Urban Regeneration and Touristification in the Sardinian Capital City of Cagliari, Italy

Regeneration agendas and inbound tourism flows have long been considered a remedy for economic crisis. In port cities, a prominent role in urban regeneration is played by the waterfronts, which have been undergoing radical makeovers worldwide since the 1960s. The city of Cagliari stuck to the same recipe, promoting a series of regeneration initiatives and implementing a series of policies to boost the tourism sector. This study combines the use of primary and secondary sources and the analysis of qualitative and quantitative data to create a useful picture of both current reality and historical development of the city. It demonstrated that development strategies promoted in Cagliari, rather than balancing tourism promotion and local community needs, contributed to the amplification and acceleration of the touristification process. Therefore, many of the challenges posed by overtourism, dread in the literature, are today faced by Cagliari and its inhabitants. In addition, the study also identifies in the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic a unique opportunity to reverse the touristification process and to achieve a sustainable manner of tourism development. Therefore, it offers some policy recommendations to define principled urban regeneration models, alternatives which are able to achieve urban revitalization while avoiding touristification. © 2023 by the author.

The sustainable tourism organization of rural spaces. The island of Sardinia in the era of "staycation"

What future for tourism in the COVID-19 era? This is a question that has become part of the daily life of many tourist destinations. The pandemic has affected all economic sectors and tourism is one of the sectors most suffered. According to data from the World Tourism Organization (2021) due to the health emergency 100% of countries have introduced restrictions in the travel sector and for this reason international tourist arrivals dropping by 74% in 2020. Future projections indicate 2023 as the year when a the "regular" flow of tourists can be recorded globally. However, in the meantime, there is a need to improve this sector by implementing strategies to promote and enhance the places to motivate sustainable tourism. The insecurity of travel and of some destinations, due to the many emergency restrictions, pushes tourists to live an outdoor vacation in contact with nature and host community. Thus, the search for authentic places moves minds more consciously towards sustainable tourism practices showing a greater interest in some forms of tourism such as rural and cultural. The aim of this work is to understand how to deal with the "new" needs of the demand, bringing out the rural realities through the creation of an organized sustainable offer that revolves around existing accommodation facilities such as farmhouses. In particular, the case of Sardinia will be analyzed, an island that has long been known for its seaside tourism, but whose rural and internal areas are still not much used touristically. The study intends, after a short review of the literature on the sustainability of rural tourism, highlight the possibility to create rural tourist itineraries capable of enhancing the territory's peculiarities by combining the different landscape assets. The exemplification of the creation of these routes will be realized in GIS field through the creation of a model of accessibility to the Sardinian rural space. This model will be based on the use of isochronous curves obtained from the analysis of travel times both to move towards and from the agritourism that offer accommodation and within their landscape offer.

Rural Tourism and Walkability. Compare Sardinia and Gran Canaria Models

The tourism crisis following the Covid-19 pandemic has caused many communities to rethink and review tourism. In fact, in European countries, many destinations are now focused on more inclusive and sustainable measures rather than over tourism, so they have invested in sustainability to create tourist-friendly places. The rural areas, in particular, are affected by a demand motivated by a longing for discovery and authenticity, and they seem to be working towards a multi-scalar planning: walkability and digitalization stand out as fundamental choices to meet the needs of tourists and residents. In this context, the paper aims, after a preliminary review of the literature on rural areas’ walkability, to highlight the relationship between rural walkability and tourism through the analysis and comparison of two rural paths: the Mining Path of Santa Barbara (Sardinia, Italy) and the Path of Saint James (Gran Canaria, Spain). It represents virtuous examples of fruition and enhancement of the insular landscape, promoting a place-based approach for a sustainable and cohesive local development. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Languages and symbols in the communication of Covid-19 in Sardinia

The spread of the Covid-19 worldwide has unleashed a communicative tsunami oriented on the metaphorical frame "The virus is a war to fight" with its bulletin of "military" languages. Often, throughout history, society has preferred this narration to explain global pandemics such as HIV (Sontag 1989) and to talk about the most serious diseases, charging the sick and their family with a psychological and intolerable burden. World leaders during the pandemic invoked wartime metaphors to communicate the seriousness of the problem. According to the linguist John Baugh (Washington University in St. Louis), when politicians and health officials invoke this language, it's often because "they feel that the public has not yet taken the problem seriously" (The Atlantic, 31/3/2020). But this imagery can damage communication and provoke misbehavior between people. Is it possible to promote language as an antidote? In this paper I want to analyze the languages (textual and visual) collected during the pandemic "waves" in order to explore the metaphorical construction of narratives, then detect the alternatives to war metaphors for Covid-19 and the counter-narratives that strengthen the sense of identity in Sardinia. In conclusion, the data reveal that new perspectives are possible to safeguard words and images necessary after the emergency (Medium, 20/3/2020).

Mobility, organisation of space and perception of places in Sardinia among old plagues and new pandemics

The Covid-19 pandemic, like the plague or other contagious diseases in the past, had a considerable impact on communities and territorial assets. This work aims to propose a reflection on the consequences that these health emergencies had on human mobility, the space organization, and the perception of places in Sardinia and, especially, in its inland areas. These areas, which may have remained immune from contagion during the plague on 1652-1657, welcomed people fleeing from the cities into their villages and country churches, while today they aspire to attract new inhabitants and high-quality tourists. © 2021 Author(s).

Molecular Characterization of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 Isolates From Central Inner Sardinia.

BACKGROUND: The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic stimulated an outstanding global sequencing effort, which allowed to monitor viral circulation and evolution. Nuoro province (Sardinia, Italy), characterized by a relatively isolated geographical location and a low population density, was severely hit and displayed a high incidence of infection. METHODS: Amplicon approach Next Generation Sequencing and subsequent variant calling in 92 respiratory samples from SARS-CoV-2 infected patients involved in infection clusters from March 2020 to May 2021. RESULTS: Phylogenetic analysis displayed a coherent distribution of sequences in terms of lineage and temporal evolution of pandemic. Circulating lineage/clade characterization highlighted a growing diversity over time, with an increasingly growing number of mutations and variability of spike and nucleocapsid proteins, while viral RdRp appeared to be more conserved. A total of 384 different mutations were detected, of which 196 were missense and 147 synonymous ones. Mapping mutations along the viral genome showed an irregular distribution in key genes. S gene was the most mutated gene with missense and synonymous variants frequencies of 58.8 and 23.5%, respectively. Mutation rates were similar for the S and N genes with one mutation every ∼788 nucleotides and every ∼712 nucleotides, respectively. Nsp12 gene appeared to be more conserved, with one mutation every ∼1,270 nucleotides. The frequency of variant Y144F in the spike protein deviated from global values with higher prevalence of this mutation in the island. CONCLUSION: The analysis of the 92 viral genome highlighted evolution over time and identified which mutations are more widespread than others. The high number of sequences also permits the identification of subclusters that are characterized by subtle differences, not only in terms of lineage, which may be used to reconstruct transmission clusters. The disclosure of viral genetic diversity and timely identification of new variants is a useful tool to guide public health intervention measures.

Early Diffusion of SARS-CoV-2 Infection in the Inner Area of the Italian Sardinia Island.

BACKGROUND: Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has been responsible for the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, which started as a severe pneumonia outbreak in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. Italy has been the first European country affected by the pandemic, registering a total of 300,363 cases and 35,741 deaths until September 24, 2020. The geographical distribution of SARS-CoV-2 in Italy during early 2020 has not been homogeneous, including regions severely affected as well as administrative areas being only slightly interested by the infection. Among the latter, Sardinia represents one of the lowest incidence areas likely due to its insular nature. METHODS: Next-generation sequencing of a small number of complete viral genomes from clinical samples and their virologic and phylogenetic characterization was performed. RESULTS: We provide a first overview of the SARS-CoV-2 genomic diversity in Sardinia in the early phase of the March-May 2020 pandemic based on viral genomes isolated in the most inner regional hospital of the island. Our analysis revealed a remarkable genetic diversity in local SARS-CoV-2 viral genomes, showing the presence of at least four different clusters that can be distinguished by specific amino acid substitutions. Based on epidemiological information, these sequences can be linked to at least eight different clusters of infection, four of which likely originates from imported cases. In addition, the presence of amino acid substitutions that were not previously reported in Italian patients has been observed, asking for further investigations in a wider population to assess their prevalence and dynamics of emergence during the pandemic. CONCLUSION: The present study provides a snapshot of the initial phases of the SARS-CoV-2 infection in inner area of the Sardinia Island, showing an unexpected genomic diversity.

Stroke unit should be preserved during the pandemic to ensure the best possible health to stroke patients

Background and Aims: Early treatment greatly reduces the negative effects of stroke. The pandemic in the last period has dramatically affected stroke care around the world. Worldwide there was a reduction in hospitalizations, thrombolysis, mechanical thrombectomies. In Italy is was the same: reduction in hospitalizations for strokes, thrombolysis, while the number of mechanical thrombectomies remained unchanged. Sardinia an Italian island with about one and a half million inhabitants have 3 Stroke Units. The Stroke Unit of Sassari one of the three guarantees treatment for the whole of northern Sardinia, about 500,000 inhabitants. Methods: We analyzed hospitalizations, thrombolysis and mechanical thrombectomies in 2020, the year of the pandemic, and 2019, the previous year, at Sassari Stroke Unit Results: In our hospital, the number of hospitalizations for stroke in 2020 decreased compared to 2019 (535vs475) but unlike the rest of the world and Italy, the number of thrombolysis remained constant, the number of mechanical thrombectomies increased. In 2019, thrombolyses were 109 while in 2020, 111;thrombectomies in 2019 were 20, in 2020, 29. Conclusions: Many Stroke Units during the pandemic were converted into Covid structure. In Sassari throughout 2020, stroke patients had always a preferential code both in the case of suspected Covidrelated and unrelated pathology. Our Stroke unit remained unchanged as number of health workers. Probably due to this reason thrombolyses and mechanical thrombectomies has not suffered any deflections despite the pandemic. It is essential to maintain adequate care conditions for stroke patients even during the pandemic to reduce the risk of mortality and disability from stroke.

COVID-19: beta-thalassemia subjects immunised?

The novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19) is a contagious acute respiratory infectious disease whose causative agent has been demonstrated to be a novel virus of the coronavirus family, SARSCoV-2. A recent PRE-print study has showed a heme attack on the 1-beta chain of hemoglobin by COVID19. Beta-thalassemia results of a default in the hemoglobin beta-chain synthesis. 1,5% global population are heterozygotes for this disease. In this study, by a multiple linear regression, we have analyzed the evolution of COVID-19 infection in three Italian regions (Puglia, Sardinia, Sicilia) with different beta-thalassemic prevalences, in order to search a link. The results have showed that betathalassemic heterozygote population prevalence is correlated to immunity against COVID-19, by a regression. This paper is only for academic discussion, the hypotheses and conclusions needs to be confirmed by further research.