The geographical patterns of the Italian electoral discontent have been strengthened by the European elections of 2019. The growing populist sentiments have been fuelled by the political programs focusing on national‐popular issues, which have pushed the escalation of the right‐wing sovereign/nationalist political parties. While the literature has stressed that long‐term socioeconomic structural decline is among the main reasons feeding the rise of the European distrust, little is yet known about the micro‐scale populist voting patterns in Italy. Through a parametric approach with linear models, the main determinants of discontent, at municipal level, are revealed and, specifically, it results that (un)employment, long‐term cultural change and immigration are the main drivers of the right‐wing populism intensity growth in the European elections of 2014 and 2019.

The consequences of climate change can involve various ambits and be very severe. For this reason, the social perception of climate change is a fundamental issue since it can influence the decisions of the policymakers, by encouraging or discouraging political, economic and social actions. In this paper, a sample of 300 interviews, collected through a standardized questionnaire and carried out among two municipalities located in southern Italy, was exploited to investigate the perception of climate change. Specific issues, regarding perceptions about climate change, concerns about its impacts, level of information, behavior and actions, exposure to extreme natural events and trust, were addressed to give answers to the research questions: (i) Is climate change perceived by the population? (ii) What is the degree of the community resilience to extreme natural events and climate change? As the main findings, this survey highlighted that the spatio-temporal dimension affects population perception, suggesting that some issues, such as correct behavior towards the geosphere, the sustainability of anthropization processes, community resilience and disaster risk reduction policies, can be very central and useful to mitigate the effects of climate change in population and society. Moreover, climate change perception varies in relation to contextual factors, including media communication, socio-demographic characteristics of respondents, knowledge and education, economic and institutional factors, personal values and, finally, psychological factors and experience.

The Covid-19 pandemic has rapidly altered the habits and lifestyles of every citizen worldwide and will have effects in the medium to long terms. The need for ‘social distancing’ has negatively affected urban areas and encouraged a rescheduling of working methods. Knowledge-intensive activities have been massively undertaken on a large scale in remote working, mainly carried out at home. Within this context, the paper explores the changes in working modalities towards remote working by focusing on the Lombardy region in north-west Italy. Specifically, it explores the renewed suitability of the municipalities outside the regional capital city of Milan with regard to remote workers during the pandemic and compares it with the period before the pandemic, and also it analyses which determinants play a role. The results show that municipalities closer to Milan with a strong broadband connection, a high concentration of knowledge workers and foreign immigrants are more suitable for hosting remote workers.