Number VIII, 2020

[extended deadline: September 30^th, 2019]

“Democracy of places: actions and forms of community self-government”

Please find here attached the full text of the Call in English and Italian, each one with the link to submission guidelines in the relevant language.
Papers must be received by the editors (at rivista@societadeiterritorialisti.it by September 30^th, 2019 and will enter the usual peer review process in double blind. The staff will accept papers written in Italian, French, English and Spanish only when complying with the substantive and formal requirements the call indicates. Since the first submission, an English version of the abstract is required.

To avoid risks of exclusion, the authors’ drafting must comply with the editorial criteria specified in the guidelines (downloadable in the allowed languages from http://bit.ly/2y9tTFy), with a special attention to the part concerning the darkening of personal data.

For further information: rivista@societadeiterritorialisti.it

Please click here for more details: English

Number VII, 2019

[deadline has been extended: November 30th, 2018]

"Heritage communities for fragile territories”

Since long the whole Italian mountainous and hilly system has been suffering a dangerous process of abandonment, with serious consequences in terms of environmental security, territorial presidium and socio‐cultural vitality. During the last decade these negative effects have been tragically exacerbated by a series of frequent and devastating seismic events, which affected great part of the central Apennine, from Marche to Molise, sadly replicating the strong earthquakes that in the last century periodically hit the Italian “highlands”.

The strenuous resistance of some inhabitants to the abandonment of the places of their everyday life is not sufficient to significantly reduce the demographic decline and the consequent socio‐cultural and economic impoverishment of many “internal” areas. To invert this trend and reverse the consolidated paradigm of “small centres on the brink of extinction”, it is therefore needed to sustain local communities in developing diffuse forms of renewed self‐organisation of and of self‐governance of territorial heritages, outlining through action‐research processes new visions and narration for the “bone of Italy”, so far scarcely investigated. The transition from “territories of resistance to heritage communities” constituted the focus of the V annual convention of the Società dei Territorialisti/e (https://goo.gl/1rGjUH), held in Matelica (MC, IT) on 12‐14 October 2017.1

For further information: rivista@societadeiterritorialisti.it

Please click here for more details: English

Number VI, 2018

[deadline: JUNE 30th, 2017]

"Local economies of the territory as the commons"

The dramatic imbalances and inequalities generated by globalised economy call for a reflection on how to build an alternative to this economic model, destroying territories as it centralises resources and power in a few hands. In order to define a plausible alternative, it is useful to focus on territories and the essential needs of people; it is therefore necessary to rethink development in economic but also social, environmental, cultural terms, relying on the experiences and practices of everyday life, on a widespread access to common goods and on a local territorial dimension.

Please click here for more details: English

Number IV, 2016

[deadline: NOVEMBER 30th, 2014]

"Reinhabiting the mountains"

The comeback to the mountains is different compared to migrations in the past, especially if compared to the expansion of the alpine perimeter due to the inhabitants of the lower valleys commuting to the urbanised foreland centres. This research shows more awareness within the people, their choices are often based on an innovative life project, that takes into consideration the various opportunities offered by mountain areas as opposed to the urbanised foreland. It is a new way of conceiving the mountain environment as a place to settle down permanently, for working or simply as a temporary stay for recreational reasons. During resettlement programmes, the new inhabitants favour the creation of new settlement forms, which, just like in a complex musical score, the contraction and dilation of spaces used, the alternation of empty and full spaces, followed by long pauses, fugues and refrains, adagios and veloces. Desert places opposed to areas with a high population density create the rhythm and the structure of the composition. In this score, silent spaces can finally be enhanced and appreciated. Who are these people coming to live in the mountain? And, moreover, are the results of the studies and practices analysed sufficient to call for a comeback to the mountains?

Please click here for more details: English

Number III, 2015

[deadline: JUNE 30th, 2015]

"Back to the City"

The second issue of Scienze del territorio, which is titled “Back to the city” because we believe that the processes of contemporary urbanization have buried the very idea of city, intends to answer the following question: is this calamitous fate of urbanization in the world really inevitable? Therefore it intends to address the above mentioned themes soliciting contributions that provide alternative and innovative experiences and paths of various kinds, and that invest the forms as well as the process of rebuilding city, such as: how to foster a relationship based on co‐evolution and care between human settlements and environment; how to find back the ecosystemic balance that used to bind the city with its environmental base (bioregional approach) and that allows to close the life cycles (water, food, energy, waste) and to produce new territory; how to make urban environment compatible with both the satisfaction of these life cycles and with social proximity, participation and self‐government; how to rebuild the quality of urban life, i. e. through peri‐urban agricultural belts producing healthy food and extended multifunctional agricultural parks; how to redefine and restore the urban edges; how to safeguard cities from the increasingly catastrophic consequences of hydrogeological and climate change; how to prevent neglected areas through rules of “reconstruction”, the recovery of forms of knowledge related to building and urban planning, the restoration of rules of cohabitation; how to promote the development of polycentric urban bioregions, that are a variety of local networks organized into clusters of small and medium cities. A major role in overcoming the metropolitan model is played by the processes and practices of re‐appropriation, construction and self‐organization acted by inhabitants; the models of inclusive and effective participation in urban planning and in defining public policies; the use of interactive tools and facilitation devices; the experimentation of networks and alternative economies and economies of proximity, as well as the production of aesthetic quality, including public art with its integrated and participated processes.

Please click here for more details: English

Number I-II, 2013-2014

[deadline: NOVEMBER 15th, 2012]

"A comeback to the mountains"

This first issue of the ‘Rivista Scienze del Territorio’ intends to offer a different perspective on urbanization processes from the mainstream. It calls for contributions able at showing through an integrated and dialectical approach, theories, methods and tools, practices and case-studies, helpful to improve scientific knowledge, but also competences and capacities of institutional, political, economical, cultural and social actors interested in actualizing the return to the land.

Please click here for more details: English