Listening to the nights of Fez a fragmentary narrative. – In how many ways can one listen to a city – or rather the city – that excludes the noise of traffic while preserving the ancestral channelling and sonic configurations of its alleys and of materials belonging to a time discreet yet not immobile? The soundscape of the medina of Fez emerges not only as a visual space, but as a stratified acoustic landscape, oscillating between public, discreet, and sheltered spaces on the one hand, and private, reverberant, and communal ones on the other. The calls to prayer from the minarets, the flight of storks, and both human and non-human voices contribute to the construction of a sonic geography that defines urban spatiality. Architecture itself functions as an acoustic device that amplifies, attenuates, or trans-forms sounds, making Fez one of the most significant “cities of sound” in the world. Nighttime, in particular, discloses the sonic intimacy of the me-dina, transforming it into a natural conservatory of phonetic effects—an intangible heritage belonging not only to history, but also to the daily practices and sensory perceptions of its inhabitants

Redefining the city-river relationship: a look at the Turin area. – The relationship between the city and the river is being profoundly redefined in the context of the water crisis, in the relationship between the natural and the built environment. The paper will focus on the case of Turin, where deindustrialisation has led to morphological, functional and symbolic transformations of previously industrialized areas, with a new process of landscape construction, in some cases based on the heritage of the industrial past, in others on a new meaning (re)attributed to the environment, as the main physical and symbolic dimension of the re-territorialisation of post-indus-trial spaces. This paper focuses on the relationship between rivers and cities, and in particular on how rivers are once again becoming a (potentially) founding element of post-industrial landscapes. We will draw on some case studies in the Turin area, where the river emerges as a potentially structuring element in rethinking places deeply marked by deindustrialisation and in imagining and constructing a new landscape.

Mega events and urban spaces: Paris, Olympic City 2024. – Geographical reflection has now sedimented, through theoretical reflections and empirical analysis, the assumption that the organization of major events has disruptive effects on the balance, albeit always dynamic, of urban ecosystems. Infrastructure construction and preparatory governance processes are then accelerators of transformative dynamics that implicitly or explicitly impact the spaces and communities involved. The construction of the Olympic village in the St. Denis neighborhood for the 2024 Paris event explicitly seeks to intervene on the area’s marginal territorial milieu. Investment and infrastructure constitute the line of intervention on which, naturally, critical debate has been activated. This paper, based on a qualitative methodological approach, through Document analysis, and a number of field surveys aims to identify the main critical ribs specific to the case study.

Inside the Margins and Marginality: (Condi-)Visions and Scientific-Artistic Practices in Suburban Contexts. – The contribution aims at analysing areas which, due to characteristics of housing discomfort, are labelled as marginal spaces of the city. After exploring the concepts of margin and marginality with reference to two areas in the eastern suburb of Naples, analysed as urban fragments in a new centre-periphery relationship, the paper focuses on a project recently developed intersecting creative art practices and geographic research. The results of site-specific experiences – conducted by involving inhabitants, scholars and artists-in-residence in on-site workshops and theatre works – have contributed to a co-construction of a new knowledge of places. Aware of the methodological difficulties and limita-tions underlying geographic-artistic collaborations, starting from sites, and integrating everyday narratives and images has allowed to enter inside the margins, trying to contribute exploring the creative potential of the fragments beyond the labels of territorial and symbolic marginality.

Edgar Degas: from public space to landscape. For a configurative geography of the Belle époque. – Edgar Degas geographer. The artist “does” geography, that is, he gives territorial meanings to the spaces that he crosses and that he represents. The impressionist painter participates in artialisation, which is an essential cultural ingredient in the construction of emotional territoriality. And he also contributed to the strengthening of the spirit of the Belle époque, thanks to the landscaping that the society of the time equipped itself with. Once again proposing geography as the outcome and condition of the territorialization process, in its triple articulation: constitutive, configurative and ontological.

Urban borders and margins as spaces of reappropriation of the city. The case of the Fontaínhas gardens in Porto. – Increasingly, urban governments, citizens and informal groups are pursuing alternative practices to feed cities. The unease provoked by postmodern urban life, which has adulterated the human/nature relationship and exacerbated the city/land divide, generate the construction of practices to contrast these processes. The borders and margins of the «Capitalocenic» city often become places of resistance where self-production initiatives can be practised through the creation of urban gardens. Of particular interest are informal experiments that emphasise the reappropriation of physical spaces for the marginalised and the community at large. This article analyses, from a critical perspective and highlighting strengths and weaknesses, the spontaneous construction experience of the La Bananeira urban garden, carried out by an informal group on the Fontaínhas escarpment in Porto, Portugal.

Shadows of militarism on the city. An urban perspective on military geographies. – Cities represent a relevant perspective for analysing military discourses and practices. Firstly, because the urban scale continues to be the key site of conventional warfare and a space of experimentation for new forms of militarism. Secondly, because the presence and the resulting construction of military discourse determine a complex system that influences both everyday practices and the dynamics of governance. The analysis of these influences allows us to highlight points of overlap between processes of militarization and forms of urban violence (to be understood both in relation to individuals and in connection to the construction/limitation of spaces). This contribution, through an analytical dialogue between the literature on military geographies and urban studies, aims to examine the relationship between militarism at the urban scale and the geographies of violence, in cities not directly involved in war conflicts.

The wind farm as a symbolic landscape. – Wind energy has had a remarkable development in Italy in recent years, despite severe criticism on the environmental and social impact of the plants. In particular, numerous studies and research have been conducted on the subject of the visual impact of wind turbines, mostly giving space to those who consider them a territorial realization that disfigures the landscape. The widespread construction of what today in Italy are commonly called wind parks must however lead us to consider that just as many are those who see in the plants not so much an element of visual disturbance but, on the contrary, an element of the landscape with an acceptable aesthetic value, and in some cases even positive. The research focuses on two wind farms – Monte d’Aria in Marche and Cinque Stelle in Liguria – close to established Italian tourist regions with the primary aim of giving a voice to those who, residents or tourists, consider them symbol and flag of a new, correct approach of society towards the natural environment.

Making a roundabout happen. Rondabout, unlilly location an autonomous politi-sation. – The article looks back at the daily experience of some sixty activists on a roundabout in the Isère region that was occupied continuously from November 2018 to March 2020. The ethnographic point of view assumes the double empirical posture of engagement in the yellow vest movement and a participatory observation methodology with about sixty interviews. On the roundabout, the yellow jackets show a constancy in participation, debates, popular education workshops, own actions or convergences with other organizations. The interaction between the development of the «no place» of the roundabouts and the construction of a new public space for living and deliberation is the source of a new creativity and political maturation opening up an instituting process of individual and collective autonomy in Cornelius Castoriadis’ sense.

Space, diversity, security. Anthropological notes on symbolic control of migration flows. – Focusing on the Italian recent «decreto sicurezza» (Security bill) the article provides an interpretive frame for understanding the symbolic implications of regulating migration flows across the states. While politics would tackle in the past both security and welfare, neoliberal expansion of autonomous capitals has progressively confined the role of professional politicians to preserving security for their constituencies. National decision makers thus need emergencies to legitimate their existence as securitization agents. That exasperation by politics of the sole security dimension of social life within the nation state has exacerbated the otherization of migrants through space (clandestinification) and the space production (local and national) through the otherization and widespread physical marginalization because of their mobility status of people in transit.

The depth of the changes taking place in the area object of the present study is of such importance as to ask questions about the features that this urban space should take in the process of growth of the Capital city. In the perspective of this evolution even more importance is given to what happens in the suburb area, which pertains to and is managed by the University of Rome “Tor Vergata”. The difficulties faced by the local authorities bring to the attention a new need arisen from the interest in finding resources to proceed with and accomplish a project of functional redefinition, which seems hard to be implemented. The 2009 World Aquatics Championships seemed to be a good opportunity, since it was thought that the construction of the sport structures would let to resume the project of urban requalification of the areas of Tor Bella Monaca and Torre Gaia, which are known to be dominated by lack of planning that has its roots in the Fifties of the last century and in which the influence of organized crime is overbearing. A new occasion, always connected with a major event, seemed to emerge to relaunch the possibility of implementing this project. All involved institutions and local authorities seemed to agree that the 2020 Olympic Games could be the right chance to reorganize this territory. In this direction, the size of the planned measures continues to change and, consequently, the disorientation of residents, while an investigation on different scales of the potential and of future possible difficulties seems to be essential.
difficulties seems to be essential.