Historical city markets: a set of guidelines

The overall objective of the Marakanda Project is, briefly, to foster the social and economic development of the partner cities by creating a cluster of historic city markets through strengthening relationships among them, improving governance and synergies among public institutions, market operators and experts and valorising high quality agro food and artistic handicraft productions. Within the project framework, the present publication was finalized for disseminating the scientific results of the work was done about the definition and selection of guidelines concerning markets and their development. What is the major interest in fronting such a challenge for the academic community? And could the enhancement of urban markets be an interesting research topic? This is a synthesis of the research activity made by the group of the University of Genoa, but also a stimulus and an invitation of taking into account these themes (and those related to) for further research finding

RES Implementation in Urban Areas: An Updated Overview

In the past, national energy planning guided the development of a central program for infrastructure investment over a defined time period. However, in the current geopolitical context, environmental damage, fossil fuel depletion, and territorial imbalance caused by the centralised energy model are all factors that require a change of energy structure, establishing actions to invest in energy diversification, and solid commitment to local renewable energies. This also implies an enhancement of the role played by local bodies, and particularly by municipalities, in achieving the targets of the Kyoto Protocol and now of the Paris Agreement, because renewable sources need to be studied, applied, and exploited at the local scale. Within this framework, this paper is organized as an overview on the promotion and implementation of the major RES technologies in the deployment of the new energy paradigm at the urban scale, taking into account multiple targets. A survey of existing literature underlines how the RES topic is mostly approached as a problem of energy supply and implementation of technology, but actual sustainability in terms of a social development process and improvement of quality of life by residents is often neglected. Then, this overview stimulated the authors to highlight three main critical issues and gaps and support the need of an all-encompassing approach as a final recommendation for a general RES urban planning advancement

SEAPs, land use and transport planning choices: a matter of urban dimension

Peer Reviewe

Metropolitan MaaS and DRT Schemes: are they paving the way towards a more inclusive and resilient urban environment?

Mobility-as-a-Service and Demand-Responsive-Transport schemes are promoting progressively a user-centered approach, made of modularity, flexibility and tailor-made travel experience, and pandemic emergency has furthermore enhanced this new way of thinking, thus representing an unprecedented occasion to develop a new paradigm for a more sustainable and resilient transport system, thus ensuring a greater level of social and territorial inclusion beyond traditional urban borders and outdated distinctions of targeted services for particular users' categories. This paper discusses the main features of MaaS and DRT schemes in order to assess if they could be able to cope with Universal Design principles and to improve metropolitan accessibility accordingly to the urgent request for social and territorial inclusion as sustainable development pre-requisites, made by different stakeholders in the international and European debate (see UNO SDGs or EU Cork Declaration 2.0), and re-launched by many national initiatives (SNAI for Italy, Espana Vacìa for Spain…). To re-think metropolitan mobility as a service that can be shaped accordingly to user's needs and to redefine transport supply as a complex puzzle made by different and complementary services could represent a unique opportunity to overcome one of traditional public transport dramatic problems: low mobility demand, whether it be due to sparsely populated areas or connected with specific demands of targeted population categories. Hence this paper recalls some of the recent DRT experiences already active in Genova Metropolitan Area -the so-called DRINBUS above all- along with the on-demand mobility strategy for Ligurian internal areas in order to discuss how this new user-centered approach is acting on the marginalization of remote territories and fragile user categories. The choice to develop a MaaS scheme could re-shape metropolitan mobility as a comprehensive and global mosaic made by multiple pieces, thus making more resilient the entire system thanks to its modularity and redundancy. This allows to make more sustainable "niche" services as well, according to the systemic nature of this mobility platform, thus opposing the present unsuccessful approach of creating adhoc options, focusing indeed on the user's request to travel from point A to point B, without the need to define him as urban resident, commuter, disabled or not, towards a greater social inclusion and territorial cohesio

Patterns of local development as a roadmap towards urban transport sustainability

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Investigation on human factors and key aspects involved in Autonomous Vehicles -AVs- acceptance: new instruments and perspectives

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The Podcast as an Innovative Urban Planning Teaching Tool: Soft and Hard Skills between Discipline and Professional Identity

The expression didactic innovation has recently assumed an implicit reference to Distance Learning. For scholars, however, it was above all the critical questioning on learning models. The article explores the use of the podcast as a stimulus for engineering students to achieve new soft skills: to learn multidisciplinary contents related to planning and to acquire professional competences in digital aspects and feedbacks attribution. Experience took place over two years: this gave the opportunity to compare the activity carried out totally in presence and totally remotely (through online lessons and reviews), to draw from them issues for discussion and future implementations

The role of urban planning towards energy saving policies: an italian overview

Peer Reviewe

Trasporti ed energia: strategie di pianificazione in ambito urbano

The fight against climate changing pushed the States of the EuropeanUnion to adopt new, strong and efficient objectives to protect theenvironment and improve life condition in urban centers.Particular attention is paid to the reduction of CO2 emissions in orderto promote a more livable environment and sustainable urbandevelopment. This growing communitarian policy and vision representsa suitable context for the introduction of innovative urban planningand managing practices allowing an attentive exploitation of naturalresources.The principle of sustainable and durable development and the newconcept of “energy planning” take to a revision of existent tools(PRG-Piano Regolatore Generale, PUM-Piano Urbano della Mobilità,etc.) used by Italian Public Administrations to plan and manage urbanspaces and to the introduction of new ones (PEC-Piano EnergeticoComunale, etc.).From this modern point of view, the field of transport and mobilitycovers a strategic role for two main reasons. The first is the relevantcontribution of transports to the production of CO2 emissions(transports are responsible of the 30 - 40% of CO2 emissions in urbancenters) and other toxic matters (PM10, NOx etc.); the second one isthe strong impact that the effectiveness of public transports can haveon citizens’ quality of life and the reduction of private cars’ use.Taking into account the wide range of fields, activities and serviceswhose efficiency and sustainability depends on that one of the urbanmobility system, a great number of actions can be proposed.The effective problem is the complexity of their mutual interaction inorder to satisfy urban exigencies and respect existing regulatoryindications.The analysis of alternative actions, technologies and scenarios thatLocal Administration can suppose to apply and/or realize might resultvery interesting taking into consideration also the recentcommunitarian policy of “20-20-20” aiming to reach a reduction of20% in greenhouse gas emissions, energy consumption to comefrom renewable resources and primary energy use.It turns out to be necessary a revision of existing management andplanning tools in the field of mobility and the engagement of newmethodologies (monitoring indicators, campaign for citizens’involvement, dynamic and temporal use of infrastructures, etc.) andtechnologies (biofuels, electric vehicles, etc.) to support LocalAdministration during a transitional moment in which long and shorttermdevelopment plans are strongly questioned.The more interesting strategic tool recently introduced into LA landplanning practices is the “Action Plan”.Starting from the identification of environmental, social and economicalweaknesses and treats of the urban system the “Action Plan” tries toindividuate critical situations and propose, as a kind of agenda, timesand modalities of LA actions.Being strongly involved in these items, the city of Genoa turns to bea meaningful case study.The fight against climate changing pushed the States of the EuropeanUnion to adopt new, strong and efficient objectives to protect theenvironment and improve life condition in urban centers.Particular attention is paid to the reduction of CO2 emissions in orderto promote a more livable environment and sustainable urbandevelopment. This growing communitarian policy and vision representsa suitable context for the introduction of innovative urban planningand managing practices allowing an attentive exploitation of naturalresources.The principle of sustainable and durable development and the newconcept of “energy planning” take to a revision of existent tools(PRG-Piano Regolatore Generale, PUM-Piano Urbano della Mobilità,etc.) used by Italian Public Administrations to plan and manage urbanspaces and to the introduction of new ones (PEC-Piano EnergeticoComunale, etc.).From this modern point of view, the field of transport and mobilitycovers a strategic role for two main reasons. The first is the relevantcontribution of transports to the production of CO2 emissions(transports are responsible of the 30 - 40% of CO2 emissions in urbancenters) and other toxic matters (PM10, NOx etc.); the second one isthe strong impact that the effectiveness of public transports can haveon citizens’ quality of life and the reduction of private cars’ use.Taking into account the wide range of fields, activities and serviceswhose efficiency and sustainability depends on that one of the urbanmobility system, a great number of actions can be proposed.The effective problem is the complexity of their mutual interaction inorder to satisfy urban exigencies and respect existing regulatoryindications.The analysis of alternative actions, technologies and scenarios thatLocal Administration can suppose to apply and/or realize might resultvery interesting taking into consideration also the recentcommunitarian policy of “20-20-20” aiming to reach a reduction of20% in greenhouse gas emissions, energy consumption to comefrom renewable resources and primary energy use.It turns out to be necessary a revision of existing management andplanning tools in the field of mobility and the engagement of newmethodologies (monitoring indicators, campaign for citizens’involvement, dynamic and temporal use of infrastructures, etc.) andtechnologies (biofuels, electric vehicles, etc.) to support LocalAdministration during a transitional moment in which long and shorttermdevelopment plans are strongly questioned.The more interesting strategic tool recently introduced into LA landplanning practices is the “Action Plan”.Starting from the identification of environmental, social and economicalweaknesses and treats of the urban system the “Action Plan” tries toindividuate critical situations and propose, as a kind of agenda, timesand modalities of LA actions.Being strongly involved in these items, the city of Genoa turns to bea meaningful case study

Effects of the digital transformation on the contemporary city project

According to many sociologists and technologists today we live in the midst of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The research aims to investigate this paradigm shift that is taking place in the contemporary city to understand how urban design is facing this digital transformation. Starting from the technological and digital innovations that are pervading the field of architecture, engineering and urban planning, this study will also try to understand how these radical changes will affect citizens' life