About
146
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Introduction
My research interests lie at the junction of the two macro areas of Science, Society & Technology studies and Space, Society & the Environment. I’m interested in innovative modes of geographical production, planning and governance performed by heterogeneous, multilayered and multiscalar networks, most notably how these networks assemble and negotiate socio-environmental issues, and how the material and semiotic implications of their agency is brought to the public fore.
Principal research topics include the digital social innovation, the social understanding of nature and technology (including current developments in environmental theory), the effects of informal urban planning practices, and the role of new ICTs in urban sustainability governance.
https://crowdusg.net/
Additional affiliations
July 2020 - February 2024
January 2005 - December 2005
Position
- PhD Student
Education
June 2010 - June 2010
January 2007 - September 2007
July 2006 - July 2006
Publications
Publications (146)
In the last decade, a wide variety of social innovation initiatives performed through digital processes, supported by digital tools, and realised in the digital space have been experimented, implemented, scaled up and uptaken in worldwide cities. We are here to explore them.
This catalogue is a product of the project “DSICity_Digitally-enabled Soc...
Our paper aims at widening political ecology research on business’ responsibility and public governance conditions in cases of violation of Environmental-related Human Rights (ERs), by adopting a quantitative perspective. We focused on a subset of socio-environmental conflicts (SECs) that directly connect with the violations of ERs. We propose a qu...
L’articolo indaga la categoria geografico-economica delle Global Production Networks (GPNs), soprattutto con riferimento alla sua capacità di cogliere gli aspetti critici del rapporto tra capitale multinazionale e sviluppo regionale. Dopo aver brevemente inquadrato le GPNs nella letteratura sulle configurazioni globali della produzione, verranno me...
L’articolo propone un’esplorazione dei primi Piani locali di Adattamento prodotti in Italia, al fine di verificare se l’uso di strumenti partecipativi possa essere utile per integrarvi criteri di giustizia socio-ambientale. La teoria dell’Ecologia Politica Urbana è assunta come quadro per indagare se i processi partecipativi impiegati nei Piani abb...
Video doc available here https://zenodo.org/records/10212551
Supported by the public engagement activities funds by the DIGGEO@ESOMAS, Department ESOMAS – University of Turin and the SeaPaCS project (funded by IMPETUS project – funded by the European Union), the video tells a compelling story about the explorations of the plastisphere and its visual documentation.
The file contains two sheets: one is the sample log for the sampling performed on the 14th and 15th of July, in Anzio (RM), Italy (harbour and coastal samples), as well as a first description of the samples collected.
The two tows with the neuston net allowed an approximate calculation of the average plastic concentration (particles > 300 µm) per...
This protocol in English and Italian is a deliverable of the SeaPaCS project (Participatory Citizen Science Against Marine Pollution), funded by IMPETUS (project ID 101058677). The protocol has been freely adapted from "LADI and the Trawl" by Coco Coyle with Melissa Novaceski, Emily Wells and Max Liboiron, as published by the Civic Laboratory for E...
Purpose-The paper presents the case of a small (about 200 m 2) container garden created in a neglected space within the premises of the School Management and Economics of the University of Turin. The project is part of the framework 'Proposal for Citizen Engagement' of EIT Food Cross-KIC New European Bauhaus. 'L'orto della SME' is an example of 'se...
In each country, the occurrence of energy poverty among resident households is usually related to low income and its unequal distribution. Like other manifestations of material deprivation, however, such a phenomenon is likely to be also correlated with some internal socio-political factors that allow its persistence by preventing effective solutio...
The paper contributes to the debate on the polyvocal nature of social innovation via the exploration of one of its principal manifestations: urban gardening. Initially, we wonder whether the dualistic reading of urban gardening, as a neoliberal vs revolutionary political initiative, is appropriate and productive, or rather, we should recognize its...
This study discusses the case of a 200 m2 container garden set up in a polluted and neglected area of the School of Management and Economics of the University of Turin. ‘L’Orto della SME’ is self-managed, and it has become a hub for a variety of stakeholders, within and outside the university. The project is part of the framework Proposal for Citiz...
This document in English is a deliverable of the SeaPaCS project (Participatory Citizen Science Against Marine Pollution), funded by IMPETUS (project ID 101058677). The document contains the description of the policy-suggestions elaboration process, the analysis of anonymised interviews and the photographic documentation.
The policy suggestions a...
This article enriches the existing literature on the importance and role of the social sciences and humanities
(SSH) in renewable energy sources research by providing a novel approach to instigating the future research
agenda in this field. Employing a series of in-depth interviews, deliberative focus group workshops and a sys-
tematic horizon scan...
The mushrooming of Digital Social Innovation (DSI) initiatives (i.e. digitally based or digitally enabled solutions to collective social problems) in urban governance is a recent phenomenon that has been only partially investigated in scholarly research, most often in terms of e-government or e-governance. Particularly the socially progressive and...
The sudden and exponential increase of projects for the production of energy from renewable sources has drastically increased in the last decade, by also triggering a widespread citizens’ disapproval towards such initiatives worldwide. Consequently, research on public acceptance of renewable energy initiatives has become an important and well-estab...
The stringency of energy poverty in a country is usually related to low income and unequal distribution of earnings. In this paper, we enlarge the picture by showing how internal socio-political factors are associated with different measures of energy deprivation. Specifically, relying on the recently elaborated energy poverty indexes developed by...
This chapter analyses the diverse and opposite social imaginaries associated with the collective representation and the practical realisation of Digital Social Innovation (DSI) initiatives. It considers representations emerging from discourses, narratives or visions that substantiate collective imaginary as the initial moment in the generation of n...
The present chapter explores how Digital Social Innovation (DSI) initiatives contribute to the processes that reproduce society by feeding new forms of urban governance. Notably, it analyses how these initiatives are mobilised in governance projects and produce technology-enhanced social configurations. In this way, they can reinforce, rethink, or...
Initially interpreted as a special kind of social innovation empowered by the digital tools, Digital Social Innovation (DSI) is now recognised as an independent category of agency, endowed with peculiar features, forms and consequences. The chapter describes the roots and the evolution of the DSI concept starting from initial explorations in the so...
This chapter explores how revolutionary initiatives of Digital Social Innovation (DSI) challenge the mechanisms of digital capitalism that generate systemic inequality via the implementation and functioning of digital urban technologies. By examining the “dark sides” and the potentially dystopic consequences of DSI, the chapter describes the strugg...
This chapter explains why a critical geography perspective is adequate to understand Digital Social Innovation (DSI) as a social technology operating in the urban spaces. Cities represent the preferred contexts for design, experiment and implement it—as amply documented by European Union-funded projects. However, the multiple spatial dimensions inv...
The growing number of digitally-enabled social innovation initiatives have recently attracted social scholars’ interest; and required an attentive consideration the complex entanglements between innovation, social agency and power. This paper contributes to the debate on this juvenile research field by analysing the different conceptualisations, cu...
This book engages the reader in exploring the relationships between digital social innovation initiatives and the city. It delivers a fresh, accessible and case-based discussion on the emergence of digitally-enabled social innovation practices in Europe that are redesigning the urban space and challenging the consolidated urban governance processes...
The stringency of energy poverty in a country is usually related to low income and unequal distribution of earnings. In this paper, we enlarge the picture by showing how internal socio-political factors are associated with different measures of energy deprivation. Specifically, relying on the recently elaborated energy poverty indexes developed by...
Memorie Geografiche Vol. XVIII “Oltre la Globalizzazione CONFIN(AT)I/BOUND(ARIES)”, 2020, a cura di S. Zilli e G. Modaffari
This report presents 100 research questions that have been identified by scientific experts as key priorities for Social Science and Humanities (SSH)research on renewables, in order to inform and support EU-funded research and innovation leading to achieve climate-neutrality by 2050.
This report presents 100 research questions that have been identified by scientific experts as key priorities for Social Science and Humanities (SSH) research on renewable energy, in order to inform and support EU-funded research and innovation leading to achieve climate-neutrality by 2050. The questions together aim to promote SSH research that co...
The concept of digital social innovation (DSI) refers to a fast-growing set of initiatives aimed at providing innovative solutions to social problems and needs by deploying the potential of the social web and digital media. Despite having been often interpreted as synonymous with digitally enhanced social innovation, we explain here why, in conside...
Digital Social Innovation (DSI) is a new concept referring to social innovation initiatives that leverage digital technologies potentiality to co-create solutions to a wide range of social needs. These initiatives generally take place in urban contexts. However, in the existing literature, scarce attention is devoted to the spatial dimensions and t...
This paper critically explores the construction and diffusion of the socio-technical imaginary of crowdsourcing for public governance in Europe via a quali-quantitative analysis of academic publications, research and innovation projects funded by the European Commission (EC) and local initiatives. Building upon the digital social participation narr...
Scientific community recently devoted an increasing attention to the opportunities of development for rural areas, most notably with the identification of attractiveness factors as potential drivers of growth and improvement of “quality of life”. This paper aims to contribute to the debate, proposing to adopt the lens of post-rurality to interpret...
A collection of links and visual stories from CROWD_USG project, an EU Marie Skłodowska-Curie research project by Chiara Certomà, exploring how increasing ICT-people interactions are transforming the governance of urban sustainability. See: crowdusg.net
This paper explores the potential of the global urban gardening movement to mitigate spatial and environmental injustice conditions in the urban space. After a background discussion of the spatial and environmental injustice theory and an assessment of methodologies that have been adopted in relevant studies, we will highlight existing links with u...
Since the 1990s, a burgeoning literature has emerged on urban climate politics and governance. It is now evident that urban responses to climate change involve a diverse range of actors as well as forms of agency that cross traditional boundaries, and that have diverse consequences for (dis)empowering different social groups.
This book provides an...
Cambridge Core - Environmental Policy, Economics and Law - Urban Climate Politics - edited by Jeroen van der Heijden
The chapter investigates the relationship between urban gardening– as political gesture- and socio-spatial justice. In search for an actually existing just city, gardeners’ everyday initiatives advance a substantive micropolitics of life that point out to less visible and sometimes ignored sides of urban governance and planning; and unveil the arti...
It is increasingly clear that, alongside the spectacular forms of justice activism, the actually existing just city outcomes from different everyday practices of performative politics that produce transformative trajectories and alternative realities in response to particular injustices in situated contexts. The massive diffusion of urban gardening...
This paper investigates the emergence of informal planning practices and their relationship with the new geometries of power and responsibility that characterise what is here defined and described as ‘fluid governance’; and that leads to co-creative forms of public space governance. In particular, the research explores the key role played by some p...
While most of the existing literature on community gardens and urban agriculture share a tendency towards either an advocacy view or a rather dismissive approach on the grounds of the co-optation of food growing, self-help and voluntarism to the neoliberal agenda, this collection investigates and reflects on the complex and sometimes contradictory...
Scholarly research on smart cities already signalled that citizens’ engagement is a fundamental requisite for the achievement of a sustainable and inclusive urban development. Accordingly, transition towards a fossil fuel free future is not to be understood as a matter of techno-economic innovation but as a process in which the ‘social’ and the ‘te...
Full text can be find here: https://issuu.com/edizioniambiente/docs/alla_scoperta_della_green_society_x
Web site content of the research project "Wine Experiences. Social mapping wine tourism" by Chiara Certomà , funded by the Great Wine Capitals Network in 2013
The chapter explores the current evolution of smart city paradigm characterized by worldwide-raising, spontaneous and bottom-up socio-technological networks that produce non-planned forms of citizen empowerment in urban governance, via crowdsourcing processes. It focuses on the role of citizen-centred data-richness for unlocking the full potential...
Offers an innovative perspective on the use of data to promote people-friendly and livable cities ▶ Analyzes trends in data-rich city governance ▶ Presents revealing and inspiring case studies ▶ Contributes to the current debate over the smart city paradigm ▶ Pursues an interdisciplinary approach to the subject This book analyzes the ongoing transf...
The paper builds on the evidence of an increasing consensus towards citizens' engagement practices in shaping both the form and functioning of the city, and on the apparent distance between the setting up of governance structures adequate for participatory processes to be performed, and the daily urban planning and design. Against this context, the...
This article addresses a new mode of planning that involves a collaboration between State, private and community actors in the context of growing urban gardening movements. It questions the view of urban gardening as a manifestation of citizens’ dissensus towards administration’s institutional planning, and the expression of urban ‘counterplanning’...
Offers an innovative perspective on the use of data to promote people-friendly and livable cities ▶ Analyzes trends in data-rich city governance ▶ Presents revealing and inspiring case studies ▶ Contributes to the current debate over the smart city paradigm ▶ Pursues an interdisciplinary approach to the subject This book analyzes the ongoing transf...
This book presents a vibrant study of the rise, decline, and transformation of environmental thinking. The author’s analysis moves from the proclaimed death of environmentalism toward the emerging theory and practices of postenvironmentalism in its manifold interpretations. Building upon current transformation of the relationship between science, t...
Factsheet 02 Urban Allotment Gardens in Europe COST Action TU1201
This chapter explores the theoretical critiques that environmental politics attracted since the 1990s onward. Among them, building upon political ecology critique, post-environmentalist theory gained a prominent role and claimed that green diplomacy, business, and large NGOs determined a de-politicization of environmental issues in the pursuit of e...
This chapter starts with the consideration that different post-environmentalist theories seem to be unable to provide an inspiring message for people engagement in environmental issues and introduces an alternative perspective based on the post-modern material-semiotic theory. This emerged from the seminal contribute of science sociologists and cri...
How does a material-semiotic postenvironmentalism actually take form in the world? This chapter presents some examples (including the Transition Network movement, the U’wa’s and the Brazilian seringueros’ struggle…) of current environmentalist practices that while confirming environmentalism is not dead at all, nonetheless show it is transforming b...
From the 1980s onward, environmental concerns became part of the international political agenda with sustainable development turning into one of the pillars of contemporary sociocultural, political, and economic programs. This chapter analyses the two main approaches that made it possible, i.e., the realist and the constructivist one. The former (a...
This article investigates the relationship between urban gardening and planning by building upon the results of field research on gardening initiatives in the city of Rome, Italy. The work is aimed at suggesting that, while often associated in geography and planning literature with urban informality practices (e.g. accidental city or self-made urba...
We are now at the conclusion of this journey through the development of environmental thinking, which explored the debate on the mainstreaming and subsequent death of environmentalism, together with the most recent scholarly and practitioners’ contributions on post-environmentalism. This chapter, thus, summarizes it and, building upon the transform...
This book presents a vibrant study of the rise, decline, and transformation of environmental thinking. The author’s analysis moves from the proclaimed death of environmentalism toward the emerging theory and practices of postenvironmentalism in its manifold interpretations. Building upon current transformation of the relationship between science, t...
Full text available here: https://ugecviewpoints.wordpress.com/2015/08/19/smart-cities-for-smart-citizens-enabling-urban-transitions-through-crowdsourcing/
https://ugecviewpoints.wordpress.com/2015/08/19/smart-cities-for-smart-citizens-enabling-urban-transitions-through-crowdsourcing/
This article analyses Bent Flyvbjerg's 'dark side of planning' theory and proposes to increase its critical strength by including, together with ideas of rationality and power, two further theoretical tools: the Foucauldian concepts of governmentality and biopolitics. The potentiality of this inclusion is exemplified by the analysis provided about...
