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.

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.

Accessibility and urban walkability are the cornerstones of urban policies for the contemporary city, which needs to be oriented towards sustainable development principles and models. Such aims are included in the objectives of the 2030 Agenda, as well as in the ambitious objectives of the ‘European Green Deal’. These concepts are closely linked to the paradigm of a sustainable city—livable, healthy and inclusive—based on a system of high-quality public spaces and on a network of services and infrastructures, both tangible and intangible, capable of strengthening and building new social, economic and environmental relationships. It is necessary to recognize potential opportunities for connection and permeability in consolidated urban environments. These are very often fragmented and are characterized by enclaves of very different kinds. Ghettoes and gated communities, old industrial plants and military installations and facilities, to cite a few, represent examples of cases where closures on urban fabrics are realized, impeding full walkability and accessibility. Within such a framework, the present research is aimed at focusing on a particular set of enclaves, such as those represented by the military sites being reconfigured to civilian use, a phenomenon that characterizes many urban areas in the world; in Europe; and in Italy, in particular, given the recent history and the Cold War infrastructure heritage. In such a sense, the city of Cagliari (Sardinia Island, Italy) represents an interesting case study as it is characterized by the presence of a series of military complexes; real ‘enclaves’ influencing the proximity connections; and, more generally, walkability. Building on previous research and analysis of policies and projects aimed at reintroducing, even partially, this military asset into civilian life (Green Barracks Project (GBP)-2019), this paper proposes and applies a methodology to evaluate the effects of urban regeneration on walkability in a flexible network logic, oriented to the ‘15 min city’ model or, more generally, to the renewed, inclusive, safe “city of proximity”, resilient and sustainable.

In European countries many measures are carried out to improve the disadvantaged conditions and socio-economic marginality of rural areas in comparison with central places. These conditions also affect the quality of travel for visitors and tourists. Therefore, in response to a ‘new’ tourist demand, motivated also by the restrictions following the spread of the COVID-19 virus in recent years, the institutions and the different local actors are working more incisively to improve rural areas. The rural tourism services offer, combined with the Green Infrastructure (GI) project, at different scales—from local to regional—interesting territorial development strategies to achieve the Agenda 2030 objectives. This contribution considers the Sulcis-Iglesiente-Guspinese area, in the Sardinia Region (IT), as a case study. In this area, the landscape context is marked by past mining activity, and the project of a path of historical, cultural, and religious values has proven to be an activator of regenerative processes, in environmental, social, and economic terms. The present study proposes a methodological approach to develop an index (FI—feasibility index) to assess the feasibility of the Stop Places (SPs) project along a horse trail to integrate the current slow mobility of bicycles and pedestrians in the bioregion.