Living with austerity, rebuilding care. Social infrastructures in crisis and practices of self-organization in Antico Corso, Catania. – This paper examines how the dismantling and partial rebuilding of care-related social infrastructures in the Antico Corso neighbourhood of Catania has reshaped everyday life and local power relations. The closure of three historic hospitals—an outcome of prolonged urban austerity—has profoundly altered the neighbourhood’s sense of place. Drawing on a qualitative approach that includes ethnography, interviews, document analysis, and participant observation, the paper shows how institutional narratives present these closures as inevitable and beneficial, legitimizing top-down “urban regeneration” while excluding residents from meaningful decision-making. Many inhabitants respond with a mix of anger and resignation, perceiving the loss of the hospitals as a wound to the neighbourhood’s identity. At the same time, feminist collectives, civic committees, and grassroots organizations are developing alternative narratives and practices of social and territorial care. These initiatives contribute to redefining the neighbourhood from below and contest the spatial consequences of austerity. The paper argues that the crisis of social reproduction manifests not only as an economic issue, but as a spatial and political struggle that generates both new forms of marginalization and innovative practices of resistance and belonging. The case of Catania highlights the specificities and contradictions of austerity urbanism in Southern Italy.

Climate Crisis and Tourism in the Maira and Vermenagna Valleys (Piedmont Alps). – This study examines the transformations driven by climate change in the alpine context, focussing on the Maira and Vermenagna Valleys in the Piedmont Alps, two areas marked by environmental vulnerability and significant exposure to ongoing climatic and socio-economic pressures. The research explores how rising temperatures and decreasing snowfall are significantly reshaping the local tourism supply, requiring a reorganisation of the sector.
Combining in-depth interviews with local stakeholders and quantitative analysis of tourism and climate data, the study reveals a growing awareness of the phenomenon and its socioeconomic impacts. The climate crisis has exposed the unsustainability of traditional ski-based tourism, prompting a shift toward more resilient models such as experiential, outdoor, and cul-tural tourism.
While the Maira Valley shows greater adaptability thanks to an already di-versified offer, the Vermenagna Valley, historically reliant on alpine skiing, struggles to transition. The findings highlight the urgent need for locally coordinated strategies that integrate sustainability, cultural identity, and innovation.

Geographies of the sacred: the sanctuary of the SS. Trinità of Vallepietra between tradi-tion, territorial identity, and new practices. – The Sanctuary of the Santissima Trinità of Vallepietra represents an emblematic place where faith, tradition, and new social and territorial practices converge. This study examines how this sacred space continues to hold strong spiritual significance while also embracing new dynamics related to slow and sustainable travel. Younger generations are rediscovering pilgrimage through paths that combine spirituality with a search for territorial authenticity, maintaining a strong connection with tradition. The “companies” of pilgrims, symbolically united by banners and the practice of gatherings, perpetuate an identity bond with the territory, reinterpreting their belonging through a lens of re-territorialization. In this context, events related to pilgrimages and gatherings of banners are seen as practices of reclaiming the territory, strengthening the bond with the local community, and reaffirming the collective meaning of the sacred site. The approach of the Holy Year 2025 and the extraordinary Jubilee of 2033 has renewed attention to these places, intensifying the process of re-territorialization and reinforcing the bond between spirituality and territory. This study shows that, although influenced by socio-cultural changes, sanctuaries remain focal points of collective identity and territorial relationships, able to evolve without losing their original religious significance.

Territorial management and promotion of the tourism offer: a study on the city of Benevento. – This paper explores tourism management in the Sannio region, focusing on Benevento. It highlights the importance of integrating the region’s natural, cultural, and gastronomic resources into a cohesive tourism offer. Through surveys and interviews with visitors, the study identifies key strengths, such as the region’s unique identity and attractions, but also highlights challenges like limited accessibility and inadequate infrastructure. Wellness, nature-based, and cultural tourism are identified as high-potential growth segments. The paper recommends strategic, integrated management, including infrastructure improvements, targeted marketing, and collaborative governance to enhance tourism developTerritorial management, Proximity tourism, Tourism, Territo-rial competitivenessment and competitiveness.

Major events and local identity. The case of “la notte della taranta” in Salento. – Major events are often created to enhance or regenerate territorial attractiveness. The goal is not only to maximize the economic and employment impacts that can directly affect the event itself but also to attract the attention of investors, tourists, and institutions to invest resources and projects in the territory. In reality, these events, in addition to their attractiveness purposes, also have generative purposes, potentially contributing to strengthening the sense of belonging within the local community, territorial cohesion, and, consequently, the affective and financial investment of individual inhabitants as well as the community as a whole. This contribution, starting from the analysis of the summarised interpretative framework, aims to evaluate the effects of the Notte della Taranta on the territory and the Salento identity over a quarter of a century.

Sardinia between transhumance and the Blue Zone. Socio-spatial dynamics, rural lifestyle and diet of a geographical area of exceptional longevity: Ogliastra. – The rural dimension of Sardinia is strongly represented by the historical and social role assumed by agricultural activities on the island, which have always been characterised by transhumance phenomena (in Sardinia Tramuda) that, at different scales from the rest of Italy, have characterised some Sardinian rural territories (Ortu, 1988; Lai, 1998). Ogliastra has long been one of the lands of transhumance in Sardinia (Schiavone, Schiavone, 2014), and is marked by a high number of long-lived individuals (Blue Zone), for which, the rural environment, lifestyle and local interrelation-ships and genetics have influenced the health status in this area (Pes and Poulain, 2014). The work aims to investigate the socio-spatial dimension of food production linked to the rural (transhumant) culture of Ogliastra, trying to understand the configurations of territoriality (Turco, 2010) and how this socio-spatial, rural and food model may have influenced the particular longevity of the area. The Blue Zone diet, in fact, typical of transhumant territories, can become a catalyst for the sustainable devel-opment not only of Sardinia but also of many small Mediterranean rural areas and, furthermore, can facilitate the re-appropriation by the younger generations of their ancient identity heritage.

The countryside revenge. From the typical economy to the post-modern eating. – The increasing of the homologated processes of the production field and the food consumption are explanatory factors of a flowing back thought process that brings to consider food again in a stronger ethic and local key and environmental sustainability. In this evaluative scene of groceries traditional, handmade, biological, natural, zero kilometer, short supply chain and local categories, incorporating an additional quid to the industrial groceries, seem to answer with greater adequacy to the satisfaction of needs felt essential to the safety of traditions, nature and human wellbeing. Values for wich consumers are willing to pay an higher price with the purpose to respect them or incorporate them. As long as they are able to perceive their quality, identity and origin with an efficient story that bring them to market. A story that, in an increasing and careful measure, aims to bring out the intangible components of food that end up endowing it with an economic, nutritional, gustatory, health and identity surplus value.

From “Italia dei barconi” to “Italia dei balconi”. National identity at the time of Covid-19. - This work is part of the debate known as «Media Geography» (Zimmermann, 2007; dell‟Agnese, 2011) and it aims to critically investi-gate the collective processes of identity narratives produced by the crisis developed by the Covid-19 emergency in Italy. These processes are identified in the media mainstream narratives of the sense of a common belonging and representation (Foucault, 1980; Schwartz, 2008). The survey takes into consideration the period February-April 2020 and it has identified a chronology of “Us”, structured as follows: “Us and Them”, “Us”, “Us and us”, through a semiotic and visual approach, a structure that encourages us to reflect on the contrast between local and global. Finally, the close link between politics and identity narration is highlighted: through the media, it tends to build images that activate and orient collective narration, confirming that «the ideological mobilization of identity concerns the images of identity rather than identity itself» (Pollice, 2005).