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Senza una quotidiana disponibilità di acqua potabile è fortemente compromessa la dignità del vivere delle persone. È infatti dall’accesso diffuso e di qualità ai servizi di captazione e fornitura dell’acqua, a quelli di fognatura e di depurazione delle acque reflue, che dipende una rilevante porzione del benessere dei cittadini. Per molto tempo l’infrastrutturazione e la gestione delle reti materiali che hanno con- sentito il consumo sociale del bene acqua e dei relativi servizi essenziali è dipeso dalla sfera pubblica. Ma la fornitura di beni e servizi fondamentali è una posta in gioco di grande valore, perennemente contesa da interessi potenti spesso coadiuvati da classi politiche compiacenti. Ecco che anche in Italia, pur in ritardo rispetto agli altri paesi europei, si è sviluppato un forte e trasversale interesse di una gran parte della classe politica e degli attori economici del settore per la trasformazione della gestione del servizio di distribuzione dell’acqua in senso privatistico: l’acqua, da bene comune, sarebbe diventata merce

Questo saggio mette a confronto il modo in cui il denaro digitale e stato La ricerca indaga, attraverso l’analisi empirica, i recenti processi di riforma che hanno interessato i servizi sociali e l’accoglienza, con l’obiettivo di descrivere se e come essi contribuiscano a ridefinire il ruolo dei lavoratori sociali. Attraverso due studi di caso nel territorio di Roma, un Punto Unico di Accesso e un Centro di Accoglienza Straordinaria, e stato possibile far emergere le pressioni esercitate sui lavoratori dalla spinta verso l'efficientamento dei servizi e dalla crescente attribuzione di funzioni di controllo sociale. La capacita dei lavoratori di farsi rappresentanti dei bisogni dei beneficiari sembra ridefinirsi come negoziazione individualizzata di spazi di autonomia, sostenuta dall’adesione etico-politica alle ragioni sociali della professione.

Since the 1990s, public policy has made incremental transformations towards greater involvement of common citizens in policymaking. The vast body of literature on healthcare service co-production and patient empowerment testifies to the persistent relevance of participatory ideas and practices in the healthcare debate. This chapter analyzes participation through the lens of an interpretative approach to public policy. It discusses the macro, meso and micro connections between participation and the evolution of contemporary democracies. Secondly, it explores the dilemmas and unintended consequences that result from using participation as the ultimate justification for policy interventions. Finally, it highlights the potential depoliticizing effect of participatory procedures on decisions about collective problems and social goals.

Cities are major contributors to global emissions, producers of waste and consumers of resources such as energy, water and food: implementing green development strategies is hence a core challenge of modern city-planning. The attention of research has been focusing on the development of energy efficient, low carbon strategies, yet city decision-makers need truly integrated approaches, as the one proposed by the water-energy-food Nexus. The purpose of our paper is to investigate whether it is possible to take one step in this direction by extending existing approaches to energy efficiency strategies to progressively include other priority resources, in particular water. To test this hypothesis we have taken a robust and well accepted methodology, the ELCC (Economics of Low Carbon development strategies for Cities) developed by SEI and CCCEP, and we have extended it to the case of demand side water efficiency strategies for cities. We have then applied the adapted ELCC framework to the case study of the domestic sector of the city of Bologna (Italy), identifying and prioritizing several efficiency measures. Measures were evaluated through their capital investment, annual values of savings, payback period and reduction in consumption, and then aggregated in different scenarios in order to highlight potential urban investments and to showcase a possible approach to the prioritization of demand side water efficiency measures. The results show that, with an upfront investment of € 17 million, a feasible subset of Bologna’s households could be equipped with five selected cost-effective measures, generating annual savings of € 10.2 million and reducing the total domestic water consumption of 34% by 2020 compared to the 2012 initial value. With additional € 28.5 million, households could be equipped with more costly appliances reaching an overall water reduction of 37% by 2020. Our findings confirm that it is possible to successfully extend current approaches to urban energy efficiency strategies to include demand side water efficiency, adding an important building block to the construction of an integrated Nexus-based approach to green development strategies at the city-level. We encourage further tests to confirm the robustness of the methodology.

The relative hegemony of land rentiers and real estate developers over the process of urban socio-economic reproduction is a defining characteristic of the "collusive regime" of Rome. Through the analysis of a case study, we tried to establish if the realisation of Urban Development Projects in this regime favours the unequal distribution of the benefits deriving from urban development. Applying a neo-Gramscian lens to urban political economy, we identified an interpretative model for explaining the role of UDPs in the urban regime of Rome. First, UDPs are suitable occasions for realising accumulation strategies based on the capture of rent gaps and the valorisation of urban assets. Second, the actors involved in UDPs mobilise ideational and material resources for gathering consensus for a project, that rewards their specific interests, by framing their investment as the best solution for localised collective needs. UDPs in Rome, therefore, facilitate the concentration of benefits and the generalisation of costs of urban development. Our research contributes to the understanding of Rome's fragile trajectory of growth and offers insights on the mechanisms reinforcing unequal urban development.