Stefania Tonin (p), Gianluca Zanatta

The last economic crisis has imposed structural changes on many former industrial areas, inducing public and private stakeholders to reconsider the urgency of the issues related to the environmental remediation and requalification of the area. Notwithstanding the remediation and reuse of industrial brownfield sites present an important opportunity for the improvement of urban quality, to sustain the costs of these operations are currently an economic sacrifice for the owner or the local authorities, especially in these present days. For this reason, temporary uses and temporary activities could be a successful way for finding opportunities in periods of uncertainty and crisis, financial market volatility, deindustrialization, and political changes. This paper examines how temporary reuses and practices may encourage, favor and transform – but also postpone in some circumstances— urban redevelopment and regeneration of a huge brownfield site in Porto Marghera, Venice, Italy. The main benefits of temporary reuse are economic benefits to the owner, users and the wider urban context, social and economic benefits to the local community, increased democratic participation in urban development, adaptability and innovation to the process of urban change, and low costs of implementation.
Porto Marghera, our case study, is one of the most notorious contaminated sites included in the national priority list (NPL) in Italy. In this area, vacant and polluted areas coexist, posing several problems to the local government and community. However, Porto Marghera is also one of the most strategic locations for future industrial development and economic renaissance in the entire Veneto Region. In fact, the area is located in the heart of the North East, close to the main intermodal transport networks, and is provided with a full range of urban services and infrastructure.
In addressing the temporary reuse, the main urban policies or the main operative methods to be implemented should be oriented to the promotion and the launch of pilot projects to reuse existing assets and areas ready for the transformation, capable of activating processes of cultural, social and economic development. To this end, the paper aims to review the main urban policies issued for the supporting of new projects for reusing buildings and empty open spaces, abandoned or underused public or private property. Moreover, the paper will propose ideas and practical examples of possible temporary activities in some of the cleaning up sites of Porto Marghera, which relate to the world of culture and associations, start-up crafts and small businesses.

Alexandra Sotiriou (p)

Abstract – This paper examines the link between increased trade and regional GDP growth across the regional income distribution in Greece during the post-EMU period (2000–2013). With the use of quantile regression techniques, we disentangle the effects of EU trade versus global trade at several points of the regional income distribution to identify differences in trade elasticities. The analysis aims to overcome the limitations of existing empirical literature that underscore the differences in growth returns (from trade) of high and low income regions. Our analysis -which employs quantile regression methods, panel fixed effects and system generalized method of moments (GMM) - confirms the hypothesis that the impact of EU trade is highly heterogeneous and contrary to the prevailing view appears negative for the more economically advanced regions, questioning assumptions of the endogenous growth theory. In contrast, the effects of EU trade display insignificant results for the lower income regions, attributed to the absence of direct substitution effect. A rich vector of growth determinants offers additional robustness to our results and insight for policy recommendations.

Vinicius Vale (p), Fernando Perobelli , Edson Domingues

The main objective of this paper is to evaluate the effects of Brazil's trade integration with the European Union and the United States. In order to complement similar studies, this research proposes, besides to the effects on macroeconomic and sectoral indicators, an evaluation of the effects on the income structure of ten representative households in Brazil. We have used a global-national integrated Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model, the BR-TAM (Brazilian Trade Analysis Model). This model has been calibrated based on the use and integration of two other CGE models, the global model – GTAP (Global Trade Analysis Project) and the national one – ORANIG-BR (Computable General Equilibrium Model of a Single Country of the Brazilian Economy). The BR-TAM model considers the trade relations among the regions and the sectoral linkages of the Brazilian economy. In addition, it maps the generation and appropriation of income, as well as its use, by the extension in the national module that incorporates multiple households and income flows from the Social Accounting Matrix (MCS) estimated based on preliminary data from the Input-Output Matrix (MIP) for 2011 of The University of Sao Paulo Regional and Urban Economics Lab (NEREUS), from the Integrated Economic Accounts (CEI) and from the Household Budgets Survey (POF) of Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). The effects of the two integration scenarios, although presenting some similarities, generally point to diverse trade-offs in relation to activity level, employment, and sectoral production. Different activities are potentiated in each of them. Moreover, different pressures are exerted on the income structure and, consequently, on Brazilian income inequality and concentration. In this way, this study contributes to the literature and trade agenda through a prospective study able to orient a short and medium-term integration strategy, since it brings some potential effects on macroeconomic and sectoral variables, and on income structure of heterogeneous household in Brazil.

Jakub Zasina (p), Aleksandra Nowakowska

The growing literature on university students identifies them as key agents of changes that occur today in cities globally. In tandem with the massification of higher education, student populations have started to flock to cities offering educational opportunities. In this respect, the highly interesting cases are the old industrial cities that look for new growth paths to combat the negative consequences of deindustrialisation. Although many of cities of this sort has not been traditionally associated with higher education services, they try to attract students to their local universities, perceiving them as young consumers of spending power able to spur economic development. Therefore, in this paper, we present the results of a comparative study into the expenditures of university students in two second-tier post-industrial European cities - Lodz, Poland, and Turin, Italy. The study aimed to reveal the structure of students' expenditures and their distribution across time and space. In particular, we analysed data on students' expenditures on food, accommodation, transportation, education and leisure time activities. The emphasis of this contribution is empirical, as our work is based on the original dataset derived from questionnaires filled by the rigorously defined representative sample of 2050 students attending to all public higher education institutions in Lodz and Turin. Drawing upon our findings, we discuss the role of university students’ expenditures in transformations of post-industrial cities.