Preface

This volume contains the proceedings for the fourth International “NEW METROPOLITAN PERSPECTIVES. Knowledge Dynamics and Innovation-driven Policies Towards Urban and Regional Transition”, scheduled from 26 to 28 May 2020, in Reggio Calabria, Italy. The Symposium was jointly promoted by LaborEst (Evaluation and Economic Appraisal Lab) and CLUDs (Commercial Local Urban Districts Lab), Laboratories of the PAU Department, Mediterranea University of Reggio Calabria, Italy, in partnership with a qualified international network of the academic institution and scientific societies. The fourth edition of “NEW METROPOLITAN PERSPECTIVES”, like the previous ones, aimed to deepen those factors which contribute to increase cities and territories attractiveness, both with theoretical studies and tangible applications. When the call for papers of New Metropolitan Perspectives was launched in September 2019, no one could imagine that in a few months we would find our- selves suddenly catapulted into a totally unknown future. And the papers sent in January 2020, of course, could not in any way reflect the dynamics caused by the spread of COVID-19, the outlines of which will all be discovered and deepened in the coming years: it is still too early to fully understand the extent of these changes. Today, we are still dealing with what appears to be a cataclysm of planetary proportions; it will take time to “historicize” events and interpret their profound meaning and long-term impact, through the multilevel observation—through the interpretation of macro-data and the in-depth investigation of the different realities involved—that the scientific community will be able to develop when the health emergency is over. At that point, the scenarios can begin to be configured with scientific rigour, which are beginning to be intuitively delineated in constant events. It will be possible to appreciate the permanent (real and perceived) effects on the daily life of communities, on the organisation of work and logistics chains and in the system of social relations. At present, we can only hypothesise scenarios, more or less well founded. v vi Preface The common thread, that linked the different themes from the Symposium in its original conception, was technology, in particular the effects produced on the set- tlement systems by the relationship between man and technology, in two different aspects: the progressive replacement of man with machines in practically all pro- duction processes and the spread of ICT. The pandemic and the policies and practices put in place to contain the infection have brought this issue to the fore with arrogance. The replacement of physical interactions with “virtual” contacts has used consolidated technologies but has accentuated their pervasiveness, generating impacts of different nature. The next few months will tell us how much of this acceleration will persist in our daily lives and how much it will be a transitory phenomenon. Permanent changes are conceivable, for example, in the organisation of work, with the adoption of smart working as an ordinary way of carrying out various tasks, also in areas where until a few months ago it seemed a distant future, such as in teaching. And these changes will probably also affect other areas, just think of the use of culture, in a broad sense, as the many virtual opening initiatives of museums and sites of cultural interest have shown us in this period. As well as central issues for democratic systems will be those related to the use of big data and their impact on individual freedoms: the ongoing debate on tracking movements and personal preferences is extremely topical. However, the data that seems to emerge with greater force from the phase we are experiencing is the progressive loss of relevance of the location factor: the pan- demic has made even more evident the fall of many barriers to the global dimension of relationships and exchanges. This change brings with it, as a consequence, a change also on the plane of centre–periphery dualism: what is centre and what is periphery, when the two terms no longer refer to accessibility to physical places but, for example, accessibility to goods and services and, ultimately, to knowledge? And how do you measure accessibility if you can no longer measure in metres or hours? The other phenomenon on which it will be increasingly necessary to reflect in the future is the speed of changes. As already underlined on the occasion of the past edition of the symposium, while society evolves with accelerations impressed by endogenous and exogenous factors (such as the pandemic COVID-19), the physical dimension of space adapts with extended times. At the dawn of the studies on the impacts of ICT on the city, the “wired city” studied by the research group of Corrado Beguinot was divided into a system of three cities: stone, relationships and experience. To harmonise the development times of the physical city with the “liquid” city of human relations is, after thirty years, still a priority. So how will our cities and, more generally, the settlement systems on a planetary level record these changes? Will the trend towards population concentration persist in hyper-equipped and congested metropolitan areas or will we see reflux? New perspectives open up towards what are now considered peripheral areas (such as the Inner Areas so dear to our Master Edoardo Mollica), in which perhaps some Preface vii organisational processes are more easily managed and there are still values that could be appreciated by future generations. The ethics of research, in the disciplinary sectors that the Symposium crosses, invites us to feed, with scientific rigour, policies and practices that make the ter- ritory more resilient and able to react effectively to events such as the pandemic that we are suffering in recent months: we hope to know the outcomes of these courses in the next editions of the New Metropolitan Perspectives Symposium. For this edition, meanwhile, approximately 230 papers published allowed us to develop six macro-topics about “Knowledge Dynamics and Innovation-driven Policies Towards Urban and Regional Transition” as follows: 1 - Inner and marginalized areas local development to re-balance territorial inequalities 2 - Knowledge and innovation ecosystem for urban regeneration and resilience 3 - Metropolitan cities and territorial dynamics. Rules, governance, economy, society 4 - Green buildings, post-carbon city and ecosystem services 5 - Infrastructures and spatial information systems 6 - Cultural heritage: conservation, enhancement and management And a Special Section, Rhegion United Nations 2020–2030, chaired by our colleague Stefano Aragona. We are pleased that the International Symposium NMP, thanks to its interdis- ciplinary character, stimulated growing interests and approvals from the scientific community, at the national and international levels. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all who have contributed to the success of the third International Symposium “NEW METROPOLITAN PERSPECTIVES. Knowledge Dynamics and Innovation-driven Policies Towards Urban and Regional Transition”: authors, keynote speakers, session chairs, referees, the scientific committee and the scientific partners, participants, student volunteers and those ones that with different roles have contributed to the dissemination and the success of the Symposium; a special thank goes to the “Associazione ASTRI”, particularly to Giuseppina Cassalia and Angela Viglianisi, together with Immacolata Lorè, Tiziana Meduri and Alessandro Rugolo, for technical and organisational support activities: without them the Symposium could not have taken place; and, obviously, we would like to thank the academic representatives of the University of Reggio Calabria too: the Rector Prof. Marcello Zimbone, the responsible of internationalisation Prof. Francesco Morabito, the chief of PAU Department Prof. Tommaso Manfredi. Thank you very much for your support. Last but not least, we would like to thank Springer for the support in the conference proceedings publication.