Dear Colleagues,

Although environmental protection goals have become primary and essential to achieve sustainable development, climate change together with the COVID-19 pandemic have made it even more urgent to intervene to protect and restore the biodiversity upon which the future of the planet and, therefore, human well-being depend.

In recent decades, the concept of biodiversity conservation has evolved thanks also to the crucial contribution of local communities in protecting the natural environment. In this perspective, an aspect of significant and renewed interest is represented by common properties—those resources that, by tradition, local communities own and manage collectively and which generally concern forests, woods, pastures, waterways, etc. They are institutions, currently custodians of multiple values—tangible and intangible—that have played a fundamental role in the conservation of natural resources and that can now make it possible to rediscover new forms of sustainable and solidarity-based territory management.

Contrary to the inevitability of Garrett Hardin’s tragic predictions and in line with the research started by Elinor Ostrom, local communities’ ability to successfully manage common properties on the basis of principles of solidarity and in a long-term intergenerational perspective is increasingly acknowledged.

In the face of growing awareness of the vital role that collective properties can play in the pursuit of environmental goals at the global level, there is still much to be done both in terms of recognition and evaluation as well as support.

The aim of this Special Issue is to promote an international and interdisciplinary scientific comparison on the broad and complex theme of common properties, both in terms of environmental protection and territorial economic, social and cultural development policies.

• Actions and tools for the valorization of commons properties;
• Values and evaluations of common properties;
• Biodiversity and ecosystem services object of collective ownership;
• Governance and use of collectively owned resources;
• Models of the use of collective properties;
• Common properties and new roles in territorial governance;
• Innovative forms of common properties management;
• Economy of places.

Prof. Dr. Pietro Nervi
Prof. Dr. Fabiana Forte
Guest Editors

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• common properties
• biodiversity conservation
• local communities
• sustainable management
• values and valuation

Authors: Marco Calabrò
Affiliation: Full Professor of Administrative Law University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli” Department of Architecture and Indusrtial Design
Abstract: The expression “civic uses” in Italy historically dates back to the feudal system and refers to the rights of enjoyment of one’s own property or those of others owned by a specific community, with the content including the use of specific benefits coming from the land, woods or waters. The Italian legislator has intervened several times, even recently, in order to provide a clear and complete discipline to these rights, the most important element of which is undoubtedly the shared model of land management, as alternative to those generally recognized (public property and private property). However, there are still many critical issues in this sector. First, this paper aims to examine the controversial legal nature of civic uses – also in the light of their legislative assimilation to landscape assets – as well as the serious state of uncertainty that characterizes the regime for the circulation of land burdened by civic uses. Lastly, the author intends to envisage a partially innovative interpretation of civic uses, as an intangible cultural asset, through the valorisation of the profile of shared use and the protection of local traditions.

Title: Externalities, Commons and Real Estate Values in Widespread Settlements in Rural Areas: A Trade-Off Analysis.
Authors: Paolo Rosato; Chiara D’Alpaos
Affiliation: 1 Department of Engineering and Architecture, University of Trieste, Trieste (Italy); 2 Department of Civil Environmental and Architectural Engineering, University of Padova, Padova (Italy);
Abstract: In many areas worldwide and specifically in Western Europe, it has prevailed a model of widespread development, in which industrial sites are intimately connected and mixed up with agricultural and residential sites. This settlement system proved to be successful from both an economic and social perspective, but has induced a significant transformation on agricultural land and, consequently, it has been largely discouraged by planning policies that were nonetheless ineffective, due to the wealth of benefits that this settlement system produces to major players involved: farms, firms, and households. In detail, we focus, on the one hand, on the monetary value of positive externalities generated by agricultural land use of land on nearby properties and residents’ wellbeing and, on the other hand, on the effects of residential settlements on land values. Many contributions in the literature have indeed proved that traditional agriculture activities in rural areas characterized by widespread residential settlements favor the preservation of the commons. In this paper, we investigate the timely issue of conversion of agricultural land from “traditional use”, by which we intend a highly diversified use that includes vast areas of commons. In detail, we focus on the trade-offs between the value of environmental services and the costs of irreversible development of “industrialized agriculture”. We analyze the impact of uncertainty on land conversion decisions and discuss them under different scenarios, by considering the monetary value of externalities over time and verifying whether they can offset the cash flows generated by the deployment of agriculture at an industrial scale.

Title: People, Property and the Territory. Valuation Perspectives and Economic Prospects for the Trazzeras’ Regional Property Reuse in Sicily
Authors: Salvatore Giuffrida; Maria Rosa Trovato; Cheren Cappello; Ludovica Nasca
Affiliation: Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture, University of Catania, Italy Department of Architecture, Planning and Design, University of Sassari, Italy
Abstract: The “demanio trazzerale” ¬is the herd way regional property instituted in Sicily (Italy) in 1231 by Federico II. For a long time, and namely until the extensive spread of stable breeding, it has has been a basic territorial infrastructure of the agricultural-pastoral economy all over the region, as well as all in many other regions and countries. The consequent and related anthropological and territorial issues – nowadays, and in the light of the affirmation o a renewed landscape-environmental sensitiveness – assume a bundle of different kinds of values, mostly connected to the landscape identity of the local communities and a widespread feeling of ground and consciousness of the significance of landscape. Unfortunately, along the time, this territorial capital asset has been illegally occupied by the neighboring owners, sometimes in the countryside, more frequently in the more valuable areas, such as the urban ones. Due to its capillary presence all over the territory, it deserves to be assumed as one of the assets to be integrated within the political economic pattern of the ecological transition and as such, to be protected and enhanced especially in that areas of the countryside that maintain the ethno-anthropological profile typical of the agro-pastoral culture and that have been less affected by the building and infrastructural transformations that have modified the profile of the traditional rural landscape. In the light of a recent regional law draft reinterpreting this land-capital asset in the prospect of different potential functions – suggesting the re-planning of the territory on the inter-municipal scale and highlighting the criticalities related to the fees to be charged in the case of the legitimization of the transaction of the over time illegally occupied parcels – the paper outlines the most significant characteristics of this territorial heritage with reference to which it proposes an in-depth analysis concerning the calculation of the monetary value of these areas, both in the urban and in the countryside cases considering considering the different and more significant values that emerge from time to time: agricultural value, market value, social value. In particular we propose the cases of the legitimizations in an urban area proposing the calculation of the fair market value and the case of the territorial value of a “trazzera” inspired to the concept of social fixed capital value.

Title: People, Property and the Territory. Valuation Perspectives and Economic Prospects for the Trazzeras’ Regional Property Reuse in Sicily
Author:
Highlights: Herd ways Regional Property; Market appraisals; Residual value; Land assessment; Social value; Land planning