Suchergebnisse

In this paper we describe and analyze an Italian case of urban sprawl and its urban growth for understanding the development of a "metropolitan sprawled system". The portion of Veneto Region that is part of our case study cover about 3700 square km, for a total of 145 municipalities. The manifestations of physical and morphological sprawl came as a result of specific cultural and political situations and economic development, such as rising incomes, and were also facilitated by the local topography. The most important changes occurred in this area over the past 30 years, starting from the 1970's: between 1970 and 1990, the population increased somewhat, but the urbanized and developed land area increased significantly. The main aim of our paper is to find out if low-density development patterns are more expensive and if local public spending is influenced by different urban forms expansions. We measure sprawl with some indicators suggesting in the literature such as urban density, population density and the territorial fragmentation. Data for the economic analysis come from local balance sheets of 145 municipalities for the year 2007. In particular, we collect the costs of the main public services sustained by the municipalities such as public transport, road and street maintenance, waste management, and water and sewer services. Adopting regression analysis, we estimate the impact of urban sprawl on different current expenditures, controlling for other variables such as local taxes paid by citizens, central government aids, territory characteristics, and more others. We find that low density development patterns are in general more expensive, in particular when municipalities have to provide education services, solid waste collection and other environmental and urban management services. Our analysis wants to highlight the threats pose by sprawl in terms of urban sustainable development patterns and to put in evidence the costs of an unbalanced growth in order to let public government to re-orient their policies versus the containment of the urban growth process.

We use conjoint choice questions to investigate people's tastes for cancer risk reductions and income in the context of public programs that would provide for remediation at abandoned industrial contaminated sites. Our survey was self‐administered using the computer by persons living in the vicinity of an important contaminated site on the Italian National Priority List. The value of a prevented case of cancer is €2.6 million, but this figure does vary with income, perceived exposure to contaminants, and respondent opinions about priorities that should be pursued by cleanup programs.

Consentement à payer pour des politiques de nettoyage de sites contaminés : résultats d'une étude Conjoint Choice en Italie Nous utilisons des expériences conjoint choice pour évaluer les préférences de la population dans les zones avec sites contaminés en Italie concernant les programmes qui peuvent réduire les risques de santé. Les attributs des différents programmes hypothétiques montrés aux personnes interrogées sont la réduction du risque de mortalité, la durée de cette réduction et le coût par ménage. Les réponses aux questions de choix sont conformes au scope test et indiquent que les gens payeraient davantage pour des réductions de risques qui durent longtemps. Ceci implique une préférence pour des programmes qui assurent un nettoyage permanent. Le taux d'actualisation pour les réductions de risques futurs est de 6.25%.

We use conjoint choice experiments to study the preferences of people living in areas with contaminated sites in Italy for public programs that would address the human health risks associated with these sites. The attributes of the alternative (and hypothetical) programs shown to our survey respondents are the size of the mortality risk reductions, the size of the population affected by the program, the timing of the risk reduction, the number of years the risk reduction would be experienced for, and the cost to the respondent's household. The responses to the choice questions satisfy scope requirements and show that people care -- and are willing to pay more for -- for risk reductions sustained over a long time. This in turn implies a preference for permanent remediation. People discount future risk reductions at a rate of about 6.25%. Adapted from the source document.

La riduzione delle emissioni di CO2 è fondamentale per valutare la sostenibilità nella pianificazione dei trasporti. Tuttavia, la maggior parte dei piani di mobilità non è ancora riuscita a trovare una metodologia condivisa per internalizzare tali emissioni e renderle uno dei parametri in grado di influenzare attivamente le scelte finali sulle politiche e sulle misure da adottare. In particolare, risulta estremamente complesso dapprima quantificare, quindi attribuire un prezzo economico unitario alle emissioni di CO2. Il presente contributo indaga le problematiche relative alla loro monetizzazione, mostrando le metodologie attualmente in uso e il vasto grado di incertezza scientifica ed economica che le caratterizzano. Attraverso una meta-analisi compiuta su una raccolta di circa settecento casi, si è arrivati a limitare l'enorme intervallo attualmente esistente (fino a sei ordini di grandezza) e predire un modello in grado di definire un valore economico basato sugli obiettivi stabiliti preliminarmente dai decisori politici. In tale modo, la CO2 può essere inclusa attivamente nelle decisioni relative alle misure da intraprendere per una corretta allocazione delle risorse pubbliche, garantendo ai decisori una maggiore trasparenza nelle scelte.

Cleaning up contaminated sites is one of the most important environmental policy priorities in many countries. Remediation of contaminated sites is attractive because it reduces risks to human health and ecological systems, and brings a host of potential social and economic benefits. Even when the burden of paying for cleanup is imposed on the parties that are responsible for the contaminated sites, in many countries government programs are established for enforcement purposes, to set cleanup standards, and to address contamination at those sites where the responsible parties are no longer in existence or do not have the means to pay for cleanup ( orphan sites). This paper presents the results of a survey of the Italian public where we ask citizens to report their opinions about possible goals for such government programs and for cleanup. Our survey respondents are generally in favor of broad-based programs that protect the health of a diverse population - without restricting attention to cleanup beneficiaries in specific age groups or to specific exposure pathways. They also in favor of permanent remedies, even if they cost more, and of cleaning up sites even when the health risk reduction are experienced in the future, as is usually the case with carcinogenic contaminants.

We use conjoint choice questions to investigate people s preferences for income and reductions in mortality risks delivered by contaminated site remediation policies. Our survey is self-administered using the computer by residents of four cities in Italy with severely contaminated sites. We estimate the Value of a Statistical Life to be about €5.6 million for an immediate risk reduction. If the risk reduction takes place 20 years from now, however, the implied VSL is about €1.26 million. The discount rate implicit in the responses to the conjoint choice questions is about 7%. People are willing to pay for permanent risk reductions, but not just any amount. Risk reductions in the nearer future are valued more highly than risk reductions in the more distant future. We also find that the VSL is individuated, in the sense that it depends on observable individual characteristics of the respondents, familiarity with contaminated sites, concern about the health effects of exposure to toxicants, having a family member with cancer, perceived usefulness of possible government actions, and the respondent s beliefs about the goals of government remediation programs. Additional questions suggest that respondents discount lives, and do so at a discount rate in the ballpark of that implicit in their risk v. money tradeoffs.