Book Review: How to run a city like Amazon and other fables edited by Mark Graham, Rob Kitchin, Shannon Mattern and Joe Shaw

In How to Run a City like Amazon and Other Fables – available to download here – editors Mark Graham et al offer 38 stories written by academics that utilise speculative fiction to explore how cities might look, feel and function, and the effects on society, economics and politics, if different business models and technologies were applied to the running of cities. The contributors conjure evocative visions of these imagined cities, allowing readers to drop into complex futures that seemingly involve more struggles than improvements, writes Lorenzo De Vidovich

Social perspectives of urban regeneration on neighbourhood-scale: the case of Spanish Quarters in Naples

Urban regeneration processes can be defined not only by urban design and planning but also considering an approach more focused on the social issues. In a deprived urban area due to marginality, vulnerability, poverty and social exclusion is used to cope with its urban regeneration looking at the local welfare system that can be developed in order to generate well-being towards new forms of policy. This approach – based on local welfare – implies a new conceptualization of city: from a top-down viewpoint of the policy-making processes, where the priority is a purely architectural requalification, to an interpretation of the city as an active and dynamic space where to build local welfare systems oriented to social inclusion, citizens’ participation and inter-institutional relationships, working on the neighbourhood-scale of urban regeneration. This perspective is focused on taking care of the citizens’ needs, understanding and identifying the most critical problems that afflict a specific urban area, starting from the voice of its inhabitants. According to this perspective, the local welfare approach gives a fundamental role to the territory, seen as the best field to enhance the inhabitants’ capabilities in the regeneration processes and projects. The development of a local welfare system provides a deep understanding of the main problems of an urban area, looking for the possible resources that can be activated for its urban renewal within a combined empowerment of places and people. The paper aims to discuss the main strengths of this perspective analysing the peculiarities of a European Programme developed during the ‘90s in a deprived urban area of Naples: Quartieri Spagnoli. The case takes into account the implementation of URBAN Programme (1st edition, 1996-2000) for the urban renewal of Quartieri Spagnoli, showing with an ex-post qualitative analysis, how the Programme did not generate the expected results, related to social inclusion and social cohesion. The only urban regeneration process that took place was the one of Objective n. 1, aimed to the renewal of the typical handcraft activities of the area (such as carpentry, leather shops, hairdressing…). The other fourth Objectives, even the one dedicated to the architectural renewal of two open spaces, have proved ineffective. Only one out of five Objectives worked, thanks to the important role of a non-profit organisation in the governance of the 1st Objective. This association, called Associazione Quartieri Spagnoli (QSA), provides street-level welfare services to the inhabitants of the neighbourhood since the ‘70s, with a particular attention to the NEET. During the URBAN implementation, QSA had an important role in the 1st Objective, working for the inclusion of artisans and citizens’ voices in the policy-making dedicated to the renovation of their activities. The approach of QSA was strongly based on the capability-building (Sen, 1992) processes, and it shows how the urban regeneration of a neighbourhood can take place if related to the possible development of its local welfare system. This process can be inscribed in the territorialisation of social policies perspective, that is a key concept of the local welfare approach. The paper grounds its reflection in the social aspects of urban regeneration with a case study that underlines the importance of the local scale of urban regeneration, for the well-being of a deprived urban area

Povertà energetica tra welfare e ambiente: prime riflessioni da una ricerca a Trieste

Nell’affrontare il legame tra crisi climatica e crisi della sostenibilità dei sistemi di welfare, occorre riformulare il paradigma entro il quale si garantiscono gli obiettivi di decarbonizzazione e di transizione energetica delineati su scala internazionale, ed i principi di giustizia sociale insiti nei sistemi di welfare per garantire servizi e benessere alle popolazioni più fragili. La prospettiva dell’eco-welfare risponde a questi intrecci e può far leva su alcuni temi capaci di tenere insieme questioni di carattere sociale e questioni di carattere ambientale come, ad esempio la povertà energetica, discussa in questo capitolo come terreno di sperimentazione per politiche di eco-welfare. Il progetto di ricerca indaga il tema della povertà energetica a Trieste, concentrandosi su quattro edifici di edilizia residenziale pubblica, e interrogando il punto di vista degli abitanti nel comprendere le difficoltà a sostenere le spese energetiche per il riscaldamento e raffrescamento del proprio ambiente domestico. In questo modo, la ricerca si confronta con problemi di natura sociale come la povertà, e problemi di carattere ambientale, relativi alle conseguenze dei consumi di energia sull’ambiente

How Can We Frame Energy Communities’ Organisational Models? Insights from the Research ‘Community Energy Map’ in the Italian Context

According to the early transposition of the EU directives by the Italian government, this paper presents some of the outcomes of the qualitative-led applied research titled Community Energy Map, aimed at identifying the main operational models and organisational frameworks put in place for the development of renewable energy communities (RECs). In this respect, the article discusses a threefold subdivision of organisational models to implement RECs: public lead, pluralist, and community energy builders’ model. Furthermore, the paper illustrates in detail three of the nine case studies dedicated to recently launched RECs, conducted through qualitative fieldworks, to investigate the social and local implications generated by these community-led initiatives. The article stresses the relevance of both the local scale and community-led initiatives in the pathway towards a fair and just energy transition, by discussing how RECs define new organisational models of distributed energy systems

Oliveira, Francisco Roque de (Coord.: 2012), Leitores de mapas: dois séculos de história da cartografia em Portugal

La edición de este libro, coordinado por Francisco Roque de Oliveira, forma parte de los trabajos del IV Simposio Iberoamericano de Historia de la Cartografía, llevado a cabo en la capital portuguesa del 11 al 14 de septiembre de 2012. Cada dos años, un grupo de especialistas se reúne para conocer experiencias particulares, actualizar las perspectivas de trabajo e intercambiar algunos materiales por parte de los organizadores. Esta organización, de acuerdo con cada grupo responsable de la sed..

Community Energy Map. Una ricognizione delle prime esperienze di comunit\ue0 energetiche rinnovabili

Il volume Community Energy Map \ue8 il risultato di una ricerca, condotta da RSE e Luiss Business School, sullo stato dell\u2019arte delle comunit\ue0 dell\u2019energia in Italia. Nel volume sono presenti diverse chiavi di lettura del fenomeno, a partire dall\u2019analisi del quadro normativo nazionale e regionale italiano. Tramite diversi metodi di ricerca (mappature, desk analysis, clusterizzazioni, focus group e interviste), il volume presenta una serie di riflessioni sugli elementi di innovazione delle iniziative, con attenzione ai contesti territoriali e alle caratteristiche organizzative. Nel capitolo conclusivo, sono infine elaborate alcune raccomandazioni indirizzate ai policy makers e ai progettisti, orientate allo sviluppo di comunit\ue0 dell\u2019energia capaci di innescare virtuosi processi di sviluppo economico locale con attenzione all\u2019impatto sociale e ambientale prodotto nei territori

INNOVAZIONE SOCIALE, SVILUPPO ECONOMICO E MARGINI TERRITORIALI: UNA RIFLESSIONE PER IL CONTESTO ITALIANO

The discussion about social innovation's agendas entails the understanding of context that increasingly necessitates new methodologies, aware of the limits unfolded by the traditional approaches to tackle wicked problems, scattered on a global scale. Amongst these, the polarization of structural conditions experienced by both the Italian and European middle class is a key theme which, exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, represents a meaningful challenge to be addressed in the next future, and it is particularly relevant to when compared to polarization and territorial exclusion phenomena, usually related to weak analysis in terms of policy implications within a place-based framework. By taking into account this body of contextual elements, this paper aims at discussing a number of key themes in the field of social innovation: the complexity of defining 'margins" in an appropriate territorial configuration, the methodological  and organizational outline of social innovation, the elements fuelling or limiting the spread of new opportunities in marginal contexts, the relevant policy fields where to transform episodic projects into shared and diffused opportunities among diverse territorial contexts

Modelli organizzativi per le comunità energetiche. Riflessioni dalla ricerca ‘Community Energy Map’

Le Comunità Energetiche Rinnovabili (CER) sono iniziative ‘socio-tecniche’ di transizione energetica a livello locale finalizzate al coinvolgimento di diversi attori e organizzazioni in progetti di comunità dell’energia. In Italia, sono state introdotte nel 2020 grazie al recepimento anticipato delle direttive europee nell’ambito del Clean Energy for All Europeans package. In questa cornice, nel 2021 è stata svolta la ricerca qualitativa dal titolo Community Energy Map, finalizzata a identificare i principali modelli operativi e le strutture organizzative adottate nelle CER di più recente nascita, convogliati in una tripartizione di tre modelli: public lead, pluralista, e modello dei community energy builder. Il presente articolo presenta i principali risultati della ricerca, citando tre dei nove casi studio condotti attraverso un lavoro di analisi qualitativa, con riferimento alle implicazioni sociali e locali generate da tali iniziative. L’articolo sottolinea inoltre l’importanza delle iniziative a livello locale o di comunità, che hanno un ruolo centrale nel percorso verso una transizione energetica più equa e giusta

Seeking polycentric post-suburbanization: a view from the urban region of Milan

The traditional conception of metropolis has been challenged by the emergence of city-regions and large agglomerations. Most of the different conceptualizations share the key feature of polycentricity. Besides, several theories today enrich the study of urban transformations. Introduced by a brief overview of polycentrism, the paper advances a reflection on Milan urban region to discuss features and functions of polycentrism, by questioning whether the shift from monocentric to polycentric patterns is capable of observing the contemporary complexities of urbanization. On such basis, the paper stresses how processes of densification, complexification and diversification of the urban in-between, resulting from multi- scale and multi-topological rationales, can be construed in a perspective of “polycentric post-suburbanization”. The ultimate aim of the paper is to bridge the knowledge gap between poly- centrism and contemporary urbanization

Proximity and post-COVID-19 urban development: Reflections from Milan, Italy

2noThis paper aims to describe the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the socio-economic structure of cities, and discuss the possible responses of a place-based agenda of urban policies built around the concept of "proximity economy". With this objective, the present work provides an interpretative framework for understanding the impact on urban economy with respect to Milan and Italy, by observing the emergence of the perspective of proximity in the debate to respond to the healthcare crisis due to the current pandemic. On this conceptual basis, the paper suggests measures and gives examples for implementing a proximity-based urban development agenda, concluding with a final framework of policy recommendations relating to the implementation of these policies.openopenTricarico L.; De Vidovich L.Tricarico, L.; De Vidovich, L