Main Italian Cities Research Articles

From South Asia to Southern Europe: a comparative analysis of Sri Lankans’ residential segregation in the main Italian cities using high-resolution data on regular lattice geographies

The present work proposes a spatial analysis of the residential segregation and settlement models of Sri Lankans in the eight main Italian municipalities. Hosting more than half of the total Sri Lankan population residing in Italy, the selected urban areas allow Sri Lankans’ residential model to be globally framed across the country. The purpose of this work is threefold. First, it provides a general assessment of the allocation pattern of a foreign community that has seldom been studied and yet is characterized by peculiar settlement choices. Second, it attempts to compare the settlement patterns of Sri Lankans across different urban contexts. Third, it aims to detect the possible spatial polarization of Sri Lankans in specific neighbourhoods and to verify its spatial correlation with other key variables that constitute proxies of urban neighbourhoods’ socioeconomic inequalities. The study runs multiple aspatial linear models to assess the global variation in concentrations of Sri Lankans related to several socioeconomic predictors. Furthermore, it implements geographically weighted regressions to explicitly model the spatial dependence between Sri Lankans’ location quotients and several predictors. It refers all the considered variables to a single geographic reference grid, enabling the homogenization of different areal unit arrangements and comparisons across space. Except for Milan and Rome, the findings suggest that Sri Lankans tend to reside in central neighbourhoods characterized by a high foreign presence and a decreased trend of Italian population. Conversely, the impact of the cost of living and the state of the built environment is heterogeneous across space, with a sort of centre-periphery duality in Southern cities and more fragmented situations in the other urban contexts. This evidence proves the relevance of local scale analysis and the need to build up urban observatories on spatial inequalities and segregation processes.

Particulate Matter Short-Term Exposition, Mobility Trips and COVID-19 Diffusion: A Correlation Analyses for the Italian Case Study at Urban Scale

The conjecture discussed in this paper was that the daily number of certified cases of COVID-19 is direct correlated to the average particular matter (PM) concentrations observed several days before when the contagions occurred (short-term effect), and this correlation is higher for areas with a higher average seasonal PM concentration, as a measure of prolonged exposure to a polluted environment (long-term effect). Furthermore, the correlations between the daily COVID-19 new cases and the mobility trips and those between the daily PM concentrations and mobility trips were also investigated. Correlation analyses were performed for the application case study consisting in 13 of the main Italian cities, through the national air quality and mobility monitoring systems. Data analyses showed that the mobility restrictions performed during the lockdown produced a significant improvement in air quality with an average PM concentrations reduction of about 15%, with maximum variations ranging between 25% and 42%. Estimation results showed a positive correlation (stronger for the more highly polluted cities) between the daily COVID-19 cases and both the daily PM concentrations and mobility trips measured about three weeks before, when probably the contagion occurred. The obtained results are original, and if confirmed in other studies, it would lay the groundwork for the definition of the main context variables which influenced the COVID-19 spread. The findings highlighted in this research also supported by the evidence in the literature and allow concluding that PM concentrations and mobility habits could be considered as potential early indicators of COVID-19 circulation in outdoor environments. However, the obtained results pose significant ethical questions about the proper urban and transportation planning; the most polluted cities have not only worst welfare for their citizens but, as highlighted in this research, could lead to a likely greater spread of current and future respiratory and/or pulmonary health emergencies. The lesson to be learned by this global pandemic will help planners to better preserve the air quality of our cities in the post-COVID-19 era.

RIFLESSIONI SULL'"INSOSTENIBILE PESO DELL’OFFERTA RESIDUA”. UNO SGUARDO DAL MEZZOGIORNO

REFLECTING ON “THE UNSUSTAINABLE BURDEN OF THE RESIDUAL SUPPLY OF DEVELOPABLE AREAS”. A VIEW FROM SOUTHERN ITALIAN REGIONSAbstractThe starting point of this reflection on the excessive supply of developable areas in Italian Land Use Master Plans is a seminal article, published in 1995 by Luigi Mazza, on the experience of Reggio Emilia Master Plan. The issue is here analysed taking into account the recent changes in the social and demographic structure of the Country, with a focus on Southern Regions, the so called “Mezzogiorno”. These changes are connected with the substantial inefficiency in the use of residential buildings a phenomenon that is likely toworsen in the next decade. An estimate based on data from the Italian National Institute of Statistics (Istat) is proposed, with reference to a sample of five regions. In addition, the issue is analysed with reference to the Master Plans of four main Italian cities and other planning experiences. From these examples it emerges the need of a paradigm shift.Keywords: land use master plans, excessive supply of developable areas, Southern Regions.

Partial Order Algorithms for the Assessment of Italian Cities Sustainability

In this paper, we introduce some recent non-aggregative algorithms, for the construction of synthetic indicators on multi-indicators systems, and exemplify them on data pertaining to the sustainability of main Italian cities. The procedure employs tools from Partial Order Theory and computes the final synthetic scores, without the compensation effects of classical composite indicators, so better preserving the nuances of city sustainability. Since turning multi-indicator systems into single synthetic indicators is unavoidably forcing, the procedure provides also ways to assess the degrees of “rankability” of statistical units, so to help researchers evaluating the soundness of the synthesis process. The algorithms introduced in the paper can be easily implemented, using the package Parsec, freely available in the R ecosystem.

Street knowledge. Stories, codes and street life

This work, besides making a careful examination, represents a real journey inside of a world that has gone through times and places, broke patterns of the past to live without, has undergone changes and revolutions, has known love to destroy hatred, is the knowledge of the movement, the movement of the body and mind ... is the hip hop!! The word "hip hop" contains the term "movement", that it is not only part of its meaning, but is what it represents. The hip hop, in fact, is born and begins to move from a road, or rather from a more restricted and circumscribed place, a house in the neighborhood between you forgotten and abandoned, the Bronx, to spread and take over the entire world. The importance of this phenomenon resides in the factor, that in the early 70s its creators and founders were all teenagers. The world of hip hop, which now affects and imposes itself in the world of fashion, music, language and society, was founded by young people. The hip hop was born from young adolescents of New York and took the world by storm. Over the years he has found a way to break down the barriers that surrounded him, being able to fit into so universal culture and to influence it and change it profoundly. It changed the way we live and stand in the street: from clashes and territories conquests, to a no more shots of gunfire, but sound of scratch and spray. It moved the people making them move and do not die. It moved crew and no gang. It moved minds to create and invent steps, rhymes and lines. It moved fashions, cultures and thoughts uniting and not dividing them. This journey from the gang to the crew begins by providing the reading and analysis keys with which is possible understand and thoroughly investigate birth, origin, causes and evolution of the gang going from New York suburbs up to the main Italian cities. The route continues by examining how many of these gangs have abandoned the path of violence undertaking a new way of re-socialization through the hip hop culture and how this phenomenon is rooted in the world. Through calligraphic analysis, interviews with writers, life stories of street people and contributions on DJing and legality, the journey ends interpreting and expressing the thoughts on the studies and on the investigations examined.

Historical Origins and Developments of Italian Cities

We analyze the historical origins and subsequent development of the Italian urban system. We show that geography, history, and their interaction crucially explain the distribution of population over space and its evolution over time: Italy was already highly urbanized during the Roman Empire; in the middle ages and in the modern era, the size and location of the Italian cities were heavily affected by the constant threat of military attacks and political fragmentation; urbanization has continued also after the unification of Italy, although the increase of the largest metropolitan areas has lost momentum in the last decades. We argue that these more recent patterns are partly driven by agglomeration dis-economies such as higher congestion and housing costs in the main Italian cities (especially in the Center-North).

Images of Italy representation of cities in Italian Photobooks (1950-1980

The present contribute intends to focus on some authorial photobooks published in Italy, especially those that have the core of their narrative interest in the representation of the main Italian cities. The photobook is a publication quite different from the most popular touristic guides illustrated by photographs. In fact, it is always an authorial project on a chosen topic where the photographer carries on a predominantly visual discourse. I propose an analysis of the most important photobooks issued between the 195o's and the 198o's, focusing on a case study of Venice and Milan. The purpose of this paper is to compare the representations of these Italian cities during those decades, stressing how their different image is due not only to the different vision of Italian photographers but also to the different layouts of the photobooks, which apart from its content must be considered as a physical object as well.

Long-term regional house prices cycles. A city-based index for Italy

PurposeThis paper aims to present the dynamics of housing prices in Italian cities based on unpublished data with regional details from the late 1960s, half-yearly base, for all main Italian cities measuring the average prices for three city dimensions: city centre, sub-centres and outskirts or suburbs. It estimates the Italian long-term house price index, city based in real terms, and shows a combination of methods to deal with large time-series data.Design/methodology/approachThis paper builds long-term cycles based on the city (real) data by estimating the common components of cointegrated time series and extracting the unobservable signals to build real house price index for sub-regions in Italy. Three different econometric methodologies are used: Johansen cointegration test and VAR models to identify the long-term pattern of prices at the estimated aggregate level; principal components to obtain the common (permanent and transitory) components; and signal extraction in ARIMA time series–model-based approach method to extract the unobserved time signals.FindingsResults show three long-term cycle-trends during the period and identify several one-direction causal non-permanent relationships among house prices from different Italian areas. There is no evidence of convergence among regional’s house prices suggesting that the Italian housing prices converge inside the local market with only short diffusion effects at larger regional level.Research limitations/implicationsData are measured as the average price in squared meters, and the resulting index is not quality controlled.Practical implicationsThe long-term trends on housing prices serve to implement further research and know deeply the evolution of Italian housing prices.Originality/valueThis paper contains new and unknown information about the evolution of housing prices in Italian regions and cities.

Hedonic value of high-speed rail services: Quantitative analysis of the students’ domestic tourist attractiveness of the main Italian cities

High-Speed Rail (HSR) is a transport mode that operates significantly faster than traditional services, using integrated and specialized rolling stock, and often dedicated tracks. These rapid transit services have profoundly impacted mobility habits on medium-long range journeys, and have also brought about social, economic, and environmental changes in the geographical areas involved. HSR has become a successful “brand”, including not only faster trains, but also a number of other on-board services that increase rail attractiveness (e.g. restaurants, wi-fi connection, free newspapers, cinema, business areas and relaxation lounges).Starting from these considerations, in this research we investigated the conjecture according to which a traveler, in choosing an HSR service to reach a destination (against a traditional rail service, or other competing transport modes), is not only influenced by its original peculiarity as a “faster train” service, but also takes into account the presence of all the “hedonic” characteristics of the service. That said, the literature in transportation modeling has yet to analyze the impact of hedonic quality on travelers’ behavior by quantifying whether and to what extent it increases their propensity to use HSR services.Aim of this research was twofold: i) to quantify, for the first time in the literature, the hedonic value of an HSR service related to a domestic tourist trip, as compared to more conventional levels of service and attractiveness attributes; ii) investigate the domestic tourist attractiveness of the main Italian cities, evaluating which attributes influence the perception of a city as a domestic tourist destination. The application case study consists in the supply of current rail services (HSR vs. traditional) between the 11 main Italian cities in terms of tourist destination. On the basis of an RP&SP survey, carried out among university students at national scale, a binomial logit model was specified with serial correlation in residuals, estimating whether or not the cities in the panel were perceived as possible destinations for a domestic tourist trips made by train.The estimation results show that city-specific attractiveness attributes (entertainment and restaurant rate; number of sites of interests; crime rate), and level of services variables (e.g. travel time and cost; HSR brand ) significantly influence the perception of a city as a possible destination for a domestic tourist trip by train. Furthermore, the average monetary value for the “pure preference” for the HSR brand (faster trains, high frequency, and on-board services) is about 22Euros/trip, while the hedonic value relative only to on-board services is about 12Euros/trip , underlining that the “faster train” is only one of the perceived attributes of HSR services. Overall, the willingness to pay for an HSR ticket is up to 40% greater than that for a traditional one. Furthermore, tourists are willing to spend 2.2h more travelling on an HSR train to reach their destinations. The estimation results show that there is also a “distance traveled effect”; the pure preference for HSR services increases in value from 9Euros/trip to 13Euros/trip (+44%) for distances traveled greater than 400km. If confirmed, these results allow the conclusion to be drawn that the “catchment area” of cities on HSR networks is larger than that served by traditional rail.

Taxi and Limousine Services after the Bersani Reform: An Investigation on Main Italian Cities

Using data from a Bank of Italy survey, this paper analyzes the Italian taxi market and its recent changes. Local regulations are rather homogeneous, while there is a widespread disproportion, within municipal advisory committees, between the number of representatives of taxi drivers and that of consumers' advocates. Indicators of service adequacy are seldom used. The average service costs are rather homogeneous across Italian provinces, while there is great variance of supply and fare structures. The instruments made available to municipalities by the Bersani Law 2006 have been used mainly in large cities. In many cases, the expansion of service, achieved mainly through additional shifts rather than through the issue of (free) additional licenses, has been the result of a trade-off for fare increases (in part to protect drivers' income). Virtually no use has been made of municipal traffic rules. All in all it is difficult to evaluate the suitability of the decisions of municipalities with respect to market characteristics, given the lack of non-occasional information on market structure.

The Taxi Service in Italy: Motivation and Outline of the Recent Reform

This paper presents a quantitative and analytical documentation to the debate on taxi service liberalization. The results of a survey of the Bank of Italy on the main Italian cities show that the supply of taxi is much lower than that of other foreign cities. The paper gives also some quantitative and qualitative evidence of the negative effects on consumers and on the creation of rents deriving from the present taxi regulation. The economic analysis and the positive results of the recent experiences of liberalization in other countries show that a rigid regulation on tariffs and supply, like the one adopted in Italy, lacks a solid analytical as well an empirical basis for support. Likely, the lower availability of taxi in Italy does not reflect only quantity and price regulation but also other characteristics of the regulation itself, such as the prohibition of juridical persons to operate on the market and a decentralized decision process that attributes more consideration to the interests of taxi drivers with respect to those of consumers. The paper also presents some proposal, in the light of the effects of the recent Bersani decree, for a reform of the sector.