Ricerc@Sapienza

There is not a lack of researches that have experienced interdisciplinary work paths, but they mainly focused on small and narrow contexts, and particularly on the neighborhood scale, while metropolitan or city-region interdisciplinary research routes were less explored, especially in the Italian context.
From a geographic point of view, during the Nineties (after law 142/90 approval) of the last century, various studies analyzed Metropolitan Areas in general (Bartaletti, 2009) and Rome's one in particular (Cristaldi, 1992, Paratore et alii, 1995; , Cristaldi, Paratore, 2000), but they mainly concerned the identification of metropolitan borders and the metropolitan parameter definition according to a qualitative but always yerarchical approach aimed at both inclusion / exclude and aggregate / disagregate outskirts minucipalities to Rome.
Against to this logic, the research group will have a strong interdisciplinary character, enhancing the relationships and collaborations that have already been established and developed between professors and researchers of Sapienza University. The research group will then use competences from geography, urban and territorial planning, public policy research, history, etc.
For this specific attention to the city of Rome and to some of its specific contexts, the research proposal is strongly characterized by a commitment to the third mission and public engagement. Research will develop relationships and interactions with the various social actors involved at local and supra-local level.
Moreover, the complexity of the concept of spatial Justice will bring us to consider, before analysing the data on the case study of the Roman area, several conceptual and methodological problems such as the scales to be considered beyond the local dimension and the possible use of information sources also qualitative and produced by local communities.
Regarding town planning, several research experiences have developed an interdisciplinary approach, but it is more nominally developed (with a juxtaposition of contributions) than is actually and actively involved in the research development. Interdisciplinary research methods have been developed with interest especially on a neighborhood scale (Cognetti, 2016, Cognetti, Padovani, 2016) or urban sector (LAA, 2005) and the research group has a great work experience in this field (for example, with reference to Tor Bella Monaca neighborhood; Cellamare, 2016a), as well as developed in previous research, also funded by the University (Grandi Progetti 2015, scientific coordinator prof. Cellamare). Much less practiced are these methodologies at the metropolitan-scale. Some first experiments have been developed at national level by the PRIN 2010-2011 "Postmetropolis" program (Balducci, Curci, Fedeli, edited by, 2016, 2017), but above all by some shared Roman research groups ( Thomassen, Clough Marinaro, eds, 2014) or coordinated ones (Cellamare, 2016b). It is therefore a field to be developed and deepened, also from an ecological point of view.
In fact, while the impact of compact urban growth on landscape composition was relatively well known (Alphan 2003; Weber and Puissant 2003; Catalan et al. 2008; Weber et al. 2005; Ioannidis et al. 2009), low-density urban diffusion may have effects on landscape structure and composition that need further investigation especially in environmentally-fragile regions such as the Mediterranean basin.
As a matter of fact, it was demonstrated that sprawl invades rural areas further away from the city centre and consumes a larger proportion of high-quality natural land (Bruegmann 2005) compared with past, when urban expansion occurred primarily in cropland and pastures at the urban fringe (Portnov and Safriel 2004).
The conversion of the agricultural areas into built-up areas is considered one of the most relevant landscape transformations in the Mediterranean basin with important environmental consequences due to land consumption and soil sealing (Munafò et al. 2010). However, urban diffusion may cause more subtle landscape modifications from both the structural and compositional point of view. Land fragmentation, landscape simplification and homologation, land cover spatial polarization, ecosystem deterioration, and loss in biodiversity are the main modifications observed in rural areas experiencing low-density, scattered urban diffusion.
The composition, structure and diversity of Rome's landscape were significantly altered by urbanization during the last 60 years (Salvati et al. 2015). This produced a more "disordered" landscape, with no evident spatial hierarchies and structures (Chorianopoulos et al. 2010). A chaotic distribution in the use of land may affect environmental quality, reducing biodiversity and resilience in traditional rural areas characterized by well conserved natural landscapes with aesthetic values and a long-established cultural heritage (Alphan 2003).