Celestina Fazia, Dora Bellamacina (p)

Maria Rosaria Seminara

The city is the complex system par excellence. In it coexist a wide range of actors, tools, directions and technologies that contribute – and have contributed – to the urban shape and structure. When these systems are able to collaborate, a model is established in spatial, social and economic terms, whose evolution doesn’t depend exclusively on a centralized authority, but on the actions of individuals who aim at the same growth objectives.
The university is the place of knowledge par excellence. It represents not only an institution of belonging, but also an example of intellectual expression, of study and interest in certain disciplines, and of experimentation. The university contributes to the construction of the identity of the city in which it is located. It constitutes a strategic node.
From the point of view of innovation, universities contribute to the transformations, therefore, not only in spatial terms, but also in terms of application of knowledge. Such an assimilation between the university and the urban cell to which it belongs is characterized as if the place enjoyed the identity given by the university to the point of triggering an almost inverse process of the phenomenology known with the locution of genius loci - in reference to the environment, the interaction with the place and the identity profile.

How do the two systems relate to urbanity? In which case do they trigger growth mechanisms capable of going beyond student services?
The object of the research is to investigate, with the case study of the University of Enna Kore, what are the strategic objectives to prevent the expressed good practices, in the style of the American campus model, from being engulfed and readapted to Italian universities, for make the citadel system not just an area belonging to the university and used by students, but a stimulating place, closely connected to the city, where study and experimentation are continuously connected, projecting onto the working world.
The research work will therefore proceed with an economic and urban analysis of the Cambridge area on which Harvard insists and then proceed with a comparison with that of Enna Bassa, where there is the Kore, in order to establish growth indicators that translate the university citadel on a campus that can be a driving force for the urban whole.

Armando Cepeda Guedea (p)

Dora Bellamacina

The City of Boston can be considered an example of good practices regarding the implementation of Green Infrastructure to face climate change challenges regarding water. Green Infrastructure according to the United States Environmental Agency (EPA) is "The range of measures that use plant or soil systems, permeable pavement or other permeable surfaces or substrates, stormwater harvest and reuse, or landscaping to store, infiltrate, or evapotranspirate stormwater and reduce flows to sewer systems or to surface waters." They can be considered as part of a set of strategies that helps to transition to more resilient and sustainable communities. Green infrastructure can be multi-scale and used at the district, neighbourhood, city and regional scale. This flexibility facilitates the exportation and adaptation of the model in different contexts.

The paper explores the good practices and opportunities for improvement in the framework of transition. Supported by maps and tables a spatial analysis of the Green infrastructure in the city is conducted and also explores the relation between the presence of less Green Infrastructure and areas with low-income populations. Finally, it is discussed the possibility to adapt the Boston Green practices to cope with water scarcity and the possibility to export the positive techniques and governance practices in contexts with water shortage risk.

Claudio Pirrone (p), Gioacchino Fazio, Stefano Fricano

Armando Cepeda Guedea

Despite 35 years have been passed since the Brundtland report, sustainability and sustainable development still remain polysemic expressions. Their vagueness facilitates building rough consensus but at the cost of avoiding crucial conflicts among and across scholars, policymakers and less organized stakeholders about their values, priorities and long-term visions. As a matter of facts, reconciling economic and environmental pillars still did not happen, and the social, or “human” dimension appears to be greatly neglected, at least in practice. In this contribution, we will argue that sustainable development (and sustainability as well) is better understood, and likely to be accepted, from an anthropocentric perspective. To this scope, we rely on “development space creation” (DSC) approach. DSC was first introduced by Pirrone and Charles in 2011 and it is a synthetic, territory-based sustainable development index. This approach is deeply rooted rooted in the considerations about the nature of territory which arose in France in economics and in geography since the 1990s. As in territorial intelligence (TI), territory is appraised as a “social construct”, both lasting and continuously regenerating. Thus, according to consolidated literature, “territory” emerges as the unstable outcome of a social process by which a specific community established on a specific area endlessly reinterprets a wide range of objective and symbolic elements, conceives “projects” and expresses territorial “ideologies”. Adopting this perspective DSC also refutes the idea, popular in environmental sustainability literature, that adopting an anthropocentric point of view could be reduced to the economic analysis. After describing DSC approach, in order to set the framework, the paper illustrates the theoretical proximities and divergences between DSC and TI. Finally, by qualitative simulation, it shows how a wisely designed TI contributes to sustainable development as measured by DSC and how DSC can help to control the TI process for better results.

Vincenzo Provenzano (p), Carmelina Bevilacqua, Maria Rosaria Seminara (p)

Claudio Pirrone

The article addresses the challenges of the Ecological Transition, which presupposes a new social and economic model rethinking how we live together in a territory to reduce environmental impact. It deepens the concept of Territorial Intelligence and highlights how a change to a participatory and territorial approach to governance supports sustainability and innovation. The attention to the territory as a convergence between physical space and the actors' living network allows a systemic vision considering the complexity of the social and economic construct. Territorial Intelligence recognizes local actors' participation as fundamental in territorial and economic planning. It formalizes information technology and communication to accelerate a concerted action for sustainable development. Comprehending the territory, on the broader exception, without delimited and predetermined boundaries implies knowing how institutions, collective action, governance, social capital, and creativity converge as fundamental mechanisms for local development and innovation. Reading the territory using technological tools becomes essential to support exploratory investigations, organization, management, evaluation, and forecasting for sustainable growth.
In support of this conceptual formalization, the work analyzes the participatory evolution created by a territorial governance approach in a less-developed European region such as Sicily. To this end, it proposes two methodologies that can support a territorial analysis and be at the service of computerized shared knowledge, such as Social Network Analysis and Geographic Information systems.