Giuseppe De Luca

The concluding essay reads the contributions collected in the special issue as an invitation to follow urban planning where it concretely takes place: in the in-between space among plans, projects, rules, social practices, procedures and administrative decisions. Starting from the questions that structured the Urbanpromo 2025 seminar - how to make space, who occupies space, and which mechanisms regulate space - the text highlights the role of less visible but decisive devices through which urban transformation is enabled, negotiated, evaluated or blocked. The essay proposes the notion of urbanistica di sotto as a research and action agenda focused on regulations, procedures, routines, protocols, indicators, offices, agreements, maintenance practices and situated knowledge that shape the ordinary production of urban space. This perspective does not oppose lower-level practices to strategic planning. Instead, it investigates how statutory planning and everyday implementation can work together, strengthening coherence, transparency, institutional learning, equity and public responsibility in the transformation of contemporary cities.

The editorial introduces the special issue Fare spazio, dare spazio in urbanistica, developed from the Urbanpromo 2025 seminar held in Florence. It frames the two expressions as complementary disciplinary postures: fare spazio refers to the need to open margins of interpretation, adaptation and action within and beyond statutory planning, while dare spazio points to the recognition of plural actors, practices and needs that shape contemporary urban transformation. The text argues that the relationship between plan, project, institutions, practices and regulation is no longer reducible to a linear sequence from vision to implementation. Rather, many relevant transformations occur in an intermediate field made of rules, knowledge, coordination devices, governance arrangements and situated forms of public responsibility. The editorial presents the structure of the issue, organised around three questions: how to make space, who occupies space, and which mechanisms regulate space. Through these questions, the special issue explores planning as a regulated practice of opening, capable of enabling just, recognisable and verifiable transformations without weakening the public role of urban planning.

Artificial light at night (ALAN) is an increasing component of urban environmental change, affecting vegetation dynamics and ecosystem functioning. Satellite nighttime light (NTL) data serve as proxies for urbanization and artificial illumination, aiding the analysis of vegetation responses to human pressures. However, NTL–vegetation relationships are often poorly synthesized, and ALAN is rarely included in frameworks linking urban vegetation, climate, and human drivers. Drawing on a 2014–2025 Scopus and Web of Science search, this review of 22 articles categorizes findings as (i) Lights Track Urbanization, (ii) Vegetation Modulates Light, and (iii) ALAN Shapes Ecology. Results show strong geographical concentration in China, followed by the United States, and high heterogeneity in sensors, metrics, and methods. Increasing nighttime radiance is consistently associated with vegetation decline and higher environmental pressure, while vegetation modulates light through canopy structure and phenology. ALAN effects on plant phenology are reported but vary relative to climatic drivers and are highly context-dependent. Despite these advances, the field remains methodologically inconsistent and geographically biased. This review highlights the need for harmonized multi-sensor frameworks that integrate radiance, vegetation, and climate data to improve assessments of urban environmental change and to support biodiversity conservation and light-sensitive urban planning, thereby preserving ecosystem service functions.

We analyse the pattern of work and other labour market states, such as unemployment and out-of-labour-force, over the life course, by making use of a long retrospective panel of older Europeans. Based on stochastic simulations of a reduced form transition probability model, we document to what extent social policies over the life course affect employment trajectories both in the long run and in the short run. We focus on two types of reforms that have taken place in various European countries over the lifetime of the panel participants: increases in compulsory school age and increases in pension eligibility age.

Climate change increasingly threatens heritage-rich river basins, yet the integration of traditional ecological knowledge into formal environmental governance remains underexplored. This study investigates how historically embedded water management practices in Tuscany’s Arno River and New York’s Hudson River can inform adaptive strategies under conditions of climate uncertainty. Employing a Triangulated mixed-methods approach—including a systematic narrative literature review, variable coding (hydrological dynamics, cultural heritage, governance structures, economic livelihoods, and adaptive knowledge), and effect size analysis—we conducted a comparative assessment to uncover regional challenges, capacities, and implementation dynamics. The findings reveal that while both basins contend with hydrological volatility and fragmented governance, the Arno benefits from legally embedded heritage practices that continue to shape canal-based agriculture and flood mitigation. In contrast, the Hudson showcases strong multi-level stakeholder engagement and ecological restoration, though with less institutional reliance on traditional land stewardship. By integrating codified traditional practices with participatory governance and applying a weighted implementation structure, this study illustrates how resilience planning can be more context-sensitive, operationally feasible, and socially inclusive. Ultimately, this research positions cultural landscapes as active infrastructure for climate adaptation—provided they are institutionally supported and community-endorsed—offering a transferable model for policy innovation in similarly vulnerable riverine systems.

Chapter advances an evolutionary reading of NBS towards Culture (NCBS), conceived as bio-technological and cultural devices that trigger systemic processes of urban regeneration. The challenge, it argues, is not to reproduce nature but to govern hybrid systems in which humans are active and co-responsible components.

This chapter is intended to bring attention back to the role of the University School of Architecture - after its establishment in the 1930s - in the process underlying Florence's urban development policies. Indeed, Architecture faculty have contributed on several occasions to the debate that has been created around strategies for the growth and re-functionalization of the city during crucial moments in Florence's political and social history. The role of university buildings - with particular regard to Architecture campuses - in the revitalization of significant parts of the historic center is also analyzed, a complex process that once again had the faculty of Architecture as a protagonist.

Overtourism is a novel and complicated phenomenon that has hastened the rapid expansion of short-term tourist accommodations (STTA) in many European art cities. This study aims to establish a link between the rapid growth of the STTA and the likely dissemination of novel COVID-19 variations in World Heritage Sites (WHS). Using a comparative case study method, we assert that the atypical evolution of STTA renders WHS more vulnerable to novel COVID-19 variations. The findings highlight that until there are no feasible multi-sectoral and multi-level approaches to management, policy agreements on what overtourism means, and measuring tools for the proper number of visitors, the STTA issue persists, which makes WHS more vulnerable to novel COVID-19 variations in the post-pandemic time.