Landscapes at Risk. Social Capital Asset in the COVID-Scape Climate

Up until the current pandemic, the terms "urban-scape" and "human-scape" have been meant, assumed, and practiced as parallel dimensions of the territorial analysis, marginalizing the knowledge and the evaluation of the landscape risk. This has always been associated, and often confused, with diverse forms of environmental risk, despite the fact that they represent some of the most important components of risk, but not its essence.

The relation between social capital and landscape deserves to be examined and represented in its entirety: as a matter of fact, while social capital has mainly been considered in the material, functional, economic, and ethical dimensions, landscape has been examined in the perceptual, psychological, cultural, and aesthetic dimensions. Sudden and widespread environmental fluctuations, such as the one created by the pandemic and by the Russian-Ukrainian crisis, significantly involved the relationship between the two main existential dimensions of the settled communities-social capital and landscape-and its possible representations by means of the economic-monetary dimension as well.

This reprint contains empirical studies and systematic reviews regarding the essence and the possible overcoming of the conflict between some specific functions of the economic sub-system and landscape quality, with specific reference to the main criticalities already existing before the pandemic and to the possibility-prefigured by the new restraints-to rebuild their connections in order to reduce the landscape risk.