto urbano circostante. Tali tensioni tornano oggi sotto forma di possibili minacce e coinvolgono una pluralità di attori molto più interessati ai destini delle stazioni ferroviarie rispetto al passato. A partire da una prima analisi delle situazioni più conflittuali che, nel tempo, si sono manifestate tra le stazioni ferroviarie ed i contesti urbani circostanti, l’articolo esamina le attuali dinamiche che caratterizzano i recenti interventi di rinnovo dei principali nodi ferroviari italiani ed europei, e le aspettative manifestate dai principali attori coinvolti dalla trasformazione con lo scopo di individuare le questioni cruciali per la costruzione di nuovi assetti vivibili ed efficienti, che attengono la strutturazione del nodo trasportistico e la sua conformazione a centro significativo e polifunzionale della città, ma anche l’individuazione delle dinamiche di trasformazione più idonee ed il corretto coinvolgimento dei diversi operatori e dei soggetti interessati dalla trasformazione. La corretta interpretazione della natura polisemica delle grandi stazioni ferroviarie contemporanee, che appaiono sempre più come sistemi complessi operanti in condizioni di equilibrio dinamico tra i diversi fattori che li caratterizzano, consente pertanto di individuare le prassi progettuali e le strategie di intervento più idonee per fare delle stazioni luoghi privilegiati di riconciliazione tra la ferrovia e la città contemporanea.