URBAN LAW AND POLICY
Instructional goals
The learning and educational stance of the course is guided by the willingness to investigate through an interdisciplinary, evidence-based and innovative approach the intersection between law and society in complex but incomplete systems known as “cities”. The aim of the course is to provide students with a theoretical, analytical and pragmatic knowledge of the most challenging and controversial issues that governing a city implies in the XXI century. The course will provide students with the possibility to apply a combination of legal and political science analytical tools. The interdisciplinary approach is a key feature of this course, as well as the applied and experimental methodology. It will provide students with a knowledge of empirical and field research methodologies applied to the study of the urban context. Through the lab activities, the course will also provide students with a concrete knowledge of the techniques and tools that can be used by cities' administrations to develop empirically-based, research-driven policies and by urban experts, scholars and practitioners to craft urban projects that achieve the goals set by the policies, develop a plan or an EU project proposal to assess their implementation and results achieved and raise funds to implement them.
The structure of the course will be twofold: on the one hand, the course will provide theoretical understanding of the fundamentals of urban laws and policies and an understanding of their implementation in the concrete reality of urban policies and urban innovation and sustainable development projects. On the other hand, the course will provide students with an understanding (and practical methods and tools) of empirical analysis of urban law and policy and of approaches based on experimentation and applied fieldwork and action-based learning and research, as well as EU funding project proposals.
Prerequisites
no specific requisites
Intended learning outcomes
Knowledge and understanding:
The course will offer key theoretical tools to understand current trends taking place in or affecting cities around the world, from the urbanization phenomenon to climate change adaptation and mitigation processes and their consequences in cities (the need to rethink urban transport, urban infrastructures, housing, energy, biodiversity and green infrastructure, air pollution, etc.), to the urban innovation frontiers (smart cities, emerging technologies, nature-based solutions, water and food policies, circular economy, etc). This course provides advanced knowledge and analytical resources that will enable students to understand the processes that are taking place in cities around the world, the policies that cities are developing to face local and global issues, their content and consequences, and the techniques adopted in cities to study and evaluate best practices, to write city regulations and EU grants applications. The acquisition of this knowledge will be tested through a practical exercise during the course.
Applying knowledge and understanding:
The students will be able to:
- understand the connections between global issues and local (city level), solutions and the interconnections between cities and their regional or rural surrounding environments and ecosystems;
- examine concrete case studies of city policies and projects by conducting scientific research and fieldwork preparation;
- look at how city institutions shape, constrain and enable policymaking, sustainable development and innovation;
- write an EU grant application for an urban sustainable development and innovation project (e.g. EUI - Innovative Actions, Urbact, Horizon Europe, etc.);
- draft a municipal policy and / or regulation;
Making judgements:
We expect students to be able to analyze urban laws and policies and concrete urban projects to demonstrate an in-depth, critical understanding of the scope and challenges of such policies and projects.
They are expected to be able to discuss and evaluate key urban policies and to identify concrete solutions to challenges faced by cities and mayors around the world.
Throughout the whole course, students will be invited to critically analyse the challenges that cities and mayors around the world are facing and their consequences, in order to understand which are the policy solutions to be adopted and how to study and write a grant application/regulation/research paper on projects/policies facing the above mentioned challenges.
Communications Skills:
This course will give the students the possibility to acquire and understand technical language and fundamental concepts in urban policymaking and innovation, to forge and communicate their ideas, proposals, analysis and critical reasoning in the field of urban law and policy in the most effective and appropriate way.
Learning skills:
This course will contribute to empower learners giving them the tools to determine why certain urban policies and projects are followed, while others are not and to evaluate the interconnections between global and local problems, the solutions adopted and their consequences on urban inhabitants and cities.
Course Contents
The goal of this course is to provide students with a body of knowledge that can guide them through the understanding, observation and analysis of urban law and policy also through the analysis of specific sustainable development and innovation projects. The course will examine and assess different kinds of urban public policies appropriate to specific local conditions and tailored to the needs of the local urban context while applying a common conceptual framework.
The course will include both traditional lecture-based modules and fully enquiry-based empirical and experimental capstone modules that will offer students useful spaces and tools to learn in applied research and real life context.
In the first part, the course will introduce students to the main trends in the study of cities from an inter-disciplinary perspective.
Thus, after an introduction aimed at understanding the fundamentals of urban law and policy, the scope of cities’ economic and political power; city government; the innovations that urban governance and urban management is producing, the course will develop, in the second part, a specific focus on key policy silos tackling the main issues relevant for urban sustainable development and innovation such as circular economy, water governance, pollution and loss of biodiversity prevention, food policies, water and energy governance, climate justice, ecological resiliency, also in relation to land use and urban real estate transactions; urban project finance and community economic development; urban innovation and technological and scientific developments connected to sharing economy, smart cities, city science; complex policy domains such as co-governance of urban assets, infrastructure, services and social infrastructures such as housing, health, education and cultural heritage.
Along the weeks, in parallel to these contents, the course will introduce students to applied, problem-based and research-based methodologies in order to equip them with useful skills to design, analyze, implement urban laws, policies, and projects for sustainable development and innovation (laboratory).
The hours dedicated to these activities will lead the students to the development of the laboratory output.
Reference Books
The bibliography of the course consists in selected chapters of manuals and selected articles. The articles, as well as manuals’ chapters, specific for each lesson will be posted on the digital platform at least one week before class. Students will be invited to present and/or react the readings.
The literature and division of classes topics proposed in the syllabus will be updated at the beginning of the course, also on the basis of the number and background of students enrolled.
Teaching Methods
The course will be composed of research-based seminars and an empirical-experimental lab. This structure will offer students useful skills and tools to learn in an empirical applied, experimental and action-based learning mode.
The aim of the research-based part is to provide a focus on the review of the relevant literature in the field of the public and local law and policies, with special attention paid to specific policy silos.
Lectures are based on a class discussion on two mandatory readings each week. Readings will be uploaded in advance on the learn.luiss platform and students are required to read them before class. The proposed readings aim to guarantee the interdisciplinarity, the processes in different parts of the world, and an equal distribution of the workload between one week and the next. Each week, one or more students will be assigned as “rapporteurs”. The rapporteurs will be responsible for starting the class discussion on the assigned readings, at least those indicated as “mandatory”, and propose their own elaboration and understanding of the readings. Two other students will play the role of “discussants” counterarguing and criticizing the readings and the rapporteurs’ positions.
Each student will play the role of rapporteur and discussant at least once during the 12 weeks of lessons depending on the number of students enrolled. Students will be able to express their preferences by filling out a form which will be made available the first week of the course.
At the beginning and at the end of each debate, the teacher will introduce the research question at the core of each class topic and set the tone for the discussion. At the end the professor will wrap up the discussion and outline the most important theoretical tenets for the specific topic.
The aim of the empirical-experimental lab part, that will take place normally during the online sessions, is to transfer students concrete knowledge on how to carry out an empirical analysis exercise and generate a policy or a projects based on the results of the empirical analysis. Students will be trained on how to craft an urban policy or how to prpeare an EU grant application that cities' normally use to raise funds for urban sustainable development and innovation projects. The empirical-experimental lab will be delivered as a set of lab sessions, facilitated by the course instructor. The students will be divided in pairs or in groups and under the guide of the course's instructor and the support of digital tools for co-design (e.g., survey/poll tools, Mural; Miro; Videoscribe; etc.) the class will work to produce concrete outputs at the end of the lab. Although the final work will be a group work, each student will be able to make a recognizable contribution to a specifically assigned part.
Leveraging on the body of knowledge acquired by students through the lecture, the lab sessions will: introduce major methodological approaches to study urban law and policy and practical tools to analyze complex urban policy programs and sustainable development and innovation projects implemented at the national, EU or trans-national level to respond to the challenges cities encounter today; simulate the crafting of an urban policy; introduce methods and techniques to apply for funding to sustain an institutional urban project for sustainable development (i.e. EU grant applications; institutional investors).
Assessment Method
A) Attendance and respect of social norms (20%);
B) proactive and spontaneous participation to the lectures (10%): unprogrammed interventions and contributions to the discussion by students who are not on call will be very positively evaluated, especially if grounded on data and arguments provided by scientific readings that were not provided as mandatory readings;
C) Students-led and reaction-based discussion: evaluation of the roles played in the peer-to-peer guided conversations through rapporteurs-discussants role play game (20%).
D) Laboratory sessions (40%): students will be tasked with the drafting of an empirical reserarch – driven proposal for a project eligible for EU funding under a call such as the second EUI-IA call (see https://www.urban-initiative.eu/calls-proposals/second-call-proposals-innovative-actions). Details for the drafting and designing of the proposal in the lab sessions will be illustrated at the beginning of the course.
E) individual discussion of the laboratory deliverable on the day of the final exam (10%).
This course does not foresee mid-term exam.
For students who selected the course as a free course, the lab deliverable is not compulsory.
Students that do not attend the course, (i.e. Erasmus students) will be evaluated through an empirically-based case study analysis (between 10 to 20 pages) and through three theorical questions on the mandatory readings during the oral exam.
Students that do not attend the course are invited to send an email to the teaching staff at least 45 days before the examination session starting date, to define the outline and methodology for the case study analysis.
Thesis assignment criteria
deep interest in the subject.
Week 1 Contenuto sessioni on line e on campus
Introduction to the course: What is a city? What is Urban Law and Policy? Between political sciences, business studies and legal disciplines.
Cities are becoming increasingly relevant from the economic, political, social standpoint.
During this week, the students will be introduced to the foundations and core elements of urban based laws and policy as an object of study. The class will argue, for example, whether it is possible to outline a common language based on a shared understanding of urban based laws and policies that would allow to compare and create a dialogue between cities in different political and legal system.
Thus, after a general introduction about the main feature of urban scholarship, the class provides an overview of the main challenges that the urban context represents for legal sciences and policy making today (so introducing the more sectorial part of the course). It then provides and stimulates a reflection on how policy making tradition can reform itself in order to adapt with the contemporary transformation of cities and generate a new field of study: the urban law.
Finally, students are introduced to the formative scope and the methodological approach of the Urban Law and Policy course. The goal of this Week is, in fact, to provide students with an introduction to the scope and main objectives of urban law and policy and to introduce them to the empirical exercise, that will be a key part of students’ assessment.
This week will be, thus, dedicated to the explanation of the education method adopted during the course and the kind of evaluation (see in the following sections). Specific material will be provided for the scope.
Mandatory readings:
1. N. Davidson, What is Urban Law Today? An Introductory Essay in Honor of the Fortieth Anniversary of the Fordham Urban Law Journal, in Fordham Urban Law Journal, vol. 40, n. 5, 2013, 1579-1593.
2. I. Vandecasteele et al., The Future of Cities – Opportunities, challenges and the way forward, Report, EUR 29752 EN, Luxembourg, Publications Office, 2019, part 1, Ch. 1, 2 and 3, also available here https://joint-research-centre.ec.europa.eu/crosscutting-activities/facts4eufuture-series-reports-future-europe/future-cities-opportunities-challenges-and-way-forward_en
Optional readings:
3. I. Tosics, Cities against the pandemic, in Foundation for European progressive studies (FEPS) COVID response papers, n. 6, 2020, available here https://feps-europe.eu/wp-content/uploads/downloads/publications/feps%20covid%20response%20cities%20ivan%20tosics.pdf
Week 2 Contenuto sessioni on line e on campus
The city as a political object and its diplomatic capacity: the role of principles
What role do cities play in the emerging global legal order? In the last two decades, cities have become the subject of international and transnational regulation and have also begun to enforce international legal norms and standards. This transformation is part of an emerging global order that reconfigures cities and uses them to advance various, often conflicting, ideological and political commitments. While there is a growing body of literature on the globalisation of cities, that literature has ignored the legal dimension of this phenomenon. The week and the articles to be read for these classes aim to discuss that gap and understand if and how "local" law affects "global" change. And while there is a growing body of literature dealing with the rise of non-state actors in international law and politics, that literature has nonetheless neglected the emergence of cities as independent agents and the role that collective city-action can play in shaping change globally, while ensuring adequate transfer to the local level.
Laboratory: 1st meeting
Mandatory Readings:
1. B.R. Barber, If mayors ruled the world, Yale University Press, 2013, ch. 1, 3-28.
2. D. Koon-Hong Chan, City diplomacy and “glocal” governance: revitalizing cosmopolitan democracy, in Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research, 2016
Optional readings:
3. M. Jachtenfuchs, N. Krisch, Subsidiarity in Global Governance, in Law & Contemp. Probs., vol. 79, n. 1, 2016, 1- 26
4. R. Katz et al, A Mayoral Network for Pandemic Preparedness, Global Policy, 21 June 2018 (freely available on the website)
5. A. Cole, R. Payre, Cities as political objects in A. Cole, R. Payre (eds.), Cities as political objects: Historical evolution, analytical categorisations and institutional challenges of metropolitanisation, Cheltenham (UK), Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, 2016
6. Loren King, Cities, Subsidiarity, and Federalism, in FEDERALISM AND SUBSIDIARITY, NYU Press, 2014.
7. R. Marchetti, City Diplomacy, Michingan University Press, 2021
Week 3 Contenuto sessioni on line e on campus
The city as an economic object: the role of economic and social rights
This week will be dedicated to the analysis of the city as an economic object of study, starting from the reading of some classics of urban studies (Sassen and Friedman) and the role of cities in global trade, through the lens of agglomeration economies and the value chain global. Furthermore, a first foray into more contemporary literature will be offered, which will be taken up again in the more sectoral part of the course. For example, the role of the neoliberal paradigm in urban planning and governance will be highlighted, with respect to the enjoyment of economic and social rights (Schragger).
Laboratory: 2nd meeting
Mandatory readings:
1. S. Sassen., The Global Gity: Introducing a Concept, in The Brown journal of world affairs, vol. 11, n. 2, 2005
2. Richard Schragger, The Political Economy of City Power, Fordham Urban Law Review (2017): Introduction, section I, section III, conclusions
Optional readings:
3. Friedmann, J. (1986) – The World City Hypothesis
4. Peris S. Jones, Economic and Social Rights and the City, in Oxford Hand Book on Economic and Social Rights, Oxford University Press (ed. K. Young and M. Langford), 2021
5. Olajide, O., & Lawanson, T. (2021). Urban paradox and the rise of the neoliberal city: Case study of Lagos, Nigeria. Urban Studies.
6. Le Galès, P. (2016) - Neoliberalism and Urban Change: Stretching a Good Idea Too Far?, in Territory, Politics, Governance, 4:2, 154-172
7. D. Schleicher, The city as a law and economic subject, in UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LAW REVIEW (2010)
Week 4 Contenuto sessioni on line e on campus
The city as a legal object or as a legal entity?
After a general introduction on the role of the legal status of cities in shaping their capacity to protect the rights and welfare of their inhabitants and to contribute to societal challenges including achieving technological, social and climate justice goals, the class will move with the presentation of a seminal work by the legal scholar Gerald Frug on the city as a legal concept. Professor Frug argues that there is a problem of city powerlessness in western democracies (namely, the US and Europe). He identifies the roots of city powerlessness in the tradition of liberal political theory. He uses the history of the emergence of European cities to prove that liberalism established cities as objects rather than subjects of legal power and tried to restrain them as much as possible in favor of State power. He then moves to the analysis of the legal status of cities in contemporary legal theory and concludes advocating for a stronger autonomy and legal authority of cities. He provocatively asks: if private corporations are granted a large degree of autonomy and legal protection, why cities should not enjoy at least the same degree of autonomy and protection from the State?
The paper is traditionally part of urban studies, and it sheds light on the role of cities in the US context, through the history of political doctrines, also European ones.
The class will then move to a more contemporary discussion based on readings that explain the current role of cities within, especially, the EU institutional framework but, also, with incursions in the rest of the world.
Laboratory: 3rd meeting
Mandatory readings:
1. G. E. Frug, The city as a legal concept, in Harv. L. Rev., 1979-1980, n. 93:6, Part. I, II and IV.
2. Willem Salet & Jochem de Vries (2019), Contextualisation of policy and law in sustainable urban development, in Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 62:2, 189-204
Optional readings:
3. M. Fernández-Prado, L. Domínguez Castro (a cura di), City Policies and the European Urban Agenda, Cham, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, 3-18.
4. Chigwata, T.C., Ziswa, M. (2018) - Entrenching Decentralisation in Africa: A Review of the African Charter on the Values and Principles of Decentralisation, Local Governance and Local Development. Hague J Rule Law 10, 295–316. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40803-018-0070-9
Week 5 Contenuto sessioni on line e on campus
The city as a commons: the co-city paradigm and universe of legal tools
Cities around the world are experimenting with policies inspired by the idea of sharing, collaboration, polycentrism and commons. These cities are emerging in ways that some authors demonstrate to be the pillars of the future sustainable model of urban collaboration. An example is the co-city paradigm, which applies these characteristics embedded in the idea of collaborative urban democracy, particularly on a neighborhood scale and in terms of strategic policies that stimulate and support the sharing economy. The week will introduce relevant literature on co-city and on the different scientific influences on the new paradigm (“Creative city”, “Rebel City”, “Smart city”, “The right to the city”, etc.)
Laboratory: 4th meeting
Mandatory readings:
1. Foster, S.R. & Iaione, F.C., Co-cities. Innovative Transitions toward Just and Self-Sustaining Communities, MIT Press, 2022, Introduction and Ch. 5, in open access.
2. E. Glaeser, D. Cutler, Survival of the City, Penguin Books, 2022
Optional readings:
3. Foster, S.R. & Iaione, F.C. - Ostrom in the city: Design principles and practices for the urban commons in Hudson, B., Rosenbloom, J., & Cole, D. (Eds.). (2019). Routledge Handbook of the Study of the Commons. Routledge, 1-21.
4. Edward L. Glaeser, 2011. The Triumph of the City, Penguin Books, book introduction, pp. 1 - 15.
5. Lee Ann Fennell, Agglomerama Brigham Young University Law Review 1373 (2015) pages 101-108; 125-128; 136-138.1.
6. C. Iaione e E. De Nictolis, Urban Pooling, in Fordham Urban Law Journal, (2017), 665
7. Michele Finck & Sofia Ranchordas (2016), Sharing and the City, 49 Vand. J. Transnat'l L. 1299. pages: 1301-1303 + 1335-1345 + 1352-1367.
8. R. Florida et. al., Cities in a post-COVID world, available here https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00420980211018072
9. Florida, Richard; Adler, Patrick; Mellander, Charlotta, The city as innovation machine, Regional studies, 2016, Volume 51, 1-24.
Week 6 Contenuto sessioni on line e on campus
City experimentalism: law and public policies
This week's topic closes the generalist part of the course, introducing a fundamental methodological element in urban studies, both on the side of juridical sciences and on that of political science and public policy analysis: the case-study approach which well suited to the polymorphism of urban experimentalism. These method indications help, together with the generalist part of the course, to address the specialist topics of the following weeks.
Several authors discussed evolutions in the way urban authorities are issuing policies in a way that is suited to the changing nature of urban issues. Especially when confronting wide societal challenges (i.e. climate change; pandemics; democratic data and tech governance) cities are increasingly recurring to experimentation and experimental methodologies to find creative solutions, often supported by a multiplicity of stakeholders, sometimes multi-stakeholder partnerships. Three questions emerge: 1) what are the challenges related to experimentations, especially for the quality of democracy? 2) what are the conditions/design principles of urban policy experimentation? 3) what are the conditions for the upscaling and replicability of policy innovations from the neighborhood to the city level and then to the level of city networks?
Laboratory: 5th meeting
Mandatory readings:
1. Evans, J., Karvonen, A. and Raven, R., The experimental city: New modes and prospects of urban transformation. In The experimental city, Routledge, 2016 (pp. 1-12).
2. Bulkeley, H., The condition of urban climate experimentation. Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy, 2023, 19(1), p.2188726.
Optional readings:
3. F.G. Nicola, S. Foster, Comparative Urban Governance for Lawyers, in Fordham Urb. L.J., vol. 42, n. 24, 2014, 1-22
4. E. Tatì, Sustainable Urban mobility plans, in J. B. Auby (ed), The future of Adinistrative Law, Lexis Nexis, 2018
5. Kristine Kern (2019) Cities as leaders in EU multilevel climate governance: embedded upscaling of local experiments in Europe, Environmental Politics, 28:1, 125-145, DOI: 10.1080/09644016.2019.1521979
6. Santiago Mejía-Dugand, Olof Hjelm, Leenard Baas and Ramiro Alberto Ríos, Lessons from the spread of Bus Rapid Transit in Latin America, 2012, Journal of Cleaner Production, (50), 82-90.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2012.11.028
7. Flynn, Alexandra, The Implications of Stakeholder Group Involvement in Urban Sustainable Development (December 1, 2018). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3314307 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3314307
8. Gustafsson, C.; Amer, M. Forsvik, Sweden: Towards a People–Public–Private Partnership as a Circular Governance and Sustainable Culture Tourism Strategy. Sustainability 2023, 15, 4687. https://doi.org/10.3390/su15054687
Week 7 Contenuto sessioni on line e on campus
Innovative Governance of Cultural Heritage in Cities
This week, the first of the sectorial part of the course, will deal with innovative governance of cultural heritage in cities starting with the introduction of the EU policy framework (Faro Convention and Participatory Governance of Cultural Heritage). The class will then focus on social, environmental, economic sustainability models for the reuse and governance of cultural heritage.
Laboratory: 6th meeting
Mandatory readings:
1. Christian Iaione, Maria Elena Santagati Elena De Nictolis, Participatory Governance of Culture and Cultural Heritage: Policy, Legal, Economic Insights From Italy, Front. Sustain. Cities, 26 May 2022, Sec. Innovation and Governance, Volume 4 - 2022
2. Mohamed Amer, Manal Ginzarly & Maria-Francesca Renzi (2023): Civita di Bagnoregio, Italy: towards a people-centred heritage branding approach, Journal of Heritage Tourism, DOI: 10.1080/1743873X.2023.2188450.
Optional readings
3. Council of Europe (a cura di), Explanatory Report to the Council of Europe Framework Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society, Council of Europe Treaty Series, n. 199, in https://rm.coe.int/CoERMPublicCommonSearchServices/DisplayDCTMContent?documentId=09000016800d3814
4. https://futurium.ec.europa.eu/en/urban-agenda/culturecultural-heritage/news/culture-and-cultural-heritage-partnership-reflects-its-legacy-during-its-final-meeting-and-looks (UAEU, partnership)
5. F. Cominelli, X. Greffe, Intangible cultural heritage: Safeguarding for creativity, in City, Culture and Society, 2012, 3, 4, 245 ss.;
6. G.M. Riccio, F. Pezza, “Street heart”: urban murals as common goods (“Cuore di strada”: “murales” urbani come beni comuni), in La rivista di diritto dei media, 2018, https://www.medialaws.eu/street-heart-urban-murals-as-common-goods/
7. E. Sciacchitano, Editorial: The European Year Of Cultural Heritage 2018. A Laboratory For Heritage-Based Innovation. ScIentific RESearch and Information Technology, Ricerca Scientifica e Tecnologie dell'Informazione, Vol 9, Issue 1 (2019), 1-14
Week 8 Contenuto sessioni on line e on campus
Climate change and protection of biodiversity: between (circular) economy and (nature-based) solutions in cities
In today's class, we will add a further facet to the set of urban special challenges by including the dimension of circularity, environmental sustainability and protection of biodiversity within cities, especially through nature-based solutions and innovation. On one hand, it is relevant how Circular Economy paradigm applies to cities - and whether circular cities ought to be distinguished from circular business by virtue of its inherent complexity. On the other hand, the class will critically argue in favour of a socio-political rethinking of the Sustainability paradigm by incorporating the notion of protection of biodiversity to the environmental discourse about the climate change resilience and adaptation, especially through nature-based solutions and innovation.
Laboratory: 7th meeting
Mandatory readings:
1. Williams, J. (2019) - Circular Cities in Urban Studies, 56(13), pp. 2746-2762.
2. Li, J., and J. I. Nassauer. 2021. Technology in support of nature-based solutions requires understanding everyday experiences. Ecology Ecology and Society 26(4):35. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-12838-260435
Optional readings:
3. Ali, Lena, Annegret Haase, and Stefan Heiland. 2020. "Gentrification through Green Regeneration? Analyzing the Interaction between Inner-City Green Space Development and Neighborhood Change in the Context of Regrowth: The Case of Lene-Voigt-Park in Leipzig, Eastern Germany" Land 9, no. 1: 24
4. M., Marchesi et al. (2020) IOP Conf. Ser.: Earth Environ. Sci. 588 052001 - Applying Circular Economy Principles to Urban Housing
5. Paiho, S. et al. (2021) - Creating a Circular City–An analysis of potential transportation, energy and food solutions in a case district, January 2021, 64
6. Tan, P. Y., J. Zhang, M. Masoudi, J. B. Alemu, P. J. Edwards, A. Grêt-Regamey, D. R. Richards, J. Saunders, X. P. Song, and L. W. Wong. 2020. A conceptual framework to untangle the concept of urban ecosystem services. Landscape and Urban Planning, 200:103837.
7. S. Pauleit, Nature-based solutions and climate change: four shades of green, in N. Kabisch et al, 2017.
Week 9 Contenuto sessioni on line e on campus
Urban Health Governance: right to an healthy environment and climate justice
In 2017, the Italian Ministry of Health presented the “Rome Urban Health Declaration” which calls upon civil society actors and local administration as necessary to the efforts of providing a safe urban environment and increasing the inhabitants’ wellbeing. Global and EU urban policy agenda as well advocate for the involvement of civil society to achieve sustainable development (Pact of Amsterdam, 2016; New Urban Agenda, 2016). However, in the fight to COVID 19 pandemic, countries adopted a centralized approach, not integrating local actors in the definition of the recovery plans, exposing the communities, especially the socially and economically vulnerable ones to face even more critical challenges. On the other hand, cities took on a proactive role and implemented measures to contribute to counteract the pandemic. This class will first reflect on the role of cities in the institutional and legal framework on urban health governance and then will provide an overview on the strategies adopted by cities to guarantee the enjoiyment of the right to a Health environment, and the contribution towards this goal of the so called Climate Justice.
Laboratory: 8° meeting
Mandatory readings:
1. Granberg, M.; Glover, L. The Climate Just City. Sustainability 2021, 13, 1201.
2. 2. Tatì, E. (2019) - Cities' Legal Actions in the EU: Towards a Stronger Urban Power? In European Papers - A Journal on Law and Integration, 2019 4(3), 861-870
Optional Readings:
3. Boyce Katz (2021) - COVID-19 and the proliferation of urban networks for health security (it can not be considered for the reaction paper, considering its extremely shortness)
4. M. Acuto, M. Morissette, e A. Tsouros, City Diplomacy: Towards More Strategic Networking? Learning with WHO Healthy Cities, in 8 Global Policy (2017), 14-22.
5. UN-Habitat (2020) - Covid-19 in African Cities
6. Joint Research Center, “Future of Cities Report”, Chapter: Urban Health (Jrc 2019), «www.urban.jrc.ec.europa.eu/thefutureofcities/».
Week 10 Contenuto sessioni on line e on campus
Governing the city: smart policies and emerging technologies
L'ampio e sorprendentemente vivace corpus di politiche adottate dalle città per risolvere i problemi quotidiani con un approccio pragmatico apre la visione della classe su un’arena amministrativa nuova e poco studiata a livello di governo locale. Come ha sottolineato Nestor Davidson parlando dell'emergente diritto amministrativo localista negli Stati Uniti, esso è “Nested within the tens of thousands of cities, suburbs, towns, and counties that span the country is a vast panoply of local agencies with significant front- line regulatory responsibility" (Davidson 2017 , 569). More in details, this week will be dedicated to the relationships between the city-government and some of the most innovative public policies, those inspired by the smart-city paradigm, especially under the push of emerging technologies.
Laboratorio: 9° incontro
Letture obbligatorie:
V. Albino et al., Smart cities: definitions, dimensions, performance, and initiatives, 2015.
M. A. Goddard et al., A global horizon scan of the future impacts of robotics and autonomous systems on urban ecosystems, 2021
Optional readings
3.Smart cities marketplace, see https://smart-cities-marketplace.ec.europa.eu/, especially here https://smart-cities-marketplace-brochure.eu/.2021/#page=1 and the charter of the community
4. F. Russo, C. Rindone, P. Panuccio, The process of smart city definition at EU level, DIIES Dipartimento di ingegneria dell’Informazione, delle Infrastrutture e dell’Energia Sostenibile Università degli Studi Mediterranea di Reggio Calabria, 2014, anche reperibile su Researchgate www.researchgate.net/publication/269030924_The_process_of_smart_city_definition_at_an_EU_level
5. C. J. Martin et al, Smart and sustainable? Five tensions in the visions and practices of the smart-sustainable city in Europe and North America, 2018
6. A. Caragliu, C. Del Bo, P. Nijkamp, Smart cities in Europe, in M. Deakin (ed.), Creating smarter cities, London-New York, Routledge, 2013, 65 ss.
7. Davidson, N.M. (2017) - Localist Administrative Law, 126 Yale L.J. 564, part I, II and III.
Week 11 Contenuto sessioni on line e on campus
Urban experimentalism and citizen science.
The perspective of Citizen science and city science will be addressed as a way to involve residents in city governance and to contribute through technology to generate scientific data or experiment with innovative forms of governance that can shape urban policy. A science-based approach to urban law and policy.
Urban science comes into play within a theory of urban governance as a way to define the body of knowledge produced by experimentations on innovative forms of governance of city resources. Eu institutions are putting a serious effort to build a bridge between science and society. Citizen science theory has brought a greater availability and open sharing of research and findings. In this way, science might become increasingly collaborative and bring about the “co-production of scientific knowledge” (Berti Suman 2018). The potentially important role of a greater involvement of science to address governance challenges related to urban assets, services or infrastructure has recently emerged in academic discussion (Acuto 2018; Sallis and others, 2016) as well as in the policy discourse. The class will discuss whether this could be facilitating the urban governance efforts of going beyond traditional institutional relationships and their inefficiencies.
Laboratory: 10th meeting
Mandatory readings:
1. Christian Iaione, Elena De Nictolis and Anna Berti Suman, The Internet of Humans (IoH): Human Rights and Co-Governance to Achieve Tech Justice in the City, Law & Ethics of Human Rights 2019; 13(2): 263–299
2. Blog Posts
- https://eurocities.eu/latest/how-data-visualisation-contribute-to-cleaner-air-in-our-cities/
- https://eurocities.eu/latest/give-citizen-science-what-it-deserves/
Optional readings:
3. Paul Romer, Technologies, Rules, and Progress: The Case for Charter Cities, Center for Economic Development, 2010.
4. F. Cappa, S. Franco, F. Rosso, Citizens and cities: Leveraging citizen science and big data for sustainable urban development, Bus Strat Env. 2022; 31:648–667.
5. Citizen science in cities: an overview of projects focused on urban Australia, Urban Ecosystems (2022) 25:741–752
6. Material on the CSI initiative:
https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/communities/en/community/city-science-initiative
7. N. J. Galle, The internet of nature: how taking nature online can shape urban ecosystems, 2019.
Week 12 Contenuto sessioni on line e on campus
The city for all and vulnerable communities: energy and housing poverty
The class addresses the issue of land use regulatory tools the city can use to steering the right to build, the urban regeneration and the use of urban land towards social goals and the protection of sensible interests. It will stress in particular the importance of planning in order to guarantee the right to an house and to contrast energy poverty.
Laboratory: 11th meeting
Mandatory readings:
1. Alexandra Panman (2021): How effective are informal property rights in cities? Reexamining the relationship between informality and housing quality in Dar es Salaam, Oxford Development Studies
2. Naama Teschner, Anca Sinea, Andreea Vornicu, Tareq Abu-Hamed, Maya Negev, Extreme energy poverty in the urban peripheries of Romania and Israel: Policy, planning and infrastructure, in Energy Research & Social Science, Volume 66, 2020
3. Post. https://eurocities.eu/latest/cities-step-up-to-mitigate-energy-poverty/
Optional readings:
3. Catalina Ortiz (2018) The “Cities, Design and Transformation” (p. 64-74, 84-90) (the sections are available on the Issuu platform)
4. Catalina Ortiza & Boano Camillo (6th April 2020) 'Stay at Home': Housing as a pivotal infrastructure (the resource is available as part of the "Post COVID-19 urban futures" series on the Bartlett Developing Planning Unit's Blog)
5. Schleicher, D. (2013). City Unplanning. The Yale Law Journal, 122(7), 1670–1737, Part I and II.