Search results for "urban policy"

Pursuing softer urban mobility behaviors through game-based apps

2020

Cities are currently engaged through their urban policies in pushing people towards less environmentally impacting mobility modalities: therefore, cycling and walking are strongly promoted, especially by means of new and wider limited traffic and no-cars zones. In this paper, the effectiveness of the new smartphones and apps-based technologies in modifying the mobility behaviors of citizens towards more sustainable choices has been investigated. Specifically, the potential of a smartphone app, directly involving citizens by means of a game rewarding the most sustainable trips, has been tested on a university commuters' group. These latter, starting from their current mobility situation, wer…

“Ya no tenemos fuerzas”. La gentrificación de los movimientos antigentrificación: una reflexión etnográfica

2021

El artículo analiza los desplazamientos y desposesiones simbólico-materiales de movimientos urbanos posicionados frente a la ciudad neoliberal. A partir de un estudio etnográfico en el barrio del Cabanyal (Valencia), se abordan las políticas urbanas y las movilizaciones vecinales en una gentrificación inacabada. El análisis muestra, en primer lugar, cómo el desplazamiento de la vecindad-activista y la desposesión de sus espacios colectivos no acarrea su desaparición, sino su transformación. En segundo lugar, la gentrificación y quienes la resisten, emergen como un mismo fenómeno contradictorio marcado por una expansión del urbanismo neoliberal a través de espacios no mercantilizados y cultu…

Active communities of interest and the political process in Italy

2014

Creative Cities in Italy: new scenarios and projects

2012

Reflections on and experimentation with urban creativity as a competitive factor put together in recent years, starting with the works of Florida and Landry, gave rise to further theoretical/operative reflections aimed at providing a greater territorial dimension to the creative city, lessening the rhetorical character and increasing that of the concrete effects on the quality of life. In 2007 my book “Creative City: Dynamics, Innovations, Actions” identified the need for concrete evolution and pointed out the factors that make it possible for urban creativity to become a launch pad for new economies and a creative force for new cities and not simply an attractive force for intellectual res…

Negations and negativity as linguistic devices in policy discourse of intercultural cities

2015

International audience; Intercultural cities – a joint initiative launched in 2008 by the European Commission and the Council of Europe – aims to develop a model supporting intercultural integration within diversified urban communities. This article examines, using methods of applied linguistics and discourse analysis, how intercultural urban policy is linguistically produced in the initiative. The examination indicates that the intercultural urban policy in the initiative is ‘negative politics’: the policy rhetoric commonly outlines the content of interculturalism by describing what is not included in it and what the policy is not about. The language used in the intercultural urban policy …

The EU’s urban policy through the 2008 financial crisis: A perspective from the case of Oporto

Many European countries are currently faced with a difficult situation fostered by a set of financial, socioeconomic and environmental problems. The last decade has been particularly rough for the Southern Europe countries due to the political reactions from the European Union (EU) to the strong economic crisis that affected the great majority of the developed economies. The EU’s actions, placed in order to face such challenges, can be characterised as a series of austerity measures that clearly diverged from the original ongoing strategies. The debate on the causes of the crisis remains unsettled and the dominant studies on the crisis focus the socioeconomic national indicators. Since the …

Urban change and regional development at the margins of Europe: an introduction

2018

Since the beginning of the nineties the urban dimension has taken a growing relevance within the EU’s regional policy. The implementation of community initiatives or other areabased projects under the structural funds has meant for several cities a tangible opportunity to start urban renewal, introduce innovative planning instruments and implement new governance relations. In the so called “less developed” regions, this process has also been accompanied by significant financial resources, giving local governments and municipalities the chance to start large infrastructure projects of metropolitan or even regional relevance. Development processes in regions and urban areas, however, have fol…

Keep Your Piece of Cake, We’ll Squat the Bakery! Autonomy Meets Repression and Institutionalisation

2017

Squatting is usually subject to institutionalisation, co-optation and repression. Legalisation of the squats is also a controversial issue among activists. This chapter provides an overview of these topics in Central-Northern European cities (Berlin, Copenhagen and Paris) and Southern European cities (Madrid, Barcelona and Rome). The authors explore how local authorities respond to squatting in different protest cycles and the consequences of those responses. Resistance to negotiations and legalisation are eventually considered within the framework of the anti-capitalist orientation of most squatters’ movements. Furthermore, the authors’ comparison across cities takes into account local con…

Forms and Functions of the Real Estate Market of Palermo (Italy). Science and Knowledge in the Cluster Analysis Approach

2016

The analysis of the housing market of a city requires suitable approaches and tools, such as data mining models, to represent its complexity which derives on many elements, e.g. the type of capital asset-house is a common good and an investment good as well, the heterogeneity of the urban areas—each of them has own historical and representative values and different urban functions—and the variability of building quality. The housing market of the most densely populated area of Palermo (Italy), corresponding to ten districts, is analyzed to verify the degree of its inner homogeneity and the relations between the quality of the characteristics and the price of the properties. Five hundred set…

Fair Planning and Affordability Housing in Urban Policy. The Case of Syracuse (Italy)

2016

Equalization can be implemented in the planning process by means of several tools. The Syracuse’s Master Plan has used “urban negotiation” to obtain land for facilities and public infrastructure in different urban areas basing on the rule of the transfer of a portion of land in return for the building permission for the remaining part of each property to be developed. The Master Plan also aimed at providing social housing because the economic crisis has amplified the gap between housing market prices and household income. This study proposes an equalization and compensation model to support the urban negotiation for providing the indexes of a fair and convenient development of several inter…