Post Un-Lock

Front matter

Patrizia Fonit gli =y È SIE Angioletta Voghera: Editors

From Territorial Vulnerabilities to Local Resilience

A Springer

Preface

This book is the first result of the “Post Un-Lock” research project, funded by the Interuniversity Department of Regional and Urban Studies and Planning (DIST) of the Politecnico di Torino, a three-year work involving the collaboration of a large number of researchers belonging not only to different departments and institutions but also to diverse disciplinary areas.

The research involves teams from the Department of Environmental, Land, and Infrastructure Engineering (DIATI) of the Politecnico di Torino (such as environmental and geomatics engineers), the Department of Mathematical Sciences “Giuseppe Luigi Lagrange” (experts in mathematical statistics), and the Department of Medical Sciences of the Università di Torino (researchers in the field of medical statistics and epidemiology), committed to reflecting on the territorialization of the pandemic and the effects of pollution on health in cities.

The Post Un-Lock research took shape in the last months of 2020, triggered by the scientific impulse of the international goals of sustainability and resilience in the perspective of the post-carbon city and the overcoming of environmental, economic, social and health crises. Scholars have collaborated and tested on case studies methodologies, approaches, and tools capable of re-imagining cities and regions to overcome vulnerabilities and to innovate the socio-ecological system on the basis of the ideal-typical model of Local Resilience Unit.

With this in mind, we would like to thank, in addition to the authors of the chapters and their collaborators: the partners of the research such as the Interdepartmental Centre Responsible Risk Resilience Centre (R3C), the SDG11LAB, the S3+Lab (Urban Sustainability and Security Laboratory for Social Challenges), the CED PPN (European Documentation Center on Natural Park Planning), the Living Lab and the PIC4SER of Politecnico di Torino. We would also like to thank the external supporting institutions such as IUGA of Grenoble, University of South Denmark, CMCC (Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change), and the administrations involved in the case studies, whose suggestions provided crucial support for the outcomes of this publication. Other institutions and people we would like to thank are: Nicola Tollin, Professor with special responsibilities in Urban Resilience, UNESCO Chair at University of Southern Denmark (SDU), ITI, vi Preface

Civil and Architectural Engineering; Joe Ravetz, Co-director of the Collaboratory for Urban Resilience and Energy at the Manchester Urban Institute, University of Manchester; Jordi Morató, Director UNESCO Chair on Sustainability at Polytechnical University of Catalonia; Michele Talia, Istituto Nazionale di Urbanistica (INU); Stefania Crotta, Direzione Ambiente, Energia e Territorio of Regione Piemonte; Milena Maule, Associate Professor of Medical Statistics and Epidemiology at Department of Medical Sciences of Università di Torino (UNITO); Egidio Dansero, Professor at Department of Cultures, Politics, and Society (UNITO) and delegate at RUS; Alessio Malcevschi, Professor at Università di Parma, RUS delegate; Stefano Armenia, Senior Research Fellow at Link Campus University, president of System Dynamics—S YDIC; Rosa Gilardi, Director of Area Urbanistica e Qualità dell’ Ambiente Costruito, Città di Torino; Gilles Novarina, Laboratoire Architecture Environnement and Cultures Constructives at Université Grenoble Alpes—École Nationale Supérieure d’ Architecture; Guglielmo Filippini, Direzione Risorse Idriche e Tutela dell’ Atmosfera at Ufficio Pianificazione e Controllo delle Risorse Idriche of Città Metropolitana di Torino.

Turin, Italy Grazia Brunetta January 2022 Patrizia Lombardi Angioletta Voghera

Contents

PartI The Research

1 Post-pandemic Challenges. The Role of Local Governance for Territorial Resilience: ,..;-;:.;-1/2 00/0 3 Grazia Brunetta and Angioletta Voghera

Part II Topics

2 Notes on Spatial Implications of COVID-19. Evidence Grazia Brunetta, Ombretta Caldarice, Danial Mohabat Doost, and Franco Pellerey

3 The Role of the Minor Hydrographic System in Increasing Luigi La Riccia and Stefano Ferraris

4 Ecosystem Services and Territorial Resilience: The Role Carolina Giaimo, Benedetta Giudice, Giulio Gabriele Pantaloni, and Angioletta Voghera

5 Indicators and Scenarios for Sustainable Development at the Local Level 4,010 005 HERRERA ILARIA 61 Alice Borsari, Patrizia Lombardi, and Sara Torabi Moghadam

Elena Pede, Mattia Scalas, and Luca Staricco viii Contents

Part III Case Studies

7 NO, Concentrations and COVID-19 in Local Systems Gt Northwest Hall 11.101) LR 83 Ettore Sarzotti, Gianmarco Pignocchino, Alessandro Pezzoli, and Angelo Besana

8 The COVID-19 Effects and the Development Process of Lanzo Federica Corrado, Erwin Durbiano, and Gabriella Negrini

9 Analysis of Hydrogeological Risks Related to Climate Change: Testing the ClimeApp Assessment Tool on the Torino Elena Pede, Mattia Scalas, and Luca Staricco

10 From Knowledge to Land-Use Planning: Local Resilient Luigi La Riccia and Angioletta Voghera

11 Space for Rights. The School Between Planning Standard Daniela Ciaffi, Carolina Giaimo, Emanuela Saporito, and Valeria Vitulano

Part IV Digital Tools

12 The3D Metric Survey for the Digital Cartographic Production to Support the Knowledge of the New Municipality of Mappano ... 153 Egle Beani, Elisabetta Colucci, Luigi La Riccia, Andrea Maria Lingua, Paolo Felice Maschio, Francesca Matrone, Alberto Possa, and Ammj Traore

13 Source and Data for the Analysis of the Metropolitan Territory with GIS Tools: A Critical Review Between Francesco Fiermonte, Luigi La Riccia, and Mattia Scalas

Part V Lesson Learned and Perspectives

14 Final Remarks on the Implementation of the Post-pandemic Patrizia Lombardi

Chapter 1 A) Post-pandemic Challenges. The Role cieco of Local Governance for Territorial Resilience

Grazia Brunetta and Angioletta Voghera

Abstract This chapter aims to provide researchers different interpretative keys of the book, which attempt to propose methodologies, tools, and case studies to put resilience into action in post-pandemic territories by planning and design at different scales. The chapter opens the discussion by presenting diverse and interdisciplinary contributions of which the research is composed; it discusses key topics with reference to the transformative resilience, and referring to methodologies and tools for interpreting territories, and focusing on the role of planning, as well as attempting to describe through practices the operational concept of the Local Resilience Unit.

Keyword Territorial resilience - Local resilience unit - Methodologies - Case studies

1.1 Framing Territorial Resilience

What is the role of urban and regional planning in achieving sustainable development goals of our communities, considering the turning point for spatial planning posed by the COVID-19 emergency? Moreover, how do medium and long-term planning purposes interact with the needs that the pandemic has boosted?

The book Post Un-Lock—From territorial vulnerabilities to local resilience aims to provide the reader with a valuable tool to understand how the COVID-19 pandemic should be a trigger for the re-start based on a new territorial path in the frame of sustainability and resilience.

As shared among scholars, sustainability and resilience are two related visions. They are two umbrella issues that cannot be used as interchangeable notions, since

G. Brunetta - A. Voghera (DI)

DIST—Interuniversity Department of Regional and Urban Studies and Planning, R3C—Interdepartmental Responsible Risk Resilience Centre, Politecnico di Torino, Torino, Italy e-mail: angioletta.voghera@polito.it

G. Brunetta e-mail: grazia.brunetta @ polito.it

© The Author(s) 2023 3 G. Brunetta et al. (eds.), Post Un-Lock, The Urban Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-03 1-33894-6_1

4 G. Brunetta and A. Voghera resilience can be considered a subsystem of the sustainability approach (Folke et al. 2016; Brunetta and Caldarice 2020) or a renewed and systemic attitude in the sustainability science (Xu et al. 2015). Sustainability and resilience have some differences (Voghera and Giudice 2019): sustainability promotes general aims of social justice, environmental protection, and economic efficiency through a radical re-organization of the socio-ecological system; resilience is focused on the need for change, adaptation, and transformation of territorial systems, evolving in time and space following the socio-ecological demands and overcoming the socio-ecological limits. Besides, they have shared features, e.g., supporting the integration of environmental management into territorial and urban planning, reinforcing reflectiveness, flexibility, and inclusiveness in planning processes, and valorizing the robustness and diversity of ecological and landscape values.

Territorial innovation is required to guarantee sustainability, resilience, and the related ecological transition. This pathway implies the “bounce forward” of territorial systems, demanding them to evolve in a post-COVID process of change. This bounce calls for the re-design of new planning solutions. Moreover, it is necessary to renew the current tools, as well as to adopt new approaches, including technological ones, an envisage actions and policies for the resilience of territories (Voghera 2020). Assuming a strengthened definition, the IPCC (2012) frames resilience as “the ability of a system and its component to anticipate, absorb, accommodate or recover from the effects of a hazards in a timely and efficient way, including by ensuring the preservation, restoration or enhancement of its essential basic structures and functions.“ In this rationale, the territorial dimension is an integrated layer, and “territorial resilience” can be described as “an emerging concept (...) that considers the dynamic and nonlinear interaction between endogenous features of systems and their exogenous transient shocks, chronic stresses, and their conditions of sudden or slow change that affect both assets and governance systems” (Brunetta et al. 2019, p. 10). This definition emphasizes the territorial ability to respond, transform, and coevolve into a different perspective without rebounding back after the pandemic event (Giovannini et al. 2020). This latter definition, the so-called transformative resilience, should take advantage of the environmental, economic, climate, and social crises, and reconsider planning and design processes.

The Post Un-Lock research supports a jump forward on “territorial resilience” based on interpreting the “inherent unpredictability” of the pandemic and post-pandemic times (Folke et al. 2021, p. 19). This complex leap ahead should enable to reorganize of territorial systems, starting from the awareness of interrelation among all their components—such as economic, social, ecological, energy, climate, and health—and following the directions drafted by the UN Agenda 2030 (Agenda for Sustainable Development, 2015) and by the different European Next Generation EU Plans (in Italy the PNRR).

Spatial policies assume a leading role in sustainable and resilient development. They have not only considered system dynamics but also encouraged our collective capacity to guide development trajectories in a responsive, adaptive, and reflective way (Freeman et al. 2020). What is needed is a process that moves towards nature-based recovery or towards a nature-positive economy (IUCN Marseille Congress

1 Post-pandemic Challenges. The Role of Local Governance ... 5

2021 “Our Nature, Our Future”). This process should be based on the integration of site-based conservation and development (see Chap. 3) as a path to rewriting the alliance between humans and nature, reversing the paradigms of the past 100 years (today, 0.01% of living things have been able to produce materials/objects/waste equal to the mass of all living things; “Great Acceleration”; Elhacham et Al. 2020).

Considering territorial governance to implement SDGs 3, 11, 13, 14, and 15 required a significant acceleration by integrating the ecological transition into planning and management at different scales (from the global consciousness to the local action).

Radical changes in spatial planning at different scales are the basis of transformative resilience. The demand for innovation has been discussed for thirty years in spatial planning. Otherwise, planning has produced partial, sectorial, and fragmented responses to the demands for innovation. Planning has attempted to pay attention to many issues, such as land consumption, energy conversion of the built environment, ecological and landscape design, social services, and transportation. These attentions have not yet produced different organizations of territories concerning the environment and landscape to ensure health, safety, and well-being.

With this in mind, the research tried to answer the following emerging questions:

e We are certainly on a proactive ground, but do we have appropriate cognitive and planning tools for the complex challenges and goals for ecological transition and resilience?

What is the role of planning in driving these goals to action? Can planning lead to effective ecological transition actions?

In a nutshell, the COVID-19 experience highlights the need to suggest a planning system that can integrate multiple scales according to an interdisciplinary approach focused on deep knowledge of territorial risks and vulnerabilities.

1.2 Territorial Resilience. Does the Scale Matter?

The operationalization of spatial resilience at different planning scales depends on local conditions and specific spatial policy objectives. Within the framework of international agreements, it is now clear that territorial resilience, to be effective, must reinforce a multiscalar governance approach. Vertical integration should address how local action contributes to international and national policy goals and how national governments can sustain local action (Caldarice et al., 2021).

From a practical point of view, the EU Green Deal (2019) represents the first attempt to decline resilient thinking into public policy, promoting multiscalar policies to develop a climate-neutral development model by 2050 both at the regional and at the local scales.

6 G. Brunetta and A. Voghera

At the regional scale, territorial resilience should be the frame of a strategic vision that fields a network of policies based on shared agreements between stakeholders and institutions, capable of supporting the empowerment and accountability of each actor, guaranteeing the adequacy of regional planning tools, and identifying economic resources to integrate the climate transition to resilience into decision-making processes (Brunetta 2015).

At the local scale, territorial resilience should be the lead for the territorial regulatory framework to support design actions that sustain a green and equitable transition. The current situation requires new paradigms and approaches for territorial governance design, aiming to link measures to reduce territorial vulnerabilities with strategies and interventions to guide territories’ transformation, maintenance, and territorial regeneration design. Territorial resilience requires two equally considered dimensions, the strategic and the local, which must work together in circular and mutual processes (Coscia and Voghera 2022, 2023). These two “ drivers” of territorial resilience imply innovative cognitive frameworks in decision-making, from analysis of territorial vulnerabilities to planning actions.

During the COVID-19 emergency, the “local resilience unit” emerged as a resilient answer at the local scale, emphasizing the role of community proximity and the liveability of urban spaces and facilities. In this book, the local resilience unit—that is a specific outcome of the research—can be defined as “an operational frame” at the “neighbourhood” level that can develop planning actions together with community empowerment to make cities more responsive, resilient, and able to provide a high level of liveability and urban well-being. Of course, this is not a completely new planning paradigm. The Local Resilience Unit stems from an ideal-typical model of territorial organization based on civic subsidiarity that can provide an operational key to integrate local demands, local self-organization, and the responses of public institutions (Brunetta and Moroni 2012).

Building on this theoretical overview, the book brings together several contributions that address various open issues, e.g., understanding spatial, landscape, environmental, and climate dynamics, analysing local vulnerabilities, and using modern survey techniques and tools to produce planning support. By proposing the Local Resilience Unit, Post Un-Lock is taking a step towards defining a new spatial planning paradigm that deals with territorial transformative resilience, aiming at supporting the implementation of innovative practices and actions for overcoming territorial vulnerabilities.

1 Post-pandemic Challenges. The Role of Local Governance ... 7

1.3 Converging Experimentations: Challenges, Methodologies, and Tools for Post-pandemic Territories and Cities

The book presents the results of work carried out by researchers at the Polytechnic and University of Turin who collaborated in the “POST-UN-LOCK. From territorial vulnerabilities to local resilience” research program.! The project’s main objective is to decline through case study a first conceptual definition of “local resilience units,” and, more broadly, of planning for resilience in the post-pandemic period. In this perspective, there is a strong focus on the definition of a new paradigm focused on the importance of local and “sub-local” planning, considered as the output of a deep relationship between territories and the knowledge paradigm. The concept of Local Resilience Unit is a recent topic that is still open in the literature. It is intended as a “micro-territory” capable of responding to shocks, the Local Resilience Unit is linked to the concept of neighbourhood unit, superblock, and 15 Minute city. It should be understood not only as a form of optimal distribution of essential services, organized and planned for enabling communities to overcome crisis through an adaptive approach, reinventing the territorial proximity.

The aim is to provide, through the concept of a resilience unit and an integrated reading of risks and vulnerabilities, an operational framework for post-COVID planning. The objective is to provide, on the one hand, ideas for an integrated interpretation of territorial risks and vulnerabilities and, on the other, practical and theoretical models for the post-COVID city, capable of reorganizing itself to pursue long-term sustainability and resilience. In this process of definition, it is necessary to work at different scales, considering how a specific system of risks to which a resilience unit is subjected is the result of the interaction of local and supra-local phenomena. Moreover, the response to these risks involves site-specific actions that require a high level of territorial awareness at different scales and the integration of policies among different levels of government and between different spheres according to a multiscalar and transdisciplinary approach.

The research POST UN-LOCK provides a wide range of reflections dealing with methodologies, approaches, and tools experimented on different territories: the Piedmont Region, the Metropolitan City of Turin, the Stura River, and the Lanzo Valley territory.

The work of the researchers in the book was organized into three sections: topics, case studies, and digital tools.

The section Topics tries to define some main issues for the resilient city critically interpreted through diverse qualitative and quantitative methodologies used to analyse the territory. It explores some specific aspects:

e the spatial analysis of the COVID-19 pandemic and its effect on Piedmont municipalities (Chap. 2);

' The research POST-UNLOCK. From territorial vulnerabilities to local resilience was financed by DIST Department in 2020.

8 G. Brunetta and A. Voghera

® an interpretation of hydrological, ecological, and ecosystem features of the territory (Chap. 3); the ecological network and ecosystem services for territorial resilience (Chap. 4); an evaluation of sustainability at the local level (Chap. 5); an interpretation of the concept of neighbourhood concerning the minimum resilience units (Chap. 6).

The section Case Studies develops reflections on various territorial scale (from the metropolitan to the neighbourhood scale) reflecting on specific aspects, such as NO2 concentrations and COVID-19 in Turin Municipality (Chap. 7); the pandemic event in mountain areas compared to the metropolitan area (Chap. 8); risks and climate change in North Turin metropolitan area (Chap. 9); experimentations for landscape resilience at local level (Chap. 10); the school and social innovation for territorial resilience and Local Resilience Unit (Chap. 11).

The Digital Tools section describes experimentations that are essential to developing the resilient challenges and investigating specific interpretation tools, considering 3D metric surveys for the digital cartographic production (Chap. 12), and the role of sources and data for the analysis used by GIS tools (Chap. 13).

Some finals remarks and perspectives are reported in Chap. 14.

The analysis and studies of the territory, which are also conducted with the help of GIS methodologies (in the three parts of the book topic, case studies, and digital tools), are essential for the knowledge on both the large and local scales of local risks and vulnerabilities. Besides, those tools have a crucial role in constructing theoretical (and critical) interpretations of the main problems and solutions that can converge in the “local resilience unit” concept.

Brunetta G (ed) (2015) Smart evaluation and integrated design in regional development. Territorial scenarios in Trentino, Italy. Ashgate, Farnham

Brunetta G, Caldarice O (2020) Spatial resilience in planning: meanings, challenges, and perspectives for urban transition. In: Leal Filho W, Azul A, Brandli L, Ozuyar P, Wall T (eds) Sustainable cities and communities. Encyclopedia of the unsustainable development goals, vol III. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp 1-12. ISBN: 9783319957166. https://doi.org/10.1007/978- 3-319-95717-3_28

Brunetta G, Moroni S (2012) Contractual community in the self-organising City. Freedom, Creativity, Subsidiarity. Springer, Dordrecht

Brunetta G, Ceravolo R, Barbieri CA, Borghini A, de Carlo F, Mela A, Beltramo S, Longhi A, De Lucia G, Ferraris S, Pezzoli A, Quagliolo C, Salata S, Voghera A (2019) Territorial resilience: toward a proactive meaning for spatial planning. Sustainability 11(8):2286, 17, ISSN 2071-1050. https://doi.org/10.3390/su1 1082286. www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability

Caldarice O, Tollin N, Pizzorni M (2021) The relevance of science-policy-practice dialogue. Exploring the urban climate resilience governance in Italy. City, Territory Archit 8:1-11, ISSN: 2195-2701. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40410-021-00137-y

Coscia C, Voghera A (2022) Co-evolutionary, transformative, and economic resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. Evidence-based experiences of urban community design in Turin

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(Italy). In: Calabrò F, Della Spina L, Piñeira Mantiñán MJ (eds) Lecture notes in networks and systems. new metropolitan perspectives—post covid dynamics: green and digital transition, between metropolitan and return to villages perspectives, vol 2. Springer, Cham, Berlino. https:/ /doi.org/10.1007/978-3-03 1-06825-6_271

Coscia C, Voghera A (2023) Resilience in action: The bottom up! architecture festival in Turin (Italy). J Safety Sci Resilience 4(2):174-187. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnlssr.2022.10.005

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Folke C, Biggs R, Norström AV, Reyers B, Rockstrém J (2016) Social-ecological resilience and biosphere-based sustainability science. Ecol Soc 21(3):41. https://doi.org/10.575 1/ES-08748- 210341

Folke C, Polasky S, Rockstrém J et al (2021) Our future in the Anthropocene biosphere. Ambio 50:834-869. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-021-01544-8

Giovannini E, Benczur P, Campolongo F, Cariboni J, Manca A (2020) Time for transformative resilience: the COVID-19 emergency. Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg. https://doi.org/10.2760/062495

IPCC (2012) Glossary of terms. In: Managing the risks of extreme events and disasters to advance climate change adaptation. In: Field CB, Barros V, Stocker TF, Qin D, Dokken DJ, Ebi KL, Mastrandrea MD, Mach KJ, Plattner G-K, Allen SK, Tignor M, Midgley PM (eds) A special report of working groups I and II of the intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, and New York, NY, USA, pp 555-564

Voghera A, Giudice B (2019) Evaluating and planning green infrastructure: a strategic perspective for sustainability and resilience. Sustainability 11(10):2726, 21, ISSN 2071-1050. https://doi. org/10.3390/su11102726. https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/10/2726/htm

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Chapter 2 Mm) Notes on Spatial Implications coset of COVID-19. Evidence from Piedmont Region, Italy

Grazia Brunetta, Ombretta Caldarice, Danial Mohabat Doost, and Franco Pellerey

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic has been studied by many scholars from a wide range of disciplines. Among these investigations, planners and regional scientists have researched the spatial spread of the contagion. Most of these studies tried to explore the spread of the disease in a fixed period, like annually, and analysed the spatial variables that are most influential on the COVID-19 spread over territories. On the same line, the chapter investigates the pattern of virus transmission in the 1.181 municipalities of the Piedmont Region during two years of the pandemic over different periods by providing 24 monthly and two annual hot spot maps using the Spatial Statistics Tools on ArcGIS. Consequently, the chapter analyses the correlation between the spread of contagion with three spatial variables (population density, annual average traffic flow, and the ageing index) by performing a statistical analysis on the municipalities which showed unexpectedly higher or unexpectedly lower numbers of contagion. The results show that the impacts of population density and annual average traffic flow are verified on the transmission rate of the cities with unexpectedly higher or lower exposure to COVID- 19 contagion than their neighbours both in the first and the second year of the pandemic. For the ageing index, an association is noticed during the first year while not confirmed for the second. In conclusion, the chapter proposes that studying the disease’s variations—at different times and on a regional scale—uncovers the spatial dimension of the phenomenon and would suggest insights for both scientists and policymakers to enrich preparedness as the preferable approach in future planning policies towards transformative resilience.

Keywords COVID-19 pandemic - Transformative resilience - Piedmont region - Spatial planning - Geographic information system

G. Brunetta - O. Caldarice (BX) - D. Mohabat Doost

DIST—Interuniversity Department of Regional and Urban Studies and Planning, R3C—Interdepartmental Responsible Risk Resilience Centre, Politecnico di Torino, Torino, Italy e-mail: ombretta.caldarice @ polito.it

F. Pellerey DISMA—Department of Mathematical Sciences “Giuseppe Luigi Lagrange”, R3C—Interdepartmental Responsible Risk Resilience Centre, Politecnico di Torino, Torino, Italy

© The Author(s) 2023 13 G. Brunetta et al. (eds.), Post Un-Lock, The Urban Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33894-6_2

2.1 How Do Spatial Implications Matter in the COVID-19 Pandemic?

In his 2012 seminal book, David Quammen (2012) defines pandemics as spillovers, questioning if they are merely happening to us or if we are somehow causing them. Most recently, Nassim Taleb reminded us that the COVID-19 pandemic is not a black swan but a warning of a more fragile global system (Avishai 2020). Precisely for this reason, the ongoing COVID-19 crisis powerfully reveals its spatial implication (Coppola 2021). On the one hand, spatial relations can intensively contribute to the diffusion of the disease; on the other hand, this contribution might change over time during the pandemic, so both temporal and spatial dimensions are essential aspects to be studied.

Along this line, planners and regional scientists are currently engaged in addressing the COVID-19 physical dimension, as it is a phenomenon that establishes spatial features in addition to the human one (Allain-Dupré et al. 2020). Although the health effects of COVID-19 are not neglectable, the impacts on the population go beyond the spread of the disease.

In addition to the temporal dimension—that only a few recent kinds of research considered for analysing the pandemic’s territorial changes—tt is also helpful to find the most influential spatial variables that might contribute to the spread of infection. Despite the growing awareness about the spatial implication of COVID-19, a limited number of place-based studies have been published since the initial pandemic outbreak. Among the existing literature, some scholars traditionally relate density and crowding to the intensification of the disease spread (Wong and Li 2020), while a growing number of researchers suggest either weak, strong or even no correlation between density and COVID-19 spread (Carozzi et al. 2020). Many empirical researchers perform case study analyses at the national level to identify the role of density as a predictor of infection rates. Among those, Bhadra et al. (2021) suggest a moderate association between COVID-19 spread and density in India, while Kadi and Khelfaoui (2020) demonstrate a stronger correlation between the two in the case of Algeria. In addition to density, some other studies have attempted to reveal spatial parameters which can explain the diffusion of COVID-19. These factors mainly include connectivity and ageing. On this line, Hamidi et al. (2020) claim that connectivity matters more than density in the US spread of COVID-19, while Mollalo and Vahedi (2020) recognize ageing and demographic variables as central.

Turning to the Italian context, the empirical studies of COVID-19 partially concentrate on the spatial dimension of contagion. Buja et al. (2020) showed that the spread of COVID-19 was correlated negatively with the ageing index in provinces of Northern Italy, underlying that provinces with younger populations are more likely to be the hot spots for the rapid spread of the disease. Dettori et al. (2021) compared the pattern of COVID-19-related mortality in Italy with several geographical, environmental, and socioeconomic variables at the provincial level, demonstrating that contagious is related to pollutants and land take.

2 Notes on Spatial Implications of COVID-19. Evidence from Piedmont ... 15

Starting from this broad framework, this chapter initially performs a territorial analysis on the increase of the pandemic using the GIS-based hot spot analysis regarding the spread of the COVID-19 infection in the 1.181 municipalities of the Piedmont Region by providing 24 monthly and two annual maps to track the movement of the disease outbreaks over time. The first set of results shows that the hot spots and cold spots of contagion are functions of both time and space, and different episodes move within the region. By changing the spatial scale of the analysis, it is observed that some municipalities—even inside the clusters of hot spots and cold spots—show an unexpectedly lower or higher contagion rate compared to their neighbours. Consequently, we analysed the correlation between the spread of contagion with three spatial variables (population density, annual average traffic flow, and the ageing index) by performing a statistical analysis on the municipalities which showed unexpectedly higher or unexpectedly lower numbers of contagion.

From this perspective, the chapter aims to fill the gap as there are no studies performed at the local level in Italy, to the best of our knowledge. Accordingly, the novelty of this study refers to its methodological approach in considering spatial and scalar factors of the pandemic in a way that:

e It is performed through a geostatistical analysis using GIS techniques and considering the proximity factors between municipalities.

e Itis not merely limited to the analysis of density as a spatial variable, integrating connectivity and ageing as well.

e Itis developed at the local scale, fitting the Italian planning system.

In the end, this study aims to suggest implications for policymakers to determine adequate courses of action to solve the problem or implement reforms independently from the pandemics, enriching preparedness (Balducci 2020) with an adaptation path in a “build back better” approach towards transformative resilience (Brunetta and Caldarice 2020).

2.2 Methodology

As mentioned earlier, this study performed a GIS-based geospatial analysis for 1.181 Piedmont Region municipalities located in northwest Italy with an area of 25,402 km?, making it the second-largest region of the country, with more than 4 million population as of 31 January 2021. The Piedmont Region has eight provinces, including the metropolitan area of Turin and the city of Turin as the capital. The geographical divisions of the country, regions, provinces, and municipalities of the study area are visible in Fig. 2.1.