Authors:Luciano De Bonis, Stefano Simoncini Abstract: The paper starts from a reinterpretation of the relationship between technology, society and power, in particular retracing the antagonism that occurred in the early ’70s between two great theorists of this relationship, M. McLuhan and L. Mumford. Their positions on the impact of the new information and telecommunication technologies were in fact diametrical: on one side the ‘techno-optimist’ McLuhan aimed at interpreting them as a potential ‘liberation’ in terms of physical and spiritual reconnection among humans and between Man and nature, on the other the ‘techno-sceptic’ Mumford, who saw them as a means of a definitive subjugation of the individual to a new form of centralised apparatus, the “megamachine”. After considering the positions of the French F. Guattari, which transcends the deterministic vision of the two Americans in a “phylogenetic” and “molecular” reinterpretation of the evolution of the heterogeneous and complex relationship between society, individuals and technology, we reread the current digital ‘explosion’, fostered by pandemic conditions, in the light of the coexistence of antagonistic models of digital platforms – one in tension towards an ‘algorithmic’ and centralised territorial governance, the other slowly evolving towards the construction of decentralised and open platforms more oriented towards territorial cooperation –, inferring finally the possible developments of such different models in relation to local systems. PubDate: 2022-03-03 DOI: 10.13128/sdt-13205 Issue No:Vol. 10, No. 1 (2022)
Authors:Ilaria Agostini Abstract: Reflecting on six thesis, the essay deals with the relationships among political power, dominant economic ideology, forms of space, urbanism and regional planning. In order to face political power (coming into a fertile conflict with it) and to re-appropriate the technique of transformation of urban and rural space, research on cities and territories must now take radical positions. Starting from the ‘workerist’ forms of research, some paths are proposed in order to give a new politicization to scientific investigation. PubDate: 2022-03-02 DOI: 10.13128/sdt-13411 Issue No:Vol. 10, No. 1 (2022)
Authors:Sergio De La Pierre Abstract: The Municipality of Nonantola (Modena, Italy) has hosted for almost 1,000 years the agrarian ‘Partecipanza’, a shared area of 760 hectares today, result of a donation from the Abbey dating back to 1058. Through very complex historical events, this common good, different from a ‘civic use’ or a collective property, is still used by a part of the population where each “participant”, with an allotment every 12 years, assumes the responsibility for the economic use of a part attributed to him with periodic rotation. From the medieval era, in which its use was partly farming partly ‘woody’, since the nineteenth century it passed to a mainly agricultural use, but with the rise of the postindustrial era it experienced an ‘ecological turning point’ not only with the forest rebirth, but also with enhancement and fruition projects in the direction of an ‘environmental education’ which now affects the entire population, including immigrants. Relations with the Municipality are very close, and allude to innovative forms of self-government and widespread socio-territorial responsibility that make Nonantola an exemplary case of participatory democracy. PubDate: 2022-03-02 DOI: 10.13128/sdt-13413 Issue No:Vol. 10, No. 1 (2022)
Authors:Paolo Pecile Abstract: The studies that highlight the central role of consumption in the so called ‘postmodern’ society make evident the effect that the prevalence of new means of consumption have on the image of cities and their very structure. The spectacularization of merchandise and the transformation of purchasing into new forms of experience produce a kind of screaming architecture that trivializes the perception of the architectural space and has a profound impact on the city, its appearance, its functions, its mode of exploitation and its own meaning. Finally, a situation is envisaged concerning the effects of the recent acceleration of e-commerce which could lead to the aggravation of the solitary habits of the consumer, depriving him of what remains of sociability in current retail spaces. PubDate: 2022-03-01 DOI: 10.13128/sdt-13403 Issue No:Vol. 10, No. 1 (2022)
Authors:Lucas Durand Abstract: This paper focuses on territorial recomposition in Canadian rural areas generated by the evolution of power balances among local actors, civil society and public authorities, and exogenous powers. In a postcolonial context, the economic development model of Canadian peripheral areas remains strongly influenced by the power of extractivist companies, intensively exploiting natural resources for export. Such extractivist business is detrimental to local communities and their life environment built into complex socio-natural relationships. What we want to show is that local (counter)powers, emerging during social mobilizations against extractivism, may generate alternative development trajectories, respectful with territorial environments and their socio-natural relationships. The case study we develop is about the region of Lac-Saint-Jean in Quebec Province and hydroelectric resource. We will focus on two projects, one generated by a community resistance against large hydroelectric dams, the other by an inter-ethnic public partnership for the development of mini-power plants. PubDate: 2022-02-25 DOI: 10.13128/sdt-12963 Issue No:Vol. 10, No. 1 (2022)
Authors:Albert Levy Abstract: The territorialist idea of “taking care of territory” as a living ecosystem (in the double sense of protecting/enhancing and healing it) is consistent with the ecologist proposal of a new alliance with nature supporting the “One Health” approaches: for both, the topic of human health must be (re)integrated into a general eco-urbanism view in which a resumption of co-evolutionary relationship between humans and ecosystems is a necessary precondition for their common survival. In this perspective, our cahiers de doléances may perhaps become an operative to-do list to heal illnesses introduced by Anthropocene. PubDate: 2022-02-25 DOI: 10.13128/sdt-13402 Issue No:Vol. 10, No. 1 (2022)
Authors:Domenico Patassini Abstract: The paper attempts to answer the following question: how can experiences adopting the 'territorial principle' be evaluated' Such experiences do shape evaluation issues stimulated by bio-regionalist approach and commoning practices, suggesting paths other than the protocols in use. A design with an exploratory-constructive content looking at the experience effectiveness is here suggested. PubDate: 2022-02-25 DOI: 10.13128/sdt-13114 Issue No:Vol. 10, No. 1 (2022)
Authors:Luciano De Bonis, Giovanni Ottaviano Abstract: The ancient practice of collective use of territorial resources has been expelled from the public scene, as a recent result of a long process contrasting its recognition by the sovereign powers that historically alternated on territories. This enmity was particularly exacerbated in the modernization process of Western Europe, since the individual ownership scheme – both private and public – could not accept the exception represented by community connotation of collective uses. The succession of legislative devices has gradually allowed governing authorities to dissolve the notion of collective ownership within the more generic concept of public property – of the state or local administrations – divesting customary tenants from the possibility of self-regulating common goods uses. The most recent Italian jurisprudential and legislative activity, however, has shed new light on the value of collective uses in protecting local socio-ecological, landscape and cultural peculiarities, considering the latter entirely dependent on those human uses. In this sense, such a value can be regarded as fully expressing a co-evolutionary dynamic between communities and the goods they use, both generative of commons and intrinsically reterritorializing. PubDate: 2022-02-23 DOI: 10.13128/sdt-13156 Issue No:Vol. 10, No. 1 (2022)
Authors:Giulia Li Destri Nicosia, Giusy Pappalardo, Venera Pavone Abstract: The paper reflects on the evolution of ‘collective subjects’ and civil organizations promoting grassroots processes aimed at generating social innovation. Focusing on the experience of the Participatory Presidium of the Simeto River Agreement (eastern Sicily), the paper describes the process of institutionalization that has characterized this organization as the promoter of a new territorial governance. The aim is to reflect on obstacles, tensions and criticalities emerged during this process. In doing so, we try to identify a ‘lesson learned’ for planning: namely, promoting a hybridization of knowledge that could make more effective and capacitating to support territorial actors who, through organizational processes and practices, try to create new institutional models able to respond to public interest issues. PubDate: 2022-02-23 DOI: 10.13128/sdt-13078 Issue No:Vol. 10, No. 1 (2022)
Authors:Lorenza Perini Abstract: The aim of the paper is to provide a theoretical insight into the feminist concept of cuerpo-territorio and the strict interrelation between the two terms – body and territory –, both object of predatory capitalist exploitation and protagonists of resistance against patriarchal extractivism in Latin America. The research intends to shed light on how capitalism, through the exploitation of territories and natural resources, is able to exploit also the reproductive role of women, strengthening their subordinated position and their confinement within the patriarchal society in the name of the profit. In this scenario, the study adopts a gender-sensitive perspective to reveal to what extent men and women are differently affected by extractivism and, as a matter of fact, it supports the evidence that this dominant model of accumulation cannot be considered gender-neutral, as impacts on women are definitely more severe than on the male counterpart. Consequently, through some cases in Colombia, greater attention has been put on women’s status, roles and capacities of challenging the system, in order to highlight the gendered implications of capitalist extractivism and to stress the capabilities of women in creating an alternative conception of development, aware of women’s needs and pointing at a more fair and inclusive society. PubDate: 2022-02-23 DOI: 10.13128/sdt-13111 Issue No:Vol. 10, No. 1 (2022)
Authors:Giuseppina Casale Abstract: Nature is an essential part of human life, humans in turn depend on nature and must interact with it competently in order to survive. At the same time, humans do not completely blend with nature, but are strangers to it: a tension that has always been present in humans-nature relationship. Such opposition must be interpreted considering man not as a single individual, but as a community and a fundamental element in assessing the risk of alteration of natural balance and exo-somatic development. Due to reciprocal effects and complex feedback mechanisms, mankind’s interaction with nature requires qualitative rather than quantitative evaluation: the slightest human interference generates environmental impact and the ecological imbalance, increasingly a source of social instability, leads to a retrograde change in the human range with unexpected consequences. Therefore, a sustainable development requires an ecosystem approach able to reconsider world economies as ecological projects, integrating biophysical and social/cultural variables: sociology can’t focus on anthropogenic environmental crisis without a consideration of what the environment is, how it works or the perverse consequences in human use of the environment itself. Finally, the traditional focus on modernity and the West can’t be adequate to the global environmental question: specific and limited as it is, it considers ecological crisis as a function of localized factors rather than as a result of long term and large scale processes. PubDate: 2022-02-23 DOI: 10.13128/sdt-13112 Issue No:Vol. 10, No. 1 (2022)
Authors:Federico Diodato Abstract: The situation of crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic has made clear the role that information and communication technologies (ICTs) have assumed in the management of our lives and our territories. ICT companies are developing new technological devices to combine the physical and digital dimensions, which find a particularly fertile field of application in the various models of smart city, digital city, green city…. Advertised today as the remedy to the economic, environmental and also health crisis, these models do raise problems and concerns, especially regarding the dynamics of power: Are we still able to control the technological devices we interact with' In search for alternative narratives of territorial planning, that question the responsibility of citizens on these devices’ impact on the territory, the article refers to the research conducted by the SMART CITY 4.0 Sustainable Lab. PubDate: 2022-02-23 DOI: 10.13128/sdt-13113 Issue No:Vol. 10, No. 1 (2022)
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