RISULTATI RICERCA

Negli ultimi decenni, il termine ‘urban design’ è stato utilizzato con crescente frequenza da un numero sempre maggiore e variegato di attori, ampliando la gamma delle sue accezioni. Una dilatazione che oggi rende la definizione del termine niente affatto scontata. Anche in ambito storiografico, alcune sintesi recenti hanno adottato prospettive fortemente inclusive tendenti a sfumare le soglie tra urban design e altre pratiche progettuali. Muovendo da tale constatazione, le righe che seguono richiamano schematicamente la vicenda italiana e internazionale negli anni postbellici per riflettere su alcune questioni che si ritengono nodali per perimetrare il ‘territorio’ dell’urban design.

A quali pratiche, a quali saperi, a quali riferimenti pensiamo quando parliamo di ‘disegno urbano’? Se l’espressione inglese ‘urban design’ può agilmente essere riconnessa a una genealogia culturale ben individuata, e anche indagata dalla storiografia, la sua traduzione italiana " incerta tra ‘progetto urbano’ e ‘disegno urbano’ " appare assai più ambigua. Esiste una specificità culturale italiana nella declinazione di questa locuzione? In assenza di uno statuto epistemologico dichiarato, come si definisce? Sono oggi ancora riconoscibili dimensioni del progetto descrivibili come pratiche del ‘disegno urbano’? E che ruolo hanno nel farsi della città? Attorno a queste domande, un gruppo di ricercatori ha costruito un programma di ricerca che indaga il tema nella storia del Novecento e nell’attualità. I saggi raccolti nel servizio presentano questioni metodologiche e anticipazioni degli esiti della ricerca.

The European Union (EU) is not only China’s biggest trading partner but also a crucial destination for Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI). During the past 15 years, Chinese FDI transactions have gained momentum, coinciding with the "Going Abroad", "Going Global" and "Belt and Road" strategies. During the post-financial crisis, the EU became the fastest growing destination for Chinese FDI triggered by a friendly investment environment and the undervaluation of forcefully privatized assets. Investments in the EU Low Carbon Energy Technologies (LCET) sector reflect a commercial and political strategy led by the Chinese government, promoting sustainable energy development as well as securing the privileged position of state-owned energy companies. Chinese state-backed companies account for a large share of FDI transactions LCET in the EU. The recently adopted "Made in China 2025" strategy gives grounds for expecting an increase in strategically motivated FDI. The increase in investment has fuelled the debate whether the EU possess sufficient policy instruments to protect national and supranational interests and to control FDI.

Currently, numerous governments and international organisations are promoting the implementation of the circular economy - both within the EU and in other regions - as an alternative to lineal models, and in search of a compromise between competitiveness and the sustainable exploitation of resources. The implementation of a circular business model is closely tied to the territory within which firms operate. As a result, firms are highly sensitive to the existence of favourable conditions at the regional level, which can greatly accelerate the transition towards circular models and regions play a relevant role in the adoption of the circular economy principles by the private sector. Similarly, the adoption of models based on circular economy principles at the micro level has an effect on macro indicators at the regional level, especially concerning the flow of raw materials and other resources, and this contributes to ensuring that quality standards and resource availability are maintained throughout the value chain. The effects of the adoption of these models on a territory can be measured in terms of volume of transactions, generation of jobs and consumption of raw materials. In this context, this study aims to contribute to the measurement of the activities related to the circular economy that have been implemented at regional level by business. This allows us to improve the knowledge of the socioeconomic impact of the circular economy, and offer an empirical approach for the development of specific regional policies to improve the circular economy in businesses.

This paper presents a study on how the Product Environmental Footprint, a method launched by the European Commission to assess and communicate environmental impacts, can be used to foster and improve green marketing. Having carried out a PEF study on its products, Carlsberg Italia initiated an in-depth engagement with consumers, in order to understand their needs and expectations concerning the environmental information to be included in its advertising. This engagement revealed the positive attitude of consumers towards green claims. Indeed, the great majority of consumers that participated in the testing declared a strong interest in wanting to "know more" about the environmental impacts of the products they purchase. The use of an environmental label was considered positively by consumers, especially when the design was simple and clear and, therefore, effective in guiding purchasing choices.

This study examines the impact of social preferences on the individual incentives of participating in climate coalitions with laboratory experimental evidence. The theoretical prediction suggests that, when players are self-interested, a dominant strategy equilibrium could exist conditionally. Players could be either critical or non-critical to an effective coalition. However, inequality-aversion may reshape the coalition formation. The coalition size could be unstable, equal or larger than the dominant strategy equilibrium. The laboratory evidence in this study suggests that most players were inequality-averse and the coalition size was usually unstable but larger than the dominant strategy equilibrium. Nevertheless, the inequality-averse attitude was positively associated with the incentives of participation. Particularly, when they were non-critical players, egalitarians were likely to give up the free riding benefit by joining a coalition. Subjective preferences were significantly associated with the decisions as well. Individual political and religious attitudes had significant effects on the individual cooperation. Our findings help to understand the climate coalition formation.

Intermediaries and financial markets are increasingly paying attention towards a more environmentally sustainable economy. The sustainability of related actions go beyond the mere provision of monetary resources. This article investigates the opportunities and challenges of green finance (GF), in order to understand which policies may foster the investment decisions the Italian biomass producers. Based on literature review supported by a survey administered to a pool of experts, our findings allowed the identification of potential policy pathways for the GF diffusion. Although GF is perceived as an opportunity for achieving environmentally sustainable innovation pathways, it does not actually prevent biomass producers from being "financially constrained" due to institutional and financial criticalities. Our results indicate that policy actions should be built considering the global attention on GF, the biomass sector conditions, the current policy frameworks and the firms internal and external barriers.

Landslides had been traditionally considered as an insignificant disaster is now a common occurrence in the hilly areas of Sri Lanka. The recent landslides have not only natural causes, but they are also due to factors related to the location of population settlements and their behavior. The demand for land in hilly areas has led to the use of marginal land, prone to landslides in unstable slopes. Control of landslides in upland areas requires an integrated approach and the issues in these areas need to be addressed in a comprehensive way by enforcing new policies and land management regulations, planning landslide risk reduction activities, improving early warning systems, improving community level landslide preparedness, developing monitoring and evaluation systems for monitoring the vulnerable slopes, and formulating necessary policies. In many areas, the risk-informed nature-based solutions and hybrid solutions can be effective in reducing the impacts of landslides. Therefore, the authors present a review of the existing Legal, regulatory and institutional frameworks for landslides mitigation and make recommendations to strengthen the existing development and agriculture related policies and to formulate suitable policies for NBSs for landslide management in Sri Lanka.

A growing number of people is coming to live and work in cities, that now host more than 50% of the human population. Solutions to better handle this process are mandatory to ensure the wellbeing of citizens. In the environmental field, urban green infrastructures play a vital role as providers of Ecosystem Services. The more complex and structured urban green areas are, the more important their functions are. A purely aesthetic vision of green, as urban furniture, changes to a productive one, where green infrastructures provide benefits and Naturebased Solutions. Urban green infrastructures can be integrated into multifunctional ecological network, modelled on wider natural park networks at regional level, but with a special focus in people wellbeing. The procedure to develop a feasibility plan for an urban ecological network and some practical examples are here described. To promote this vision, new forms of exchange are emerging, such as PES (Payment for Ecosystem Services), that can be effective natural resources management tool that allows to internalize environmental costs and benefits in the decision-making process, while preserving the landscape and the environment. Assigning a value to the various Ecosystem Services is therefore an essential tool for policy makers, planners, investors and ordinary citizens, so being able to choose between different options in an aware way. A review of different methods to evaluate the Ecosystem Services provided by the various urban green typologies are illustrated with a wide bibliography.

In urban areas, the elements of the natural environment providing multi-functional ecosystem services are referred to as green infrastructure, into the perspective of leisure, education, health and well-being, reconnection to biodiversity, cultural and heritage landscapes, resilience-building. Numerous tools have been developed to explore multiple benefits of green infrastructure, adapting methodologies and designing new frameworks, especially in the emerging research area of the landscape economy. The contribution focuses on the relevance of the socio-economic values of cultural ecosystem services provided by urban green infrastructure, which are increasingly calling researchers, policy makers and practitioners’ attention from new perspectives, mirroring the needs and claims of the growing population of urban dwellers. The often-conflicting socio-economic implications of the urban green infrastructure are presented, introducing major findings of an extensive repository of international case studies. The conclusions suggest how a better understanding of urban green infrastructure’s economic values would enable decision makers to successfully engage in trade-off analysis, promoting dialogue among stakeholders, ultimately helping them identify strategies for improved governance.

An ecosystem services-based approach can constitute the analytical basis to develop a multipurpose framework able to identify and assess the multi-benefits generated by nature-based solutions (NBS). An ecosystem services analytical framework goes beyond individual sustainability- related issues and beyond the traditional mono-sectoral view, such as: water and waste management, urban regeneration, transport, energy efficiency in buildings, resilience and climate change in a separate way. All these issues have in fact ecosystem services as a common denominator, but it is not currently possible to synoptically consider the results across different sectoral themes. This paper shows how an ecosystem services framework can link all these sectoral issues and how an accounting frame for ecosystem services can be built. First an ecosystem services classification specifically for the NBS at the local scale for the urban contexts is tailored. Second, an attempt is made to build ecosystem services accounts within the official accounting frames currently developed. Finally, an illustrative example is presented to show how the whole accounting frame work to assess resilience, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and risk management based on the presence (absence) of NBS.

Ecosystem services are "the direct and indirect contributions of ecosystems to human wellbeing" and they can help to cope with the major challenges that cities are facing nowadays. In fact, healthy ecosystem are able to regulate city temperature reducing the heat island effect, reduce water run off, and improve human health and the overall resilience of urban areas. At the same time, urbanisation has increased the pressure on natural resources, generating several impacts on the ecosystems and on the services provided by them at local, regional, national and global scales. This phenomenon has been exacerbated by the impacts of climate change, increasing vulnerability to natural disaster risks. At international and national level several policies for the protection of ecosystems has been defined. Indeed regional and local authorities can improve integrated spatial planning and coordinated management between sectors to reduce the pressures on natural system. In order to do this it is fundamental to understand the value of the ecosystem to introduce regulatory and market instruments that are able to protect them.

The National Policy on Biofuels (NPB) 2009 was adopted on 24th December 2009 in India to ensure the minimum availability of biofuels at any given time to meet the demand. NPB 2009 laid down the vision, goals and strategy to biofuel development while proposing a framework of technological, financial and enabling mechanisms. The NPB 2009 undertook reforms and aimed to increase the biodiesel blending percentage in diesel and bioethanol blending percentage in petrol to 20% each by 2017. It promoted inclusive growth, development and contributed to energy security and climate change mitigation. The lack of assured supply of raw material feedstock for biofuel production has been the major slippage of NPB 2009. NPB 2018 was adopted on 16th May 2018 and built on the foundation laid upon by NPB 2009. The paper focuses on the importance of NPB 2009, its achievements and misses and touches upon NPB 2018.

Il lavoro prende origine da un interesse dell’Osservatorio nel conoscere le altre realtà che si occupano di gruppi: con quali teorie e prassi e si muovono, quali sono i loro interrogativi, da dove prendono origine e quanta risonanza c’è tra noi tera-peuti gruppali al di là delle appartenenze. Questo primo scritto sarà seguito da altri che avranno il compito di recensire e conoscere le riviste italiane sui gruppi. Il fine sarà quello di ampliare il panorama del lettore e stimolare nuove linee di pensiero.

L’autrice illustra le origini della Summer School GASI, concepita e realizzata come un evento grazie al quale analisti di gruppo già formati o ancora in training, insieme a partecipanti provenienti da altri ambiti professionali, ma con uno speci-fico interesse per il lavoro gruppale, hanno la possibilità di incontrarsi ed entrare in relazione a un livello profondo e personale. Partecipando alla Scuola estiva della GASI, è possibile vivere un’esperienza gruppoanalitica molto intensa. Le quattro passate edizioni hanno dimostrato che è possibile creare importanti collegamenti tra persone a livello internazionale. La quinta Summer School avrà luogo a Fiume nel luglio 2019.

La quarta edizione della Scuola estiva internazionale GASI si è svolta a Lubia-na nel luglio 2018. Gruppoanalisti già formati e giovani colleghi ancora impegnati nel training si sono ritrovati nella capitale slovena per condividere un’intensa espe-rienza gruppoanalitica. Attraverso il confronto fra partecipanti di età e provenien-ze diverse, è stato possibile riflettere sul significato dell’appartenenza a una parti-colare generazione, e sull’importanza del dialogo intergenerazionale. L’autrice of-fre inoltre un breve excursus sulla storia della Scuola estiva internazionale GASI, a partire dalla prima edizione del 2013, fornendo alcune informazioni sulla prossima edizione dell’evento, che avrà luogo a Fiume nel luglio 2019.

L’articolo affronta i profondi cambiamenti che nella seconda metà del XX se-colo hanno riguardato i costumi sessuali di uomini e donne in seguito alla scoperta e alla diffusione della pillola anticoncezionale, alla approvazione della legge sul divorzio e di quella che ha reso legale l’interruzione volontaria di gravidanza. Le trasformazioni relazionali che ne sono derivate hanno radicalmente modificato l’idea stessa di procreazione. Da oltre trent’anni, infatti, fare sesso non implica più il concepimento e ora, grazie alla procreazione medicalmente assistita, il concepi-mento non implica più necessariamente l’atto sessuale. Le modalità relazionali fra femmine e maschi vengono ripercorse in una sintetica prospettiva storica. Il picco-lo gruppo analiticamente orientato viene proposto come setting elettivo per ritro-vare o trovare per la prima volta la propria identità, di cui quella di genere costitui-sce un aspetto importante. Femminile e maschile sono costrutti relazionali, e quin-di definibili al meglio attraverso quei processi di identificazione e differenziazione intrinseci al divenire gruppale che consentono di superare i ruoli stereotipati appresi in famiglia e nel sociale, rendendo il rapporto donna-uomo autentico e personale. Alcuni esempi clinici chiariscono ulteriormente quanto sostenuto.