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Much information is conveyed within tables, which can be semantically annotated by humans or (semi)automatic approaches. Nevertheless, many applications cannot take full advantage of semantic annotations because of the low quality. A few methodologies exist for the quality assessment of semantic annotation of tabular data, but they do not automatically assess the quality as a multidimensional concept through different quality dimensions. The quality dimensions are implemented in STILTool 2, a web application to automate the quality assessment of the annotations. The evaluation is carried out by comparing the quality of semantic annotations with gold standards. The work presented here has been applied to at least three use cases. The results show that our approach can give us hints about the quality issues and how to address them.

This paper describes STILTool, an open-source tool for the automatic evaluation of the quality of semantic annotations computed by semantic table interpretation approaches. STILTool provides a graphical interface allowing users to analyse the correctness of the annotations of tabular data. The tool also provides a set of statistics in order to identify the most common error patterns.

Esiste un numero significativo di documenti, report e pagine Web – un'analisi riporta 233 milioni di tabelle relazionali nel repository Common Crawl contenente un totale 2,85 miliardi di documenti – che fanno uso di tabelle per fornire informazioni che non possono essere facilmente elaborate dagli umani o capite dai computer. Per risolvere questo problema proponiamo un nuovo approccio che permetterà ai computer di interpretare la semantica di una tabella, e fornirà agli umani una rappresentazione più accessibile dei dati contenuti in essa. Per conseguire questo obiettivo, il problema principale è stato suddiviso in tre sotto-problemi: (i) la definizione di un metodo per fornire un'interpretazione semantica dei dati di una tabella; (ii) la definizione di un modello descrittivo che permetta ai computer di capire e condividere dati di una tabella; e (iii) la definizione di processi, tecniche e algoritmi per generare rappresentazioni dei dati in linguaggio naturale. Per quanto riguarda il sotto-problema (i), la rappresentazione semantica dei dati è stata ottenuta attraverso l'applicazione di tecniche di interpretazione di tabelle (table interpretation), che aiuta gli utenti ad identificare, in una maniera semi-automatica, il significato dei dati di una tabella e le relazioni tra di essi. Queste tecniche considerano in input una tabella e un Knowledge Graph, e restituiscono una rappresentazione RDF – un set di tuple – del contenuto della tabella, facendo riferimento ai concetti e alle proprietà del KG. Questa dissertazione presenta un nuovo approccio che, a partire dai lavori presenti in letteratura, ha portato allo sviluppo di un nuovo strumento, chiamato MantisTable, che effettua automaticamente un'interpretazione semantica completa della tabella. Gli esperimenti condotti hanno mostrato buoni risultati, rispetto alle tecniche e ai tool simili. Il sotto-problema (ii) è stato affrontato con la definizione di nuovi modi di rappresentazione dei dati: è stato definito un nuovo tipo di descrizione che combina la specifica OpenAPI con il linguaggio JSON-LD. I risultati delle tecniche di interpretazione semantica delle tabelle vengono così sfruttati per migliorare un formato già popolare, permettendo il recupero e il processamento dei dati tabellari. Il sotto-problema (iii) è stato affrontato definendo una tecnica di generazione del linguaggio naturale che utilizza una rete neurale per trasformare dati RDF, ottenuti dall'interpretazione delle tabelle, in frasi. Grazie a queste frasi, è possibile creare una rappresentazione testuale del contenuto delle tabelle. Questa è poi estendibile con informazioni aggiuntive provenienti da fonti che possono essere selezionate automaticamente utilizzando l'annotazione semantica. A significant number of documents, reports and Web pages –an analysis reports 233M relational tables within the Common Crawl repository of 1.81 billion documents– makes use of tables to convey information that cannot be easily processed by humans, and understood by computers. To address this issue, we propose a new approach that allows computers to interpret the semantics of a table, and provides humans with a more accessible representation of the data contained in a table. To achieve the objective, the general problem has been broken down into three sub-problems: (i) define a method to provide a semantic interpretation of table data; (ii) define a descriptive model that allows computers to understand and share table data; and (iii) define processes, techniques and algorithms to generate natural language representation of the table data. Regarding sub-problem (i), the semantic representation of a data has been obtained through the application of table interpretation techniques, which supports users to identify in a semi-automatic way the meaning of the data in the table and the relationships between them. Such techniques take a table and a Knowledge Graph (KG) as input, and deliver as output an RDF representation –a set of tuples –. The output contains the input table annotated with the KG concepts and properties. This thesis presents a new approach, rooted in the existing literature, to laid the foundations for the development of a new tool -called MantisTable- which automatically performs a complete semantic interpretation of a table. The conducted experiments have shown good results compared to similar techniques. Sub-problem (ii) has been tackled by defining new ways of representing data. A new kind of description has been defined that combines the OpenAPI specification with the JSON-LD. The results of semantic table interpretation techniques are exploited to enhance a popular description format and allow automatic retrieval and processing of table data. Sub-problem (iii) has been addressed by defining a natural language generation technique that uses a neural network to translate RDF data obtained from table interpretation into sentences. Thanks to these sentences, it is possible to create a textual representation of the content of the table, and possibly extend it with additional information from data sources that can be selected automatically using semantic annotations.

This paper describes MantisTable, an open source Semantic Table Interpretation tool, which automatically annotates tables using a Knowledge Graph. MantisTable provides a graphical interface allowing users to analyse the results of the semantic table interpretation process and validate the final annotations. The tool also provides a guided mode for viewing and editing annotations by users. Thanks to MantisTable features, it is possible to create semantic annotations and favour the publication and exchange of tabular data.

This paper discusses the time and steps of the introduction of intensive agriculture and evolution of irrigation systems to sustain crops in the palaeo-oasis of Salut in the northern Sultanate of Oman. Various geoarchaeological methods allow reconstructing the exploitation of the natural resources of the region and technological development of irrigation methods since the Mid-Holocene. Intensive agriculture started during the Bronze Age and continued with some spatial and intensity fluctuations up to the Islamic period. Cultivations were initially sustained by surface irrigation systems and later replaced by a dense net of aflaj, the typical surface/underground system adopted in the Levant, Arabian Peninsula and western Asia to collect water from deep piedmont aquifers and redistribute it to the fields located in the lowlands. Our results indicate that the aflaj were in use for a long period in the palaeo-oasis formed along Wadi Sayfam and surrounding the citadel of Salut. Uranium-Thorium dating of calcareous tufa formed in the underground tunnels of the aflaj suggests that they were used between ∼540 BCE and ∼1150 CE. After ∼1150 CE Wadi Sayfam were abandoned and the size of the oasis shrank substantially. During the late Islamic period, a surface aqueduct descending from the piedmont of Jabal Shams secured water supply. Our work confirms that in arid lands archaeological and historical communities were able to actively modulate their response to climate changes by using a variety of technological strategies.

This paper presents the results of the geoarchaeological study of a medieval motte known in historical documents as “Castrum Popilii” (Poviglio, Northern Italy). The Castrum Popilii motte, for its particular environmental characteristics, represents an exceptional case study for the Early Medieval Age in Po Valley. In 1989 an archaeological rescue excavation revealed an exceptionally well-preserved stratigraphic sequence at the northern side of the Santo Stefano church. The study of the archaeological materials and thin soil sections collected during this campaign, integrated with geoarchaeological observations, allowed the reconstruction of the natural and anthropogenic processes involved in the formation of the Santo Stefano di Poviglio stratigraphy sequence. The area also referred to as “Santo Stefano di Poviglio”, exposed the eastern limit of the medieval motte, characterizes by a sequence of occupation deposits, living floors, and wooden structural remains dated between the late 9th and the 11th centuries AD. The micromorphological study of this archaeological site led to developing a new hypothesis about the use of lime-based plaster in the construction of domestic living floors in a rural early medieval village in Central Po Plain. The sealing of the sequence due to the construction of a stone stronghold in the 15th century, combined with waterlogging, preserved the deposit from reworking by bioturbation and later human activities. On the other hand, water stagnation influenced a series of post-depositional migration and accumulation of iron–manganese and phosphatic features. The geoarchaeological tools applied in this study allowed to maximize the data collected in a rescue situation in 1989 highlighting new information about the genesis and development of Castrum Popilii medieval motte.

Services composition has been much investigated over the last decade without reaching shared and consolidated results mainly for the lack of interoperable descriptions of services and the consequent need of extensive user intervention. In this paper, we propose a light and practical approach to create machine-readable descriptions of output data that can be merged or used (as-is or adapted) as input data to other services. The solution relies on the popular and standard OpenAPI descriptions augmented with annotations based on JSON-LD format. Services descriptions are created by table annotations techniques applied on sets of given or retrieved output values. The approach has been implemented in a tool and validated with a set of real services.

Part 5: Services; International audience; The ability to provide appropriate and complete API descriptions to let users discover services that satisfy a set of requirements and compose them to fulfil more complex users’ needs is critical for the success of any modern ICT solution. Composition suffers from the lack of semantic matching between properties included in published API descriptions. The work presented in this paper addresses this issue by discussing the current formats and tools to build API descriptions, and presenting a method for extracting and associating semantic to properties. Such method relies on a revised version of Table Interpretation techniques to support semantic annotations of API properties. The objectives are to enrich the popular OpenAPI Specification format with semantic annotations, and add the functionality of semantic annotation and composition to the associated editor.

Knowledge Graphs (KG) represent a large amount of Semantic Associations (SAs), i.e., chains of relations that may reveal interesting and unknown connections between different types of entities. Applications for the contextual exploration of KGs help users explore information extracted from a KG, including SAs, while they are reading an input text. Because of the large number of SAs that can be extracted from a text, a first challenge in these applications is to effectively determine which SAs are most interesting to the users, defining a suitable ranking function over SAs. However, since different users may have different interests, an additional challenge is to personalize this ranking function to match individual users’ preferences. In this paper we introduce a novel active learning to rank model to let a user rate small samples of SAs, which are used to iteratively learn a personalized ranking function. Experiments conducted with two data sets show that the approach is able to improve the quality of the ranking function with a limited number of user interactions.

The Italian Public Administration (PA) consists in a wide set of local authorities (i.e., regions, provinces and municipalities) providing services to citizens, each with its own administrative autonomy. Actually, it often happens that Italian citizens have difficulties in discovering and using services that they need in the course of their lifes. Several Italian initiatives, suchas the SMART (Services and Meta-services for smart e-Government) project, aim to simplify the interaction between Italian citizens and the PA trought the definition of value -added services. A value-added service (VAS) guides the citizen in the fruition of all services needed along a life event (e.g., the change of address). In this paper, we present a new version of the Italian Public Administration Service (IPAS) model defined for the description of PA services. We will show how the new model supports the description of concepts that simplifies the definition of VAS. A case study defined in the context of the SMART project will be presented.

In recent years several description tools and formats have been introduced for describing REST Web APIs both in human and machine readable formats. Although these descriptions provide functional information about the APIs (e.g. HTTP methods, URIs, model schema, etc.), the information that qualifies the properties of APIs (e.g. classification of input arguments and response data) is missing. We envisage that providing a complete set of information to the users will facilitate the composition of APIs to fulfil users’ specific needs. This paper analyses the current state of the art in Web API Descriptions and Semantic Annotations to show that although there are solutions with semantic capabilities, most of them fails to add semantic annotations automatically or semi-automatically. Moreover, advanced technical skills are needed to manage semantics and compose different Web APIs, which reduce the number of potential users of such solutions. The goal is to enhance actual API descriptions by creating a simple description format to annotate properties at semantic level to support semi-automatic composition. To achieve this goal, we propose an extension of the Open API Initiative (OAI) specification to create comprehensive descriptions. The approach focuses on the emerging concept of API Profiling to add descriptive information of data semantics by addressing Dublin Core Application Profile (DCAP) guidelines.

DaCENA (Data Context for News Articles) is a web application that showcases a new approach to reading online news articles with the support of a data context built from interlinked facts available on the Web of Data. Given a source article, a set of facts that are estimated to be more interesting for the readers are extracted from the Web and presented using tailored information visualization methods and an interactive user interface. By looking at this background factual knowledge, the reader is supported in the interpretation of the news content and is suggested connections to related topics that he/she can further explore.

Thermoluminescence (TL) dating is a powerful tool in archaeology, and its reliability has been checked since the early 1970s. It is, in principle, specific for ceramic, but it can also be successfully applied to other materials of archaeological interest, provided that they have been submitted in the past to some kind of heating up to several hundreds of degrees centigrade. This is the case of prehistoric flint deliberately or accidentally burnt by ancient man. Illustrating the specific aspects of this application, we report the TL dating results of a group of burnt flints from three prehistoric sites in northern Italy. The first two, Ghiardo and Ghiardello, are open-air sites close to Reggio Emilia, at the fringe of the Apennine on Middle Pleistocene terraces. The third, Fumane, is a large cave system in the Venetian Pre-Alps, in the Lessini plateau, close to Verona. It includes a thick Palaeolithic sequence, spanning the whole first Pleninglacial period. © 2001 Editions scientifiques et medicales Elsevier SAS archaeometry / thermoluminescence / flint / palaeolithic

He Italian Public Administration Services (IPAS) is a registry of services provided to Italian citizens likewise the Local Government Service List (UK), or the European Service List for local authorities from other nations. Unlike existing registries, IPAS presents the novelty of modelling public services from the view point of the value they have for the consumers and the providers. A value-added-service (VAS) is linked to a life event that requires its fruition, addresses consumer categories to identify market opportunities for private providers, and is described by non-functional-properties such as price and time of fruition. Where Italian local authorities leave the citizen-users in a daedal us of references to understand whether they can/have to apply for a service, the IPAS model captures the necessary back-ground knowledge about the connection between administrative legislation and service specifications, life events, and application contexts to support the citizen-users to fulfill their needs. As a proof of concept, we developed an operational web environment named ASSO, designed to assist the citizen-user to intuitively create bundles of mandatory-by-legislation and recommended services, to accomplish his bureaucratic fulfillments. Although ASSO is an ongoing project, domain experts gave preliminary positive feedback on the innovativeness and effectiveness of the proposed approach. © 2013 IEEE.

Choreographers are interested in enriched performances where virtual actants play together with live performers. Augmented Choreography can be viewed as the definition of how perceptions generated from the environment turn into commands that influence the environment itself and, in particular, virtual actants. This paper introduces a modular and extensible architecture that supports the flexible and dynamic definition of augmented choreographies and presents an experimental application.

The neighbourhoods discussed here address different combinations of social issues, technical contexts and design options. Different logics of production are deployed, ranging from total renovation, to ex novo construction, or to incremental change. One could legitimately state that such variety does not allow any conclusive evidence, apart from warning that change follows disparate paths. However, the in-depth discussion of the case studies supports at least some logical and qualitative generalizations. The first of these is that at a closer look, all the solid neighbourhood characteristics “melt into air”. Even the seemingly obvious distinction between newly built and renovated neighbourhoods may get blurred eventually, since different logics of production for built space combine in the same area, as in Warsaw for instance; or because material and symbolic representations constantly interplay and evolve, as in Hvidore-Copenhagen; or because one logic intentionally or covertly evolves into another, as in Lisbon or Marseille. On the contrary, the storylines of neighbourhood development and redevelopment, though often showing argumentative loops, constitute the materiality of places. Bergsli in Marseille, Bøggild and Yde in Hvidore-Copenhagen, for instance, have focused on the ideological discourse that accompanies the actual construction of the neighbourhood. The analysis of the tense interplay between argumentation and power has enucleated the formal and practical logic imbedded in local events. Those discourses have directed the actors in assembling local and global policy repertoires. The resulting places are thus shaped by actions and discourses together. Eventually, the reconstruction of local narratives raises a question regarding the hidden structure of power, the overlap of discourses and policy communities. Such investigation provides an answer to the question of how neighbourhoods conflictually adjust to cities’ strategies. This is the case explored in Marseille, but is addressed also by Karachalis in Psiri, Annunziata in Rome and De Leo in Afragola. Neighbourhoods change, as often happens, as the result of the adaptation of builders' or inhabitants' practice to the cities’ changing context. All of the studies presented here raise questions such as the following. Does “post-modern” urban space offer any ground for the idea of social bonds? How do the new technicalities of sustainability, quality, and design interpret the condition of contemporary citizenships? What political ideas are incorporated in these spaces and designs; what aims, vision and layout are incorporated in the projects; what do they tell about the urbanity of the city to come? What is the place of ideology in building designers’, planners’ and decision-makers’ approach to the new organization of cities (public space, neighbourhoods)? Consumers, visitors and tourists might seem to be the only actors included by the neoliberal agenda, but these projects are actually describing a more hybrid concern, an exercise that apparently requires a challenging reconceptualisation of space. But how are the outputs of these different construction processes turned into a neighbourhood? The renovation of brown fields or former port areas involves a debate on the sustainable design of such an investment, as well as its budgetary and economic balance. All these have been areas of growing involvement for the local authorities over the last 30 years, and several countries’ experiences (albeit quite dissimilar) have been extensively studied and often taken as an example or a model. Flagship projects too, like EuroMediterranée in Marseille and Parque das Nações in Lisbon (Bergsli's and Aelbrecht's chapters), raise issues of culture and design. Both exemplify the process of redeveloping former industrial or infrastructural areas into a strategic part of the new envisioned city. Large urban projects are often viewed as the local epiphany of the "single thought” that lies behind neoliberal urban redevelopments. However, the story of urban projects in Europe -as these chapters show- is far more complicated than the mainstream critique allows, due to the strength of societal intermediate networks and the local state. In fact, all developments show a consistent process of mediation that is subject to all sorts of influences by the state, the local communities, and the technical bodies. And how does the construction of the local public sphere take place in these extremely different urban landscapes? The illegal settlement in the metropolitan area of Naples (De Leo), for instance, has a peculiar epiphany: not just informally built by the inhabitants, but organized or controlled by organized crime. The rehabilitation of old public estates (Bielany, but also Hvidore) is usually achieved through a laborious process, which involves an openly contested and conflict-ridden political dimension. Social housing estates usually carry a concern with social impacts, and with the way urban policy addresses such concerns (Eckardt and Klocke, Górzynska). Relying upon different combinations of public and private ethos, all these case-studies question the emergence of the public sphere in a statu nascendi local community, and the model of urban citizenship incorporated by the organization of space. These processes are often referred to as a new request for urbanity. The central question is apparently that the political discussion needs to reflect on the disappointing results of the promises of the Habermasian “project of modernity” aiming at social cohesion, civic liberties, and general wealth. New residential neighbourhoods have been built that exemplify the contemporary effort to devise a way of living into the 21st century (Trkulja and Annunziata). The model Ørestad neighbourhood in Copenhagen is far different in ambitions from the ordinary, privately promoted and designed and assembled Ponte di Nona district in Rome. Neighbourhoods built by design are a field experiment in linking urbanism and urbanity. Only the social nature of urban space might be controlled by design and planning rules, at least in part; the organization of social bonds, instead, are created and recreated by inhabitants in practical engagements. This link is the basis of a long and sound debate in both planning and sociology. The resulting public space is the main design challenge for those settlements, which differ entirely in purpose and quality. Political scientists and planners share a distinctive, yet not coinciding interest in the public space and the public sphere. The public sphere faces here the same risk of erosion as the public space, and might be rescued by the same process of adapting to the dwelling practices of the inhabitants. Renovated, gentrified, evolving districts, such as the cultural quarter of Psiri in Athens, the modernist experiment of Hvidore in Copenhagen, the transition areas surrounding Bielany in Warsaw, the inner city of in Frankfurt, all address the coexistence of different social groups in a shared space, and the political approach to such processes. A concern is growing with the ideology of places, and the 'political' uses of the image of old and new neighbourhoods. ‘Political’ is used here in the sense that the building of the image is the subject of a large confrontation among a number of factors, which interact strategically in a symbolically mediated field. This is precisely the case in those neighbourhoods labelled as “cultural districts”, or as gentrified or renaissance areas. In these cases we explore the political art of branding, renaming, and selling new products in a very mobile submarket: a submarket made of the investment activities of new agencies, and of the often blurred actions of different tiers of government. “Changing places” reflects the empirical evidence of neighbourhoods, taken as some form of local-societal entity, and against the background of more observations of developments in urban planning, local governance and in particular citizenship, but also of a wide reaching construction of narratives, discourses and ideologies. In doing so, this book is caught up in the paradoxical situation that “change” and the observation of it cannot be separated from the more profound idea of change as such. What really changes, beyond the ideology of change? That is the final question that has motivated this book.

To paraphrase an oft-quoted Shakespearean line, neighbourhoods and places are “such stuff as dreams are made of”. In present day usage, "the stuff of dreams" refers to wishes and desires: in the poem and in this book, the "stuff of dreams" refers to the materials that create an illusion. Are the new neighbourhoods developed across Europe just an illusion? Not at all, of course: on the contrary, they are the material, often dull, contested, heavy substance that fashions the dream of the 21st century city. This latter is often sold as an illusion, the appeased image of the renaissance city, hub of creativity, tolerance, growth and competitiveness. These are profound ideological images, deeply rooted inside the common wisdom of urban policies that often misguide urban research. The nature and ideology of ongoing urban change is difficult to ascertain: discourse and reality are strictly interwoven and hard to unravel. The book tries to reveal some of the materials that have created such an illusion: politics, economics, design materials, and more symbolic “stuff” as well. Eventually, the investigation of matter and dreams, built space and public images, leads to a better understanding of the political constitution of new neighbourhoods.

This book investigates the process of change in some European neighbourhoods, either newly and purposely built or redeveloped from ashes and scratch. The questions addressed concern the model and process of change of urban places, considering both local communities and physical spaces. The included chapters investigate the scope and nature of uses and design, assess the contribution of place to a common urban life, and reconstruct the role and discourse of planners. The book tries to offer evidence of many varied and complex paths of change, far from the mainstream simplified models of general urban evolution. The piecemeal production of new additions to cities, as well as the process of incrementally reconverting old places and urban segments, we argue, proceeds in fact on twin tracts: structural change and internal evolution, discourses and practices combined, are therefore to be considered together. The following case studies assess the internal logic of the ideological discourses of change against the actual practices of production taking place in the neighbourhoods. The research tackles such change from the neighbourhoods upwards, rather than ‘downloading’ frames and concepts from the general models of urban change. All chapters venture into the realm of discursive arguments, analysing visions and discourses elaborated to justify neighbourhood change, unravelling the tangle between everyday practices and ideological representations. Beyond celebration or slander, studying these narratives contributes to the understanding of places; even more, to the critique of both the design of physical spaces and the elaboration of policy actions. “Changing places” is composed of a series of different case studies, though all investigate the change of European neighbourhoods in the last twenty years . The chapters are based upon original research carried out by a group of researchers from different countries and backgrounds, reflecting a varied set of interests and cultural orientations, as well as the personal approaches of their respective authors . The book's selection acknowledges the diversity of the contributions, a diversity reflected in the table of contents, which alternates interpretative and analytical contributions. Far from confusing, the contrast of different views provided here enriches the understanding of the way places change: moreover, it emphasizes through contrast the buzz of rhetorical arguments that weigh down the research on this subject.

I cambiamenti che negli ultimi dieci anni hanno investito le quattro regioni oggetto di studio hanno evidenziato processi di trasformazione economica, sociale e insediativa peculiari per ciascuna delle aree. Gli elementi chiave risiedono nei processi di trasformazione produttiva e di terziarizzazione urbana che, puntando soprattutto su capacità competitive e innovative del territorio, hanno seguito percorsi e finalità differenti nei quattro casi. Le quattro regioni descrivono modi molto diversi di gestire la transizione ad un’economia post industriale. Le differenze sono marcate, e corrispondono in larga misura ai caratteri specifici del sistema produttivo e insediativo, e ai percorsi diversi della crisi. Sono differenze che tutto sommato si accordano meno alla situazione individuale, che non a specifici stili di decisione e programmazione. In base alla indagine sugli indirizzi programmatici, le differenze tra i quattro casi studio sono apparse marcate. Sia nella struttura e negli indirizzi generali, che per le politiche per le città e l’innovazione dei sistemi produttivi, i quattro casi mostrano posizioni diverse. Per quanto riguarda l’innovazione, Veneto e Toscana danno spazio alle reti di imprese, quest’ultimo anche con attenzione ai distretti, sistemi produttivi locali o specifici settori tecnologici; mentre Piemonte e Lazio (questo anche attraverso settori o tecnologie specifiche) privilegiano lo strumento delle agenzie. Per quanto attiene alle politiche urbane, Il Piemonte ha favorito iniziative di maggior respiro, che cercano di favorire processi di riconversione della base economica e produttiva, di miglioramento e diversificazione dell'offerta urbana; la Toscana ha ampiamente territorializzato le politiche urbane, orientate però in modo tradizionale alle infrastrutture e all’efficienza produttiva; Lazio e Veneto hanno curato altre iniziative, non molto orientate alle città e meno attente allo sviluppo delle risorse umane, e senza un forte riferimento territoriale. Anticipando un giudizio di sintesi, certamente schematico ma suggestivo, questi Docup appaiono condizionati nel bene o nel male dalla preesistenza della grande industria: quando questa mancava, o era stata storicamente debole, e deboli gli effetti della sua crisi, i Docup sono risultati remediali e distributivi, poco concentrati e poco integrati, come nel caso del Veneto e del Lazio, quest’ultimo simile addirittura ad un Por; laddove la grande industria è stata presente, e la deindustrializzazione ha costituito il problema per eccellenza, come nel caso del Piemonte e della Toscana, questi documenti sono risultati un poco più orientati strategicamente, e un poco più territorializzati. Queste differenze si sono tradotte in orientamenti programmatici, frutto dell’intenzionalità politica e delle reti di interessi; ma sono anche venuti a dipendere da vincoli, regolamenti e shock esterni (la transizione economica), elementi di diversa forza e cogenza. Elementi che sono stati diversi e si sono combinati in modo diverso in ciascuna regione, in linea con situazioni e ispirazioni particolari. Ma sono anche venuti a dipendere da fattori meno espliciti ma non meno influenti. In questa indagine è stata prestata una forte attenzione alle “pratiche” di programmazione esperite, allo ‘stile’ dei programmi di investimento, nonché alle vicende della mobilitazione dei territori. Come vedremo, il dispiegarsi delle pratiche ha influenzato a ritroso gli orientamenti programmatici, e mostra in definitiva una crescente somiglianza tra i diversi esempi. Ai fini delle indicazioni programmatiche, dunque, la lettura condotta ha esaminato da un lato i presupposti e dall'altro le pratiche. I presupposti dei programmi dipendevano in particolare dai modi delle perimetrazioni, dalle scelte delle priorità, dalla rappresentazione del territorio, dagli stili di governance. Le pratiche si sono sviluppate a partire dalle forme di territorializzazione dei programmi (non sempre deliberate ex ante), e dalle tematiche specifiche delle politiche per l’innovazione e le città (sovente resistenti alle categorie delle politiche).Per esempio, la tematizzazione della città nei programmi regionali -come si vedrà in seguito- è molto diversa, sia da un punto di vista qualitativo che quantitativo a seconda se viene riguardata dal punto di vista dei presupposti o delle pratiche.

Dall'analisi delle dinamiche di sviluppo della conurbazione napoletana vengono individuate diverse tipologie e forme del territorio. L'analisi viene poi dettagliata su una località della costa occidentale che funziona come un quartiere del capoluogo regionale.

This article presents and discusses the chronological layout of the final Mousterian and Uluzzian levels of Fumane Cave in northern Italy using 14C, ESR and TL methods. Given its complex sedimentary and cultural succession, Fumane is a key site to assess the Middle-Upper Palaeolithic transition in Southern Europe and to explore Neanderthal behaviour and to compare it with the first Aurignacians. Large ranges defined by the ESR and TL dates cover the radiocarbon ages for units from A11 to A4, respectively, from 42.8 to 32.5 ka BP become progressively younger in agreement with the stratigraphy, despite high dispersions within the same unit. Our estimates using chronometric data seem to support the hypothesis that the sequence may cover almost 10,000 radiocarbon yr and that from comparison with the sedimentological and palaeoecological data, the late Middle Palaeolithic and the early Upper Palaeolithic at Fumane occur in sediments formed under moderately cool to mild climatic conditions correlated to the Hengelo-Interstadial, shifting towards cooler and drier conditions. Finally, comparisons between the Fumane data set and other sites in the North-Adriatic region are discussed. © 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Questa raccolta di saggi descrive il cambiamento della città attraverso i suoi quartieri ; tratta cioè di luoghi specifici e particolari traiettorie di cambiamento. Alcuni anni fa, Doreen Massey (2005) ha discusso le contemporanee immagini di spazio e tempo, e le idee e narrazioni che ne conseguono; affermando in conclusione che non esiste uno spazio, o un luogo, né un tempo privilegiato. Luoghi, temporalità e processi di cambiamenti sono appunto il prodotto d’interazioni sociali; sono frutto di processi diversi, e il carattere contestuale del cambiamento fonda una pluralità di percorsi e narrazioni costitutivamente eterogenea; e sono costruiti socialmente, un’impresa mai definitivamente compiuta, in un intreccio di storie in simultaneo divenire (ivi). Si capirà, allora, l’interesse per la città vista dalla prospettiva del quartiere, per un aggregato regolato visto da dove il tempo e lo spazio si riconoscono l’uno nell’altro nella costruzione di una vicenda comune. In questa prospettiva, si privilegiano alcuni punti di vista: quello della vita quotidiana, senza dubbio; e dei legami sociali tradizionali scossi dalla modernizzazione prima, dalla globalizzazione poi. E, infine, dell’agire politico locale, al tempo stesso centrale nelle pratiche sociali e residuale rispetto alle dinamiche complessive. I capitoli che seguono, scritti in prevalenza da giovani ricercatori di diversa provenienza (antropologia, architettura, psicologia, sociologia, storia e urbanistica), seguono inevitabilmente linee di ricerca di diverso orientamento disciplinare, pur con alcuni punti in comune: cercano nuove descrizioni della morfologia degli spazi, secondo una tradizione che in Italia ha avuto una recente fortuna, rinnovando le analisi urbanistiche e geografiche; ricostruiscono le pratiche sociali, i modi di uso e i rapporti di convivenza a livello sociale, con una dichiarata attenzione etnografica alle pratiche e alle culture locali; esaminano le forme di mediazione e di mobilitazione politica, e la gestione locale che le leadership locali, non ancora sparite del tutto, cercano di fare degli effetti delle politiche pubbliche. Più che una sintesi, dunque, il valore di questa ricerca è di riaprire un ambito di studio che sembra esser stato seppellito sotto frettolose liquidazioni. E che altrettanto frettolosamente potrebbe essere rivisitato. Ancora una volta, le facili dicotomie prevalenti sul declino sociale oscurano la ricerca più umile e paziente– d’interpretazioni che sappiano essere coerenti con il quadro dei fenomeni e capaci di dialogare con le rappresentazioni dei soggetti. Forse il primo risultato, e il più importante, è suggerire che il tema del quartiere resiste, e occupa una certa rilevanza nelle fenomenologie del cambiamento metropolitano, nelle pratiche degli abitanti, nei comportamenti degli attori politici. Questo lavoro inoltre introduce diverse ‘famiglie’ di quartieri, situazioni distinte e forse tipizzabili di convivenza locale. Ciascuna con problemi e con potenzialità, alcune con risorse e opportunità. Più avanti descriveremo alcuni fenomeni emergenti che sembrano mostrare degli aspetti innovativi: la creazione di quartieri di nicchia, per esempio, o la improvvisa conversione di vecchi comuni di periferia in nuovi borghi metropolitani. E le diverse configurazioni che nel frattempo assumono i quartieri consolidati della ormai logora (come fenomeno, e come descrizione) periferia delle città, siano essi pubblici o di nuova immigrazione. In secondo luogo, dopo anni di sperimentazione delle azioni locali di quartiere, queste riflessioni indicano la necessità di ampliare il quadro di riferimento delle politiche urbane, interrogando con maggior respiro l’orizzonte evolutivo del neoliberismo e la sua ibridazione locale (vedi anche i saggi in Cremaschi, 2008, a cura di). C’è una storia dietro ogni formazione sociale e, nelle debite proporzioni, dietro ogni quartiere. Conoscerla e ricostruirla sono condizione per capire le possibilità di trasformazione locale. La storia locale, la rappresentazione del passato (e insieme del futuro) hanno una forza e un’inerzia straordinaria e trascinante. Inoltre, i saggi che seguono suggeriscono di approfondire la dimensione delle pratiche sociali, che non solo danno senso e sostengono le politiche locali e le reti locali degli attori della politica; ma che costituiscono un volano resiliente e duraturo della vita sociale locale. La tenuta della coesione sociale è un problema delle nostre società, ma non implica necessariamente che ogni organizzazione sociale sia fragile. Riconoscere gli elementi di resistenza e quelli di crisi può aiutare a definire politiche meno generiche. In definitiva, questo libro tratta del cambiamento. E non del cambiamento di grana minuta che avviene localmente, o quello che riguarda solo la vita personale e gli orientamenti culturali. Ma, pur attraverso queste lenti (e con i limiti conseguenti), il cambiamento delle società urbane. Con il risultato di evidenziare i ritmi diversi, le rielaborazioni culturali, il campo delle differenze: cambiamenti lenti, a volte ‘dolci’, ma con subitanei accelerazioni (come quella che stiamo attraversando); cambiamenti spesso attesi, ma che offrono non di rado conseguenze non intuitive, rielaborate a volte con esiti insospettabili. Sembra allora possibile affermare che – con un po’ di sorpresa – questo tema non è abbastanza curato da studiosi e scienziati sociali, che lo venerano ma raramente lo criticano. Ciascuno di noi è incline a sottostimare i difetti del proprio lavoro, e non sarà chi scrive a sfuggire a questa regola. Ma questa raccolta, pur iniziale e con tutti le approssimazioni proprie delle raccolte di diversa provenienza, mi sembra capace di affrontare il tema trascurato delle forme concrete del cambiamento, della società e della città, del territorio, cosi come sono intese localmente; e le combinazioni tra i grandi eventi, le regolazioni locali e le forme di territorializzazione. A me sembra che concentrarsi su questo aspetto sia una delle necessità di studio dei prossimi anni. Recently, a very celebrated return to the neighbourhood has occurred. In the contemporary narrative of the ‘global’ -yet ‘divided’- city, the neighbourhood occupies a central position. New labels testify the need of produce sounder and better description of the neighbourhoods. One may wonder what definitions like gentrified areas, gated communities, or quartiers en crise have in common; or what the cultural districts, the creative hub, the ‘sustainable’ living actually promise. Apart from differences in purpose and ideology, they all revert to a recombination of social and physical units. What I am suggesting here is that most of these current definitions propose a plain and peaceful arrangement between contrasting images of society and space. They tend to assert an order where there is actually a field of conflictual practices. On the contrary, the neighbourhood requires an approach oriented to describe these practices, and retrieve from these hypotheses about the resultant order. The probing of the nature of neighbourhoods can not be severed from the inquiry onto the nature of the city. Urban reserchers have increasingly enlarged the list of relevant explanatory factors, warning about unfruitful generalization, since the world of cities is increasingly interdependent; urban living in particular is not anymore separated from the rural culture; urban lifestyles dominate the whole culture etc. Even more complex, cities do not seem to offer stable conditions on which concentrate the analytical effort; conditions like mobility, exchanges and transitoriety being crucial stakes to any possible description. However, neighbourhoods have heavily suffered from the rhetoric of global change and flows. On one hand, they are celebrated as the creative results of fashion design, attempting to contribute towards the marketing of new identities. On the other hand, neighbourhoods are stigmatised as contexts of “relegation”, the hidden area of marginality. Ordinary neighbourhoods are quite blurred in this clash of extremes. In this context, it comes as no surprise the emphasis placed on the identity of places: the design of the new building complexes and open spaces has been overloaded with expectations and promises, appearing almost as a thaumaturgical device against the wounds of cities. Even building companies have grasped the opportunities of marketing new styles of living either gentrifying former working class neighbourhoods; or building new ideal locations. A new romanticism has sprung, expecting new neighbourhoods and plazas to reconcile history and modernity, differences and public sphere. Such profound ideological discourse permeates not only building practices, but also broader policy frameworks. The mythical approach to design surfaces also in the EU’s urban policies, the UK urban renaissance framework, the US new urbanism. However, such rediscovering assumes all but too easy the “natural” deployment of the socialisation process. The communitarian effect of living together is not granted, if ever was. Most of the socialization took place in the streets, or in the secular struggle for expanding the public sphere, both occurrence heavily influenced by the working experience, rather than the neighborhood. Both the urban and the political public space are subjected to a profound restructutation, and the contemporary city is questioned precisely because is not anymore “producing society”.