Accessibility and Walkability represent, today, some of the most striking challenges contemporary cities are facing, particularly in light of the goals from UN Agenda 2030, aimed at a sustainable city, and particularly in terms of a livable, healthy and inclusive city. This can be also performed thanks to a set of high quality public services and a set of important and central services and infrastructures. These principles, however, are constrained by an overall, general fragmentation affecting many urban areas, particularly as an outcome of the vehicular accessibility needs. Scholars have debated through the years on the nature of cities and on the preference for centrality of services compared to the distribution of services towards dispersed neighborhood units. Recently, a need for a wider, minimum set of services that is easily reachable to most citizens is filling the scholars and city mayors’ agendas in order to improve urban performances. This is also coupled with a huge surge in the heritage of abandoned urban items coming from previous periods of time and alternative uses. The aim of this research is to evaluate the role of abandoned urban assets—particularly big-size buildings and compounds and their areas—to facilitate the implementation of the concept of a 15-minute city, a city that is capable of granting a wider social equality and access to main urban services to citizens and city users. To do this, we developed a set of indexes, capable of detecting porosity, crossing and attractiveness. This latter index in particular represents a combined index that can be used to improve the accessibility of pedestrians in urban central locations. In the present research, we decided to limit the analysis to a subset of disused public buildings in the historic center of a sample city, as Cagliari (Sardinia, Italy). This was done in order to understand if and in which terms they can contribute, after their redevelopment, to the development of the 15-minute city, as well as reducing the “enclave–effect: they are, at present, playing in the historic urban fabric.

COVID-19 hit Italy in February 2020 after its outbreak in China at the beginning of January. Why was Italy first among the Western countries? What are the conditions that made Italy more vulnerable and the first target of this disease? What characteristics and diffusion patterns could be highlighted and hypothesized from its outbreak to the end of March 2020, after containment measures, including a national lockdown, were introduced? In this paper, we try to provide some answers to these questions, analyzing the issue from medical, geographical and planning points of view. With reference to the Italian case, we observed the phenomenon in terms of the spatial diffusion process and by observing the relation between the epidemic and various environmental elements. In particular, we started from a hypothesis of the comparable economic, geographical, climatic and environmental conditions of the areas of Wuhan (in the Hubei Province in China, where the epidemic broke out) and the Po Valley area (in Italy) where most cases and deaths were registered. Via an ecological approach, we compared the spatial distribution and pattern of COVID-19-related mortality in Italy with several geographical, environmental and socio-economic variables at a Provincial level, analyzing them by means of spatial analytical techniques such as LISA (Local Indicators of Spatial Association). Possible evidence arose relating to COVID-19 cases and Nitrogen-related pollutants and land take, particularly in the Po Valley area.

The present work aims to study the role of air pollutants in relation to the number of deaths per each Italian province affected by COVID-19. To do that, specific mortality from COVID-19 has been standardized for each Italian province and per age group (10 groups) ranging from 0 to 9 years to >90 years, based on the 2019 national population figures. The link between air pollutants and COVID-19 mortality among Italian provinces was studied implementing a linear regression model, whereas the wide set of variables were examined by means of LISA (Local Indicators of Spatial Autocorrelation), relating the spatial component of COVID-19 related data with a mix of environmental variables as explanatory variables. As results, in some provinces, namely the Western Po Valley provinces, the SMR (Standardized Mortality Ratio) is much higher than expected, and the presence of PM10 was independently associated with the case status. Furthermore, the results for LISA on SMR and PM10 demonstrate clusters of high-high values in the wide Metropolitan area of Milan and the Po Valley area respectively, with a certain level of overlap of the two distributions in the area strictly considered Milan. In conclusion, this research appears to find elements to confirm the existence of a link between pollution and the risk of death due to the disease, in particular, considering land take and air pollution, this latter referred to particulate (PM10). For this reason, we can reiterate the need to act in favour of policies aimed at reducing pollutants in the atmosphere, by means of speeding up the already existing plans and policies, targeting all sources of atmospheric pollution: industries, home heating and traffic.

Spatial planning and territorial promotion can benefit largely from the application of the Information Communication Technology (ICT) at different scales. From knowledge acquisition to management and planning, their role in building an image of the territory, and constantly updating it to the benefit of users and planners, is of paramount importance. Institutional channels, together with social networks, are the means by which both a local community and a wider community of users share experiences and perceptions. ICTs are therefore strategic in supporting and promoting a sustainable tourism development of territories. Data and information aggregators as dashboards represent examples of decision support systems where digital data are organized and processed to produce an information output. The present paper is part of a wider research, related to the valorization of a former mining area in the Sulcis-Iglesiente area (Sardinia, Italy), where the extraction activity has left the place to abandonment, and only recently to tourism, stressing the concept of slow tourism. Such new opportunity has been launched with the Santa Barbara Walk (SBW), an ancient mining route currently trying to consolidate as a tourism attraction area. Such a territory is in constant transition with unique characters of anthropic and naturalistic characterization, setting itself as a green infrastructure, capable also of attracting a wide community of regional and extra-regional users. However, its digital network—consisting of intangible infrastructure and flows—is fragmented in terms of policies and contents. Additionally, a state of disorganization in slow tourism promotion activities can be observed. To implement the SBW capabilities, the present paper aims to develop a proposal for the framework of a circular dashboard applied to the SBW. In particular, we implement a set of indicators of performance of the SBW for the organization of information on the walk’s main characters, to facilitate a shared governance and an effective tourism promotion. The SBW is recognized as a network connecting the main points of interest preferred by the slow tourism (This paper is based on the Research project TSULKI—Tourism and Sustainability in the Sulcis (Sardinia-Italy)—and on the agreement protocol between DICAAR Department of Cagliari University and Foundation of the Santa Barbara Walk, signed in December 2018).

Cities consume over 75% of natural resources, produce over 50% of global waste, and emit 60–80% of greenhouse gases. The scenario that by 2050 two thirds of the world population will live in cities, highlights how cities are still responsible for the growing consumption characterized by linear economic processes, with the production of various types of waste. In this unsustainable framework, the Circular Economy offers the opportunity to shape the urban system by means of rethinking the possibility to produce and use goods and services, exploring new ways to ensure long-term prosperity. The Circular City paradigm contains in fact all the principles of the Circular Economy: recovery, recycling, and sharing. In particular, Circular City also introduces actions related to the development of renewable energy communities, use of green materials, CO₂ absorption approaches, and Proximity Cities. This work aims to develop a methodology to build a composite index (Circular City Index) capable of measuring the degree of implementation of urban policies that may enable an ecological transition of public assets. Circular City Index was applied to the military cluster of the city of Cagliari (Sardinia, Italy), a significant case study to guide circular policies in public properties for civil and military uses.

According to projects and practices that the Italian botanists and ecologists are carrying out for bringing “more nature in the city”, new insights for a factual integration between ecological perspectives and more consolidated aesthetic and agronomic approaches to the sustainable planning and management of urban green areas are provided.