Suchergebnisse

The theme of urban regeneration is currently one of the main actions of transformation policies. It presents an opportunity for cities' design, in particular historical centers, through joint actions aimed at creating synergies and connections between social, political, economic, and environmental aspects. It also becomes an opportunity to enhance the huge and complex Cultural Heritage, full of architectural values, memory, and history. At the same time, it appears increasingly inadequate and obsolete compared to the new needs of a changing society, of regulatory aspects, and of a general compatible approach to intervention to the more general policies of sustainable development, as required by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. A total of two case studies of the reuse and enhancement of hospital buildings of the University of Pavia are presented, which has a large building heritage spread throughout the city. In recent years, owing to the opportunities offered by funding, it has started transformation policies on some abandoned buildings through projects based on an interdisciplinary approach and a participatory design strategy. The article testifies to a potential method of intervention that can be exported to other contexts, after a previous test of the compatibility on the existing and on the urban context.

Violence against women is increasingly being recognized as an urgent public health priority and a significant human rights concern, as well as a major threat to social and economic development. Globally, an estimated 20 percent of all women will face some form of violence during their lifetime, including emotional coercion, physical violence, and sexual violence. The overall objective of the impact evaluation is to identify low-cost and scalable interventions, which demonstrate improvements in social, psychological, and economic functioning of sexual violence survivors in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). To this end, the authors conducted an impact evaluation of a village savings and loans association (VSLA) program to understand its impact on economic, social, and psychological outcomes for a sample of female sexual violence survivors. The impact evaluation had four components: (1) a qualitative needs assessment; (2) a quantitative baseline assessment; (3) a qualitative post-program assessment; and (4) a quantitative post-program assessment. This report presents a brief description of components 1 and 2 and then a full description of the method and results of the impact evaluation focusing on components 3 and 4. In terms of improving the psychological, social, and economic well-being of survivors of sexual violence, this study shows important results in some of the social and economic outcomes, but fewer results than expected for psychological outcomes. One recommendation from these results will be to explore the idea of pairing VSLA with other interventions to work more specifically on the certain outcomes that VSLA may not change on its own.