The case study of Bitti (Sardinia): Risk perception and local best practices. – In alignment with Goal 13 of the UN 2030 Agenda, strengthening risk awareness within local communities can provide a framework for effective citizenship in managing extreme weather and climate events. In Sardinia, the community of Bitti (an inland area in the province of Nuoro, northeastern Sardinia) experienced a devastating flood in 2020. In response, local institutions and the community demonstrated resilience and implemented sound institutional practices. Following a field survey initiated through meetings with local authorities, this work presents the results of research aimed at understanding the risk perception among the municipality’s population. This insight aims to support the future implementation of participatory processes and citizen science tools designed to foster the development of communities resilient to meteorological disasters.

The participatory process of community tourism in Oscata for the enhancement of Alta Irpinia. - Tourism is one of the most disruptive phenomena on a global scale, both as concerns intensity in terms of the flows of people it moves and for the economic, social and environmental transformations it brings. The exploitation of territorial resources and the effects tourism produces can at times result irreversible on the environmental system of reference. This element has often been underestimated by the tourism industry remaining unable to prevent the negative consequences of mass tourism which, on the one hand, damages resources and, on the other, corrodes the socio-territorial fabric. Consequently, a rethinking of the processes of development in the sector is necessary from the perspective of sustainability through local community participation.
The paper, based on the experience of Oscata, a rural village situated in Alta Irpinia, aims to reflect on alternative forms of tourism such as community tourism which welcomes visitors offering them hospitality underpinned by emotional and culturally interesting involvement thus triggering integration and participation in the local community's routine activities and mainstream social events.

Urban green spaces and community roots: the social infrastructure of Parco Uditore (Palermo). – This article examines how urban green spaces act as social infrastructures capable of countering fragmentation in contexts marked by austerity, marginalisation and the erosion of collective life. Drawing on critical perspectives on roots and identity, it interprets green-space care as a form of re-rooting through which communities rebuild relations, memories and shared attachments. Using Parco Uditore in Palermo as a case study, the article explores how bottom-up management fosters social cohesion, produces territorial knowledge and supports new forms of citizenship, while also revealing structural vulnerabilities and limits to replicability. The findings show how community-led green spaces can rekindle bonds of place and open pathways toward more shared and meaningful ways of inhabiting the city.

The new opportunities offered by immersive and inclusive technologies to represent and rediscover the complex relationship between human communities and water resources. – In order to know, represent and interpret the complex relationship between water landscapes and human communities the new technologies (immersive cartography, three-dimensional web, augmented reality, 3D environments) represent extraordinary and functional tools both for research and for territorial information and promotion actions in terms of tourism. Evidence of this is the project “Tourist Itineraries to Discover the Waters of Italy”, conceived and promoted by the GECOAGRI LANDITALY Interuniversity Research Group Association and financed by ACEA, aimed at promoting a process of water resource enhancement in the dimension of environmental, economic and social sustainability. The authors through some exemplifications and using a methodology of operational analysis, characterized by new syntaxes, reconstruct with the help of augmented reality and immersive technologies, as well as the canonical geocartographic and documentary sources, the material and immaterial dimension of the water resource in the Conca reatina, Umbilicus Italiae, where the sociocultural dynamics underlying the relationship between water and population, narrate experiences of vulnerability and development, participation and conflict, protection and threat. Through 10 ten interactive and implementable totem-stations, it is possible to embark on an inclusive and participatory journey that allows people to explore even inaccessible places. Not only video and audio, historical and thematic cartographies, photos and three-dimensional images, but also drone shots from which to observe from above what nature and culture have achieved and, if necessary, to land in particular places reconstructed through augmented reality that allows one to observe them as they were and as they are today, making clear the processes of transformation of which signs and sedimentations remain in the landscape palimpsest.

The river in the city: requalification and shared management of the water resource. – The watercourse of the Basento river, in the segment that runs through the regional capital of Basilicata, Potenza, has undertaken enhancement and redevelopment initiatives, in order to allow its reintegration into the urban fabric. The pourpose of this contribution is to outline the process that is leading to the requalification of the river area – in the context of the Basento River Park – as well as the ex Cip-Zoo, a former industrial area. The aim is to return them to the community, which is attempting to participate in decision-making processes through voluntary and spontane-ous actions. A qualitative analysis, based on questionnaires addressed to citizens, reveals that the community is searching for a space of agency, hence the demand of governance tools that can make these participatory processes more structured and effective.

Agreements on the use of water, cooperation, policies and conflicts: river contracts in Italy. – The paper aims to explore the concept of river contract as a tool for participatory management of water resources, analyzing in this context the key role of conservation and management of their naturalness. The main objective of the research is to understand how river contracting can facilitate the conservation, enhancement and transmission of cultural heritage while promoting the sustainable development of local communities. The methodology is based on a review of the available literature on the river contract concept, its role in cultural heritage enhancement, and the need for the geo-mediation phase as an important moment of shared and participatory planning. The results of the research, in addition to highlighting regional differences in the application of River Contracts in Italy, indicate that the river contract although not widespread can act as a catalyst for the management and enhancement of cultural heritage, actively involving local communities in the conservation of their territories. The implications of the research may be useful for scholars, practitioners and institutions interested in the conservation and enhancement of water resources through the implementation of planning strategies by identifying the figure of the geomediator as a facilitator of performative processes.

Participatory public art and creative workshop: murals in Bergamo’s suburbs. – The paper examines some urban regeneration and social inclusion projects implemented through collective artworks in Bergamo’s suburbs. Here, for about a decade, murals and graphic design worshops have been adopted as agents of change and active citizen participation. In particular, Tracce Urbane and Pigmenti were conceived as opportunities to modify the urban space by producing murals based on issues such as inequality, gender equality, memory and marginalization. On the one hand, these initiatives involved international artists, in order to give aesthetic qualities to the works and make them colorful re-aesthetization operations (Trione, 2022); on the other hand, street art as a «geographic agent» (Dumont, 2019), has allowed the involvement of vulnerable groups of citizens such as immi-grants and disabled, in order to regenerate and co-construct their everyday landscape. The objective is to provide, with the help of documentation and semi-structured interviews, a critical analysis of the various approaches advocated by local stakeholders. This allows to define the dynamics of the participatory processes implemented and the effectiveness of community empowerment agency; finally, it allows to understand whether these experiences are able to generate conscious communities (Bazzini, Puttilli, 2008), bearers of a common narrative with a peripheral point of view.

Participatory processes