scholarly journals Evaluating and Planning Green Infrastructure: A Strategic Perspective for Sustainability and Resilience

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 2726 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angioletta Voghera ◽  
Benedetta Giudice

In the light of the current changing global scenarios, green infrastructure is obtaining increasing relevance in planning policies, especially due to its ecological, environmental and social components which contribute to pursuing sustainable and resilient planning and designing of cities and territories. The issue of green infrastructure is framed within the conceptual contexts of sustainability and resilience, which are described through the analysis of their common aspects and differences with a particular focus on planning elements. In particular, the paper uses two distinct case studies of green infrastructure as representative: the green infrastructure of the Region Languedoc-Roussillon in France and the one of the Province of Turin in Italy. The analysis of two case studies focuses on the evaluation process carried on about the social-ecological system and describes the methodologies and the social-ecological indicators used to define the green infrastructure network. We related these indicators to their possible contribution to the measurement of sustainability and resilience. The analysis of this relationship led us to outline some conclusive considerations on the complex role of the design of green infrastructure with reference to sustainability and resilience.

2021 ◽  
pp. 026858092199450
Author(s):  
Nicola Maggini ◽  
Tom Montgomery ◽  
Simone Baglioni

Against the background of crisis and cuts, citizens can express solidarity with groups in various ways. Using novel survey data this article explores the attitudes and behaviours of citizens in their expressions of solidarity with disabled people and in doing so illuminates the differences and similarities across two European contexts: Italy and the UK. The findings reveal pools of solidarity with disabled people across both countries that have on the one hand similar foundations such as the social embeddedness and social trust of citizens, while on the other hand contain some differences, such as the more direct and active nature of solidarity in Italy compared to the UK and the role of religiosity as an important determinant, particularly in Italy. Across both countries the role of ‘deservingness’ was key to understanding solidarity, and the study’s conclusions raise questions about a solidarity embedded by a degree of paternalism and even religious piety.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (7) ◽  
pp. 3858
Author(s):  
Francesca Abastante ◽  
Isabella M. Lami ◽  
Marika Gaballo

This paper is built on the following research questions: (i) What are the direct/indirect relationships between Sustainable Development Goal 11 (SDG11) and sustainability protocols? (ii) Could the sustainability protocols constitute a solution towards the achievement of SDG11? We underline that, on the one hand, the SDGs are guidelines to support the development of sustainable policies and thus address all elements that may affect them, and on the other hand, sustainability protocols are assessment tools to promote sustainability-conscious design while remaining focused on the built environment. In the Italian regulatory context, the paper highlights how this difference in terms of focus and scale means that they only overlap and mutually reinforce each other with regard to certain aspects, more related to energy and air pollution issues and less to the social aspects of sustainability. Even if there is not always a direct relationship between the evaluation criteria of the protocols and the indicators of SDG11, it is possible to conclude that the sustainability protocols can facilitate the achievement of the SDG11 targets, acting as a key for the implementation of sustainable cities and helping in structuring the process leading to sustainability in a broader framework.


2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (11) ◽  
pp. 374-377
Author(s):  
Tinni Goswami Bhattacharya

The essential theme of this paper is to highlight the condition of health and hygiene in the British Bengal from the perspective of official documents and vernacular writings, with special emphasis on the journals and periodicals. The fatal effects of the epidemics like malaria and cholera, the insanitary condition of the rural Bengal and the cultivated indifference of the British Raj made the lives of the poor natives miserable and ailing. The authorities had a tendency to blame the colonized for their illiteracy and callousness, which became instrumental for the outbreak of the epidemics. On the other, in the late 19 th and the beginning of the 20th, the vernacular literature played the role of a catalyst in awakening health awareness, highlighting the issues related with ill health, insanitation and malnourishment. More importantly, it became an active link between the society and culture on the one hand, and health and people on the other. The present researcher wants to highlight these opposite trajectories of mentalities with a different connotation. The ideologies of the Raj and the native political aspirations often reflected in the colonial writings, where the year 1880 was considered as a landmark in the field of public health policies. On the other, the dichotomy between the masters and the colonized took a prominent shape during 1930s. Within these fifty years; the health of the natives witnessed many upheavals grounded on the social, economic and cultural tensions.


Author(s):  
Michelle Sofo ◽  
Francesco Sofo

This chapter explores the link between social capital, the bullying that can occur via social networking sites, and community education. It becomes evident that social networking sites are influential sources of informal learning despite the published literature being somewhat divided on the sociological, psychological, and emotional benefits of social networking. Through the presentation of Australian statistics and case studies, the chapter demonstrates how social capital can be eroded through the misuse of social networking sites particularly in the form of cyber bullying. The Australian government has responded to the social impacts of cyber bullying by funding an extensive community education program. Through examining this program, it is possible to see how important it is to have effective and accessible community education regarding safe and responsible social networking.


Author(s):  
Cem Özatalay ◽  
Gözde Aytemur Nüfusçu ◽  
Gülistan Zeren

The use of blood money by powerful people during the judicial process following different kinds of homicides (workplace homicides, state homicides, gun homicides and so on) has become commonplace within the neoliberal context. Based on data obtained from five cases in Turkey, this chapter shows, on the one hand, how the use of blood money serves as an effective tool in the hands of powerful people to consolidate power relations, particularly necropower, as well as the relationship of domination, which rests upon class and identity-based inequalities. The analysis indicates that the blood money offers made by powerful people allows them to minimize potential penalties within penal courts and also to keep their privileged positions in the social hierarchy by purchasing the ‘right to kill’. On the other hand, the resistance of the oppressed and aggrieved people to the subjugation of life to the power of death is analysed with a particular focus on the role of power asymmetries between perpetrators and victims and their unequal positions in the social hierarchy. This conflictual relationship, which we qualify as an expression of necrodomination, offers novel insights into Turkey’s historically shaped system of domination.


2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 485-498 ◽  
Author(s):  
C.A. Strine

AbstractThe patriarch Jacob is an involuntary migrant. Jacob lives as an asylum seeker from Esau’s threat of violence and then as a refugee under Laban’s protection. Eventually, Jacob returns ‘home’ to Canaan, but he finds there a society totally different than the one he remembers or imagines. Jacob resembles involuntary migrants from other cultures in all of these ways. The experiences of other involuntary migrants can and should, therefore, guide interpretation of this narrative. This article, therefore, exegetes the texts concerning Jacob in Genesis 25-33 by utilising findings from the social-scientific study of involuntary migration, James C. Scott’s work on subaltern resistance, and studies on the role of trickster narratives in the Hebrew Bible. By generating new interpretive solutions to perennially problematic passages and showing the prominence of the experience of involuntary migration in Genesis, this article outlines an important new hermeneutical approach relevant not only for this text but also for a large number of texts in the Hebrew Bible concerned with involuntary migration.


2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-225
Author(s):  
Arif A JAMAL

AbstractIn considering the articles in this Special Issue, I am struck by the importance of a set of factors that, in my view, both run through the articles like a leitmotif, as well as shape the major ‘take away’ lesson(s) from the articles. In this short commentary, I elaborate on these factors and the lesson(s) to take from them through five ‘Cs’: context; complexity; contestation; the framework of constitutions; and the role of comparative law. The first three ‘Cs’ are lessons from the case studies of the articles themselves, while the second two ‘Cs’ are offered as lessons to help take the dialogue forward. Fundamentally, these five ‘Cs’ highlight the importance of the articles in this Special Issue and the conference from which they emerged on the one hand, while on the other hand, also making us aware of what are the limits of what we should conclude from the individual articles. In other words, taken together, the five ‘Cs’ are, one might say, lessons about lessons.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-30
Author(s):  
Nenad Miscevic ◽  

What is the role of toleration in the present-day crisis, marked by the inflow of refugees and increase in populism? The seriousness of the crises demands efforts of active toleration, acceptance, and integration of refugees and the like. Active toleration brings with itself a series of very demanding duties, divided into immediate ones involving immediate Samaritan aid to people at our doors and the long-term ones involving their acculturation and possibilities of decent life for them. A cosmopolitan attitude can contribute a lot. In the context of a refugee crisis, cosmopolitanism is not disappearing but showing its non-traditional, more Samaritan face turned not to distant strangers, as the classical one, but towards strangers at our doors.We have conjectured that this work of active toleration can diminish the need for the passive one: the well-integrated immigrant is no longer seen as a strange, exotic person with an incomprehensible and unacceptable attitude, but as one of us so that her attitudes become less irritating and provocative. The social-psychological approach that sees integration as involving both the preservation of central aspects of the original identity and the copy-pasting of the new one over it offers an interesting rationale for the conjecture: once integrated, the former newcomer is perceived as one of ‘us’ and her views stop being exotic, incomprehensible and a priori unacceptable. Given the amount of need for toleration, and difficulties and paradoxes connected with its passive variety, the conjecture, if true, might be a piece of good news.Finally, we have briefly touched the question of deeper causes of the crisis. Once one turns to this question, the traditional cosmopolitan issues come back to the forefront: the deep poverty and unjust distribution on the one hand, and conflicts and wars on the other. Cosmopolitans have a duty to face these issues, and this is where active global toleration leads in our times.


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