Scienze del Territorio

Long lasting territorial structures facing the challenge of contemporary extractivism. Editorial

2026-08-25T11:07:46+02:00

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The design significance of long-lasting territorial structures

2026-08-25T11:07:44+02:00

The article clarifies that the terms ‘territorial structures’ and ‘long-duration structures’ are equivalent for the purposes of this paper, even though the term ‘territorial’ has often overshadowed urban structures. Starting from the assumption that a structure has as its fundamental characteristic a relational role, the paper exemplifies two typical territorial structures (of long duration) and the relationships between these and the origin and development of the ‘urban structure’, coinciding with public space. In the final section, the contributions of community maps, ecomuseums and river contracts to the revitalization of existing long-duration structures or to the promotion of new ones are discussed.

Bormida Valley: long-term territorial structures and green extractivism

2026-08-25T11:07:42+02:00

This paper examines the conflict between top-down energy transition policies and the preservation of long-term territorial structures in Bormida Valley, located between Piedmont and Liguria. By analyzing the proliferation of industrial wind farm projects and waste-to-energy plants there, the article highlights how these interventions risk becoming forms of green extractivism, turning its local communities and fragile eco-systems into areas which are to be sacrificed for external speculative interests. In this light, the research sees social opposition as something more than just NIMBY phenomenon, but rather as territorial resistance rooted in the historical memory of a community already scarred by industrial pollution, the ACNA case. The study aims to emphasize the need to overcome the de-territorialization of current energy policies. It proposes a shift toward a territorial transition based on democratic planning, public debate, and localized energy models, such as renewable energy communities, which recognize the landscape as a common good and a core constitutional value.

From the energy transition to ecological conversion: the role of territorial structures between conflict and planning

2026-08-25T11:07:41+02:00

This paper critically examines the current territorialization processes of the energy transition, highlighting the growing gap between decarbonization targets and territorially integrated ecological conversion. Starting from the analysis of renewable energy infrastructure deployment in Italy, the paper shows how ongoing transformations are increasingly concentrated in rural, inland and marginal areas, generating significant pressures on landscapes. The contribution discusses the main critical issues related to these processes - including land consumption, ecological fragmentation, alteration of territorial structures and local conflicts - interpreting them as the outcome of a predominantly techno-economic approach to transition. In contrast, the paper proposes an ecological conversion perspective based on the recognition of territory as a complex relational structure and on the role of landscape as both an interpretative and design-oriented framework. Within this context, the ENSCAPE research project, developed by the University of Florence in collaboration with the regional heritage authority and the National Park of the Casentino Forests, aims to define territorial and landscape criteria for the integration of renewable energy systems. The paper particularly presents the experimental work carried out in the Alto Mugello area, based on the integration of GIS tools, structural landscape interpretation and territorial fragility analysis.

Florence: counter-planning and resistance to the extraction of private surplus value from the historical and territorial heritage

2026-08-25T11:07:39+02:00

The paper analyses the process of alienation of public building heritage in historic Italian cities, interpreting it as the result of local governments' ideological adherence to the principles of global finance and tourism monoculture. Cities subject to these dynamics are defined as “alienated”: economically dependent on the extraction of surplus value from history and culture, socially emptied by the expulsion of lower-middle classes, and politically subordinate to real estate financialization. Florence, due to the quality of its territorial heritage, its historicity and the universally recognised value of its assets, is a privileged observatory. The national regulatory framework governing state-owned property has allowed authorities to sell off approximately 370,000 square metres of public buildings in the city centre, converted into tourist accommodation or luxury residential properties. This process has been facilitated by a systematic weakening of urban planning: regulatory uncertainty regarding large “transformation areas”, monetisation of planning standards, abolition of restore obligations. Finally, the paper documents civic resistance and grassroot proposals, including that for the former OGR, where movements and scholar-activists put forward the hypothesis of a public Kulturforum as a model of “major urban repair” as opposed to the extraction of private surplus value from the historic city.

Combining memory and contemporary art. From living art to the aestheticisation of a historic centre: the case of Maria Lai in Aggius

2026-08-25T11:07:37+02:00

This essay aims to tell the story of an intriguing experiment that took place in a small town in northern Sardinia: Aggius. The purpose of this account is to invite reflection on the paradoxical effects of ambiguity that a significant urban regeneration project—one based on heritage preservation and capable of combining memory and contemporary art—can produce if sacrificed on the altar of tourism. What we intend to recount is a story that shows us precisely how the long-standing structures and memorial heritage that characterize the uniqueness of a small historic town can, on the one hand, trigger—through a recombination of tradition and innovation—an interesting process of collective reappropriation of the heritage of a territory’s history and traditions; on the other hand, simultaneously become elements that generate a process of “intensive exploitation of specific resources, formed by deposits accumulated over time” (Boltanski, Esquerre, 2019, p. 77), which risks, if not carefully managed, taking on trivializing and commodifying traits.

Living the border. Territories and cities between the Eastern and Western Mediterranean

2026-08-25T11:07:36+02:00

This essay explores the relationship between Land, Territory and City through a long-term historical-philosophical perspective, from ancient cosmogonies to the contemporary Metropolis. Starting from the notion of "world soul" – from Platonic and Plotinian geo-sophy to the imaginal geography of Henry Corbin – the paper examines how civilizations have constructed the sense of place and the urban boundary: from the Greek polis, born out of a federative agreement among rural communities, to the Roman civitas, founded on the inclusive principle of citizenship, through to the medieval city, the urban boundary is never a mere physical barrier, but a “threshold” bringing sensible and supersensible worlds into relation. Medicean Florence offers an exemplary case: the columns of Cosimo I redraw the urban perimeter as ceremonial thresholds, while the Vasarian Corridor embodies Alberti's idea of a city within the city. In the nineteenth-century Metropolis the threshold becomes a situated utopia – in the Parisian grands travaux read by Foucault as heterotopies – while in the contemporary megalopolis it dissolves, producing existential disorientation. The essay closes with an open perspective on the cosmopolitan Earth-City, calling for a new theoretical foundation for urban design capable of embodying a neo-humanism for the man of the future.