Articoli taggati con ‘urban development’
Transforming Historical Cities in Smart Cities by Using Geospatial Technologies
The term geospatial in the Anglo-Saxon world – but also in the scientific and technical Italian elite – is slowly replacing the word Gis, acronym of Geographic Information System. Geospatial is interpreted as a synonym of geographical notions, in a system that can include more than two dimensions, normally represented by the latitude and the longitude, introducing geographical information in a landmark that could be developed in three, or, by now, also in four dimensions. The simplest examples are the google maps, which in the classical plane dimension of the chart sheet have put together the three-dimensional place with a fourth dimension time-slider. The impact of geospatial technology in our daily life has become rather relevant, showing itself as a global reference overview in our environment. The impact of all the innovations that form the Geospatial technology is increasing in our lives. It reached such a relevance to become a key point in our environment. This is particularly recognizable in urban envirornment, as it allow us in using Location Based Sevices technologies, which are able to transform every georeferenced object in a smart object, inserting it in a network of objects through position relationship among which the objects in the network transmit data and information each other. The common use of these networks of objects in our urban environment, could represent the structural network of the Smart Cities. When we use mobile devices in our trips, or when we share our feelings or other personal information on Social Network such as Twitter, Instagram or Facebook, we communicate also our geografical position (if we allowed it in our privacy agreement). Many of the services offered by search engines, using our position, are able in showing us restaurants, hotels, shops, banks, drugstores and everything we need, even classifying the showed results on the basis of the appreciation of other users. Thus, it is clear that geospatial technology is already present in the very core of our lives.
Culture and Citizenship
Most Italian cities, both big cities and small cities, are experiencing a sort of identity crisis, which is the result of different but convergent factors. The failure of the urbanistic vision as a virtuous urban development model. The unresolved relationship between historic city centre and the peripheries. The bureaucratic resistance to the implementation of mid and long-term strategic plans. The tendency in concentrating the cultural production only into the main cultural production centres. The distance between the University and the places where the urban change process take shape. The lack of intercultural and intergenerational integration processes. The underestimation of the change potential expressed by culture and cultural and creative activities. These are all issues that affect the real development of a culture-oriented society. Furthermore, there is also another point to underline: the rise of an interpretation of cultural and creative phenomenon as a specific tool of the tourism economy: during last decades, this vision shaped both public and private intervention in culture, realizing processes into a “touristic attractors” perspective. Because of the scarce resources, the touristic addressed interventions the implementation of mid and long term strategies mainly addressed to a change and to a cultural-driven urban renewal.
The regional turn of the European Capital of Culture and its traits in France, Germany, and Poland
Policies to strengthen urban regions play today a major role in the implementation of key objectives such as improving competitiveness of the EU territory, or achieving its territorial cohesion. A remarkable point in case here is the European Capital of Culture event whose “regional turn” is here to be discussed by the example of France, Germany, and Poland. A special impetus is to lie on the question on how far trends are reflected in the Polish (i.e. Central Eastern European) case notably with Wroc?aw preparing to become European Capital of Culture in 2016.
European Capitals of Culture: structures and infrastructures
Culture and territory. A pair with an ancient but actual flair. A binomial that a growing number of public managers choose as the asset to economic development and to increase the quality of life, like in Qatar, where culture has peeped out with a certain delay on the desks of the European Union. At first excluded from EU subjects and focuses, culture has been recognized only at the beginning of the 90s as a subsidiary competence, while on the contrary, it would have been the essence of the integration in the European project. As Jean Monnet, one of the fathers and founders of Europe stated, “If Europe has to be rebuilt, maybe we should start from culture”. The absence of a real and shared cultural project should have been inserted in the process of economic integration to reinforce the EU directives. From a different perspective, it is to say that the absence of an economic structure, deprived of its cultural infrastructure, is visible in the diffused phenomena of dissatisfaction towards the European institutions, in the many misunderstandings and in the race amongst member states.
