Public Real Estate Assets and the Metropolitan Strategic Plan in Italy. The Two Cases of Milan and Cagliari

COVID-19 hit Italy in February 2020 after its outbreak in China at the beginning of January. Why was Italy first among the Western countries? What are the conditions that made Italy more vulnerable and the first target of this disease? What characteristics and diffusion patterns could be highlighted and hypothesized from its outbreak to the end of March 2020, after containment measures, including a national lockdown, were introduced? In this paper, we try to provide some answers to these questions, analyzing the issue from medical, geographical and planning points of view. With reference to the Italian case, we observed the phenomenon in terms of the spatial diffusion process and by observing the relation between the epidemic and various environmental elements. In particular, we started from a hypothesis of the comparable economic, geographical, climatic and environmental conditions of the areas of Wuhan (in the Hubei Province in China, where the epidemic broke out) and the Po Valley area (in Italy) where most cases and deaths were registered. Via an ecological approach, we compared the spatial distribution and pattern of COVID-19-related mortality in Italy with several geographical, environmental and socio-economic variables at a Provincial level, analyzing them by means of spatial analytical techniques such as LISA (Local Indicators of Spatial Association). Possible evidence arose relating to COVID-19 cases and Nitrogen-related pollutants and land take, particularly in the Po Valley area.

Spatial planning and territorial promotion can benefit largely from the application of the Information Communication Technology (ICT) at different scales. From knowledge acquisition to management and planning, their role in building an image of the territory, and constantly updating it to the benefit of users and planners, is of paramount importance. Institutional channels, together with social networks, are the means by which both a local community and a wider community of users share experiences and perceptions. ICTs are therefore strategic in supporting and promoting a sustainable tourism development of territories. Data and information aggregators as dashboards represent examples of decision support systems where digital data are organized and processed to produce an information output. The present paper is part of a wider research, related to the valorization of a former mining area in the Sulcis-Iglesiente area (Sardinia, Italy), where the extraction activity has left the place to abandonment, and only recently to tourism, stressing the concept of slow tourism. Such new opportunity has been launched with the Santa Barbara Walk (SBW), an ancient mining route currently trying to consolidate as a tourism attraction area. Such a territory is in constant transition with unique characters of anthropic and naturalistic characterization, setting itself as a green infrastructure, capable also of attracting a wide community of regional and extra-regional users. However, its digital network—consisting of intangible infrastructure and flows—is fragmented in terms of policies and contents. Additionally, a state of disorganization in slow tourism promotion activities can be observed. To implement the SBW capabilities, the present paper aims to develop a proposal for the framework of a circular dashboard applied to the SBW. In particular, we implement a set of indicators of performance of the SBW for the organization of information on the walk’s main characters, to facilitate a shared governance and an effective tourism promotion. The SBW is recognized as a network connecting the main points of interest preferred by the slow tourism (This paper is based on the Research project TSULKI—Tourism and Sustainability in the Sulcis (Sardinia-Italy)—and on the agreement protocol between DICAAR Department of Cagliari University and Foundation of the Santa Barbara Walk, signed in December 2018).