339 research outputs found

    When Conflict Spills Over: Identities, Memories, Politics and Representations of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in Italy— The 1960s

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    The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been fought also outside the Middle East, reverberating into the domestic political and social dynamics of many countries. By investigating these dynamics, and therefore the cultural and political aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Italy, I analyze how this conflict came to be inextricably connected with political and existential questions of local relevance, and therefore with the lives, the memories, and the positioning of Italian Jews on the one hand, of Palestinians living in Italy (and/or Palestinian Italians) on the other, and with Italian politics in general. Inevitably, I also investigate how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict interlocked with anti-Semitism and, in part, also with Islamophobia

    Uno spessore fragile : approcci socio-ecologici per il progetto del litorale italiano

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    Since the second half of the 20th century, the Italian coasts have undergone a radical transformation. On the one hand, there has been a massive displacement of populations, particularly from inland territories to the coast. On the other hand, the change in society's ways of living has contributed to the settlement of a recreational thickness, consolidating what we call a tourist civilization. In recent years there has been a general tightening of some meshes on the coast, which by nature have varying thickness. Over time, a seaside tourist imaginary begins to settle, contributing to massive colonization of some coastal areas, sometimes by opening access, sometimes by privatizing them. We have gone within a few years from keeping our distance from a sphere of recognized instability to the presumption that we can inhabit it with the help of rigid and stable structures. Today, climate change has exacerbated the regime of instability inherent in these places, showing the inadequacy of some tourist settlements and facilities in terms of responding to environmental drives and incompatibility with the dynamism of the dune movement. According to IPCC predictions, sea level rise will heavily reshape national coastal areas, highlighting the need to explore possible future geographies through the project. A recognition of state-owned land and a new season of public property acquisition is needed, both for the implementation of defense policies and sustainable tourism projects and to imagine the depth of the coast of the future, recognizing its role as public infrastructure. The contribution envisions the coast as a democratically accessible community asset recognized as state property. While there is a need to ensure that a fair percentage of the beach remains outside the logic of the market, there is also an emerging need to reorder the way the maritime state property is managed. The regime of tourist-recreational concessions, and the allocation criteria related to them, need a renewed view that aims at coastal regeneration, taking into account the parameters of transparency, sustainability, and accessibility. In this sense, current beach concessions should ensure virtuous socio-ecological designs that, by encouraging sustainable forms of tourism, favor the construction of eco-friendly removable structures, investment in dune care practices, including monitoring of erosion phenomena and environmental awareness, but above all, guarantee accessibility and a set of minimum services, recognizing the coast as a public good. Building on these assumptions, the paper proposes a recognition of significant actions to reimagine the coastal thickness, a series of dune restoration and protection projects, or some policies that have begun to recognize the coastline's role as a public good and its relationship with its backshore

    Recognition of coherent structures in the boundary layer of a low-pressure-turbine blade for different free-stream turbulence intensity levels

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    Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) has been adopted to analyze the instantaneous flow field developing on a high-lift turbine blade profile operating under low and elevated free-stream turbulence conditions (FSTI). Results reported in the paper allow us to analyze the dynamics leading to transition and separation of the suction side boundary layer, looking to generation, propagation and breakdown of coherent structures observed in the two different FSTI cases. To this end, measurements have been performed in two orthogonal planes. Results obtained in the blade-to-blade plane allow the detailed characterization of the propagation of Kelvin–Helmholtz (KH) rolls generating, at low FSTI condition, as a consequence of a non-reattaching separation. Otherwise, data in the wall-parallel plane allow recognizing the presence of three-dimensional disuniformities induced at high FSTI by low and high speed streaks (Klebanoff mode). The sinuous breakdown of boundary layer streaks generates other complex three-dimensional coherent structures such as hairpin or cane-like vortices that induce transition. Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) has been adopted to in depth characterize these structures, thus further explaining the mechanisms through which the free-stream turbulence intensity modify the transition/separation processes of the suction side boundary layer of an highly loaded low pressure turbine blade

    La costruzione dei suoli in Sardegna. Antropo-pedogenesi delle grandi trasformazioni territoriali dall’Ottocento a oggi.

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    Il suolo è oggi al centro di una rinnovata attenzione scientifica e progettuale. Non solo supporto all’antropizzazione ma agente attivo della transizione ecologica. Questa tesi si interroga su come le trasformazioni territoriali moderne abbiano inciso sulla costruzione materiale e simbolica dei suoli, adottando come caso studio la Sardegna: un contesto insulare, attraversato da cicli selettivi di modernizzazione agraria, industriale, turistica, energetica. L’ipotesi alla base del lavoro è che, a partire dall’Ottocento, l’isola sia stata investita da una sequenza di grandi trasformazioni che non solo hanno modificato l’organizzazione economica e insediativa del territorio, ma hanno costruito spessori antropogenici di suolo, alterando e sedimentando nuove morfologie, valori e relazioni ecologiche. Questi processi vengono qui letti come forme di antropo-pedogenesi: trasformazioni profonde del suolo generate dall’intervento umano. Il lavoro affianca alle letture degli storici un’ampia raccolta di materiali tecnici e visivi: piani, progetti, mappe, cartografie tematiche, e immagini d’archivio. Queste fonti permettono di leggere il suolo non come un’entità astratta o un dato fisico da quantificare, ma come un archivio materiale delle trasformazioni, un dispositivo che condensa economie, tecniche, politiche e conflitti. L’approccio scelto consente di risalire alle genealogie territoriali della modernità attraverso ciò che nei suoli si è depositato e modificato nel tempo. La struttura della tesi si articola in quattro parti. La prima offre uno sfondo teorico, introducendo le nozioni chiave (suolo, spessore, palinsesto, antropo-pedogenesi, progetto di suolo) e inquadrando la rilevanza del tema nella crisi climatica e nei dibattiti sulla transizione ecologica. La seconda parte ricostruisce le grandi stagioni di trasformazione del territorio sardo a partire dal XIX secolo: dal riformismo sabaudo alle bonifiche passando per la riforma agraria, dall’industrializzazione mineraria a quella dei grandi poli, fino all’esplosione del turismo costiero e delle energie rinnovabili. Tali processi sono letti come capitoli di una modernizzazione selettiva, che ha ridefinito lo spessore di certi suoli dell’isola. La terza parte si concentra su un caso studio specifico: il Sulcis Iglesiente, arcipelago minerario e industriale che si rivela oggi un laboratorio emblematico per studiare la costruzione e rigenerazione dei suoli antropogenici attraverso la transizione dei territori minerari. Qui l’osservazione si fa più ravvicinata e il lavoro apre a una lettura cartografica e fotografica che mette in luce spessori compromessi, processi di rigenerazione spontanea e nuove traiettorie d’uso. La quarta parte, infine, propone alcune mosse progettuali orientate alla cura e alla rigenerazione del suolo: depavimentazioni, riuso delle eccedenze edilizie, costruzione di spessori vegetali e strategie adattive in territori segnati da profondi processi di transizione. La tesi si configura così come un tentativo di rileggere la storia del territorio sardo dal punto di vista del suolo, e al tempo stesso di proporre alcune mosse per il progetto urbanistico. Parlare di progetto di antropo-pedogenesi significa infatti assumere il suolo come agente di transizione, come interfaccia tra natura e artificio, come dispositivo attraverso cui immaginare nuovi scenari

    Elogio delle vagabondə. Riappropriarsi del diritto al suolo per un patto socio-ecologico

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    Dall’innesco del dibattito sulla transizione ecologica, il suolo acquisisce sempre più importanza, non più percepito come una superficie inerte, ma come uno spessore vivo, seppur fragile. Guardando alla città con questa lente, lo spazio degli standard urbanistici acquisisce una nuova rilevanza, non solo perché garante di una infrastruttura pubblica, ma anche come fornitore di servizi ecosistemici nella porosità dei suoi suoli. A partire da un’esperienza di vagabondaggio (peri)urbano, il contributo riflette sulla pratica del camminare come strumento capace di costruire un dibattito inclusivo sulla coscienza socio-ecologica. La serie di passeggiate esplorative e laboratori di mappatura hanno visto la collaborazione tra un gruppo di giovani e alcune associazioni di Sinnai, un comune al margine della Città metropolitana di Cagliari, in cui esiste ancora una domanda di espansione urbana. Durante le esplorazioni, si è guardato al potenziale socio-ecologico del suolo, per scardinare una visione antropocentrica che nella pianificazione determina una classificazione omogenea da cui dipende uno specifico indice volumetrico e una conseguente possibilità di urbanità. Raggiungere una consapevolezza collettiva (a partire dai più giovani) di un diritto al suolo plurale, può essere una leva per altre possibilità inclusive di spazio pubblico, con una maggiore qualità urbana e ambientale, soprattutto in vista del progetto della transizione ecologica, a cui siamo chiamati

    The role of seasonal tourism in fragile territories : the case of Solanas, Sardinia

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    Since the post-war period Italy has been invested by an epochal phenomenon of redistribution of population, economies and urban materials from highlands to lowlands, from the hinterland to the coastline. Moreover, since the 1970s, the development of the Mediterranean coastal territories assumed a character strongly oriented to tourism too, altering the balance sedimented through the years in these areas, converting many slow landscapes into intermittent territories triggered by specifc seasons and monocultural activities. This proposal intends to refect on the possible development weaving the destinies of such realities, in the awareness that the reactivation of these territorial systems could be led by the rediscovery of connections and emergencies often forgotten, silent traces able to give back values to these tired landscapes. Working through interconnected territorial structures means to consider their networks and their tangible and intangible capital, and this is an indispensable exercise in order to rethink our country and some of its reiterated development models. Starting with a few days of interdisciplinary seminars that took place in between Politecnico di Torino and Politecnico di Milano, and the organisation of a workshop on-site, Solanas was identifed as an emblematic case, a valley able to explore these issues. Located in the south of Sardinia, annexed to the territory of Sinnai due to its ancient transhumance role, today it remains detached from the main inhabited centres, suffering strong isolation from welfare systems during the low season, and the exploitation of landscape resources because of mere tourist purposes during the high season. This condition of seasonal contraction, unfortunately rarely accompanied by a medium-long term planning, can be retraced along many other coastal areas of Mediterranean countries, becoming a specifc fragility of our reality to take into consideration

    A wavelet-based intermittency detection technique from PIV investigations in transitional boundary layers

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    The transition process of the boundary layer growing over a flat plate with pressure gradient simulating the suction side of a low-pressure turbine blade and elevated free-stream turbulence intensity level has been analyzed by means of PIV and hot-wire measurements. A detailed view of the instantaneous flow field in the wallnormal plane highlights the physics characterizing the complex process leading to the formation of large-scale coherent structures during breaking down of the ordered motion of the flow, thus generating randomized oscillations (i.e., turbulent spots). This analysis gives the basis for the development of a new procedure aimed at determining the intermittency function describing (statistically) the transition process. To this end, a wavelet-based method has been employed for the identification of the large-scale structures created during the transition process. Successively, a probability density function of these events has been defined so that an intermittency function is deduced. This latter strictly corresponds to the intermittency function of the transitional flow computed trough a classic procedure based on hotwire data. The agreement between the two procedures in the intermittency shape and spot production rate proves the capability of the method in providing the statistical representation of the transition process. The main advantages of the procedure here proposed concern with its applicability to PIV data; it does not require a threshold level to discriminate first- and/or second-order time-derivative of hot-wire time traces (that makes the method not influenced by the operator); and it provides a clear evidence of the connection between the flow physics and the statistical representation of transition based on theory of turbulent spot propagatio

    Redefining tourism along coastal fragile territories: The case of Solanas

    No full text
    Since the post-war period Italy has been invested by an epochal phenomenon of redistribution of population, economies and urban materials from highlands to lowlands, from the hinterland to the coastline. Moreover, since the 1970s, the development of the Mediterranean coastal territories assumed a character strongly oriented to tourism too, altering the balance sedimented through the years in these areas, converting many slow landscapes into intermittent territories triggered by specific seasons and monocultural activities. This proposal intends to reflect on the possible development weaving the destinies of such realities, in the awareness that the reactivation of these territorial systems could be led by the rediscovery of connections and emergencies often forgotten, silent traces able to give back values to these tired landscapes. Working through interconnected territorial structures means to consider their networks and their tangible and intangible capital, and this is an indispensable exercise in order to rethink our country and some of its reiterated development models. Starting with a few days of interdisciplinary seminars that took place in between Politecnico di Torino and Politecnico di Milano, and the organisation of a workshop on-site, Solanas was identified as an emblematic case, a valley able to explore these issues. Located in the south of Sardinia, annexed to the territory of Sinnai due to its ancient transhumance role, today it remains detached from the main inhabited centres, suffering strong isolation from welfare systems during the low season, and the exploitation of landscape resources because of mere tourist purposes during the high season. This condition of seasonal contraction, unfortunately rarely accompanied by a medium-long term planning, can be retraced along many other coastal areas of Mediterranean countries, becoming a specific fragility of our reality to take into consideration
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