Digital placemaking, health & wellbeing and nature-based solutions: A systematic review and practice model

Technology implementations in the urban environment have the potential to reshape how communities experience places, specifically providing a potential enhancer for nature-based solutions in the city. Urban spaces are facing a number of challenges from climate mitigation to negative effects on communities. In this context, nature-based solutions aim to promote nature as an answer to the current climate challenge, linking positive outcomes for society in a cost-effective way. Urban nature could benefit from the implementation of technology to enhance nature experiences and nature's impact on the community. This study aims to review and synthesise existing literature focusing on the associations between digital placemaking, mental health and wellbeing impact and the use of green and blue spaces while exploring successful case studies. Hundred and seventeen studies met the eligibility criteria, most of them used qualitative methods. The findings provide insights into the potential impact of digital placemaking practices for urban nature on citizens’ wellbeing and mental health. Our results indicated an absence of agreement on the concept of digital placemaking, and a lack of blue space research while nature was presented as a context and passive element. Mental health and wellbeing are mostly approached without specifically examining health indicators or assessing the health impact of these practices. Our study proposes a model offering insights into the broad range of best practices for implementing digital placemaking for nature and wellbeing and represents a key contribution to understanding the innovative application of augmenting NBS through digital placemaking impacting the wellbeing of citizens

Social Media & Place Making

My research addresses the intersection of two concepts: urban transformation and place making. Firstly, concerning Urban transformation, there is the crisis of the city that has created vacant and underused spaces. These areas invite interventions from the local communities and bottom-up solutions to real, local and social problems. Secondly, regarding the relation between people and surroundings, I consider place making that is a process intrinsically connected with socio-spatial relations of a community. In my thesis digital transformation is the interpretation key of the two concepts, technologies, new media and the increased interaction between local actors. The aim of this project is to verify the role of internet technology and social media in the process of place making. As part of the study there will be an interrogation about the social media: how digital networks changed the relations of space with the general public

CON-TEMPORARY LIVING. UNEXPECTED HOUSING SOLUTIONS IN PUBLIC SPACES

In this book we will analyse the meaning of the word temporary in relation to the change between space and time, time and use, use and memory. Specifically, we will look at the value of the temporary nature of design as applied to the world, the city and its inhabitants, the temporary urban solutions (Fassi, 2012), and finally the key place designed to host people’s life: the home. Although it can be said that today the meaning of the term “living” is broader and indicates more than a place to sleep, and therefore to the small domestic space of a house. This is shown by the fact that today we live at work, we live on the go, we live in the movement, but, the house still plays a central role (Galluzzo, 2018). We will then draw up a categorization of the different types of temporary housing. Examples that in the world of design are multiple and, especially in recent years, have increased exponentially. Temporary design has become an excellent instrument to occupy peripheral, degraded and underutilized areas of the city, to give them a new personality and new value, and to then find a more permanent form of use for them. In this sense, the temporary city is one that takes its least used areas and aspects and transforms them to accommodate new uses, new identities and new inhabitants

The 'Orient' in the 'Occident' : the social, cultural and spatial dynamics of Moroccan diaspora formations in Granada, Spain

PhD ThesisContributing to research on geographies of diasporas and migration, this thesis examines how the Moroccan diaspora in the city of Granada, Spain, has transformed urban space, and conversely, how the spatiality of Granada engenders distinctive diasporic identity formations, senses of belonging and spatial practices. Using the geographical insight that diasporas alter and are altered by the places they inhabit and that identities and belongings are often spatialised and spatially contingent, the research examines how these processes function for the Moroccan diaspora living in Granada. Granada’s mixed Christian and Islamic heritage, its relatively recent transformation from an ethnically homogenous space into a diaspora space, and the close proximity of the Maghreb and Africa, all herald Granada as a rich arena to explore social, cultural and spatial processes of diasporas and migration. Conceptually, the research is positioned within urban geographies of diasporas. The centrality of the urban spatial scale in diaspora formations and experiences, rather than the national, is demonstrated and examined. The thesis focuses on four concepts that are at the core of geographies of diasporas: space, belonging, home and identity. Drawing on eight months of ethnographic fieldwork, the thesis provides an empirical analysis that is grounded in the everyday and intimate spaces of the Moroccan diaspora. As such it responds to calls for grounded studies on diasporas that take locations and their contexts seriously. Overall, the thesis underlines the fundamental centrality of place for diaspora formations, and argues that the experiences and perceptions of the Moroccan diaspora in Granada provide distinctive narratives of European urban diversity

The Commons

"This book explores the potential creation of a broader collaborative economy through commons-based peer production (P2P) and the emergent role of information and communication technologies (ICTs). The book seeks to critically engage in the political discussion of commons-based peer production, which can be classified into three basic arguments: the liberal, the reformist and the anti-capitalist. This book categorises the liberal argument as being in favour of the coexistence of the commons with the market and the state. Reformists, on the other hand, advocate for the gradual adjustment of the state and of capitalism to the commons, while anti-capitalists situate the commons against capitalism and the state. By discussing these three viewpoints, the book contributes to contemporary debates concerning the future of commons-based peer production. Further, the author argues that for the commons to become a fully operational mode of peer production, it needs to reach critical mass arguing that the liberal argument underestimates the reformist insight that technology has the potential to decentralise production, thereby forcing capitalism to transition to post-capitalism. Surveying the three main strands of commons-based peer production, this book makes the case for a post-capitalist commons-orientated transition that moves beyond neoliberalism.

The Commons

"This book explores the potential creation of a broader collaborative economy through commons-based peer production (P2P) and the emergent role of information and communication technologies (ICTs). The book seeks to critically engage in the political discussion of commons-based peer production, which can be classified into three basic arguments: the liberal, the reformist and the anti-capitalist. This book categorises the liberal argument as being in favour of the coexistence of the commons with the market and the state. Reformists, on the other hand, advocate for the gradual adjustment of the state and of capitalism to the commons, while anti-capitalists situate the commons against capitalism and the state. By discussing these three viewpoints, the book contributes to contemporary debates concerning the future of commons-based peer production. Further, the author argues that for the commons to become a fully operational mode of peer production, it needs to reach critical mass arguing that the liberal argument underestimates the reformist insight that technology has the potential to decentralise production, thereby forcing capitalism to transition to post-capitalism. Surveying the three main strands of commons-based peer production, this book makes the case for a post-capitalist commons-orientated transition that moves beyond neoliberalism.