Stefano Corsi

Urban-rural relationships in feeding metropolis : a case study in Ljubljana metropolitan area

Metropolitan areas are characterized by the coexistence of a urban core insisting on natural resources of surrounding rural areas, strictly linked to the former. Inevitably, increasing urbanization and its consequences affect the model of urban development, which then needs to deal with the challenge of sustainability, also aiming to reduce pressures on resources and on supplying capacities of rural agricultural systems in providing food to urban zones, traditionally lacking. It then becomes important to deepen the possibility for the dense core to be supplied through proximity agriculture, able to recreate and improve synergic connections between urban and rural spheres. The paper aims to study the relationships among them for feeding the metropolis, adopting a methodology for the spatial definition of urban centre in metropolitan area and the assessment of its food balance, in order to identify the potentialities of local and proximity agriculture and provide a first evaluation for the possibility to match urban development and production potential. Identified tools are applied to Ljubljana metropolitan area.

The Cores of Metropolitan Areas: Evidence from Five European Contexts

Numerosi sono gli studi che a vario livello ed in diversi ambiti affrontano la tematica dei contesti metropolitani, fornendo approcci differenti per la loro definizione. Ciononostante, concordano nel considerare l’area metropolitana come insieme di aree meno dense che gravitano su un contesto maggiormente urbanizzato. Mentre gran parte degli studi ne affrontano la delimitazione spaziale focalizzandosi sull’analisi congiunta di piu variabili, l’articolo intende fornire un approccio metodologico basato sulla densita di popolazione, al fine di individuare all’interno dell’area metropolitana il nucleo denso nel quale si concentra la domanda di beni e servizi. La metodologia illustrata fa riferimento ad un’analisi di correlazione spaziale basata sull’approccio lisa, di cui viene fornita un’applicazione in cinque diverse realta europee: Berlino, Lubiana, Londra, Milano, Rotterdam. I risultati evidenziano la bonta del modello e le potenzialita di applicazione in qualsivoglia contesto

Innovation in Territorial Governance: The Case of Agricultural Districts in Lombardy Region

In recent years globalization and the economic crisis have been pressing the agricultural sector, driving farmers to adopt new tools in order to deal with the challenges put in place by a globalized market and by the actions of agricultural policies. In this sense, the Italian legislation allows them joining in organized superstructures which, referring to the concept of industrial district, involve different members of a specific production sector in a territorial context,. in a network of relationships and a higher vertical and horizontal integration. Under these drivers, agricultural rural districts, agro-food quality districts and supply chain districts are been constituted. They represent concrete examples of a new form of territorial governance that may play a role in the development and enhancement of the local area and its agro-food production. Three districts belonging to different categories operating and recognized by Lombardy region have been taken such as case studies and a set of qualitative criteria and indicators is proposed, in order to provide a framework of their characteristics and a preliminary comparison among them.

Infrastructure Development and Territorial Vulnerability. The Role of Composite Indicators for Addressing Siting Decisions

Composite indicators have been analyzed by several scholars, especially with the aim of defining standardization and aggregation rules consistent to the multidimensional theoretical framework underlying these kind of measures and adequate to the difficulty of comparing data of different nature. Starting from a broadly shared methodology, set up by OECD in 2008, the paper proposes a Composite Indicator of Territorial Vulnerability based on environmental, social and economic criteria. A special attention has been paid to the methodological approach more than to the results, with a focus on uncertainty and sensitivity analysis. The latter one has been developed by the use of the SimLab (http://ipsc.jrc.ec.europa.eu), which has allowed to estimate the probability distribution function of the composite indicator and to point out the field of variation of its variables. Lombardy Region has been selected as a pilot case study since it is one of the Italian regions with the highest infrastructural development. The results show that the Composite Indicator of Territorial Vulnerability applied to municipalities in the Lombardy Region has a limited variation range, and thus low uncertainty. Furthermore, the synthetic measure of territorial vulnerability seems to be a promising decision aid tool in the field of regional infrastructural development policies.

Fragilità del contesto agricolo periurbano: uno strumento di analisi per il governo del territorio

Negli ultimi anni l’urbanizzazione ha cancellato vaste aree agricole, soprattutto in zona periurbana. In un recente Disegno di Legge il governo italiano propone la valorizzazione delle aree agricole attraverso la limitazione dei terreni agricoli edificabili, con il controllo delle Regioni in accordo con i Comuni. Ipotizzando un’azione di alcuni fattori di pressione in area periurbana che renderebbero l’azienda agricola maggiormente incline alla cessione dei propri terreni a scopo edificatorio, attraverso l’applicazione di una metodologia innovativa si fornisce uno strumento di ausilio alle politiche di governo. Nel caso studio analizzato le variabili derivanti dalla vicinanza alla citta risultano determinanti nei processi di conversione dei suoli.

Factors influencing German and Italian farmland prices – a spatial econometric analysis

A spatial econometric model of German and Italian farmland prices is estimated to identify the determinants of farmland prices. It explicitly takes spatial dependencies among neighbouring areas into account, not only in form of spatially lagged farmland prices (spatial lag model) but also in form of spatially lagged explanatory variables (spatial Durbin model). Results show that both agricultural and non-agricultural factors are important for explaining farmland prices in both countries. Differences seem to be stronger within the member states than between the countries.

Territorial Vulnerability and Local Conflicts

In the last years the number and the magnitude of the oppositions to new public (and private) works have increased all over the World, but the reasons of the op-position are difficult to identify. There are several international examples of conflicts originating from environ-mental oppositions as the mobilization in Istanbul in defense of Gezi park, the toppling of the government in Madagascar over land-grabbing, and the aboriginal ‘Idle No More’ movement in Canada against fracking activities. In Italy the most famous environmental conflict is the opposition to High Speed Rail in Val di Susa, but recently the referendum on the drilling in the Mediterranean sea has seen a very huge opposition front which includes also influential member of Catholic Clergy. But at the same time similar works didn’t face any (or so hard) opposition in different areas and periods. So we can hypnotize that the conflict is site specific but what are the determinants of the conflict? Can we explain the relevance of the conflict with the territorial vulnerability? How can the vulnerability be measured? What are the main dimensions of vulnerability? Several scientists analysed the relationships between the oppositions, which can degenerate in conflict, even violent, and the vulnerability of the territories where the public works are planned. The aim of the present paper is to provide a comprehensive analysis of the recent ad most relevant scientific papers which study the relationship between vulnerability and conflict by means of a bibliographic approach. Bibliometric approaches analyze scholarly publications and scientific production through various quantitative techniques, with the main goal of revealing how different research topic and specific scientific domains are conceptually and intellectually structured. Bibliometrics borrows the information it needs directly from the bibliographic description of scientific documents, available for download on several databases. The bibliographical data gathered in this study was collected from 682 articles from a wide range of journals available in the Thomson Reuters’ ISI Web of Knowledge; the search criteria included the joint appearance of the terms “vulnerability” and “conflict”. For the purpose of this research different methods have been employed to map the scientific production and to gather information about this research topic. The results of the analysis show an increasing interest in studying the relationship between conflict and vulnerability and the extension of the semantic context including several scientific fields.

Bringing urban food supply closer to food consumption: opportunities for five European metropolitan regions

Agro-food systems in urban and metropolitan regions are complex structures that simultaneously have to respond to domestic supply, compete on global markets and ensure to consumers a direct relationship with both food producers and production sites. In this regard, the strengthen of the local dimension, through the enhancement of proximity agriculture, is a strategic goal to foster both local resources and improve regional socio- economic viability. The paper adopts a territorial approach to analyse agro-food systems in five European metropolitan regions. The proposed methodology aims at deepening the actual capacities of urban and peri-urban agriculture in adequately meet urban food demand, its role in the economic dimension of the primary sector, the opportunities for exploiting the local component, as well as at providing preliminary results to be taken into account in order to shape proper regulations in their respective agro-food sector.

Conservation Agriculture as a Driving Force to Accumulate Carbon in Soils: An Analysis of RDP in Lombardy

Carbon Dioxide (CO2) emission credits and C-sequestration are measures that are largely applied to limit the rising concentration of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere. In this context an increasing role is played by conservation agriculture (CA). This chapter aims to present the policies pursued in Lombardy and to calculate, with the soil CN-cycle model ARMOSA, the potential of C-storage in soils with the adoption of CA measures for 20 years. The analysis is performed on 600 farms (24,550 ha), and it is implemented here taking into account the economic incentive provided by the 2007–2013 Rural Development Program (RDP) of Lombardy. The results show that C-accumulation in soils by CA can contribute to achieve Kyoto targets, but it needs a significant economic effort. Suggestions for policy-makers are here briefly outlined in relation to similar policies applied at the international level.

Nuovi modelli interpretativi delle dinamichedel mercato fondiario

Il mercato fondiario e uno dei temi tradizionali dell’estimo che da sempre ha coinvolto i maggiori esponenti della scuola estimativa italiana. A partire dagli anni ’80 lo studio del mercato fondiario sembra aver progressivamente perso l’interesse presso la maggior parte degli estimatori. In parte questo abbandono e legato alla sempre piu contenuta importanza del settore agricolo rispetto agli altri settori economici e conseguentemente anche alla minore mobilita nel mercato fondiario. Ma questo non basta a spiegare quanto accaduto, poiche molte altre tematiche strettamente agricole sono tutt’oggi argomento di molti studi del nostro settore. Una componente non trascurabile e invece la complessita e l’articolazione del mercato fondiario ed i problemi estimativi ad esso connessi. Infatti, se il mercato fondiario fino agli anni ’50, quando oltre il 50% della popolazione era impiegata nel settore agricolo, rispecchiava l’interesse degli operatori economici per le attivita agricole e la redditivita dei fondi, a partire dagli anni ’70, le componenti che condizionano il mercato fondiario portano ad analizzarlo tenendo conto delle variabili endogene ed esogene fino a considerare sempre con maggiore frequenza componenti rilevanti quali la globalizzazione dei mercati, le politiche agricole comunitarie, i vincoli ambientali, la multifunzionalita dell’agricoltura e la forte espansione urbanistica a cui e collegata la pianificazione territoriale. Il presente articolo intende prendere in considerazione i diversi approcci allo studio del mercato fondiario partendo dalla tradizione italiana fino alle piu recenti ricerche sviluppate soprattutto oltreoceano, individuando le determinanti che maggiormente influiscono sul mercato fondiario. Nella parte conclusiva si provera ad introdurre tematiche innovative che potranno costituire lo spunto per nuove ricerche e per una ripresa di un argomento che, come vedremo, oggi ancora piu che in passato, riveste