Italian Cities Research Articles

The elderly and urban mobility: cost sensitivity of elderly people in the “oldest” Italian city

The world is facing a series of changes that will modify the way we envisage transport planning in our cities. Demographic ageing as a consequence of higher life expectancy and lower fertility rates is a world-wide phenomenon. While ageing is indeed a triumph of scientific progress and increasing longevity is perceived as one of humanity’s greatest achievements, the transition in society needs to be managed. In the urban context, any increase in age, health, and economic conditions determines one’s ability to enjoy the urban milieu and the so-called economies of urbanisation (advantages gained from an urban location, e.g., proximity to a market, labour supply, good communications, and financial and commercial services) longer. As there are more and more elderly people in cities, urban mobility becomes crucial in making the urban environment more inclusive. In order to provide suitable policy guidelines, it is, therefore, necessary to investigate and understand senior traveller behaviour. In this study, we investigate urban travel characteristics of people aged 65 years and over living in the city of Genoa (one of the cities with the largest population of the elderly in the EU). By utilising a structured questionnaire, the paper explores the satisfaction and motivations of approx. 600 elderly public transport users in the city. In particular, exploratory factor analysis has been used to determine the key dimensions of the satisfaction and mobility motivations, and subsequently to use them to investigate the cost sensitivity of elderly people.

ТОРГІВЛЯ ТА ГРОШОВИЙ ОБІГ ВІЗАНТІЙСЬКОЇ ІМПЕРІЇ

The article is devoted to the main directions and features of trade and money circulation of the Byzantine Empire. Describing the main sectors of the economy, the author notes that it was based on agriculture. Agriculture, viticulture and livestock were its main industries. At the same time it is noted that in the Middle Ages Byzantium was the most urbanized country. There were more than 1,000 cities with Constantinople, the largest of them. The author notes that the Byzantine cities were not only important administrative but also economic centers. It was characteristic of the Byzantine economy that a quarter of the gross national product came from handicrafts and trade. Describing trade, the author of the article notes that Constantinople was not only the capital and residence of the emperor, but it acted as an intermediary in trade between West and East. Convenient and safe routes have contributed to the growth of trade. Iron, perfume, spices, opium, and precious stones were imported from India; silk was exported from China; from Iran - soft wool; from Asia Minor - meat and metals; from Ethiopia - slaves. Thin linen was imported from the West to Byzantium, and Constantinople was not only a consumer of these goods, but also a center of commission trade and resale. The author also pays attention to Russian-Byzantine trade relations. Russia exported to Byzantium part of the tribute and military booty, especially slaves and raw materials. It imported mostly expensive fabrics, various ornaments, weapons, spices, etc. In the second part of the article the author refers to the Byzantine trade of the XII- XV centuries. During this period, immigrants from the Italian cities of Genoa, Pisa and Venice were in significant competition with Byzantine merchants. The Venetians, who established a powerful colony in Constantinople, became especially famous in this regard. Gradually, the empire lost control of its own economic and financial resources, which contributed to a huge uncontrolled outflow of Byzantine capital to Europe. The conclusions note that trade facilitated the exchange of goods not only between Byzantium and the West. It became a powerful leader of Byzantine cultural influence on European countries. However, cultural dominance contradicted Byzantium's economic backwardness of European countries. External defeats and internal problems increased the empire's dependence on foreigners, and duty-free trade, although filling the market with many European and Asian goods, quickly led to the decline of Byzantine crafts and the degradation of agriculture.

Nationwide investigation on the use of new psychoactive substances in Italy through urban wastewater analysis

New psychoactive substances (NPS) emerged in the mid-2000s as a legal alternative to established illicit drugs. Despite the high individual and public harm associated to NPS, little is known about their real extent of use. New strategies are required to deal with the challenging monitoring of NPS, affected by the high number of substances available in the market, their rapid change and level of innovation, and their easy distribution mainly through the web. In this study, a wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) approach was applied for a nationwide monitoring of the use of eight categories of NPS in the population, including fentanyl analogues. Sixty-two biomarkers of NPS were selected following an established criterion, that included the most frequently and recently reported. A selective analytical method based on solid-phase extraction and liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry was developed and validated for NPS analysis in wastewater. Composite wastewater samples (24 h) were collected in 33 Italian cities in October–November 2020 and analyzed according the validated method. Results highlighted the use of ten NPS, mainly synthetic cathinones and tryptamines, all over Italy. Methcathinone was found in all the cities and the highest mass loads corresponded to 3-methylmethcathinone with values up to 3.8 mg/day/1000 inhabitants. Low levels of fentanyl (found in 9 cities) and its main metabolite norfentanyl (11) were found whereas no fentanyl analogues were identified. As far as we know, this is the first time that the use of fentanyl and its analogues was investigated in Italy by wastewater analysis. WBE is a useful tool to rapidly evaluate emerging trends of NPS use, complementing common indicators (i.e. population surveys, seizures) and helping to establish measures for public health protection.

Environmental and socioeconomic determinants of neonatal mortality in a northern Italian city in the early nineteenth century

The research explores the effects of the environment on neonatal mortality in the early nineteenth century, controlling for social and economic factors. Individual data, relative to the resident population of Udine, a city in northeastern Italy, under French domination (1806–1815) have been used. The information collected regards births and deaths within the first month of life and is taken from the Napoleonic civil registers. The spatial distribution of some data within the urban area, heating in the houses where children were born or died, and a time series of temperature levels and corn prices are taken into account. The methodological approach adopted is based on logistic regression models and discrete-time event history analysis. The results point to excess winter neonatal mortality. Neonatal mortality was higher in peripheral areas of the city and in heated houses. A positive relationship between mortality and lower temperatures and corn prices has been found. As to socioeconomic status, peasant families and those of the upper class showed, respectively, the lowest and the highest mortality levels. This was arguably the result of the adoption of different breastfeeding practices.

Toxicities that matter: Slow bureaucracy and polluting temporalities in a southern Italian city

This paper deconstructs toxicity through a juxtaposition of a conventional epidemiological approach to pollutants and the lived experience of a highly polluted residential area next to the largest steel production plant in Europe. An ethnographic analysis of toxicity in Taranto illustrates the complexity of various temporal scales through which toxic chemicals contribute to new biological, political and moral balances. Attuning to the slow experiences of pollution is fundamental to shed light on the processes moulding aspirations to environmental justice within the community. In particular, law and bureaucracy imbue pollutants with experiential legitimacy, allowing them to be seen, contested and collectivized. I focus on the residents’ and workers’ dissonant experiences with the bureaucratic system to illustrate how their encounter with asbestos has profoundly shaped toxic exposure to less bureaucratically visible shapeshifting pollutants, thus contributing to a diffused sense of political resignation.

Validation of a questionnaire for young women to assess knowledge, attitudes and behaviors towards cervical screening and vaccination against HPV: survey among an Italian sample


 Background: The aim of this pilot study was to assess the reliability and validity of the questionnaire in young women ≥18 years as tool to examine knowledge, attitudes and behaviors towards screening and vaccination against HPV and reliable source of information.
 Methods: Reliability analysis was tested and content validity was evaluated using Cronbach's alpha to check internal consistency with the intention to obtain no misunderstanding results. The questionnaire - composed by n. 3 section for a total of n. 69 items- was administered to 30 girls. The study was conducted in 4 Italian cities: Ferrara, Rome, Cassino and Palermo and data were collected in the month of October 2010. Statistical analysis was performed through SPSS 19.0, statistical software for Windows.
 Results: The higher value of Cronbach’s alpha resulted on 24 items (alpha= 0,774). The addition just one at time of also only one more of the others items got worse the alpha. Cronbach’s alpha on all the III section together (n. 69 items) resulted in a value of 0, 059. Young women generally known HPV can cause cervical cancer (93.3%) and genital warts (16.7%) and 76.7% of them recognize pap test as a screening tool. The main sources of information about HPV vaccination, are represented by magazines / books (33.3%), TV (26.7%), gynecologists (23.3%).
 Conclusion: This pilot study demonstrated that a reduced version of the questionnaire showed a very good reliability properties in the study and this needs to be taken into account for future studies.

Reinterpreting Spatial Planning Cultures to Define Local Adaptation Cultures: A Methodology from the Central Veneto Region Case

This paper focuses on recognising the underlying component of climate risk adaptation and management that is present at the local planning level. Starting from a comparative analysis of four Italian cities in the Central Veneto Area, the aim is to understand how plans and regulations have already directed their efforts toward adaptation and climate risk reduction over the years, without explicitly labelling these measures as such. This process is carried out by co-ordinating the technicians of local administrations in the recognition and classification of already active measures that can be brought within the framework of combating the effects of climate change. The analysis of the identified measures shows that there is already considerable attention to flooding-related and heat-related issues in the local planning corpus. Understanding this dimension of local planning allows access to a set of adaptation intervention models that are already integrated into the planning system and support incorporating adaptation practices in a more co-ordinated way at various planning levels.

Social Housing and Affordable Rent: The Effectiveness of Legal Thresholds of Rents in Two Italian Metropolitan Cities

Social housing is an instrument of housing policies to support those groups of people who are disadvantaged due to particular economic weaknesses and/or social relational fragility. Consequently, to achieve the objective of social sustainability, the rents of social housing must be below the market rents and low enough to be affordable. Italian law has set several rent thresholds which are based on local territorial agreements between landlords and renters associations. This article aims to examine whether these thresholds generate social fairness and housing affordability within each city and between different cities, or instead inequalities and spatial asymmetries. A cluster analysis is applied to study whether the goal of fairness is achieved, while the effectiveness of providing housing affordability is assessed by comparing the benchmarked rents with those of the national ministerial Real Estate Market Observatory. Two metropolitan cities—one in the north and another in the south of Italy—with different social and economic characteristics were chosen as case studies. The results show that variations in rents, location, and housing quality are fairly consistent within urban areas and cities. However, the benchmarked rents are not consistently related to the market rents and are often higher than the latter, failing to meet the provision of affordable housing that was the primary goal of the law.

Specific Learning Disorders and Special Educational Needs during COVID-19 Pandemic; Pilot Survey Study Performed in Local District Schools in Italy.

Specific Learning Disorders (SLD) are a group of heterogeneous health deficits frequently diagnosed in early childhood that cause difficulties in general intellectual functioning. In the last decades in Italy new laws have been developed to give practical guidelines for the best education plans for children with SLD. Background: The aim of our study was to determine the efficacy of the educational treatment on SLD in Primary and Secondary schools in the Italian city of Barletta. We acquired valuable data to evaluate Special Education Needs during COVID-19. Methods: Our study was conducted from April to June 2021, during the second “lockdown” period in Italy. A fact-finding survey was conducted to schools with a questionnaire provided to the teachers to acquire data on the SEN applied in the management of distance learning for children. Results: The study involved 15 male and 6 female pupils with SLD in Primary Schools and 18 male and 6 female in Secondary Schools. The schools participating in the study organized distance learning programs with a support teacher with a 1:1 ratio. Data showed that all children with SLD needed a support teacher. Conclusions: The findings of this pilot study suggest that distance learning programs are able to achieve adequate educational goals, despite the difficulties of the lockdown period.

World Film Locations: Florence

World Film Locations: Florence offers a unique, insightful examination of Florence as both backdrop and protagonist in a selection of international films. Joining the already forty-two volumes in the World Film Locations series, this edited collection is the third Italian city to be highlighted after Venice (2013) and Rome (2014), and conforms to the series’ organization: forty to fifty brief scene reviews, including six to eight individual frames, along with a time sequence, director's name, a one-line description, and a contemporary image of the area portrayed. User-friendly in presentation, each film is presented in two-page segments, the left and right side of the book, for the reader to experience the representation of the film in a complete unit.Edited by Alberto Zambenedetti, this volume is divided into six thematic sections. The first section begins with Eleanor Andrews “Views from the Grand Tour(ist): Florence and Foreign Consumption,” which examines films that represent the conceptualization, and at times adaptation, of the Grand Tour through Florence, starting as early as 1924 with Romola (Henry King) and ending with Carlo Lizzani's Cronache di poveri amanti (1954). In the second contribution, “Florentine Artists on Film: Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci,” Nathaniel J. Donahue explores films in which Florence influences the artist on screen. Although the essay is rich, the title is misleading, as Donahue considers films which represent both fictional artists and historical ones, including but not limited to Ottone Rosai. Dom Holdaway's “Florence after Dark: Cops, Crime and Serial Killers” successfully studies “giallo-like” classics revolving around the city. His brief introduction is well written and mentions Hannibal among others, but surprisingly chooses to omit it from his analysis despite its notoriety (Hannibal appears instead in Hennessey's section on food later). The fourth piece by Pasquale Iannone explores “Rolling Hills, Scorching Sun: Filming the Tuscan Countryside,” highlighting the mysticism that the Tuscan countryside offers. Although Iannone considers these films Tuscan, most of the scenes analyzed are actually shot in Florence proper. Next, Brenden Hennessey's “Bread, Wine and Celluloid: Tuscan Cuisine at the Movies” delves into the way Tuscan foodways function in seven memorable films. In this section, the movie choices are compelling, but it is unfortunate that there is no mention of Carole Counihan's anthropological research of Tuscan foodways, either in the introduction or the analysis. In the final piece, “From Dante to Machiavelli: Canonical Florentine Literature on Film,” Barbara Garbin investigates what the author deems to be canonical literature on screen through a variety of works, but the author's definition of “canonical” is debatable.The editor of the volume, Zambenedetti, collaborated with many contemporary film scholars on this publication. Most of the photo credits belong to the editor himself, and the collection works well together as a unified piece. The introductions are all insightful, well written, and provide a complete overview of each theme.Zambenedetti's “Introduction” makes it clear that the volume is not exhaustive due to its size and approach, and as such it is always a difficult task to select which movies to feature. The collection presents a balanced range of films that represent Florence's cinematic ingenuity, yet placement of a few films may have fit stronger in alternative categories. In revised editions, it may be interesting to include an essay dedicated to Florence in other media, particularly television with the new productions about the Medici and Borgia families.To conclude, one of the most appealing components of the volume is its very rich visual aspect, from contemporary images and maps to the individual cinematic frames, which will be useful to a wide array of readers, from undergraduates in a monograph course or study abroad experience, to film students and cultured travelers alike. Additionally, the individual authors often reference and cross-cite films throughout the work, intertwining nicely the six themes.

Shakespeare on European Festival Stages ed. by Nicoleta Cinpoeş, Florence March, and Paul Prescott

Reviewed by: Shakespeare on European Festival Stages ed. by Nicoleta Cinpoeş, Florence March, and Paul Prescott Rowena Hawkins Shakespeare on European Festival Stages. Edited by Nicoleta Cinpoeş, Florence March, and Paul Prescott. London: Bloomsbury, 2022. Pp. vii + 235. Hardcover $100.00. Ebook $90.00. This timely collection addresses “the relative paucity of literature on European Shakespeare festivals” (2) by providing a comprehensive introduction to the topic. Across eleven chapters, its contributors offer immensely readable accounts of events ranging from the famous Festival d’Avignon to a little-known grassroots festival in the Bulgarian village of Patalenitsa that “runs on enthusiasm and professional dedication” (161). Some of these festivals are wholly dedicated to Shakespeare, while others feature his plays as part of broader programs. Part travel guide and part cultural criticism, Shakespeare on European Festival Stages shows the value of festival theater. The volume opens with sentences that would not feel out of place in a tourist brochure: “Dear Reader, you have before you a travel companion, the first of its kind. This book will take you across continental Europe[,] offering an introduction to each of the festival stages that have illuminated the works of William Shakespeare over the last seventy or so years” (1). With this warm welcome, Paul Prescott, Nicoleta Cinpoeş, and Florence March set the tone. As they outline the scope of the collection they promise “the widest imaginable variety of theatrical and artistic offering[s] on a range of stages,” preparing us for a journey packed with discoveries that they describe as a tour “of the exquisitely ephemeral” (1). Remarkably, our local guides, the “resident experts” (2) selected to write each chapter, deliver on these enticing promises. First, we are whisked away to southern France, where March introduces us to the variety of Shakespearean performance on festival stages in Avignon, Montpellier, and Nice. Almagro, Spain is the next stop on our “Shakespearean Grand Tour” (1), and here Isabel Guerrero offers us an evocative glimpse of a festival at which “early modern theatre is not only preserved, but also reinvented” (50). We then head to four castles in the Czech Republic and Slovakia with Filip Krajník and Eva Kyselová before visiting a reconstructed Globe Theatre in Neuss, Germany. At this replica playhouse, which is “neither exactly a cultural heritage site nor [. . .] a tourist attraction” (79), Vanessa Schormann introduces a festive celebration of Shakespeare’s global afterlives. [End Page 307] Our journey across the continent then takes us to Craiova, Romania, where we encounter the vibrancy of the city’s “large-scale international biennial” festival (95) with Cinpoeş. We travel on to the Italian cities of Verona and Rome with Lisanna Calvi and Maddalena Pennacchia before heading north “to the sea-swept Baltic [setting] of Gdańsk” in Poland (1) with Urszula Kizelbach and Jacek Fabiszak. Boika Sokolova and Kirilka Stavreva then guide us “toward the softly undulating Rhodope Mountains” and “through a luminous field of sunflowers” (157) to Patalenitsa, Bulgaria, before we stop at the Gyula Shakespeare Festival in Hungary with Júlia Paraizs and Ágnes Matuska. Our penultimate destination is Helsingør, Denmark, where Anne Sophie Refskou introduces the interculturalism on offer at Kronborg castle, before we end our journey in Inđija, Serbia, with Alexandra Portmann’s “portrait” (213) of the Itaka Shakespeare Festival. This whirlwind tour makes for exhilarating reading, and there is a real sense of discovery underpinning every chapter of Shakespeare on European Festival Stages. As the editors observe, “Shakespeare festivals are disproportionately likely to occur in a small- to medium-sized town [. . .] doubtless because the magnetic pull of the Shakespeare brand can survive relocation to an otherwise small and/ or overlooked town or city” (10). As a result, the collection achieves a curiously intimate feel, as if we are being given exclusive glimpses of previously undiscovered wonders courtesy of those who know the festivals best: the authors, who “are united in their desire to share their subject with a new audience” and “put their festival on the map” (13–14). The collection also offers escapism through its vivid descriptions of the places and spaces that host Shakespearean performance, the electric atmospheres that descend at festival time, and the diverse productions that...

Bottom-up regeneration in Italy: A case study of the medium-sized city of Novara

Italy has a vast heritage of unused public properties and regeneration initiatives can have positive effects on local communities. This paper aims to analyse bottom-up approaches to such initiatives, in which citizens are an integral part of the design and development of urban regeneration projects. As citizen engagement is crucial to the success of the regeneration process, both the active participation of all stakeholders and regular project monitoring are required. The paper is based on a case study carried out on the medium-sized Italian city of Novara, which examines bottom-up regeneration projects involving citizen collaboration agreements and assesses their value to society.

From Collectivities to Families and Back to the Individual: Religiosity, Migrations and Civic Engagement at the Beginning of the COVID Period in a Multicultural Italian City

Religions and religiosities are among the various social life spheres being affected by medical and political measures imposed during the health emergency. Involving a wide range of daily life dimensions and intertwining with fundamental aspects of individual and social existence, restrictions hit religions and religiosities in all those spaces where they find expression in our contemporary era. Pandemic restraints induced changes in the use of different public spaces: from school to home, from workplaces to places of worship, from prisons to squares, from hospitals to cemeteries. This also concerned the way religiosity could be performed, lived and shared in everyday life, for communities, families and individuals. In particular, during the pandemic, the role of religious environments became, once again, a place of material as well as spiritual support for migrants. And in this perspective, young people, i.e., second generations, played a prominent role, regaining prestige and recognition from adults. In fact, from being perceived as “far from religion and on the road to secularization”, as one interviewee said, young people have been able to show how it is possible to reinterpret religion in emigration, without abandoning religious values. This paper discusses the results of preliminary research on the topic conducted in the first phase of the pandemic in Turin, a city that, for its history of immigration and consolidated presence of Muslim, Catholic and Orthodox communities, is an emblematic case of the Italian multicultural context.

Modeling cyclist behavior using entropy and GPS data

This paper analyzes the relation between Shannon’s information entropy and trips made by cyclists in an urban context. Such entropy indicator depends on people distribution across a territory in a specific time. Its evaluation and temporal evolution have multiple applications in transport planning, from the specification of demand distribution models to the calibration and validation of transport demand models to be used where transport data are scarce. This feature is crucial in transport planning, as the lack of robust data to estimate travel demand is still a common challenge, especially for cycling mobility. The entropy indicator has been applied to the cyclists’ case in the Italian city of Bologna, using approximately 165,000 GPS traces recorded from April to September 2017. The results are encouraging because the entropy indicator is able to explain the evolution of the agents’ distribution throughout a day across the territory. However, it is suggested that future research may further deepen the concept to test its transferability, and to better establish its sensibility to other case studies.

Mobilizing against the odds. Solidarity in action in the platform economy

The relationship between working conditions and the development of collective solidarity has been much debated in sociology over the past century. The article contributes to this debate by exploring two recent cases of worker mobilization in the context of the Italian platform economy, concerning Amazon delivery drivers and food delivery couriers. Both groups developed specific identity frames in the course of their mobilizations in four Italian cities between 2018 and 2019, which differed significantly. The article explains those differences through a theoretical framework that bridges social movement and labor studies. While Amazon delivery drivers adopted a mobilizing strategy aimed narrowly at improving their conditions as Amazon workers, food delivery couriers elaborated a broader identity framing as precarious platform workers. The difference can be connected to specific features of labor organization, in particular regarding the diverse conditions met by digital innovation in the two sectors: While Amazon drivers belong to a technologically advanced segment (e-commerce) of a traditional sector (logistics), food delivery couriers are part of a new, platform-based sector. The article shows how such sectoral variation affected ways of collectively organizing, forms of solidarity and identity framing.

Methodological approach and comparative analyses for smart envelopes assessment in three different temperate climates

Recently, innovative and responsive technologies applied to building envelopes have drawn the attention of researchers to reduce energy consumption and improve indoor environmental quality. The main feature of these systems is to react to external environmental stimuli and adapt themselves to improve the overall building performance. The spread of these technologies has promptly led to a wide range of very different new devices that have added a further degree of complexity in the energy efficiency field. This study is part of this research topic and proposes a comparison of four different responsive technologies applied to glazed surfaces of an office model located in three different Italian cities to compare their advantages and disadvantages in different contexts. This comparison is conducted from both technological and energy points of view on the following selected technologies: i) electrochromic windows, ii) Phase Change Material windows, iii) dynamic automated external shadings, and iv) windows with variable thermal transmittance. The first part of this study focuses on the technology comparison – with reference to users' control, building integration, cost, and maintenance – to highlight the main strengths and disadvantages of these systems. Hence, starting from an office reference model located in Brindisi, Rome, and Milan, dynamic energy analyses are conducted in EnergyPlus to compare the responsive systems with reference static envelopes obtaining as the final output the savings comparison between different technologies, exposures, and climates.

1367 Pécs/Fünfkirchen

Among the universities, which were established around the European continent gradually from the second half of the 14th century, we have to highlight the role of Pécs within the Kingdom of Hungary. The University of Pécs (studium generale) was founded in 1367 by William of Koppenbach (1361–1347), who played an essential role in the operation of the institution. The most important objective of the establishment of the university was that the diplomats of the king (contemporarily King Louis I the Great) would be able to study in the territory of Hungary instead of the Italian cities. Self-evidently, the costs of studying at a local university proved to be much lower than spending years in the well-known Italian cities such as Bologna and Padova. As an ecclesiastical seat, Pécs offered an excellent opportunity for the development of a newly-established institution. The cathedral chapter school and the library also had an important role in the foundation. In my paper I will discuss the most important details regarding the short history of the medieval university of Pécs.

Green and Gold Buildings? Detecting Real Estate Market Premium for Green Buildings through Evolutionary Polynomial Regression

This study concerns the determination of empirical evidence of a real estate market premium for Green Buildings and of an aware role of the private real estate market as driver to foster-up urban and architectural sustainability and energy efficiency. In real estate markets, there is growing relevance of Green Buildings, especially in cities where the greater part of residential buildings is built before the first regulations on energy performance. Through policies oriented towards sustainable practices, a twofold goal can be achieved: energy consumption mitigation respecting the historical value for existing buildings, direct economic impacts on real estate values. In some metropolitan or urban contexts, the “green premium” for buildings can be understood as a real “gold premium”. This result has been highlighted and quantified with a real estate market analysis developed for a central area of an Italian mid-size city, pursued through the innovative tool of Evolutionary Polynomial Regression (EPR). The study highlighted a higher sale price for properties characterized by the best ecological characteristics and energy efficiency (+41.52%).

Urban Transition and the Return of Neighbourhood Planning. Questioning the Proximity Syndrome and the 15-Minute City

European policies acknowledge cities’ major roles in building greener and just urban habitats. When rethinking cities’ spatial organisation, the call is for creating better liveability conditions at the level closest to citizens. In this frame, research into the impacts of COVID-19 has led to a revival of neighbourhood planning and the 15-Minute City has been proposed as a successful model for cities’ recoveries in the name of regained proximity to collective facilities. This article questions the long-lasting neighbourhood image that the 15-Minute City refers to, by exploring recent experiences that renewed its application. We begin with a literature review, and then develop an evidence-based approach to a deeper analysis of policy design and implementation focusing on the Italian city of Milano. Discussion and conclusions highlight critical issues and potentials of the 15-Minute City. If the threat is that of a simplified and rhetorical use of this idea, its ability to gather plural actions under an appealing flagship can be a powerful driver for urban regeneration policies. However, being more than just a reproducible spatial model, the 15-Minute City needs to be handled as a complex planning device, whose effective implementation depends on the specific characteristics of the urban environments it applies to and on the strong intertwining of different policy fields and tools.

Dynamics of carbapenemase-producing Enterobacterales intestinal colonisation in the elderly population after hospital discharge, Italy, 2018–2020

Carbapenemase-producing Enterobacterales (CPE) represent a serious threat to public health worldwide. Elderly patients are at increased risk of colonisation/infection with CPE. This study aimed to evaluate the persistence of CPE colonisation and the genotypic characteristics of persistent strains in elderly people discharged from Italian hospitals. A longitudinal study was conducted in two Italian cities (March 2018 to September 2020) enrolling 137 patients aged ≥65 years with CPE intestinal colonisation at hospital discharge. CPE colonisation was evaluated after 4, 8 and 12 months. Competing risk analysis was used to explore the association between baseline characteristics and persistence at 4 months. For all isolates, carbapenemase typing and multilocus sequence typing were performed. Persistent isolates underwent whole-genome sequencing. Of 137 patients, 91% carried carbapenemase-producing Klebsiella pneumoniae (CP-KP) and 8.8% carried carbapenemase-producing Escherichia coli. Although a large number of patients were lost to follow-up owing to death or withdrawal, 28/65 patients (43.1%) remained colonised at Month 4; 16/42 (38.1%) and 5/28 (17.9%) were found colonised up to Months 8 and 12, respectively. Colonisation persistence was more frequent in patients with bacteraemia or complicated urinary tract infection while in hospital and in those staying in long-term care facilities (LTCFs). Clonal characteristics of CP-KP isolates did not appear to influence persistence. Isolates obtained from each persistent carrier were identical or highly related by SNP phylogenetic analysis. Identification of patients at higher risk of persistent intestinal carriage after hospital discharge can prompt control measures to limit the transmission of CPE in the community, especially in LTCF settings.