Towards lower carbon cities: urban morphology contribution in climate change adaptation strategies

Non-urbanized areas (NUAs) play an important role in reducing the effects of climate change by providing both carbon storage and sequestration. Urban areas are responsible for the emission of 60% of global greenhouse gas, 50% of which are produced by buildings. During the past decades, increasing urban growth and sprawl processes produced several urban layouts characterized by different morphological features and a common lack of sustainable energy and environmental solutions. Investigating the relationship between urban morphology, energy demand and carbon emission/sequestration represents a relevant topic for urban planning practices implemented to face urban climate change effects. This study proposes a method for a transformability assessment aimed at investigating the transformation suitability of different urban morphology types. The case study is the metropolitan area of Catania (Italy), characterized by an impressive urban growth since the 1960s. The proposed method identification of limits and options for increasing sustainability of urban areas considering the contribution of both NUAs and built-up areas. This approach allows to identify appropriate planning tools for new layouts of urban fabrics while increasing the objectivity of the decision process. In the framework of climate change mitigation and adaptation, the outcomes of this research may lead to innovative urban planning practices.     

Place-based innovation policy for industrial diversification in regions

New industrial innovation policies like smart specialization aim at boosting economic growth by diversification towards more complex and higher value economic activities. This paper proposes a conceptual and analytical framework to support the design and implementation of such policies considering place-specific preconditions, particularly the differentiation of the regional system of innovation and entrepreneurship and the degree of current industrial diversification. The paper expands on the links between these preconditions and the barriers and opportunities for industrial diversification. Consequently, it proposes an archetypical place-based policy framework covering overall policy objectives as well as measures at the level of actors, networks, and the institutional and organizational support structures.     

Spatial and sectoral differentiation of support to innovative companies from EU funds in Czechia

This paper aims to introduce a case study of Czechia in distribution of the EU funds and their spatial patterns. EU funds receive plenty attention from both European society and the scientific community. However, there is a lack of detailed evaluations of spatial and sectoral differentiation, which might bring a better understanding to the whole EU funds system. This paper attempts to fill this gap with a method of geographical differentiation analysis of the Czech operational programme Enterprise and Innovations 2007–15, which should increase the competitiveness of industry and develop services for commercial activities. Historically, subsidies often go to peripheral regions at the borderland with Slovakia and Poland, while regions along the borders with Germany and Austria receive only a low level of support. Jurisdictions of the major recipients from hi-tech sectors are mainly in the close vicinity of the largest cities (Praha, Brno), which are natural centres of high technologically demanding sectors, but a high share of high-tech subsidies goes to some peripheral districts as well. These findings can contribute not only to the academic discussion about contradictory developmental impacts of subsidies but to the all-European debate on the EU funds purposes as well.     

European Cohesion Policy impact on development and convergence: a local empirical analysis in Portugal between 2000 and 2014

Substantial European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) monies have been directed at regional economic and social development in Portugal in which Portuguese local government plays a vital role. Given the magnitude of funding, an important question turns on the effect of the ESIF on overall local authority performance. This paper focuses on the impact of the ESIF on Portuguese municipality performance and development. In particular, it investigates whether the ESIF improved the performance of Portuguese local government and which factors best explain its effect on municipality development. The analysis considers all 308 Portuguese local authorities for the period 2000–2014. Various policy implications flowing from the empirical results of this analysis are explored.     

Diasporic identifications: exile,nostalgia and the Famine past in Irish and Irish North-American popular fiction, 1871–1891

During the nineteenth century, “exile” became a key term to describe the Irish-diasporic community in North America. More recently, scholars in the fields of diaspora studies and Irish studies have described this community as a “victim diaspora” with connotations of forced expulsion, exile, and nostalgia for the homeland. Moreover, among scholars and within the Irish-American community, the notion exists that the Great Irish Famine (1845–1851) constitutes the Irish-American “charter myth”, that it was the starting point of an Irish-American identity. This article sheds a different light on these (self-)identifications by discussing the concepts of origin myth, exile and nostalgia and also considers the concept of diasporic belonging in the context of Irish and Irish North-American works of popular “Famine fiction” written between 1871 and 1891. Consequently, the impact of these late nineteenth-century literary considerations on present-day conceptualisations of the Irish-American community as a victim diaspora are discussed.     

Single female tenants in South Delhi – gender,class and morality in a globalizing city

Based on ethnographic data gathered over 12 months of fieldwork with unmarried women living alone or in flat-shares in different middle class South Delhi localities, this article traces the way shifting gendered norms – often epitomized by growing numbers of single women households – are negotiated within class specific and highly localized contexts of the residential neighborhood. Despite growing economic opportunities for middle class and elite women, cultural anxieties surrounding the notion of ‘delayed’ marriage and women living outside of the familial or marital home persist and obstruct attempts at establishing independent households. Single women experience difficulties finding apartments to rent; have to contend with hostile intrusions from neighbors; or feel obliged to self-monitor their behavior within their neighborhoods. As South Delhi’s liberalised urban landscape has become home to an increasingly globalized, consumerist middle class, disciplinary measures such as curfews, regulations over houseguests and increased surveillance simultaneously indicate a middle class recalibrating its gendered social coordinates by proving its commitment to values of female propriety. While popular discourses draw juxtaposed imaginaries of the ‘modern’ and the ‘traditional’ in their depictions of increasing individualism and a loosening of ‘traditional’ role expectations, this article demonstrates the need to consider the different structural conditions and local inflections in which struggles over women’s agency take place. Looking beyond the supposedly universalizing forces of globalized consumer modernity, the residential neighborhood hereby provides a view into the lived experiences of – at times incongruous – mechanisms at play in societies undergoing social change.     

阆中大像山石窟的形制、题材与时代

位于四川省阆中市的大像山石窟,主要开凿于中晚唐和宋代,明清时期也有少量开凿。现有37龛,以方形龛、外方内圆拱形龛及圆拱形龛为主,方形龛最为多见。龛楣大多无装饰,雕刻简单。题材主要有弥勒佛、七佛、千佛、观音、天王、力士、经幢及舍利塔等。造像组合较少,以单身造像为多。阆中独特的地理位置,使得大像山石窟兼具广元、巴中两地石窟的特点,其丰富的内容为巴蜀佛教石窟寺的深入研究提供了重要的实物资料。     

The Multiple Functions of Criollo,Gaucho and Indigenous Symbols in La Historieta Patoruzú, 1936–50: The Conflicts of Peronism,Nationalism and Migration

This article considers the comic book Patoruzú in light of the cultural expressions of Argentine criollismo between the 1930s and 50s. It begins by examining the political and class conflicts that informed the meanings of criollo symbols, and how Dante Quinterno’s creation interacts with them. Perón’s political organisation, for example, constantly resorted to discourses and images of a gaucho and rural nature in order to propagate the ideals of nationalist corporatism. From one perspective, the drawings, storylines and characters of Patoruzú articulate the arguments set forth by Perón in his battles with neo-colonial and oligarchic forces. However, as Anthony Cohen and Stuart Hall argue, mass-media products and popular national symbols are dialogic; they enter into a dialogue with different competing discourses. Thus the comic book is also analysed in respect of the different and conflictive uses and potential interpretations of criollo symbols. One such conflict, it is proposed, resides in the understudied effect of modernisation and urbanisation on the rural criollo migrants, who moved to the provinces of Buenos Aires in large numbers in the 1930s. The comic book, therefore, is not understood simply as an expression of Peronist ideals, but as a footprint of the complex political and identity conflicts of the period.     

Migration,knowledge production and the humanitarian agenda in times of crisis

By drawing on the Italian case, this article critically discusses the use of crisis as a tool of knowledge and expertise production. In recent years, the theme of crisis has played a key role in shifting migration management towards a humanitarian agenda based on the premise that contemporary migration to Europe is comprised of forced mass movement. The article considers the extent to which migrants’ subjectivities call into question the knowledge that has been produced during the current era. It also reflects on the ways in which gender and race provide fundamental insights for a better understanding of the evolution of migration management within the context of crisis.