Adriana Galderisi

Towards an urban planners’ perspective on Smart City

The concept of “Smart City”, providing a solution for making cities more efficient and sustainable, has been quite popular in recent years, encouraging reflections, ideas, researches and projects for a “smart” urban development. A smart city is generally meant as a city capable of joining “competitiveness” and “sustainability”, by integrating different dimensions of development and addressing infrastructural investments able to support economic growth as well as the quality of life of communities, a more careful management of natural resources, a greater transparency and participation to decision-making processes. Based on those assumptions, this contribution tackle the controversial subject of Smart City, starting from the review of the scientific Italian and international literature that, from the Eighties to the Nineties, has been largely focused on ICTs and their impacts on urban development. Then, the focus shifts on the large debate on smart cities that has been developing from the beginning of 2000s and on the numerous institutional initiatives up to now implemented by the European Union for building up the Smart City. Finally, the article highlights how, despite these efforts, a shared definition of the term is still missing and current approaches to the issue are still very heterogeneous; it emphasizes, on the opposite, the key-role that urban planning, grounding on a holistic approach to cities’ development, should play in coordinating and integrating urban policies addressed to building up a Smart City.

Smart and Resilient Cities. A Systemic Approach for Developing Cross-sectoral Strategies in the Face of Climate Change

Climate change is considered one of the main environmental issues challenging contemporary cities. Meanwhile, urban development patterns and the growth of urban population represent the main contributors to climate change, affecting the total energy consumptions and the related greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, a breakthrough in current urban development patterns is required to counterbalance the climate-related issues. This study focuses on the Smart City and Resilient City concepts; in detail, based on the review of existing literature, it analyzes the synergies between the two concepts, highlighting how the Smart City concept is more and more widely interpreted as a process addressed to make cities “more livable and resilient and, hence, able to respond quicker to new challenges” (Kunzmann, 2014). Nevertheless, current initiatives to improve cities’ smartness and resilience in the European cities are very fragmented and operational tools capable to support multi-objective strategies are still at an early stage. To fill this gap, embracing a systemic perspective, the main characteristics of a smart and resilient urban system have been identified and arranged into a conceptual model. The latter represents a preliminary step for the development of an operational tool capable to guide planners and decision-makers in carrying out multi-objective strategies addressed to enhance the response capacities of complex urban systems in the face of climate change.

Vulnerability Assessment and Risk Mitigation: The Case of Vulcano Island, Italy

This paper reports on a comprehensive vulnerability analysis based on a research work developed within the EC ENSURE Project (7FP) dealing with the assessment of different volcanic phenomena and induced mass-movements on Vulcano Island (S Italy) as a key tool for proactive efforts for multi-risk mitigation. The work is mainly focused on tephra sedimentation and lahar hazards and related physical, systemic and mitigation capacities.

Climate Change Adaptation. Challenges and Opportunities for a Smart Urban Growth

Climate change is one of the main environmental issues challenging cities in the 21th century. At present, more than half of the world population lives in cities and the latter are responsible for 60% to 80% of global energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which are the main causes of the change in climate conditions. In the meantime, they are seriously threatened by the heterogeneous climate-related phenomena, very often exacerbated by the features of the cities themselves. In the last decade, international and European efforts have been mainly focused on mitigation rather than on adaptation strategies. Europe is one of the world leaders in global mitigation policies, while the issue of adaptation has gained growing importance in the last years. As underlined by the EU Strategy on adaptation to climate change, even though climate change mitigation still remains a priority for the global community, large room has to be devoted to adaptation measures, in order to effectively face the unavoidable impacts and related economic, environmental and social costs of climate change (EC, 2013). Thus, measures for adaptation to climate change are receiving an increasing financial support and a growing number of European countries are implementing national and urban adaptation strategies to deal with the actual and potential climate change impacts. According to the above considerations, this paper explores strengths and weaknesses of current adaptation strategies in European cities. First the main suggestions of the European Community to improve urban adaptation to climate change are examined; then, some recent Adaptation Plans are analyzed, in order to highlight challenges and opportunities arising from the adaptation processes at urban level and to explore the potential of Adaptation Plans to promote a smart growth in the European cities.

Città, mobilità e ambiente nelle strategie e nei progetti di ricerca dell’Unione Europea

Il rapporto citta, mobilita e ambiente ha assunto nell’ultimo decennio un ruolo centrale nelle strategie, nelle iniziative e nei programmi di ricerca dell’Unione Europea. A fronte del riconoscimento della accessibilita e della qualita ambientale quali elementi chiave per l’acquisizione di vantaggi competitivi, l’Unione Europea ha individuato quale obiettivo prioritario per rispondere alla sfida della competitivita in ambito internazionale, la messa a punto di politiche mirate ad accrescere la mobilita riducendone, nel contempo, gli effetti negativi, soprattutto nelle aree urbane. A tal fine, a partire dalla fine degli anni Novanta, l’Europa ha indirizzato i propri sforzi verso l’identificazione di soluzioni innovative per una mobilita urbana sostenibile, promuovendo ricerche e iniziative in settori molteplici, dalle infrastrutture di trasporto alla regolamentazione e gestione del traffico, dai servizi di trasporto pubblico alla pianificazione urbana. I principali documenti prodotti in ambito europeo dal 2000 ad oggi, gli esiti dei programmi di ricerca e gli indirizzi per le future attivita di ricerca delineati nel settimo Programma Quadro sottolineano la necessita di superare la settorialita cui e stata a lungo improntata la pianificazione dei trasporti per delineare approcci, pratiche e strumenti, basati su una visione integrata del rapporto citta, mobilita e ambiente e orientati ad una piu stretta correlazione tra pianificazione dei trasporti e pianificazione urbana e territoriale. Risulta tuttavia ancora debole, nelle strategie e nelle prospettive di ricerca delineate per il prossimo futuro dall’Unione Europea, la consapevolezza che la risoluzione del difficile rapporto citta, mobilita e ambiente richiede non solo una maggiore integrazione tra politiche di settore, frutto di un coordinamento tra scelte effettuate sulla base di saperi e competenze ancora troppo distanti, quanto l’effettivo superamento della separazione tra ambiti disciplinari tradizionalmente disgiunti e l’individuazione di nuovi campi di riflessione, nuove professionalita da cui potranno emergere approcci, strumenti e pratiche realmente innovative.

La logistica nei processi di trasformazione dell’area orientale di Napoli

The investigation field spreadly defined as “city logistics” is only a segment of a wider field of investigation concerning the whole chain of goods distribution and storage. That segment points out the so-called “last mile”, namely the last section of the complex chain related to the carrying of goods from production places up to their final destination: the retail network. Indeed, it is just the last mile of the chain the one that mostly affects the urban areas: in these last ones the demand for goods mostly converges and, consequently, the supply of retail goods. Moreover, while there are several innovations that have affected the wider field of logistics in the last decades, on the contrary there are few successful investigations and experimentations concerning the innovation in the modalities of final distribution of goods. As widely stressed by some European projects, goods transportation in urban areas represents an important factor of decay for several reasons: – except for few pilot experiences, it is still mainly carried out by road transport which represents one of the main causes of congestion and air and acoustic pollution in urban areas; – the access of heavy transport means in the core of urban areas strongly clashes with the current goal of most European cities that is to reduce car traffic in central areas; – the scarce availability of open spaces in the historical cities makes difficult to to find out adequate areas for loading and unloading operations; – the use of heavy means of transport for goods distribution produces economic disadvantages for the haulers too. Facing up to the importance of the problem, several and heterogeneous initiatives have been undertaken in many European cities to control and reduce goods traffic in urban areas: from the ones targeted to reduce the access and the transit of goods transport or the loading and unloading operations, to the more complex ones aimed at creating areas for goods distribution inside or near the urban areas, using eco-compatible vehicles for the distribution of goods inside urban areas, especially in the historical centers. It seems currently shared the idea that the problem of goods transport in urban areas has to be faced taking into account both the organization of urban activities and the mobility. This fact implies that, in defining the strategies for rationalizing/reducing goods transport, the characteristics of the urban context, the organization of the retail network, the more general choices regarding urban mobility, the environmental policies should be considered. Starting from those assumptions, this paper points out the solutions up to now suggested for the reorganization of goods distribution in the Neapolitan urban context, focusing in detail on the role that the eastern area of Naples could play in order to re-organize the distribution of goods in the historical city.

Soft mobility and pedestrian networks in urban areas

By referring to the wider strategies set up, starting from the middle of the Nineties, by the European cities to promote a sustainable urban mobility and to the more recent concept of soft mobility, which generally includes pedestrian and cycling mobility, this contribution focuses on pedestrian mobility in urban areas, outlining criteria and methods for planning and designing networks of urban public open spaces, such as roads and squares, devoted to an exclusive or prevailing pedestrian use. First of all, the paper analyzes the multiple roles played by roads and squares within the cities: “axes” supporting different mobility flows, including the pedestrian ones, and in the meanwhile urban places in which different activities (commercial activities, meeting, and so on) take place. Grounding on that, the main reasons driving toward an organization of such spaces as urban networks have been outlined. Then, some guidelines and methodological elements, both for planning pedestrian networks and designing their elements taking into account the correspondence between foreseen uses and spatial features of each element, have been provided. Furthermore, the links between the pedestrian networks and the main junctions of other urban mobility networks, as well as between the first ones and the urban contexts have been stressed. Suggested guidelines and methodological elements have been applied and tested both on historical and suburban areas of the city of Naples; nevertheless they represent only a first step towards the setting up of a method for pedestrian networks planning and design in urban areas.

Sustainability, Risks, Land Use Planning:Tools For Integration

In the last decades, urban areas have been more and more frequently hit by hazards with catastrophic impacts on human and natural resources. Urban disasters are often characterized as an interactive mix of natural, technological and social events, due to changes of hazards, exposure and vulnerability of territorial systems and to the interactive mix of such changes. These issues are critical both for urban planning and sustainable development, since hazards pose a relevant threat both to the development of cities and to the safeguarding of human and natural resources for the benefit of future generations. Accordingly, the need for integrating both environmental and disaster risk considerations into spatial planning has been largely emphasized. Since the eighties, the role played by environmental issues in land use planning has been consistently growing in all European countries. Nowadays, almost all land use planning processes have to be subjected to a Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA). On the opposite, Disasters Risk Reduction still represents a marginal goal in land use planning. Risk assessment and prevention is mainly faced through sectoral planning tools, based on a hazard oriented approach and devoting scarce attention to the vulnerability of human and natural resources. Furthermore, risk features as well as the potential impacts of planning policies on such features are often neglected within the SEAs. To face these criticalities, a new tool, the SERA, which could largely contribute to an effective integration of Risk Assessment (RA) into the SEA has been provided. This tool is addressed to support land use planners in evaluating the impact that land use planning choices might have on environmental features of the territory, including risks.

Shift in Thinking

The Scenario project has set a rather ambitious and even risky goal: to lay down a roadmap for future research in natural risks and mitigation policy in the European Union, drawing on ten years of research on natural hazards, mainly funded under the V (1998–2002) and VI (2002–2006) Framework Programmes. The goal is not only ambitious, but could be easily labelled as unrealistic and even arrogant. Initial meetings of the project set the stage for harsh discussions on methodology, specific steps and basic definitions to be followed by the research teams. Despite initial differences, many of which persist, between diverse hazard communities, and between climate change and natural hazards scholars, it is interesting to note that it was possible to achieve some commonalities and convergence points.

Mobility Network and Safety

Mobility network is crucial for ensuring territorial safety with respect to natural and technological hazards. They represent a basic support to community’s everyday life although being exposed elements often characterized by high vulnerability to different hazards and, in the meanwhile, strategic equipments for emergency management. Physical damages or the lack in functioning of those networks may greatly increase the loss of human lives caused by hazardous events as well as produce relevant economic damages at medium and long term. Although the relevance of the mobility networks in assuring territorial safety is at present largely recognized, risk analyses have been long focused on buildings’ vulnerability or, even where they have paid attention to mobility network, they have been mainly focused on the physical damages that a given hazard could may induce on individual elements of such network. It is recent the awareness that mobility network represents a system, characterized by relevant interdependences both among its elements and among network infrastructures and urban systems. Based on these assumptions, this paper points out the heterogeneous aspects of the mobility network vulnerability and their relevance in increasing the overall territorial or urban vulnerability to hazardous events. Therefore, an in-depth investigation of the concept of mobility network vulnerability is provided, in order to highlight the aspects mostly investigated and more recent research perspectives. Finally, a case study in the Campania Region is presented in order to point out how traditional risk analyses, generally referred to individual hazards, can sometimes led to invest in the mobility network improvement or development which, targeted to increase the security of a territory result, on the opposite, in an increase of the territorial vulnerability.