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This contribution offers to analyse the reasoning and the stakes of the landscape appraisal in its relationship with historical gardens. It consists in showing that this appraisal can be a tool at the service of the promotion of a place. By taking the Tuileries Garden in Paris as case study, we shall point out how the landscape project permits the historical identity of a given place to be preserved as well as adapting it to the modern-day demands. The important historical, identity, and symbolic heritage of this garden turns it into a privileged analysing field at the moment of judging the heritage value of a site. Moreover, the Tuileries Garden has been the object of an ambitious renovation project at the end of the 20th century, led by landscapers Pascal Cribier and Louis Benech. We will have a critical reading of this project, and we will highlight the economic ans environmental issues which it fulfilled.

Les Promenades de Paris (1867-1873), a two-volume book led by French engineer of the Corps of Bridges and Roads C. A. Alphand, within the framework of the Haussmann Plan, represents an account of paramount importance in order to grasp the discourse on landscape planning in the 19th century and its circulation towards the public. In this text, which mentions the first results of a research on theoretical skills and know-how implied in the implementation of the project of Haussmannian open spaces, we shall offer an editorial history of the book and its narrative structure, as well as its originality within the wider framework of literature about gardens’ Art history (financing, circulation, address, conception).

The analysis of the professions and the technical skills developed in the realisation of pleasure gardens lead, during the last years, to new opportunities of research investigation in the field of landscape and garden history. Based on this new study trend, this article reviews the art of managing the waters in the gardens of the classical period through the analysis of the training, the savoir-faire and the daily work of Versailles hydrant men during the age of Louis XIV. Based on archived documents, correspondence, and architecture and hydraulic treaties, this research aims to contribute to studies on garden arts evolution and on the professions related to it during the modern era.

Based on new researches recently developed in the history of gardens, relating to the gardener's knowledge and savoir-faire at the Modern period, this article presents the first results of a research about the profession of gardener in France at the 17th century. The analysis is based on a corpus of twenty texts on horticulture and gardening published during the 17th and 18th centuries by gardeners, flowers collectors, agronomists and amateurs à i.e. authors who belong to a milieu less erudite than the milieu who elaborated the following Treaties : Boyceau de la Barauderie and de Dezallier d'Argenville. The article attempts to draw the reception and the participation of the representatives of the profession in the definition of the « art of garden» and the theories related to it.

Lucio Gambi has held an essential place in the last century Italian Geography. Major intellectual personality, he aimed to develop a productive criticism of sense and contents of Geography, its role inside the University, its capacity to take part to the Italian and European cultural debate and to overcome the distinction between science and society. In this process of epistemological renewal of the discipline, the concept of landscape has always been defined as a unification element, understanding key of the geographer’s faire, savoir-faire and acting. This article aims to highlight the intellectual approach of Lucio Gambi, through which he has addressed the criticism of the concept « human landscape» and to analyze his positions related to the debate on opportunities of multidisciplinarity in this context.

Abstract Covid-19 pandemic is exerting a tragic impact all around the world. First-person experience of life-threatening and stressful events can modify individuals’ risk perception, and, consequently, risk-taking behaviours. Here we investigated risk-taking profiles in 130 Italian residents, and compared healthcare to non-healthcare workers, during the lockdown phase. We ad hoc developed the “Covid-19 Risk Task”, including the classic monetary Holt-Laury Paired Lottery Task (Monetary Condition, MC) and two new ecological conditions exploring Covid-19 related risk-taking aptitudes in relation to different health (Health Status Condition, HsC) and employment (Employment Status Condition, EsC) outcomes. Results showed that, in the whole sample, individuals were more risk-averse in MC than in HsC and EsC. Moreover, a payoff increase produced a shift toward more risk-averse behaviours in MC, but not in HsC and EsC, where we found an opposite trend suggesting a more risk-loving behaviour. Finally, we found that healthcare workers were significantly less risk-averse compared to non-healthcare workers in EsC, but not in MC and HsC. These findings provided evidence of the possible effects of Covid-19 outbreak on risk-taking aptitudes. The negative impact on human choices and, consequently, on the whole world economy of this catastrophic life event must not be underestimated.

The early identification of fragile populations in the Covid-19 era would help governments to allocate resources and plan strategies to contain consequences of the pandemic. Beyond frailty, social vulnerability to environmental stressors, such as the social distancing enforced to reduce the SARS-CoV2 contagion, can modify long-term disease risk and induce health status changes in the general population. We assessed frailty and social vulnerability indices in 1,258 Italian residents during the first lockdown phase via an on-line survey. We compared indices taking into account age categories and gender. While frailty showed a linear increase with age and was greater in females than in males, social vulnerability was higher in young adults and elders compared to middle aged and older adults, and in males than females. Both frailty and social vulnerability contributed in explaining the individual perception of the impact of Covid-19 emergency on health, which was further influenced by proactive attitudes/behaviors and social isolation. Social isolation and loneliness following the Covid-19 outbreak may exert dramatic psychosocial effects in the general population. The early detection of vulnerable categories, at risk to become ill and develop long-lasting health status changes, would help to prevent consequences on general well-being by allocating resources to targeted interventions managing psychosocial distress and increasing young adults and elderly resilience toward the post-Covid-19 crisis.

In the last decade, scientific literature provided solid evidence of cognitive deficits in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patients and their effects on end-life choices. However, moral cognition and judgment are still poorly investigated in this population. Here we aimed at evaluating both socio-cognitive and socio-affective components of moral reasoning in a sample of 28 ALS patients. Patients underwent clinical and neuropsychological evaluation including basic cognitive and social cognition measures. Additionally, we administered an experimental task including moral dilemmas, with instrumental and incidental conditions. Patients’ performances were compared with a control group [healthy control (HC)], including 36 age-, gender-, and education-matched healthy subjects. Despite that the judgment pattern was comparable in ALS and HC, patients resulted less prone to carry out a moral transgression compared to HC. Additionally, ALS patients displayed higher levels of moral permissibility and lower emotional arousal, with similar levels of engagement in both instrumental and incidental conditions. Our findings expanded the current literature about cognitive deficits in ALS, showing that in judging moral actions, patients may present non-utilitarian choices and emotion flattening. Such a decision-making profile may have relevant implications in applying moral principles in real-life situations and for the judgment of end-of-life treatments and care in clinical settings.