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In the last few decades, the remarkable increase in the number of people living in urban areas around the world has posed new challenges for urban planning. The environmental, economic, and social issues of urban sprawl are well-known also in several metropolitan areas of Italy. In this paper, we consider a southern city of Italy (Campania Region), Caserta and its surroundings. We use several satellite images with different spatial and spectral resolutions (Landsat, Sentinel, and KH-9 Hexagon) within the Google Earth Engine platform, to map the main land use changes of Caserta conurbation from the 1980s till 2021. The results highlight the great land consumption and, at the same time, the relevant urban infill that occurred in this area in this short period, both on topographic and local scale (referring, in this last case, only to the town of Caserta). While at an early stage, the increase in artificial areas responds to a specific demand related to the increase in the resident population, the urban growth of the last two decades has more complex answers. Systematic delays in land use planning and a biased perspective (usually focusing only on the municipal scale) to solve the problems of a significantly larger area means insufficient services to the citizens in their daily lives (mainly in relation to local public transport and the actual availability of urban green areas). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The work critically explores a recently-emerged strategy of territorial regeneration for small towns at risk of depopulation in Italy, "One-euro houses". Situated at the intersection between rural gentrification and the researches on real estate capitalism, the analysis is based on a place-based case-study in Troina, Sicily, to understand if the initiative supports socio-economic regeneration in small villages and/or marginal areas or, on the contrary, it fosters commodification/financialization of the real estate market as well as extractive dynamics. So, the paper scrutinizes how the local coalition of public and private actors mobilizes the initiative to deal with the challenges of the local development, thus highlighting the mismatch between their perception and the critical views of the academic and cultural debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article investigates the economic-geography's category of Global Production Networks (GPNs), especially with reference to its ability to grasp the critical aspects of the relationship between multinational capital and regional development. After having briefly framed the GPNs in the literature on the global systems of production, we'll discuss some controversial aspects of this concept. Particular attention will be devoted to the capacity of GPNs category of dealing with the questions of the asymmetries of power and of the ecological relationships. To reiterate the urgency of reinforcing the study of these issues, we present a short analysis of the most relevant aspects of the environmental conflicts, as they appear in the international repository of the Atlas on Environmental Justice (Atlas EJ). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The “heroic era” of the railways in Italy was marked by a spread, in the territory between Tuscany, Romagna, Umbria and Marche, of projects for the construction of trans-Apennine railways. Every one of these was strenuously supported by administrations and politicians, who were convinced that the new lines would bring great benefits to the local communities. After a lively debate, the Faenza-Florence line was chosen on the basis of orographic, technical and economic considerations and this was the only one actually built. This paper aims to analyse the history of the projects for trans-Apennine lines between Arezzo and Romagna. The mains sources of the research are the various railway projects that have remained on paper, local publications and parliamentary acts.

In all pre-industrial societies, water power has been the main form of energy used to drive grain and oil mills, ironworks, fulling mills, paper factories and other types of craft and manufacturing activities. The “Carta idrografica del Regno d’Italia”, published in the last decade of the 19th century, is the first representation at topographic scale of the hydrographic network and it is homogeneous at national level and includes the location of all the water-powered factories existing in Italy in the late 19th century. The graphical representation of the structures is supported by technical data such as type, nature of the diversion, flow rates, months of use, as well as by monographic studies on the hydrological characteristics and productive capacity of Italian watercourses. Using the methodologies of historical GIS, the paper aims to analyse the distribution of water-powered factories, existing at the end of the 19th century both in Tuscany as a whole and in two provinces (Pisa and Arezzo) chosen as case studies.

The “commercial revolution” driven by the spread of large-scale retail is always spatially differentiated. Even within an economically developed region, such as Lombardy, significant differences can be seen between territories with regard to the structure and evolution of the distribution network. The paper considers the case of Lower Lombardy, a vast rural area which includes 424 municipalities split into 4 provinces (Pavia, Lodi, Cremona and Mantua). An eccentric outlook is adopted compared to trade geography studies, which are usually focused on large urban areas, overlooking what occurs in peripheral contexts. The restructuring of the distribution network between 2001 and 2019 is investigated, highlighting how the municipalities of the southern part of Lombardy witnessed different evolutionary trajectories in relation to their demographic size and their position in the urban network. The image of trade decline, often associated with rural areas, is too simplistic and conceals different processes, which restructure the relationships internal to those areas. The paper also highlights a concerning process of weakening of the proximity commercial supply: are we moving towards the formation of food deserts?

Following the increase of cruise traffic, the area of Ragusa (Dubrovnik) suffers from the negative impacts on the urban transport system, especially in terms of congestion and pollution, along the main connections from the main cruise terminal (Gruž) to the Old Town. The aim of the paper consists of carrying out an original feasibility study – fostered by local stakeholders and policy-makers – based on a sound empirical methodology and data collection so as to put forward an innovative local maritime transport service complementary to traditional urban transport solutions, which mainly consist of pedestrian routes and land-based public transport services. Following a comprehensive literature review and a best practice analysis, the paper builds upon a number of original scenarios comparing the current situation with a number of transport alternatives (a local maritime service and a pedestrian tunnel) to be used by cruise tourists accessing the historical center so as to support local policy-makers. Results show the feasibility of the local maritime option, which determines a significant reduction in urban congestion and pollution.

This paper is related to a national research project covering every Italian region and province with respect to their performances in the attainment of the priorities of the 2014-2020 EU Cohesion Policy. The first part of the paper presents a survey of the literature available on Inner Peripheries, with specific regard to the methodologies useful for their identification. The second part will present an analysis at the national level, with a focus on the case of Lombardy, and an index of multimodal accessibility selected for a preliminary evaluation of the concept of Inner Periphery. The third part of the paper will discuss an empirical assessment of the Inner Periphery individuated in the Lombardy region, using a set of indicators provided by the STeMA model. The discussion developed in the three sections is intended to test the territories defined as Inner Periphery in Lombardy according to the set of indicators made available by the national project.

This paper illustrates the work of the Florence Research unit, in particular the intermediate work of selection of indicators related to the topic “productivity”, for their inclusion in the STeMA model for the evaluation of territorial cohesion policies. As already indicated in the first working paper of this PRIN, we have combined for this selection the concept of “productivity” with that of “territorial competitiveness”, more correct for a survey about geographical economies (NUTS 3) as unit of analysis. The selection identified around 250 indicators, which were progressively reduced through a screening process. At the end, 12 indicators were included in the STeMA model. We have subsequently discussed the NUTS 3 geographical distribution of some of these indicators, inserting them within a synthetic reconstruction of the regional articulation of Italian development. Then we discussed deeper the cases of Tuscany and Emilia Romagna, emphasizing the aspects of analogy and diversity, both in the development model and in territorial policies.

This paper analyses some key dimensions of Inclusive Growth, one of the pillars of the EU 2020 strategy, focusing on social inclusion as a fundamental aspect of territorial cohesion. This research is part of a PRIN funded project on territorial impact assessment and territorial cohesion of the Italian regions. Firstly, the results of a survey aimed at developing an applicable, shared language between the PRIN research units are presented. The definitions reflect views and perspectives on various key concepts of social inclusion among 76 stakeholders and practitioners. In addition, the survey provides evidence of the level of knowledge of European programs, and the concepts adopted in the PRIN research project. Secondly, the paper looks at the territorial distribution of some indicators of Equal Opportunities, Trust in institutions and Trust in European Union cooperation. Maps at NUTS 2 and NUTS 3 level are discussed and compared in order to define differences and similarities between Italian regions, provinces and metropolitan areas. The paper shows the importance of place-based evidence of territorial impact assessment as a way to address future policies, which consider the geographical and social context.

The main goal of this paper is to develop a further examination of the intriguing interaction between geography and literature, with a special focus concerning environmental issues. According to the methods developed within the humanistic geography, individual perceptions and emotional relationships are investigated to shed light on the involvement with everyday places and practices. Literary texts have really adequate chances to improve the conventional analysis and interpretation of both territorial disorder and people’s related uneasiness. The growing needs to be aware about the environmental problems are more and more a shared urgency. It follows that ecocriticism can be identified as the proper approach to better investigate the ecological troubles affecting worldwide societies. Through such theoretical trajectory, waterscapes and water related narratives and perceptions are considered in order to clearly identify the pertinence of the concept of “hydrophilia”. It could actually be defined as an ancestral perception concerning the aesthetic experience that begins with physical stimulation of the senses, that is the physiological mechanisms of sight, smell and hearing, and ends in moods, emotions and meanings. Such inborn appreciation obviously depends on human physiology and vital needs so that humans, throughout history, have always tried to settle themselves close to rivers, lakes and coastlines. The paper besides develops the fruitful relationships between environmental psychology and geography, paying special attention to the effects of waterscapes on human perceptions. Water preferences are therefore explored taking into consideration both individual and social behaviors. Ecological awareness is easily detectable when considering Italian hydrography that is a stimulating chance to deal with contemporary local writers.

Manufacturing reshoring, or the company decision to bring offshoring production back to the home country, has recently received a great attention in developed countries as a possible way to re-industrialization. The paper investigates the main features, the drivers and the possible impact of reshoring as well as its spreading to Italy, as they emerge from extant literature and empirical evidence. A short focus on a group of Italian industrial districts will be proposed at the end of the paper. Up to now, available empirical evidence doesn’t support strong conclusions about the positive impact of reshoring on developed countries, particularly regarding job creation. Anyway, these limitations could open to future empirical research in Economic Geography, particularly regarding the role of reshoring in local production systems.

The Suez Canal, that connects the Mediterranean to the Red Sea across the Isthmus of Suez, is one of the world’s most critical waterways. Today it represents a strategic world’s choke point. Maritime choke points are a major issue today in the global economy and in shipments of goods, particularly oil and container. This paper, using the typical approach of the transport geography, aims to highlight the geo-political and geo-economic relevance of the Suez Canal starting from its construction until its recent expansion. In particular, the paper considers the canal’s impact on the Mediterranean’s new centrality in global seaborne trade. Main freight flows crossing the Suez Canal northbound/southbound underline the importance of the Northern Mediterranean and Italian ports that perform gateway functions. The main goal of the paper is to describe, as Panaro suggested (2015), how the new infrastructure of the Suez Canal is extremely important for the Northern Italy gateway ports in particular focusing on the Genoa port (which is the target of a significant share of traffic coming from/directed to Suez).

This article focuses on the role that the transformation of industrial areas into residential and cultural areas has played in facilitating the transition from industrial to financial and service-based capitalism and in aiding traditional industrial urban élites in their redefinition and transformation into global and transnational financial and service sector operators. As part of this process, abandoned industrial areas come to represent real financial assets, an essential and instrumental means of fueling and financing the old economic industrial élite’s climb toward a new stage of financial capitalism. The article shows how this process is inextricably caught up with the radical redefinition of the social dimension of the urban spaces once hosting this industrial production and, at the same time, the relative failure to effectively integrate renewal projects into the larger urban fabric conceptualized as physical and social space. Taking the Pirelli corporation in Milan as a case study, this paper considers how transformations in the Pirelli group significantly conditioned the redevelopment of the Bicocca district of Milan, owned and built by the group in the tradition of industrial paternalism. Pirelli was one of the pioneers of Twentieth Century, family-run, industrial capitalism in Italy, but it was quick to adjust to the requirements of the new economy by changing its ownership pattern and shifting its core business to real estate activities. Mapping the changing relations to space of the old and new urban élites, the paper argues that the spaces produced by the new urban élites are characterised by an introvert nature, the privatization of public space and the lack of a mutually beneficial engagement with the urban environment which was a central characteristic of the spaces produced by urban élites in earlier stages of capitalism.

This paper explores an approach to territorial planning from a purely geographical perspective, with the idea to approach the top-down planning concept, similarly as if it were presented «bottom-up». The supporting thesis is that the geographical approaches (such as those proposed by the different addresses of this discipline) have the conceptual, interpretative and methodological tools to overcome, via a holistic and systemic outlook, the hierarchical and pyramidal formulation. Process, distribution and power relations are identified to recognize and explicate the subtended political choices, to get to the heart of problems. Building the foundations to develop a plan «with» the inhabitants, which are the communities that live in the place, and not solely «for» them. Another aim of this paper is to try to offer interpretative keys to «read» and/or evaluate and/or elaborate on participating planning policies (on different spatial scale levels) for a sustainable and ecological equilibrated government of territory.

Rural Tourism (RT) has moved into a more complex phase and today it is possible to point out different stages of development within European regions. In order to encompass the evolutionary processes of tourism development within rural areas, an evolutionary approach is proposed. If the attention moves from a static analysis of RT within a region, to the transition from a basic rural economy to a new economic specialisation, then the evolutionary economic geography (EEG) may be a useful framework. The EEG explains economical transitions as a shift from a historically predominant configuration to a new one, by the interplay of processes at three different levels: micro (local), meso (regional) and macro (european). The aim of this paper is to adapt the EEG approach to the study of RT. In this paper, the framework is applied to the case study of RT in Tuscany. We argue that in Tuscany the rural transition towards a tourism development was fostered by the weakness of the established rural configuration and its heritage of a large availability of empty buildings, which has been a primary input for tourism development. New trends at the macro-level fostered the transition towards RT, in particular the European funding for multifunctionality within agriculture and urban people seeking for natural life-style.

The current paper focuses on the study of the similarity between the development of the Territorial Cooperation, representation of the cohesion’s politics at the European level, and the improving steps on the territorial reorganization that are taking place in Italy. The elaboration of a model of economic politics subjected to the «dictat» of equity and efficiency is indeed constrained by financial issues both at an European level and a national one. Furthermore, the problem of the distribution of the competency is affected from the burden of embracing the mentioned model in the respect of the administrative uniformity. However, such administrative uniformity does not coincide with the regional uniformity, in a geographical aspect, consequently compromising the criterion of the distributive equity. In order to overcome such problem it is needed to find «ad hoc» solutions stemming from the application of the principle of the cohesion. An interesting practical example of that is found in the Macro-Regions. Likewise, at an Italian scale, such principle seems to lead to the approach of the territorial reorganization either via the intercommunal associations or with the simplification of the government levels existing on the territory. Hence, the term «variable geometry» fits both scales and identifies the process of recognition of the institutional duties without additional tax raises. The analysis of what is happening at the macro-regional dimensional level in Europe and of the territorial reorganization in Italy, it is adopted in the paper as interpretation and evaluation of the enforcement of the principle of cohesion to the territorial dimension adopting a reorganization of the space capable to achieve the optimization of the public resources.

The rigorous environmental standards of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the European Union (EU) may become worth no more than the paper they are written on if the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is signed with the United States. These two regions represent mutually opposed ideas, concepts and approaches that would ultimately interact dialectically, the appropriate scientific method to adopt for an analysis of this question. The general aim of this paper is to reflect on the increase in competition that will be sparked by an intensification of free trade, and the consequent escalation of production, degradation of the environment and deterioration in working conditions and food quality; in other words, the categorical worsening of everything that the CAP claims to defend, especially as regards pollution, ecosystem integrity, animal welfare and public health.

The paper focuses on the term marginality and its use in social sciences and in human geography in particular. Quite surprisingly, geographical knowledge seems not very committed to define precisely the concept of marginality, probably because of the wider use of the concept of periphery or because of the sociological orientation usually given to the term. When used, the concept of marginality is affected by a negative connotation, due to the fact that it has always been opposed to the notion of centre. By means of examples, the paper explores the possible definitions of marginality and it stresses the importance to consider the geographical dimension of marginality. The paper also highlights the strategic role of considering the margins in the shaping of innovative and original perspectives and scenarios on the changing contemporary world.

The advent of the postmodernist shift has characterized the last thirty years of geographic debate with a vast theoretical production that has changed the familiar points of reference of the discipline. In particular, postmodernism appeared as a solution to the hegemonic and homogenizing character of the knowledge of the modern tradition. This paper will attempt to demonstrate that the objective of postmodernism has not only not been reached but has been totally contradicted, bringing about by means of will that which modernity had already experienced as rationality. In the first part some typical traits of postmodernism will be highlighted, mostly taken from geographic literature or in any case of interest for geographers, which are assimilable to a subjectivist prospective; the second part will demonstrate that the subjectivism present in postmodernism is not a vague individualism, but rather the transcendent modern subjectivism. Subjectivism, the theoretical key of modernity, shows itself to also be the foundation of postmodernism, a denuncia of the contradiction generated. Given the multiplicity of authors and sources linked to postmodernism it was decided to limit the field of analysis to two papers by young Italian authors, which however cover a wide ranging spectrum of analysis and are significant indicators of the attention being given by the new generations to the relationship between geography and philosophy.

This paper debates the reconfiguration of the relationship between space, power and knowledge linked to the launch of the IBM smart city strategies. The global spread of the smart city model is interpreted as the result of corporate activism and its discursive, spatial and technological mediation. In particular, the aim of the paper is to scrutinize the interconnection between the economic dimensions of IBM territorial strategy, linked to the experimentation of innovative mechanisms of knowledge extraction, production and exploitation within capitalist economy, and its political dimensions, related to the promotion and territorialisation of such a model of urban planning and governance.

Moving from the case of Cherarba, a popular district located in the eastern suburbs of Algiers, the paper focuses on the controversial relations between public policies and spaces of informality within the city. Urban margins are here conceived as direct expression of the social logics of contemporary urban policies. From the one side, the paper analyses the social impacts of neoliberal policies in Algiers, stressing the socio-spatial inequalities deriving from the concentration of public funds on real estate developments, to the detriment of marginal suburbs. From the other side, the work highlights how the social practices and know-hows of Cherarba’s residents may be used as a mean for the socio-spatial integration of the district within the city.

This paper offers a brief overview of «the geography of food», a strand of research appeared in the last decade, merging into the so-called «critical food studies». It highlights how food is a topic which has been at the core of recent geographical debates in Italy and overseas. In the conclusion, the paper mentions Milan’s 2015 Expo and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Programme in order to emphasise that food is a crucial topic in contemporary politics, which demands geographers’ attention.

Recent literature has pointed at urban agriculture as an opportunity to achieve food justice and sovereignty. Building on this body of work, this paper look at the opportunities and limits that constraints UA in the achievement of this goal. In the first part the paper aims to expand the usual discussion on food justice based on consideration of gender, race and income, exploring how matter of distributional, cultural, capability, procedural and global justice unfold in the urban production of food. In the second part, the paper discusses four possible strategies that could inform grassroots political activism for food justice. These are: 1) challenging neoliberal urbanism; 2) converging urban and agrarian struggles; 3) food communing; 4) conceptualizing an agro-ecological urbanism.

Food is becoming more and more an urban issue. This paper aims to explore the complex relationships between food systems and urban areas, trying to define the potential role of geography in studying these relationships and supporting urban food policies. The first part of the contribution explores the characteristics and the scales of food systems in urban areas, posing questions about the existence of «local food systems» and about their relationships with global food networks and flows. The following paragraphs are focused on cities as spaces of action for food policies, defining the field of urban food polices and urban food strategies, in an international perspective. The last part of the paper reflects on the role of the geographical approach in contributing to the debate on urban food systems and in supporting food policies.

Historically, food geographies in advanced economies have been shaped by a “productivist spatial fix” that has introduced a fundamental separation between city and countryside and between food consumption and production. After briefly examining the limitations of this model, the paper focuses on urban food strategies as an alternative response to the complexity of current cross-scale challenges in the food system. Based on a discourse analysis, the paper highlights four main novelties embedded in the urban approach to food security and sustainability: systems thinking; a holistic view that emphasizes the connections between health, social, ecological and economic development; a “new localism” that gives new prominence to the urban-regional scale; participatory governance, with is emphasis on social inclusion, participation and community capacity-building; and trans-localism, or the formation of networks through which cities are gaining the collective capacity to span larger geographical and higher political scales. As the paper concludes, these innovations are promoting a relational turn in the geography of food that deserves attention for its potential to build the social capacities needed to meet the contemporary joined-up sustainability challenges and, more broadly, to advance a more inclusive and reflexive post-capitalist politics.

Landscape, both as visible features of places and as set of cultural and identity values, should be considered as a crucial element of food systems. The aim of this paper is to explore the presence of this concept in the debate about food systems and urban food planning. In the first part of the paper, three main perspectives on food landscapes are presented: food systems as producers of landscape, foodscapes as frameworks for any food-related action and food landscapes as heritage. The second part explores urban food landscapes, focusing on landscapes of urban agriculture, on the role of consumers as co-producers of landscape and on urban foodscapes as resources for new urban images strategies of urban development. In the third part, the presence of landscape as field of action in existing Urban Food Strategies/Policies is investigated, showing its underrepresentation. The conclusions discuss the potential role of landscape in urban food policies both as the object of specific strategies or actions and as a useful conceptual framework, able to connect the actors of the food system, in sharing a vision for its future evolution.

It is well-known that many factors increase urban outdoor temperature. Urban landscapes and buildings designs that do not consider this specific issue are probably the most important causes of the so-called Urban Heat Island effect (UHI). Furthermore, loss of vegetation and of pervious surface cover can increase the intensity of the UHI effect. Specialist knowledge of the UHI growth factors and their impact on the urban microclimate is of the upmost importance for the adoption of efficient mitigation measures. This paper uses Remote Sensing and GIS methods in order to investigate the main UHI impact factors in the Province of Trieste (the capital of the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region, North-East of Italy). With this aim, the surface temperature is considered from a medium spatial resolution remote sensed image and these data are cross-checked with the local albedo, the urban vegetation and the building density. The main results of the paper are of a geographical kind. The remote sensing methods showed that, in the area studied, there was a strong correlation between higher temperatures and building density and the absence of vegetation. This is particularly evident in the urban environment of the city of Trieste (but it also occurs in the small villages of the surrounding area).

The complexity of territorial tourism systems is reflected today in the dynamism of the so-called “digital ecosystems”, such as hyper-connected territorial systems that require integrated government actions oriented to marketing and destination governance strategies. These planning scenarios involve a participatory vision, able to activate virtuous formulas of integrated design of spaces for tourist use, as well as some action of social dialogue and territorial animation. In order to highlight the narrative elements and the related aspects of governance of the destination, understood as a geographical area and, also, as a tourist product with high emotional content. This study investigates the field of study of spatial planning according to a cross-cutting and multi-level government vision in favour of a more effective planning in a tourism point of view. In this field of investigation, the traditional elements of the destination are integrated with the most innovative elements to support the territorial organizational management, such as, strategies for the digitalisation of material and intangible assets with high attractive value for territorial use. In light of scientific literature review, the paper also illustrates the results of a research project called HERIBITS (Heritage Best Practice Models and Crowdfunding Intelligence to enable the Culture Economy) conducted by the University of Pisa in order to create a techno-social web platform for joint use, of the local community and of the public decision-makers of the tourist system, on different territorial scale.

The present paper offers a preliminary assessment of tourism in Tuscany following the dramatic crisis brought about by Covid19 pandemic. Starting with an outline of the most recent trends in this economic sector, the study draws the attention to the newly arisen forms of tourism in Tuscany with special focus on rural tourism and its impressive development at a regional scale in the last years. Our conclusion is that the case of rural tourism can positively represent a top trend leading Tuscany economy out of the recent pandemic.

Since it is not beneficial to everyone, the sustainability transition is a complex process and many mechanisms hinder its evolution. Some agents involved in this transition shoulder significant costs and burdens: even if some agents can shoulder part of them, it is unlikely that all agents will spontaneously comply with the responsibi- lity that the sustainability transition imposes on them. This paper intends to investigate how, in the context of the sustainability transition, the relevant agents must/can comply with the duties demanded by this responsibility (which can be defined as “first order” responsibility). Indeed, some agents do not comply with their own (first order) responsibility and with the consequent obligations. To induce such (first order) agents to act in accordance with their (first order) responsibility, the notion of “second order” responsibility – that is, the responsibility that other agents ensure that the first order agents act on the basis of their (first order) responsibility – should be employed. In this normative perspective, the work proposes a theoretical-analytical framework within which second order agents – which in a pragmatic perspective can be defined as “agents of destabilization” (divided into primary and operational) – take action to win the resistance of first order agents in order to favor the sustainability transition.

In recent years a lot has been written about foreign migration in Italy, about the crossing of invisible borders that become liquid in the Mediterranean Sea, about the policies of exclusion that make Europe a fortress, about the narratives expressed by migrants and others actors who inform civil society of passages and invasions, less has been written on the crossing of borders by Italian emigrants. In this paper we want to analyze the relationship that has developed with borders by Italian emigrants, the role that these delimitations have assumed in the rhythms of life and socio-economic practices in the different national realities of the time, the importance of living on either side of a border in relation to being a desired or unwanted migrant and the representation of borders at the basis of some stereotypes, because borders, in the intertwining of their temporal, spatial and symbolic dimensions, have given life to numerous phenomena of differential inclusion.

The paper aims to retrace the (geo)-literary portrait of the city of Tunis by analysing the work Tunisi e il suo popolo. Studi impressioni e ricordi (Tunis and its people. Studies, impressions and memories), written by Guglielmo Collotti and published in Catania in 1876. This work is a travel report of a journey planned by Collotti with the excuse of presenting a “philanthropic” award to the sovereign of the Regency of Tunis. In fact, it gave the Sicilian nobleman the opportunity to visit the places inhabited by a large Italian community. The epistemological approach being adopted in the study, which is a geographical one, takes into consideration the historical and cultural context in which the author’s political beliefs developed: his interpretation of the landscape and the places he describes mirrors his choice of sometimes favouring colonial propaganda “Occidental” over the narration of events.

The paper presents the experimental attempt to apply the shift-share decomposition technique, mainly used in the economic field to analyse regional differentials, to the growth dynamics of infections during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Through a partial readjustment of the initial formulations of this technique, the regional patterns of the spread of the infections in Italy are analysed, taking into account the influence exercised by the demographic characteristics (age composition) of the region. In this reformulation, the shift-share analysis (SSA) allows to break down the daily variation of COVID-19 cases according to four effects resulting from: the distribution of the population by age groups (measured through the demographic and allocative effects), the tendency of the regional dynamics to follow the trend of the nation (measured by the national effect) and the rising of specific local dynamics (measured by the local effect). The application of our proposed reformulation studies the diffusion of infections in the Italian regions between March 9 and May 20, 2020, highlighting strengths and weaknesses of the methodology, offering ideas for further development and refinements to use SSA for applications in extra-economic realms (demographic, epidemiologic etc.), fruitfully. For example, the choice of the Italian case study was detrimental to the quality of the results obtained, since in Italy the population’s age distribution tends to be similar. For this reason, at the end of our study, it is suggested the opportunity to test the robustness of the proposed method using as case study other European nations (for example, France, Spain or Germany) characterised by more significant heterogeneity of the regional population than Italy.

Due to their geophysical structure, the Maldives face various natural hazards, such as coastal erosion, rising water levels, tsunamis and other climate-related disasters. In 2004, the country was affected by the Indian Ocean tsunami, with almost 12,000 displaced persons and a further 8,500 relocated inhabitants. In the context of the country’s efforts to achieve sustainable development and face climate change, disaster risk reduction and resilience capacity are key issues. The Government is working hard to implement the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risks Reduction 2015-2030, linked to Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement. The paper considers the cases of two islands in Dhaalu Atoll – Meedhoo and Rin’budhoo – both affected by the tsunami, where social and economic resilience produced two different models of development. The tsunami hit Meedhoo hard. The island economy depends on fishing and the main threats are its small size and soil erosion. Thus, in 2006 a large area around the island was reclaimed and in 2014 larger reclamation projects were started. Rin’budhoo was also severly impacted by the tsunami; there were two victims and a lot of infrastructural damage, forcing many people to migrate. However, for years local government has promoted no land reclamation. The recovery of the island started from its historical and cultural heritage and the revival of traditional crafts and goldsmithery, involving young people. Two islands, two different resilience stories.

The paper analyzes the contemporary concept of public space. It focuses the attention on the transformation of the traditional concept of public space into the idea of an alternative public space (i.e. collective space, open space, hybrid space, etc.). The methodology adopted for research purposes is mainly empirical. The case study analyzes the MAXXI museum in Rome, that shows a spontaneous birth of a (un) expected form of public space in the museum pole. This phenomenon expresses a clear need of an alternative, safe, cultural, innovative, contemporary, public space.

This paper deals with the historiographic reflections on the civilizations of Southeast Asia, written by some Italian scholars who explored this area in the second half of the Nineteenth century. These texts were translations of summaries, unpublished notes intended for reworking, introduction to ethnographic studies. Their publication testifies to the trans-cultural circulation of historical and political information between Indochina and Italy, caused by political initiatives (the opening of diplomatic relations with Siam and Burma) and by expeditions financed by some scientific institutions, such as the Genoa Natural History Museum.

The multiple geographies of trade in Abruzzo reflect the heterogeneities of regional fabric itself: different constituents like orography, business demography, population density and infrastructure endowment have led to a two-speed growth of the retail sector, where coastal areas have developed faster than inland areas. Through retailers’ and consumers’ prism, this paper offers a focus on the urban retail in some cities of the inland Abruzzo, providing some policy implications. Availing of descriptive and semi-parametric approaches, we found that some public policies, like subsides and pedestrianisation, had an impact on retailers’ perception based in inland areas even higher than those localised in coastal areas, while other features still remain lacking, such as accessibility; besides, compared with coastal areas, consumers’ perceptions in inland areas show an higher social function, where buying behavior is less hedonic and more functional to the needs of local communities.

This paper traces the recent transformations that have taken place in the city of Bologna to critically redefine the meaning and scope of the changes related to commerce and consumption, and including the city’s more general practices and promotional rhetoric. It will show how, starting from the increase in tourism and the strategic planning and policies to render the city more attractive, the city has undergone a reconfiguration through important regeneration processes linked to food. It will highlight the limited range of political and economic values which, through new ways of regulating public space and access to consumption, have redefined the socio-spatial fabric of certain areas of the city. The processes described will trace a path for deconstructing the reductively optimistic way in which Bologna is being portrayed, which ends up producing forms of displacement and exclusion.

This paper aims at scrutinizing from an historical perspective the deep transformations shaped by retail spaces and new consumption patterns challenging long-entrenched dichotomies, such as the centre-periphery one. In particular, the exploratory research explores the territorial reconfiguration of the main Eastern Sicily metropolitan areas, Catania and Messina, from the lens of the retail geography, namely after the diffusion of new suburban retail formats which have completely upset deeply-rooted relations between urban core and suburban rings.

The European Capital of Culture (ECoC) process-event has contributed to amplify the main transformations of the commercial structure in Matera. This paper proposes an analysis of the recent transformation of the historical Sassi neighborhood, aimed at pointing out the changes in trade and consumption practices, considering the effects that the development of tourism, one among the main drivers of the changes occurred, has produced in this area. Indeed, the Sassi neighborhood represents a definitely peculiar commercial and touristic landscape: from the year of designation of Matera as ECoC until today, the neighborhood – already a privileged destination for local tourism – has invested in a decisive reconversion of its commercial spaces, focused on the food & drink segment. These commercial activities are addressed mainly for tourists, therefore the first and most evident result is, actually, the exclusion of the residents. What are the characteristics of such a touristic change? What is the position of these places in the urban context? What are the functions that characterize them? Attempting to answer these questions will enable to highlight the specific characteristics of the Sassi and their development based on the most remarkable forms of touristification.

According to the COVID-19 lockdown and successive reopening a number of facts can be analysed. The main effects have been detected on: mobility and environment, and specifically on traffic, environmental data and parking. The mobility reduction has been assessed to be quite coherent with respect to what has been described by Google Global mobility report. On the other hand, in this paper a number of additional aspects have been put in evidence providing detailed aspects on mobility and parking that allowed us to better analyse the impact of the reopening on an eventual revamping of the infection, also taking into account of the Rt index. To this end, the collected data from the field have been compared from those of Google and some considerations with respect to the Imperial college Report 20 have been derived. For the pollutant aspects, a relevant reduction on most of them has been measured and rationales are reported. The solution has exploited the Snap4City IOT smart city infrastructure and data collector and Dashboard in place in Tuscany.

The territorial cohesion is today the main European policy through which to reduce the economic-social, environmental and cultural imbalances between European regions, as well as a “tool” to measure, on the basis of geographic diversity, the level of cohesion achieved in terms of territorial impact assessment of the policies. The present paper, result of the second year of research of the PRIN 2015- Territorial Impact Assessment of the territorial cohesion of the Italian regions, aims to spread the results of the measure of territorial cohesion in the Campania Region in terms of Smart, Sustainable and Inclusive Growth (Europe 2020 Strategy), through the application of the innovative STeMA-TIA methodology to the regional system. The reading that the analysis returns, starting from the strategic objectives defined in the regional programming 2014-2020, shows a widespread weakness in the level of territorial cohesion reached (NUTS 2 and NUTS 3), but also suggests the most appropriate policy choices for the future, both in terms of strengthening the “virtuosity”, and in mitigating and recovering inefficiencies.

This paper shows the first findings of an ongoing research project on “Territorial Impact Assessment of the Italian regions territorial cohesion. Place based evidence model for the policy evaluation towards the development of green economy in inner and metropolitan peripheries”, coordinated by Maria Prezioso (Tor Vergata University, Rome) as Principal Investigator. We hereby present the results of the first two years of investigation carried out by the Research Unit number 8, located in Trieste.

This work is part of the typical research field of transport geography. In particular, this paper focuses on air freight because it is a modal choice in strong growth over the past four decades. Moreover, air cargo is the indicator of a rapidly changing economic system and, not least, it is an area of considerable interest for geography, although not very discussed. From the methodological point of view, in the first part the analysis highlights the characteristics of the so-called “air cargo”. Besides it is underlined its growing importance through a dynamic reading of the strong link between this mode of transport and the transformation of production systems and of distribution processes on a global scale. In the second part, the air cargo recent dynamics’ analysis enables to describe the global flows scenario and to highlight the most important regions today together with the European market configuration. The ultimate goal of the work is to outline the distinctive features that have characterized the development of air cargo traffic in Italy and especially in the Malpensa airport catchment area, in order to understand its strategic choices and its future potential.

In the current paper the authors used the STeMA methodology, adopted in PRIN 2015 Programme and applied to Italian inner areas to check the impact of European and Italian policies to get the objective of territorial cohesion. At first the authors provide a synthesis of scientific and institutional debate on inner areas and inner peripheries. Then they use three indicators, according to the TIA approach, to audit the contributions of important local development factors, such University and three-years graduates. They also studied the policies of cohesion and territorial development in Sicily in planning 2014-2020. Finally, the authors outline some initial reflections on the state of the research carried out and on the necessity for a redesign of the complex relationship between university and territory, as a strategic aspect of the more general national policies for territorial cohesion.

Territorial capital (TC) is often defined as a set of tangible and intangible values, of an economic, social and environmental nature, capable of determining the development potential of a territory. In this paper, two fundamental categories of TC factors are identified. The first (generative factors) includes human capital and social capital which together significantly influence individual and collective action. The material and immaterial effects induced by this category of TC take the form of structures, infrastructures, productive and governmental structures, artistic expressions, and the cultural heritage and constitute the second category of TC factors (here defined as sedimented factors). Measuring and assessing these two categories, here applied to the case of provinces in Italy, could allow the formulation of key policy suggestions for economic growth and territorial development. The preliminary results provide useful information about the methodological framework adopted and pose new questions for future research developments.

The paper deals with the reconstruction of the history of the Estanque of Bellcaire d’Empordà, by the integration of traditional techniques of research with modern GIS information approaches. This area, administratively part of the comarca of the Baix Empordà, is located about seven kilometres from the Costa Brava, in the northernmost area of Catalonia. Traditional geo-historical research approach – based on the collection of the sources, analysis of the documents and the elaboration of a text – has been combined with technological approach of informatics sciences. As consequence of the introduction of GIS in geohistorical research, different sources and data (produced both by historians and by public institutions) have been compared; digitisation and GIS analysis of the sources allow to bring new light on the history of the areas, increasing our knowledge both under the quantitative and the qualitative perspectives.

The city of Khartoum, the capital of present-day Sudan, strategically located at the crossroads of the crossings of the African continent, along the north-south and east-west routes, was rebuilt ex novo by the British, at the turn of the 19th-20th century. Founded in 1820 in the context of Turkish-Egyptian Egypt, it grew rapidly in the central decades of the 1800s, it was then sacked and partially destroyed after 1885 during the years of the Mahdist revolt. Following the British re-occupation of Sudan, the city was rebuilt on the basis of an urban plan devised by an excellent team. The project represented a real laboratory, in which the theme of the urban and progressive utopia of doctors and urban planners was confronted with the white man’s civilizing mission, but the interpretation of the design of the city appears anything but easy to read. From a careful analysis of the papers developed and of the literature, it is possible to advance the hypothesis that the matrix of the plan is of a military nature and that the urban structure, based on a series of diagonal road axes, has been designed to guarantee the safety of the settlers with respect to local populations through a spatial organization that, although developed horizontally (unlike other colonial cities located in an elevated position), offered the maximum visibility and facilitated the operations of intervention by the British army.

The relationship between university and city over time has been subject to alternating phases, often also very controversial. In recent years, the theme relating to the push of the academic reality towards the territory has enriched the scientific debate making it now mature on this aspect. This paper explores the particular declination of this theme in the case of university decentralization in the suburban area, focusing critical analysis on local impacts and dynamics in relation to the glocal characteristics of the universities. The evaluation of the territorial impacts is developed in a Lefebvrerian perspective, epistemologically able to hold the city as an “urban society”, therefore, rich in social contradictions that the university must internalize, negotiating them in the best way. The characteristic of mediation, proposed by Lefebvre, is emphasized in the methodological proposed approach, firstly, on the basis of a review of the literature, identifying the most critical areas of the suburban areas that need regeneration and strengthening actions, and then placing the results in relation to the glocal characteristics of the university, defined according to national and international standards. The theoretical approach has also been declined and characterized in the specific case of the eastern suburban area of Naples, site of a recent university decentralization and of a consequent establishment of Academy of the main multinationals in the high-tech sector, which lends itself to being a perfect real laboratory for analyzing the discussed phenomena and paradigms.