Kinetic intensities and moral registers of pandemic place branding

Emblematic of late capitalist modes of value creation, place branding draws on semiotic processes as well as on affective mobilization both to structure the representation and fruition of specific locales and to produce publics. Such governmental projects of people and places, however, are always open to possible acts of recontextualization. This article discusses the complex forms of social and semiotic regimentation (and subver-sion) underlying place-branding projects by exploring two social media campaigns that involved the city of Milan during two key moments of the Covid-19 outbreak. Revolving around different moral discourses of speed, both campaigns resulted in a partial or failed uptake. The initial (February 2020) celebration of fast-paced metropolitan work eth-ics evoked by #MilanoNonSiFerma (‘Milan doesn't stop') – a marketing and political faux pas – was followed (in May 2020) by a reparatory campaign #UnPassoAllaVolta (‘One step at a time'), aimed at endorsing the meditative quality of slow temporality. These morally inflected shifts in kinetic intensity materialized alternative forms of ethical sociality and disciplinary practices, showing how the semiotic regimentation of affects through moral registers and chronotopic formulations plays a key role within the fusion of media and capital characteristic of our post-Fordist present. © 2023, EQUINOX PUBLISHING.

Urban Farming: The Reluctant Utopia

The old conceptual dichotomy between the city and the countryside has often been a historical stumbling block for architects and urban planners. Whilst there have been many attempts to bring the city closer to the natural environment, some on grand scales, more modest experiments have often gleaned better results. Daniele Belleri is a partner at design and innovation office CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati, where he is in charge of all editorial and curatorial projects. He and the practice's founder, architect and engineer Carlo Ratti – who is director of the Senseable City Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) – together explore our contemporary options. Copyright © 2023 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Exploring the "15-Minute City" and near working in Milan using mobile phone data

This paper investigates the changes in neighbourhood attractiveness during the Covid-19 pandemic (2020) compared to the year before in 2019 in the city of Milan. Central neighbourhoods recorded a drop in users from -63% to -47%, while the peripheral areas showed a relatively steady presence during the day. Indeed, remote working and the fear of public transport led to rethinking commuting and re-value working close to home. Semi-peripheral and peripheral neighbourhoods have gained a renewed role in attracting remote workers, and coworking spaces represent a valuable alternative for those willing to improve work-life balance through near working. Within this context, the paper aims to:(i) measure the presence of remote workers at the neighbourhood level;(ii) explore the accessibility to coworking spaces within 15 minutes of walking and cycling distance;(iii) focus on three peripheral neighbourhoods which show the lowest number of city users loss, do not host CSs, and present different levels of essential services and access to subway stations. The three cases are explored to understand whether they are considered feasible locations for hosting a neighbourhood coworking space. The change of the city users' presence in the Milan neighbourhoods in 2019-2020 is analysed using << TIM Big Data - Data Visual Insight >>, which includes the presence and mobility of the TIM mobile network's users.

A hybrid method to quantify household urban agriculture gardening: Implications for sustainable and equitable food action planning

Urban food action plans seek quantitative data on household agriculture gardening, traditionally difficult to quantify rapidly, as welt as data on inequality to explore the potential to improve equitable access to fresh vegetables through household agriculture. This article presents a novel hybrid field survey (HFS) method, combining ground surveys with satellite imagery to quantify the prevalence and area of household agriculture gardens, as well as inequality by neighborhood income. We test the method in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, (Twin Cities), USA, analyzing the presence/absence (prevalence) and size of agriculture gardens across a total of similar to 17,500 households in 2017 and repeated in 2020 (during COVID-19). In 2017, the overall mean frequency of household agricultural gardening was 5.0%, with significant differences (2.7 vs. 7.0%) across low- vs. high-income neighborhoods. The city-wide median area per agriculture garden size was 14.6 m(2) with greater size (19.8 vs. 11.6 m(2)) in low- vs. high-income neighborhoods, respectively. Across all income groups, the gardening area was a small fraction of the yard area, suggesting little land availability constraints. Measurements in the summer of 2020 during COVID-19 found the method sensitive over time, showing an overall 60% increase in the prevalence of household agriculture with low-income neighborhoods increasing rates from 3 to 5%. Overall, the method can inform aggregate production potential and inequality in household agriculture.

Health governance of COVID-19 in Milan and Toronto: long-term trends and short-term failures

In this paper, we examine a crisis in the governance of health and care that characterized the regions of Milan and Toronto, which the COVID-19 pandemic impacted substantially—both in early 2020 when SARS-CoV-2 first hit and later in the fall and winter when the disease entered its second and third waves. We analyze restructuring in health and care in both regions, and, where necessary, in national contexts. We make the case that restructuring and implementing welfare and health policy, including long-term care, in Toronto and Milan in the context of long-standing tendencies of health governance restructuring that were part of a more general rescaling of the regional welfare state be held responsible for the toll COVID-19 levied. This paper is part of the SPE Theme on the Political Economy of COVID-19.

Outdoor Terraces in Barcelona and Milan: Configuration of New Spaces for Social Interaction

This work approaches the phenomenon of the outdoor terraces of bars and restaurants, analysing the role of these privately owned collective elements whose layout has shaped the urban landscape at the pavement level for more than a century, and whose presence has become essential in the streets of many cities after a pandemic. The research highlights the interest of terraces as dynamic elements of urbanity: private domains in the public space where people eat collectively;they are apparently simple units that synthesise complex conflicts between individual behaviours and property boundary conditions. The investigation shows the increasing expansion that outdoor terraces have experienced since 2020, using the cities of Barcelona and Milan as case studies. A series of GIS maps show the image of both cities before and after the pandemic, allowing us to evaluate the amount of public space allocated to terraces, measure their increase in number and sur-face, establish the proportions of occupation of the street and find the patterns of concentration in the public space. Finally, the article offers some policy and planning recommendations based on the research findings. © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

Evidence of SARS-CoV-2 Antibodies and RNA on Autopsy Cases in the Pre-Pandemic Period in Milan (Italy).

In this study, we analyzed blood samples obtained from 169 cadavers subjected to an autopsy from 1 October 2019 to 27 March 2020. The presence of anti-severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (anti-SARS-CoV-2) antibodies was searched by lateral flow immunochromatographic assay (LFIA) and ELISA tests and the SARS-CoV-2 RNA was tested in blood and available lung tissues by real-time PCR (RT-PCR) and droplet digital PCR (ddPCR). Five cases resulted in positives at the serological screening for anti-SARS-CoV-2. Three results were weakly positive for IgM while only one showed strong reactivity for IgG antibodies. The fifth subject (who died in December 2019) resulted positive for the ELISA test. The detection of SARS-CoV-2 RNA resulted in positive only in the blood and lung tissues of such cases. These data suggest that cadaveric blood may be a suitable substrate for the assessment of SARS-CoV-2 infection; moreover, they extend the observations of sporadic cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection in North Italy prior to the first confirmed cases.

'Covid-19 opened the pandora box' of the creative city: creative and cultural workers against precarity in Milan

Creative and cultural workers (CCWs) concentrate in large cities due to the livelihood opportunities they facilitate. Synchronously, cities have experienced the highest rate of Covid-19 infections. Focusing on the case study of Milan, the paper explores the criticalities of the sector and the impact of the pandemic using qualitative interviews and digital ethnography. It highlights how C-19 has exacerbated the effects of neoliberalism on CCWs, illuminating their precarious working conditions but paradoxically providing time and focus for workers to collectively organise. This paper captures CCWs use of the city to make their precarious working conditions visible in response to the unsustainable demands of neoliberalism. It also engages with the need for re-futuring contemporary understanding of the creative city, questioning the value of agglomeration economies and creative city policies, especially if workers' rights and livelihoods do not become central to the future local policy agenda.

Boosters and time since last anti-COVID-19 vaccine dose: lead public health choices by real-time epidemiological assessment

BACKGROUND: the levels of anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies after the second vaccine dose decline in the following months;an additional vaccine dose (booster) is able to swiftly restore the immune system, significantly reducing the risk of severe disease. In the winter of 2021, a new, particularly infectious variant made the need to increase booster coverage in the population even more urgent. OBJECTIVES: to present, using real data, an evaluation of the effectiveness of the booster dose in reducing severe disease caused by SARS-CoV-2 infection in terms of COVID-19 hospitalization and intensive care admission, and all-cause mortality. DESIGN: descriptive study of vaccination uptake;associative study of the factors linked with uptake of vaccination and COVID-19 symptoms;associative study of vaccine effectiveness against hospital admission and mortality. SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS: population residing in the Milan and Lodi provinces (Lombardy Region, Northern Italy), eligible for anti-SARS-COV-2 vaccination, with subjects aged >= 19 years alive as at 01.10.2021, not residing in nursing homes, followed-up until 31.12.2021. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: COVID-19 symptoms, hospitalization, intensive care hospitalization, and all-cause mortality in the period 01.10.2021-31.12.2021. RESULTS: the cohort included 2,936,193 patients as of 01.10.2021;at the end of the observation period (31.12.2021), 378,616 (12.9%) were unvaccinated, 60,102 (2.0%) had received only 1 dose and had not had the disease, 68,777 (2.3%) had received only 1 dose and had had the disease, 412,227 (14.0%) were fully vaccinated with 2 doses less than 4 months earlier, 198,459 (6.8%) had received 2 doses [4,5) months earlier, 439,363 (15.0%) had received 2 doses [5,6) months earlier, 87,984 (3.0%) had received 2 doses [6,7) months earlier, 74,152 (2.5%) had received 2 doses more than 7 months earlier, 62,614 (2.1%) had received 2 doses and had had the disease, and, finally, 1,153,899 (39.3%) had received a booster shot. In the study period (01.10.2021-31.12.2021), characterized by a very high prevalence of the omicron variant, 121,620 cases (positive antigen/molecular test), 3,661 hospitalizations for COVID-19, 162 intensive care admissions for COVID-19, and 7,508 deaths from all causes were identified. Compared to unvaccinated subjects, subjects who received a booster had half the risk of being symptomatic, and had half the risk of experiencing fatigue, muscle aches, and dyspnoea. In comparison with boosted subjects, unvaccinated subjects had a 10-fold risk of hospitalization, a 9-fold risk of intensive care, and a 3-fold risk of dying. CONCLUSIONS: this work highlights the effectiveness of vaccination in reducing serious adverse events in boosted subjects and the need to implement specific policies of engagement to bring subjects who received their second dose earliest to get a booster.

Toward greener and pandemic-proof cities: policy responses to Covid-19 outbreak in four European cities

Starting from the relationship between urban planning and mobility management, TeMA has gradually expanded the view of the covered topics, always following a rigorous scientific in-depth analysis. This section of the Journal, Review Notes, is the expression of a continuous updating of emerging topics concerning relationships among urban planning, mobility and environment, through a collection of short scientific papers. The Review Notes are made of four parts. Each section examines a specific aspect of the broader information storage within the main interests of TeMA Journal. In particular, the Urban practices section aims at presenting recent advancements on relevant topics that underlie the challenges that the cities have to face. The present note provides an overview of the policies and initiatives undertaken in four global cities in response to the Covid-19 outbreak: Madrid (ES), London (UK), Milan (IT) and Brussels (BE). A cross-city analysis is used to derive a taxonomy of urban policy measures. The contribution discusses the effectiveness of each measures in providing answers to epidemic threats in urban areas while, at the same time, improving the sustainability and resilience of urban communities.

Evidence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in an Oropharyngeal Swab Specimen, Milan, Italy, Early December 2019.

We identified severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 RNA in an oropharyngeal swab specimen collected from a child with suspected measles in early December 2019, ≈3 months before the first identified coronavirus disease case in Italy. This finding expands our knowledge on timing and mapping of novel coronavirus transmission pathways.