Latest publications

Danny Casprini

Danny Casprini

PhD Student

Danny is a PhD Candidate at the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies (DASTU) and Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering (DIG)at Politecnico di Milano. He conducts research on topics related to social innovation and social impact measurement in field of architectural heritage preservation and urban regeneration focusing on “commoning” strategies and multi-stakeholder approaches and strategies to preserve industrial heritage. With a solid experience on project design and project evaluation, he developed his expertise in social innovation projects and programs as well as in human rights and sustainable growth projects. He holds a master's degree in Italian Law and Jurisprudence from the University of Florence and an LLM in International Law from Maastricht University. ​



Research topic

  • Social Impact evaluation
  • impact measurement and managent
  • commons
  • cultural heritage
  • urban regeneration

 

Publications

 

Managing Urban Green Areas: The Benefits of Collaborative Governance for Green Spaces​

Danny Casprini, Alessandra Oppio, Giulia Rossi, Irene Bengo

LAND

Short Abstract: Urbanisation has had an impact on people’s livelihoods, and on social infrastructures as well as on the consumption of resources. In the last century, we have witnessed many transformations at the urban scale that in many cases led to the commodification and enclosure of public areas and, especially, green areas. With the turn of the millennium and following the adoption of the UN Agenda 2030, the trend has been partially reverted and cities in Europe are becoming progressively greener, although the phenomenon do not always bring positive societal outcomes and it is not able to re-distribute benefits among community members, promoting unequal access to green areas. Instead, in many cases the so-called green gentrification phenomenon has been identified as a primary societal challenge connected with urban regeneration projects. Building on this, the paper aims to find an answer to the question of whether or not the governance model adopted for urban green areas influences how benefits connected with ecosystem services are perceived by stakeholders and re-distributed at the community level. Based on the gaps highlighted in the theoretical background and direct observation of Biblioteca degli Alberi Milano (BAM), a recently developed urban park in Milan, an analytical framework was developed and tested. The results allow us to identify innovative practices for the management of green areas capable of maximising ecosystem services’ benefits beyond the intervention area. This will support the adaptability, replicability, and scalability of these initiatives while providing effective tools for practitioners and planners when developing a collaborative management model for urban green areas.

https://dx.doi.org/10.3390/land12040871

 

Civic Uses as Complex Socio-Ecological System: A Proposal for an Analytical Framework​

Danny Casprini, Alessandra Oppio, Francesca Torrieri

Computational Science and its Application – ICCSA 2023 Workshops

Short Abstract: Civic use rights are a particular category of real rights over collective-owned or public lands that allows local communities to enjoy agri-pastoral-sylvan properties and use them for individual or commercial purposes. Properties encumbered by civic use rights have had a crucial importance in Italy to guarantee access to natural resources to local communities and contributed to shape the present cultural landscapes, especially in mountain and inner areas. In this sense, properties encumbered by civic uses represent strategic assets to preserve common natural resources and the landscape. Based on this, the Italian legislator recently guaranteed public bodies the faculty to transfer civic use rights from properties that lost their original agri-pastoral-sylvan purpose to another public property land of equal environmental value. This raised an evaluation question related to the assessment of the value of the land encumbered by civic use rights. To answer this question, the current paper presents an analytical framework that supports in the definition of criteria to be addressed by decision-makers in cases of transferral of civic use rights. The framework combines different methodologies in a multidimensional model built on the basis of Ostrom’s Design Principles (DPs) for the commons; the Socio-Ecological System Framework; and social impact assessment

https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37117-2_26

 

Usi Civici: Open Evaluation Issues in the Italian Legal Framework on Civic Use Properties​

Danny Casprini, Alessandra Oppio, Francesca Torrieri

LAND

Short Abstract: Physical spaces and assets vary in legal nature and as such can be subjected to both private and public ownership. Therefore, rights and obligations connected with the use and enjoyment of the different goods depends on the juridic nature of the good itself. In the Italian legal framework, private goods are subject to homogeneous regulation, whereas public goods might comprehend a plethora of heterogeneous categories each of them featuring a specific legal regulation. Among those, collective-owned goods present a complex case as they have the typical characteristics of common goods but might be the object of specific rival and exclusive rights that are guaranteed to certain communities with the system of “civic use rights” (usi civici). This peculiar legal regime is typical of rural areas, where, traditionally, common ownership of the land was pursued and encouraged resulting in the creation of a common agri-sylvan-pastoral heritage. As such, the areas susceptible to being left behind or even abandoned due to a lack of public resources or initiatives that can foster their intrinsic cultural, social, and economic value. We intend collective goods to be long-term physical assets that trigger ecosystems of social entrepreneurial, innovative partnerships, and impact investing that can meet long-lasting and/or emerging social and collective needs. This paper aims to achieve two objectives. Firstly, we investigate the Italian juridical regime of “shared-ownership rights” and “civic use rights” aiming to define a taxonomy that provides support in categorising these goods according to pre-defined legal clusters. Secondly, we explore the evaluation issues related to land appraisal processes

https://dx.doi.org/10.3390/land12040871