RISULTATI RICERCA

L’articolo prende in esame la sentenza della Corte costituzionale n. 33 del 2025, esaminando alcuni precedenti della Corte e gli argomenti esposti a sostegno della declaratoria di parziale incostituzionalità dell’art. 29 bis della legge n. 184 del 1983. Considera quindi quali sono gli effetti della pronuncia nel complessivo sistema dell’adozione nazionale e internazionale e quali le incertezze applicative che gli operatori del settore debbono affrontare.

Quale interpretazione storica e culturale dare ai recenti fatti di violenza accaduti a Palermo? Riconsiderando le interpretazioni dei fatti che sono state date dalla politica e dalla cultura giornalistica, l’articolo cerca di espandere i significati degli eventi in una logica sociale e culturale più ampia che guarda all’evoluzione e ai cambiamenti che recentemente stanno trasformando la città di Palermo e alle motivazioni sociali che possono sottendere a eventi violenti da parte di adolescenti e giovani adulti.

L’articolo esplora il quartiere Zen di Palermo come laboratorio di innovazione sociale, evidenziando il ruolo del Terzo Settore come honest broker tra comunità, istituzioni e decisori. Attraverso pratiche partecipative e reti associative, le iniziative locali affrontano isolamento, stigma e carenze infrastrutturali, valorizzando risorse e competenze giovanili. L’articolo ha l’ambizione di contribuire al dibattito su come modelli non lineari di sviluppo urbano possano generare coesione sociale e opportunità, combinando dati quantitativi e narrazioni emiche per restituire una visione articolata del quartiere.

A partire dall’analisi del legame tra competenze linguistiche ridotte e condotte antisociali in adolescenza, questo lavoro indaga il ruolo decisivo del fallimento nel processo di figurazione psichica quale snodo centrale nella genesi dell’agito delinquenziale. Quando la funzione figurativa – intesa come capacità di dare forma mentale e simbolica all’esperienza – risulta compromessa, eventi traumatici non elaborati e non elaborabili lasciano nella psiche delle tracce vuote, lacune rappresentazionali che generano rotture nel senso di integrità e continuità del Sé. In questi casi, l’azione violenta diviene l’unico linguaggio possibile: un’espressione primitiva, alternativa al pensiero, che tenta di arginare il caos interno e di convertire il dolore muto in gesto tangibile. L’autore propone che il rafforzamento delle capacità linguistiche e rappresentative degli adolescenti può rappresentare una via fondamentale per prevenire la devianza e per costruire, specie per i giovani appartenenti alle fasce più deboli della società, efficaci percorsi di recupero, restituendo ai giovani la possibilità di pensare ciò che per loro non trova parola.

In questo breve articolo condividiamo un ragionamento sul ruolo che la politica di coesione europea, vale a dire la più grande politica di investimento dell’Unione europea per garantire lo sviluppo equo, sostenibile, competitivo di tutti i territori, garantendo che nessuno venga lasciato indietro, sia uno strumento di lavoro essenziale per chi si occupa di adolescenze fragili. Conoscere cosa la politica di coesione fa e cosa può fare è, in questa prospettiva, un bagaglio conoscitivo e uno strumento di lavoro necessario per chi si occupa di minori. Al contempo, le adolescenze fragili è come se fossero una potentissima cartina al tornasole per capire cosa funziona e cosa no nella politica di coesione in Italia e, soprattutto, quali sono le aree di attenzione e le sfide da governare in una fase particolarmente critica nelle politiche europee, in cui la negoziazione del nuovo quadro finanziario pluriennale post 2027 sta chiedendo alla politica di coesione, e forse all’idea di Unione Europea per come noi la conosciamo, di cambiare profondamente pelle.

L’articolo esamina l’evoluzione recente della povertà in Italia distinguendo tra povertà assoluta, povertà relativa e rischio di esclusione sociale (Arope), evidenziandone la persistenza strutturale e la marcata asimmetria territoriale. L’attenzione si concentra sulla povertà minorile come snodo centrale della trasmissione intergenerazionale delle diseguaglianze, in connessione con divari educativi e occupazionali. Il contributo analizza il nesso tra carenza di infrastrutture sociali – in particolare servizi per la prima infanzia e tempo pieno – e bassa occupazione femminile nel Mezzogiorno, delineando un circuito cumulativo di vulnerabilità economica. Le principali politiche recenti (assegno unico, riforma del reddito di cittadinanza, Pnrr) sono valutate alla luce della loro capacità redistributiva effettiva e delle criticità attuative nei territori più fragili. Si sostiene la necessità di un rafforzamento strutturale delle infrastrutture educative e della capacità amministrativa locale quale condizione per una riduzione stabile delle diseguaglianze.

A key concept for understanding Japanese urban spaces is sakariba, or “amusement district”. These areas, embedded in everyday life, foster a distinctive culture through shopping, entertainment, dining, and other diversions, often with sexual pleasure as a background element. Typically removed from residential and workplace areas, sakariba develop in vibrant neighborhoods where people gather and interact, functioning as a uniquely Japanese type of urban public space. This paper traces the historical evolution of Tokyo’s sakariba from the late Edo period to the present, with particular focus on local shopping areas and “mini sakariba” around railway stations during westward suburban expansion and their growing significance in contemporary Tokyo.

Traditional shopping streets in Japan (shotengai) have been going through a long period of decline since the 1980s, and the efforts of shopping streets associations to regenerate them were in some cases ineffective. From the 1990s state-sponsored shotengai revitalizing projects have been implemented with mixed results. Past literature has been documenting many cases of collaboration between shotengai associations and external groups for the renewal of the shopping districts. This paper analyses the case study of Kitanaka shotengai in Koenji during the second half of the 2000s: here the shopping street association successfully facilitated the formation of youth-owned second-hand shops, called Shiroto no Ran (‘Amateur Riot’), through the engagement of young artists and activists who contributed to the regeneration of the district. The study will use local surveys to reconstruct the recent evolution of Koenji shopping streets, and direct testimonies of the actors involved to explore the formation of the connection between Kitanaka Shotengai Association and the activists who gave birth to Shiroto no Ran shops.

Japanese animation (anime) provides an important lens through which to examine contemporary relationship between public and private space and the role of local communities in Tokyo. Since the late 1990s, live-action filmmaking in central Tokyo has become increasingly difficult due to administrative restrictions, high pedestrian density, and spatial constraints, leading to a decline in on-location urban representation. In contrast, anime has developed as a medium capable of depicting Tokyo with considerable freedom and realism, often grounded in detailed location research. As a result, animated films have come to represent everyday urban life in Tokyo more prominently than live-action cinema, giving rise to practices such as anime pilgrimage. This paper analyses the historical and contemporary significance of Tokyo anime by exploring the inverse relationship between the decline of live-action urban representation and the expansion of animated depictions.

This study examines the location of statues as a new experience of famous places in modern Tokyo and discusses it in relation to its urban space. It considers statues, which are newly emerging landmarks in modern Tokyo. Focusing on Portraits of Great People (1928) and other examples, a collection of photographs and the location and characteristics of statues in public spaces are analysed. We found that statues in modern Tokyo are placed in plazas, parks, and precincts of shrines and temples. Although they are public spaces, they also function as private spaces by honouring the person of the statue.

Waterfront areas offer a vital lens through which to examine the dynamic interplay between public and private domains in urban environments. Urban development worldwide is intimately shaped by surrounding water, which provides essential resources while posing uncontrollable risks. This dual nature of water necessitates public intervention in waterfront spaces, shaping their spatial and socio-political structures. At the same time, private individuals and local communities establish close, sustainable relationships with water for domestic, industrial, and aesthetic purposes, often supported by communal management systems. Tokyo exemplifies this intricate balance between private use and collective stewardship. This study examines Tokyo’s waterfronts from a historical perspective to elucidate the coexistence and contestation of public and private forces, contributing to a broader comparative understanding of urban waterfronts in global water cities.

Early modern Japan witnessed a significant expansion of its commercial publishing industry, particularly from around 1750 in the city of Edo, which by then had become the largest urban centre in the country. Publishers produced large numbers of illustrated books and single-sheet prints for an increasingly literate and socially diverse readership. Visual images played a crucial role in making printed material accessible to audiences with differing levels of education. This article examines how public space was represented in such visual material. Rather than treating images as objective records, it approaches them as visual constructions shaped by specific artistic and ideological choices. The study therefore explores the perception of public space articulated by artists working on fictional publications intended for commercial circulation, a perception likely shared by readers across different regions, social classes, and genders. Despite their fictional nature, these illustrations remain an indispensable source for understanding the appearance and meanings of public space prior to the introduction of Western photography in the mid-nineteenth century. After outlining general trends in Edo-period visual representations of public space, the article focuses on a distinctive work whose illustrations depict only people moving along a major city street, without architectural or topographical features. This approach conveys a conception of the metropolis defined by the number and diversity of individuals inhabiting its streets. The work’s favourable reception suggests that this human-centred understanding of public space resonated strongly with contemporary readers.

In 1722, under the eighth shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune (1684-1751, r. 1716-1745), a free hospital for impoverished commoners was established in the Koishikawa district, in the northern part of Edo. Prompted by a petition submitted by a local physician to the military government (bakufu), the Koishikawa Yojosho represented an unprecedented initiative in a city where no system of public medical care existed and access to treatment was largely determined by social status and economic means. The creation of the hospital must be understood within the broader context of the Tokugawa regime’s financial and socio-political challenges, which Yoshimune sought to address through a programme of reforms grounded in Confucian ideals of benevolent governance. These reforms included new medical policies aimed at reducing reliance on costly imported medicinal herbs and promoting domestic cultivation. The hospital’s location within the Koishikawa Medicinal Herb Garden directly reflected these objectives, linking medical care to economic self-sufficiency and broader strategies of urban management. This article examines the Koishikawa Yojosho as both an institutional and spatial intervention, analysing its establishment, location, and early operation within the fabric of Edo. It argues that, although limited in scale, the hospital played a significant role in the early articulation of healthcare within the city’s administrative and spatial framework, shaped by the interaction between shogunal authority and local actors.

In the Edo period, samurai lived in the castle towns, the greatest of which was Edo. This ingress generated a new type of community. The communities I analyse are what I would like to term ‘communities of relationships’, because they came into being through ‘conversation’. The crucial evidence of these conversations would be lost today, were it not for their appearance in popular fiction of the period (gesaku) and comic narrations (rakugo). The fundamental spatial locus of the community was the nagaya, or shared residential tenement. Life in the nagaya was possible thanks to a carefully built infrastructure, and people gathered to take advantage of this indispensable, life-supporting apparatus. Knowledge derived from books brought cultural communities together. Glimpses of how and where this occurred can be culled from conversations in the Bathhouse of the Floating World (Ukiyoburo) and its companion work, Barber’s Shop of the Floating World (Ukiyodoko). Pooled knowledge bore fruit in communities of creativity, or ren. They were microcosms of a wider Edo cultural community.

Although the public-private distinction has long served as a fundamental analytical category within Western social and spatial thought, its applicability beyond Euro-American contexts requires careful critical reflection. This issue of «Storia urbana» explores how public and private spaces were configured, negotiated, and transformed in Edo-Tokyo across early modern, modern, and contemporary periods. Treating space as a product of social practices as well as institutional and regulatory frameworks, the contributions examine the interrelations among physical environments, everyday uses of space, socio-economic relations, and forms of urban governance. Edo-Tokyo offers a particularly valuable case study due to its historical continuity as an urban site, despite profound political, social, and material transformations from the feudal capital Edo to the imperial centre and global metropolis renamed Tokyo. Here, inherited spatial patterns persisted alongside imported Western models, generating moments of conflict, hybridisation, and innovation. By foregrounding both continuity and change, the active role of communities and cultural practices in shaping urban space is emphasised, and Edo-Tokyo is presented as a particularly revealing lens for analysing how the boundaries between public and private space have been historically defined, regulated, and contested.