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This paper focuses on the research pathway related to the drafting of a strategic Agri-Food Plan of Rome. The paper highlights the theoretical background and investigates the strategic vision and actions, as well as the role played by the Covid-19 Pandemic by changing priorities. The merging between two strands of study is identified: urban food strategies and sustainability in the debate on post Covid-19 food planning studies and the analysis of local agri-food systems for economic development. This work shows that in the case of urban and metropolitan areas around the Mediterranean, agriculture, the cultural dimension of food, logistics, research and innovation, and tourism marketing can be included within a single planning and policy tool. In the case of Rome, the place-based approach allowed us to consider the specificities of social and spatial contexts with interactions of market drivers with public institutions. This approach may constitute a promising path of research for the future of sustainable planning, particularly in Mediterranean cities. The results have interesting policy implications that should be more explicitly considered in addressing urban agendas, and in particular, the role of food to promote local development by integrating economic, social, and environmental and spatial values at a regional scale. • The sustainability of urban food system is a relevant issue in post Covid-19 Recovery • The agri-food systems of Southern Europe are more specialized and regionalized than those of Northern Europe • Food and agriculture shaping spatial, socioeconomic and environmental dynamics is crucial in Mediterranean cities • The case of Rome suggests that spatial planning and local development in Mediterranean cities play a crucial role in the urban agenda for the ecological transition [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The material fabric of a city is never neutral. It speaks to the opportunities of access and usage that some are given at the exclusion of others. Scholars of the everyday have analyzed how city residents counter oppression by appropriating and transforming spaces. Less attention, however, has been given to how not only people, but also material things have agency in producing opportunities for insurgency. This paper examines how people and materialities imbricate, co-producing geographies of survival on Ponte Sant'Angelo, a bridge in Rome where diverse immigrants eke out a living by selling trinkets. Interviews and observations revealed that both seniority on the street and immigration status divide vendors into three groups, each with a different degree of power over other users of the bridge. At the same time, Ponte Sant'Angelo, a physical entity made by permanent built forms as well as contingent elements such as water levels and car traffic, generate five distinct areas, each with a different degree of attractiveness in the eyes of diverse vendors. Differences across vendors and material elements intertwine with one another. The nitty-gritty of the city, its seemingly banal materialities, partner with vendors as they negotiate power and counter exclusion. These circumstances call for expanding scholarship of the everyday , exploring how multiple, interdependent agencies shape urban patterns of oppression and resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Temporary uses represent innovative and experimental solutions to give new life to disused facilities and spaces while conserving their historical, identity and environmental value. By offering the opportunity to assign new functions and meanings to abandoned places and create economic and social development, these practices can play a strategic role in promoting an integrated approach as a starting point for urban regeneration processes. Based on these assumptions, this paper aims to investigate how temporary uses of disused urban spaces can interact in a practical sense with formal planning systems and urban policies. To do so, it analyses a European project implemented in Rome aimed at fostering temporary activities in public space and reactivating several disused areas by directly involving the local community. The paper proposes a few observations touching on two issues: firstly, whether the temporary use of disused space can be a practical opportunity to not only re-design urban space but also establish a new governance model. Secondly, whether such practices can effectively address the needs and aspirations of citizens, as a precondition for improving quality of life in the city. • The paper analyses the spatial opportunities and the social implications of temporary uses in urban areas. • It investigates the strategic role of temporary uses in urban regeneration. • It analyses the EU project TUTUR, which aims to promote temporary uses, paving the way to new experimentation models. • It explores the potentialities and limitations of these practices and their possible transfer to other contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Access to homeownership for young adults is becoming more and more difficult. Italy – where homeownership rates for young adults are steadily decreasing – is a case in point. In the recent past, becoming homeowner was an obvious housing pathway for Italian young adults, even from lower-middle class families. If your parents were homeowner, you became homeowner as well, often with the help of intergenerational transfers. However, the Italian reproduction of homeownership is under severe pressure, as a result of the economic crisis and the subsequent austerity measures. Through in-depth interviews with young adults and their parents, this paper shows how deeply ingrained social expectations and aspirations surrounding homeownership – together with an objective lack of rental options – result in young adults staying longer in their parental home and becoming independent at a later age. This may have a negative impact on the social and economic dynamics within Italian society. • Homeownership reproduction is threatened for lower-middle class households in Rome. • Decreased levels of intergenerational help after crisis and austerity. • Prolonged co-residence is more common than intergenerational wealth transfers. • Owner-occupation still perceived as best tenure; lack of rental options. • Inaccessible homeownership affects class identity for lower-middle class young adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resilience has been intensely investigated as the viable quality of individuals, groups, organizations, and systems to respond productively to notable change without engaging in an extended period of regressive behaviour. Recently, there has been growing attention to the relationship between resilience and cities. To contribute to this stimulating debate, this paper first provides the theoretical framework and links the concept of resilience to urban studies. Subsequently, it enlightens, through a systems perspective and the aspect-based sentiment analysis (ABSA) methodology, the possibility to enrich the information variety endowment of urban policymakers, generated by new information units, to foster resilience capabilities in the urban context. Specifically, a large-scale text analysis study was conducted on the city of Rome to understand the sentiments expressed within the text generated online by citizens and visitors. The positive or negative sentiments linked to the hidden problems of the urban context were organized within collective perception-based maps for each of the analysed points of interest (POIs). Since cities represent complex decision-making contexts, this study aimed to outline a methodology and a tool that would help foster resilient thinking in urban policies by enriching the diversity of the information variety endowment of urban decision-makers. Unlabelled Image • Aiming to understanding what makes an urban context resilient. • The Aspect-Based Sentiment Analysis is applied for the first time to urban context. • The case of Rome in terms of vulnerabilities and resilience is analysed by ABSA methodology. • A useful urban management tool is proposed: the collective perception-based maps. • Implications for the urban management are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates Participatory Cultural Initiatives (i.e., cultural and creative projects, events, and experiences that involve civic engagement), shedding light on how participation unfolds and what elements best explain its dynamics. Based on a sound literature review in the field, the paper focuses on four European case studies: the MuseumsQuartier in Vienna, Matera as a European Capital of Culture, Big City Life in Tor Marancia and Rome City of Film as part of the UNESCO network of creative cities. The findings highlight the dynamics of the governance and the significant role of the orchestrator(s) in shaping the vision and enabling participation of all relevant stakeholders. From a theoretical perspective, this study contributes to the literature and debate on culture as a driver for local regeneration and development. Furthermore, cultural professionals, urban and regional planners, policy makers, institutions and citizens get new insights for designing and managing cultural projects. • Explaining the dynamics of participation in cultural initiatives • Highlighting the interconnection of orchestration, participation, legitimacy, and space • Demonstrating the enabling role of the orchestrator for a balanced participation • Illustrating communication as an important aspect in all phases of cultural initiatives • Elaborating the crucial role of space in promoting civic engagement, participation, and identity [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a retrospective ethnography of a failed attempt, by Rome's municipal institutions, to implement a formal decision concerning the management of an authorized Roma camp. The study unpacks multiple relations between the various actors involved (Roma families, NGOs and the city authorities involved in the management of the settlements), focusing particularly on the forms of brokerage and micro-negotiations that are located at the edge of formal procedures. I aim to highlight how informal networks have been pivotal in managing, reproducing and eventually shaping the "nomad camps" system in Rome, bringing to the fore the ways in which chains of informal relations produce hidden connections that reshape the role of each of the subjects and the space for claims-making. I thereby provide an anthropological analysis of the means through which the city's camps system has been informally managed for more than thirty years and, with it, the housing rights of Roma. • Housing security for Roma in Rome depends on access to authorized settlements/camps • Formal and strict regulations, lack of rules and informal practices are intertwined in the management of "nomad camps" • Informal relations connect all the subjects involved in the nomad camp system: Municipal officials, NGOs staff, Roma people • Informality acts as a governmental tool reshaping strategies and subjectivities of all the actors • Recommendations: abandon the nomad camps policy; create clear and direct channel between Roma and institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disparities in access to healthcare services and, more generally, in the implementation of the right to health constitute a crucial element in the insecurities of urban life. This contribution revisits ethnographic research carried out in Roma camps in Rome and proposes the theme of therapeutic informality through the lens of the relationship between Roma and healthcare institutions. The paper focuses on three key themes: informal healthcare, healthcare temporalities, and therapeutic informality. These focal points are developed around three questions; firstly, how do economic and housing informalities of particular groups intertwine with informality in the field of healthcare? Secondly, considering the centrality of the theme of temporalities in studies on health issues, how are temporalities imposed by living in a regime of informality related to the temporalities of healthcare? Thirdly, how does informality in the field of healthcare specifically affect the forms of citizenship of Roma community members? The notions of informal healthcare and therapeutic informality are proposed as analytical tools to grasp what is at stake when economic, housing and urban informalities intersect around healthcare issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]