scholarly journals Ascoltare il territorio

ARCHALP ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2020 (N. 5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Simone Cola

The recent history of urban development in Italy largely stems from a policy – here intended as a set of actions and strategies of administrators, entrepreneurs and experts – which has been incapable of planning transformations and, therefore, adopting a shared and far-sighted approach to development. The urban regeneration of metropolitan areas and their consequent demographic and economic development (70% of the population and 80% of GDP are concentrated in these areas) have often penalised internal areas such as the Alps and Apennines. Some peculiar experiences, including the regeneration of the village of Ostana (Cuneo), the project carried out in Contrada Bricconi (Bergamo), or even the activities of the association Dolomiti Contemporanee (Belluno) – just to mention a few interesting cases in the Italian Alps, – show that the understanding of and care for a unique territory are the pillars on which any informed political, administrative, architectural or territorial project should be based. This approach is all the more important in the framework of those events envisaging the construction of large infrastructures (such as the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina). After these events, such infrastructures are often abandoned because they are useless for the territory, economically unsustainable in the long-term, and not shared with the local community. In this perspective, the work of the association Architetti Arco Alpino (Alpine Arc Architects), whose activities range from architecture awards to photographic surveys, conferences and publications, aims to understand the complexity of mountain areas and to promote architectural quality. In this framework, they have successfully shown how the problems are often the same regardless of geographical and cultural distances. The solution to these problems is to be found primarily in the act of listening to the places and history of the local population; whether in the Alps or elsewhere, every good project based on a contemporary and conscious approach starts from there.

Author(s):  
Julia Evangelista ◽  
William A. Fulford

AbstractThis chapter shows how carnival has been used to counter the impact of Brazil’s colonial history on its asylums and perceptions of madness. Colonisation of Brazil by Portugal in the nineteenth century led to a process of Europeanisation that was associated with dismissal of non-European customs and values as “mad” and sequestration of the poor from the streets into asylums. Bringing together the work of the two authors, the chapter describes through a case study how a carnival project, Loucura Suburbana (Suburban Madness), in which patients in both long- and short-term asylum care play leading roles, has enabled them to “reclaim the streets,” and re-establish their right to the city as valid producers of culture on their own terms. In the process, entrenched stigmas associated with having a history of mental illness in a local community are challenged, and sense of identity and self-confidence can be rebuilt, thus contributing to long-term improvements in mental well-being. Further illustrative materials are available including photographs and video clips.


Geophysics ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 77 (6) ◽  
pp. B287-B294 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jamie K. Pringle ◽  
Peter Styles ◽  
Claire P. Howell ◽  
Michael W. Branston ◽  
Rebecca Furner ◽  
...  

The area around the town of Northwich in Cheshire, U. K., has a long history of catastrophic ground subsidence caused by a combination of natural dissolution and collapsing abandoned mine workings within the underlying Triassic halite bedrock geology. In the village of Marston, the Trent and Mersey Canal crosses several abandoned salt mine workings and previously subsiding areas, the canal being breached by a catastrophic subsidence event in 1953. This canal section is the focus of a long-term monitoring study by conventional geotechnical topographic and microgravity surveys. Results of 20 years of topographic time-lapse surveys indicate specific areas of local subsidence that could not be predicted by available site and mine abandonment plan and shaft data. Subsidence has subsequently necessitated four phases of temporary canal bank remediation. Ten years of microgravity time-lapse data have recorded major deepening negative anomalies in specific sections that correlate with topographic data. Gravity 2D modeling using available site data found upwardly propagating voids, and associated collapse material produced a good match with observed microgravity data. Intrusive investigations have confirmed a void at the major anomaly. The advantages of undertaking such long-term studies for near-surface geophysicists, geotechnical engineers, and researchers working in other application areas are discussed.


Author(s):  
Ilaria Scaglia

This book’s journey through the history of a broad range of political, leisure, educational, and medical institutions in the Alps shows that emotions constituted an essential ingredient in the development of internationalist ideas and practices in the interwar period. After the First World War—a traumatic event that contemporaries blamed on mismanaged passions—internationalists constructed the Alps—a recent battleground and the markers of national borders—as ideal sites for instilling amicable feelings among nations. The staging of large-scale international events such as the 1924 Winter Olympics strengthened the image of mountains as a natural backdrop for peaceful encounters. The commercialization of “typical” convivial products such as cheese fondue and the “cup of friendship” further reinforced this association. At the same time, in an age of increasing industrialization, the Alps attracted both public and private entities interested in large infrastructure projects (including roads, electrical plants, railway lines, and tunnels like the one celebrated in ...


Author(s):  
David R Munoz

Circles of friends (trust) as a means for indigenous community development have been actively encouraged in Colinas de Suiza, Honduras. This effort at enhancing long-term community resilience is the latest in a 10 year relationship that includes a water project and two school construction activities within the village of ~10,000 economically poor. These techniques were utilized in part to provide an example of communities in partnership for universities involved in developing educational programs around practically-based engineering service learning projects. To enhance community involvement, children were included in the development process through creative educational activities involving music, graphical arts and dance. The initial two-month experience culminated in a fiesta or celebration of community. Project evaluation has yielded several positive indigenous results; namely the construction of a dining hall, supported by the local community where poorest children are fed, and the formation of a locally managed credit union where the local people can place their savings and apply for microloans for microenterprise development. This project is further testament to the belief that humanitarian efforts are most effective when performed consistently within the same locations and where the entire community is invited to organize, identify, discuss and solve their own problems.


2016 ◽  
Vol 76 (2) ◽  
pp. 559-594 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Casari ◽  
Maurizio Lisciandra

Starting from the Medieval period, women in the Italian Alps experienced a progressive erosion in property rights over the commons. We collected documents about the evolution of inheritance regulations on collective land issued by hundreds of villages over a period of six centuries (thirteenth-nineteenth). Based on this original dataset, we provide a long-term perspective of decentralized institutional change in which gender-biased inheritance systems emerged as a defensive measure to preserve the wealth of village insiders. This institutional change also had implications for the population growth, marriage strategies, and the protection from economic shocks.


2014 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
pp. 7-29
Author(s):  
Mattia Forni

This article provides a deep description about local politics in Rignano sull’Arno, a small village near Florence, focusing on the features of “red” territorial political subculture that have ceased to exist, as well as those that still remain a part of voters’ behaviour. To begin with, I will draw attention to the political and electoral history of the village since 1946; going on to describe the main traits of local electors, with reference to a survey that accounted for 1220 voters, carried out during the 2012 administrative elections. I will concentrate on social and demographic characteristics, searching for a link between these qualities and the electoral results. From here I will examine the voting patterns of the local population and the motives behind such voting behaviour. I will consider the main role played by candidate’s personal characteristics in infl uencing the voters, to the detriment of party identifi cation, political values and ideology, which are becoming less and less relevant. Further topics I will illustrate in this paper are the types of sources that people gathered their information from during the election campaign and the time at which they decided how to vote. Finally, electoral instability and the changes in voter’s behaviour between the last two local elections will be analysed.


2018 ◽  
pp. 60-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eilidh Garrett ◽  
Alice Reid

This contribution examines the relationship between local population studies and the national picture by considering the example of the Victorian fertility transition in England and Wales. It begins by summarising the history of research into the fertility decline. It then describes a recent project, the Atlas of Fertility Decline, which has used the newly available machine-readable data on individuals from the censuses from 1851 to 1911 to estimate fertility at the level of the registration sub-district. The results from the project can be used to highlight geographical variations in fertility at the regional and local level. Explaining the patterns observed, though, will require detailed local studies. New resources that are being opened up for researchers interested in such issues in their local community, in their county, in their region or in the nation as a whole, make the pursuit and attainment of answers possible. New light can be thrown on local scenes that will each add a piece of the jigsaw which, when completed, will bring a whole new level of understanding of the complex puzzle that is the fertility transition in England and Wales.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cornelia Baumann ◽  
Inga Beck

<p>Education is key in order to create a generation that thinks and acts sustainable and that considers nature as one of the most important good.Within the three years Interreg Project ‘KlimaAlps’ (www.klimaalps.eu) – making climate change visible - one major task is the establishment of a training for educators, to become a certified ‘Climate-Pedagogue’ for the alpine region. The ‘Climate-Pedagogue’-training contains background information of climate change in the Alps and a variety of innovative educational tools and methods. It covers aspects of the high mountain areas, rivers and lakes, human beings, agriculture as well as moors.  The project is managed by the ‘Energiewende Oberland’; five additional partners from Austria and Bavaria are responsible for e. g. a high quality of the taught scientific information (Environmental Research Station Schneefernerhaus), the didactical input (University of Innsbruck, Department of Geography), the outreach activities and the implementation (Naturpark Karwendel, Klimabündnis Oberösterreich, Landratsamt Garmisch-Partenkirchen). During the last one and half years, the concept for the ‘Climate-Pedagogue’- training was worked out in cooperation with other environmental facilities and in March 2021 the first lectures of a pilot run with over 30 selected participants were held. In total there will be two runs in 2021 in order to evaluate the recent version of the training as good as possible. The next and long-term steps will be the firm establishment of a chargeable ‘Climate-Pedagogue’ – Training for every interested person for at least the coming ten years, as well as the strengthening and growing of the network. The presentation will give a short overview about the entire project as well as details about the ‘Climate-Pedagogue’ – Training and some first impressions of the already hold lectures in 2021.</p>


Author(s):  
Camilla Toulmin

Chapter 2 sets the village of Dlonguébougou within its wider region. Long-term shifts in rainfall have shaped the landscape and societies, from prehistory through to the emergence of the Ghana, Mali, and Songhai Empires, relying on trans-Saharan trade in gold, salt, and slaves. The Bambara kingdom of Ségou used warfare to exact tribute and control trade, but by the time of the French conquest, much of the region had been taken under the jihadist rule of El Hajj Oumar Tall. The colonial administration had profound, long-lasting impacts on village life, taxation, forced labour, military recruitment, and legal and political systems. Economic and political events since Independence in 1960 are described, including the growing conflict in the north and centre of the country, sparked by demands for Tuareg autonomy, but now spread into widespread instability.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ajay Bijoor ◽  
Munib Khanyari ◽  
Rigzen Dorjay ◽  
Sherab Lobzang ◽  
Kulbhushansingh Suryawanshi

Mitigating livestock predation by carnivores is crucial to ensure carnivore conservation and facilitate human-carnivore coexistence. Mitigation measures proposed by conservation agencies, however, are often technocratic and perceived as being an external imposition on the local community. Herders affected by the depredation may have the knowledge to design locally relevant solutions, but they might lack financial and technical support to implement these effectively. Their inability to act can result in the communities being viewed as antagonistic rather than a part of the solution. We present a case study on co-development of a conservation intervention by a traditional pastoral community together with a conservation NGO, to mitigate livestock depredation inside night-time corrals in Ladakh, India. Between January and June 2020, livestock corrals in Sumdoo TR village were attacked 10 times by carnivores such as snow leopards and wolves, killing over 100 sheep, goat, yak, and horses and causing loses of over 10,400 USD. Local people were agitated, and there were strong demands for capture or removal of the carnivores from the area. We operationalized the PARTNERS (Presence, Aptness, Respect, Transparency, Negotiation, Empathy, Responsiveness, and Strategic Support) principles framework for community-based conservation to help the village effectively implement an intervention based on a novel predator-proof corral design conceptualized by the community. We demonstrate that empowering the community to design and implement a conservation intervention helped them take ownership of the effort, improve trust with conservation agencies, and hence likely to be a long-term solution to conservation conflicts in the region. Our approach of using the PARTNERS principles has relevance for conservation agencies who are trying to implement interventions, particularly those geared toward reducing livestock depredation by carnivores. Our approach further helps communities to view themselves as part of the solution and not the problem.


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