Landscape and proximity fruition in the Euganean Hills context: reflections from an educational experience. – Tourism-recreational practices are often framed through dichotomous concepts such as near/far, familiar/unfamiliar, tourist/local, and everyday/exotic. With this awareness, we proposed a didactic laboratory within the Master’s degree program in Landscape Science at the University of Padua to address the following research question: What role does the experience of landscape play in reconsidering these dichotomous approaches? We analysed the Euganean Hills area in the Padua province exploring four specific contexts, two historical houses and two museums, where the relationship with the landscape is defined by practices of proximity and specific connections with natural and cultural heritage values. The research was based on desk analysis of demographic and tourism data, strategic and promotional documents, visits and interviews. Dialogue with local operators, their perspectives on local communities and the direct immersion in the landscape unveiled the multiple ways in which the Euganean landscape is understood and promoted for leisure purposes. What emerged is the plurality of discourses and images, places and initiatives, often co-created ‘from below’, that define and redefine the landscape. Tracing the variety of proximity visits, experienced similarly by residents and tourists through an interesting hybridisation process mixing roles, motivations and space sharing, allows to overcome dichotomies and open up new spaces for reflection and local planning.

Marginal Narratives from a “Undisciplined” Excursion to the Architecture Biennale 2021. – If Neil Smith and David Harvey find space at the Arsenale, if at the Giardini the exercise is to dis-explore the Earth, it is because the Biennale is about surveying the crisis space of globalisation: it forces us to interrogate the geopolitical map of contemporaneity between the Anthropocene, techno-capitalism, encroachments and adaptations. This is why we thought of sharing a visit to the Biennale with those geographers for whom the exercise proposed by Architects is essential to our theoretical, disciplinary, ethical, civil and very human present of being geographers.
Our notes in the margin depend on this invitation to investigate the potential of the object of marginality starting from the concept of “hole in the plot - which - nourishes the other plots” (Negarestani, 2021, p. 106). Hole or absence that stands for the missed encounter between Geography (the material on display) and geographical discipline to imagine plots, narratives and “undisciplined” alliances to come.

Potential Impacts of NRRP Investments in Italian Mono-functional or Desertified Realities: Threats and Opportunities. – The contribution aims to reflect on the impact of PNRR plans and programs with particular attention to the sustainability of rural and mountain tourist regions, highlighting territorial criticalities and suggesting greater emphasis on the concept of adaptation and the possible role for activities related to education for the territory. The PNRR provides for a € 6.68 billion loan in the “tourism and culture” sector, which will make it possible to develop innovative actions to implement local development through the new ecological transition criterion. Much emphasis is placed on the digital transition and physical measures of renewal. Many realities of those compatible with these funds fall within rural and mountain areas, often characterized by negative situations up to conditions of real demographic and economic desertification. The poor economic and social sustainability of many peripheral and mono-functional territories, investigated by recent studies in the field, seems to link the transformation of these areas to actions of economic adaptation and diversification linked to climate change, with respect to which climate maps suggest an increase of the impacts in the coming decades. An investment in these areas, perhaps aimed at restoring or physical-functional de-velopment actions, runs the risk of producing little benefits if it is not accompanied by new forms of social, economic and even demographic attractiveness. The systemic vision can make it possible to operate in a more suitable way to the specific local territorial system, while the development of educational paths to the territory open to stakeholders active in the field can increase the possibility of investment success through the sharing and production of open local knowledge to the reproduction and renewal of territorial values as a project for the future of the subjects who live there and who work there.

Emerging urban mobility. Critical evaluation of micromobility, e-bikes and e-scooters, between individuality, public and private. – In recent years, shared mobility has grown in many cities around the world. The term micromobility was coined to refer to low-speed shared vehicles like bicycles and scooter (moped and kick-style) that have recently drawn more attention. It offers a flexible transport option capable of avoiding road congestion encouraging intermodality. This paper aims to identify the main factors that individuals affect to adopt electric e-micromobility. Following systematic literature, we observed the reported influence of several functional and non-functional factors over the decision on whether to use an e-micromobility mode of transport in Italian cities. Cities have to provide better conditions for walking, cycling and emerging micromobilities and thereby at the same time contribute to a more sustainable and equitable urban transport system.

Environmental protection and National Energy Balance. Geographical Considerations in the Perspective of a Process of Virtuous Innovation. – The EU’s European Environmental Agency defines the target of pollution limits to be observed by our member’s for the progressive reduction of environmental impact. Italy as a whole respects the limits of the Effort Sharing Decision to 2020, but presents problems of concentration of NO2 and PM10 in many urban areas. Analyzing national energy consumption, we identify the geopolitical and geoeconomic structural causes that condition the structure of the hydrocarbon dependence of the National Energy Balance. Within this “scenario”, the contribution discusses the strategies and interventions necessary for the reshaping of energy consumption towards stable results of active environmental balance.