Metropolitan Cities and Inner Areas in a Hyperconnected, Transitional World: Advancing Fairness, Cohesion and Equal Opportunities for Lagging and Demographically Declining Territories

Within the International Symposium “Networks, Markets & People” 2026, it is worth mentioning in particular


Thematic Session TS 05
“Digital Approaches to Networks, Mobility and Heritage in Multicultural Settlements”
Organizers: Pelin Bolca, Farzaneh Aliakbari, Sofia Darbesio
This session explores how digital humanities methodologies provide new lenses for understanding the complex relations shaping multicultural settlements across Europe and beyond. Drawing on Actor-Network Theory, the session investigates how trade routes, colonial legacies and contemporary mobilities have produced layered landscapes of tangible and intangible heritage. By integrating digital mapping, archival reconstruction, data-driven interpretation and narrative modelling, the session examines how craftsmanship, rituals, spatial practices and community-led initiatives evolve within multiscalar networks. The aim is to highlight how digital tools can reveal hidden connections, amplify marginalised voices and reframe multicultural settlements as dynamic nodes of shared living heritage shaped through continuous intercultural exchange.

Thematic Session TS 13
"Commoning the voids: structural barriers and enabling conditions for inhabiting the inner peripheries"
Organizers: Mauro Fontana and Luca Lazzarini
This session addresses the structural paradox characterizing inner peripheries and left-behind territories: a vast stock of vacant, obsolete, and underused housing heritage that remains largely inaccessible. Rather than a simple market failure, this “housing crisis in reverse” is rooted in structural barriers: property fragmentation, poor building conditions, lack of accessibility, owner distrust, real estate speculation, and the impacts of touristification.

Thematic Session TS 33
“Enhancing Urban Decision-Making in the Digital Eras”
Organizers: Elena Todella, Beatrice Mecca
The session aims to investigate the role of decision support tools in the urban context, in a world accelerated by technology and digital innovation, with the growing influence of artificial intelligence. In a context of rapid digital evolution, decision support methodologies – such as problem structuring methods and multi-criteria decision analysis – combine structured and innovative approaches to guide complex urban and architectural transformations. Consequently, the session discusses, starting from these families of methodologies, but not only, the role of evaluation and its models in supporting urban and architectural transformations, in an interdisciplinary integration between design, planning, and evaluation.

Thematic Session TS 34
"Place-Based Governance and Strategic Planning for Local Transitions: Rethinking Development and Regeneration Beyond Overtourism"
Organizers: Luca Tricarico, Antonia Gravagnuolo, Mariarosaria Angrisano, Francesca Bragaglia
This session explores how place-based governance and strategic planning can foster sustainable local development, moving beyond tourism dependency. Focusing on community resilience and social innovation, it discusses alternative models for regenerating small towns and inner areas undergoing transition


Deadline Call for Abstract: 23 January 2026
Registration Link: https://www.nmp.unirc.it/?page_id=205
Target Audience: Researchers
Further Information: https://www.nmp.unirc.it/?page_id=2175

Link for more info: https://www.nmp.unirc.it/