P L Sacco
Biographic Data
| ID | 36127 |
|---|---|
| NAME | P L Sacco |
| GIVEN NAMES | P L |
| FAMILY NAME | Sacco |
| SIGNATURE | SACCO P L |
| AFFILIATIONS | IULM University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5559-2889 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 72 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 107 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 68 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 4 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1993 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Montagne in Movimento
This paper examines culture-led peripheral development through the case of Montagne in Movimento (MiM), an innovative project in Gagliano Aterno, a small mountain village in Central Italy. Within the context of growing urban-rural interdependencies and the global post-pandemic spatial reorganization, this research contributes to emerging theories of peripheral revitalization by identifying transferable mechanisms that catalyze sustainable neopopu…
The broadcasting trap
Social media and digital production tools have provided a big impulse to the possibility of a democratization of content production. However, enhanced viability does not imply an actual capacity to tap into the opportunity. Research on social media participation shows that content production, and especially the most popular content, is mostly driven by a small elite of super-users, and an additional but still small share of content creators. In t…
Culture and creativity, skills building, and growth
In this paper, we discuss the role of culture and creativity as a so far neglected growth factor, filling an important gap in the existing literature. We analyse both the relevant theoretical and empirical studies, and we find that there is a solid basis to integrate culture and creativity into a more comprehensive growth paradigm. Working on the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) database, we adopt a cross-s…
From fandoms to heritage. Understanding fanfiction forums as Digital Heritage Communities
Should fanfiction forums be considered an instance of Digital Heritage Communities? Departing from the mainstream approach according to which Heritage Communities relate to intangible goods or material collections of Cultural Heritage Institutions (CHIs), we rather focus on the creative and cultural participatory assets enhanced by the advent of digital media (such as fanfictions) and the online communities (resp., fandoms) that support them. Her…
Dance and the Embodied Social Cognition of Mating
This paper analyzes Carlos Saura’s film Tango through the theoretical lens of the Tie-Up Theory to explore how fictional narratives can serve as laboratories for investigating the embodied social cognition of romantic relationships. The study shows how dance, particularly tango, functions both as subject matter and cognitive metaphor in representing the complex dynamics of couple formation and maintenance. The film’s meta-representational structu…
From Touch to Mental Imagery
This paper examines the embodied aesthetic experiences of late-blind individuals during tactile engagements with Enrico Castellani's Pseudo-Braille Surface artwork. The study applies a mixed computational-qualitative approach, utilizing the Atlas-Ti software for semantic analysis of interviews with 21 participants. Categories emerging from the analysis suggest a vivid relationship between touch, mental imagery, emotional well-being, and the creat…
Revisiting the CCIs-tourism nexus
In recent years, increasing attention has been paid to the importance of interrelationships between cultural and creative industries (CCIs) and tourism for cross-industry innovation and sustainable local development. The purpose of this study is to deepen the understanding of the role and relevance of the CCIs-tourism nexus for innovation-driven socio-economic transformation of territories through regional policy design and implementation in Smar…
Pseudo-scientific versus anti-scientific online conspiracism
Attitudes of distrust and paranoia toward scientific and political institutions are increasingly identified as major troubles in online communication and often lumped together under the umbrella term of conspiracy theories. However, this term encompasses two distinct communication practices that deserve to be distinguished. Traditional conspiratorial thinking adopts pseudo-scientific arguments, while newer manifestations lack coherent theories, p…
Mirroring the inequalities of mainstream music platforms
In the era of digital music streaming, understanding the monetization and popularity dynamics of online audio distribution platforms is crucial for both researchers and music industry professionals. While much of the existing research has focused on mainstream platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music, we study Bandcamp, an alternative marketplace that, among other things, empowers independent artists to upload and sell their music. Leveraging a …
Mind-stimulating leisure activities
Introduction: This study examines prospective associations within a 6-year perspective between three mind-stimulating leisure activities (relaxed and solitary: reading; serious and solitary: doing number and word games; serious and social: playing cards and games) and 21 outcomes in (1) physical health, (2) wellbeing, (3) daily life functioning, (4) cognitive impairment, and (5) longevity domains. Methods: Data were obtained from 19,821 middle-ag…
Proactive vs. reactive country responses to the Covid-19 pandemic shock
The infection caused by SARS-CoV-2, responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, is characterized by an infectious period with either asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic phases, leading to a rapid surge of mild and severe cases putting national health systems under serious stress. To avoid their collapse, and in the absence of pharmacological treatments, during the early pandemic phase countries worldwide were forced to adopt strategies, from elimination t…
The link between reported cases of Covid-19 and the Infodemic Risk Index
In this brief report we followed the evolution of the COVID-19 Infodemic Risk Index during 2020 and clarified its connection with the epidemic waves, focusing specifically on their co-evolution in Europe, South America, and South-eastern Asia. Using 640 million tweets collected by the Infodemic Observatory and the open access dataset published by Our World in Data regarding COVID-19 worldwide reported cases, we analyze the COVID-19 infodemic vs. …
Cultural, creative, and complex
Are cultural cities always creative? An empirical analysis of culture-led development in 190 European cities
Self-Interest, prosociality, and the moral cognition of markets
In this paper, we perform a text analysis of Adam Smith's two books, the Theory of Moral Sentiments and the Wealth of Nations, to better characterize their highly disputed differences in terms of moral cognition. In particular, given that Smith's ideas are still very cited and influential in the current scholarly debate on moral cognition, we are interested in understanding whether a text analysis would unveil a semantic structure that is in line…
Urban ‘beautification’ and its discontents
In this paper, we analyze the relationship between artistic interventions in the public space and their impact on urban cultural commons. We focus on the case study of the Muri Liberi street art project in NoLo, a semi-peripheral neighbourhood of Milan traditionally characterized by a multi-ethnic, low-income resident population and now witnessing the early signs of socio-economic transformation. We propose a comparison with a case of art-based r…
Global world (dis-)order? Analyzing the dynamic evolution of the micro-structure of multipolarism by means of an unsupervised neural network approach
A monument to whom? Artist positionality in community art-based projects
Artistic interventions in the public domain are often legitimized as opportunities for the empowerment of local communities. However, the nature of such interventions is complex and cannot be inferred from stated intentions. The interaction between agents of cultural and artistic interventions and local communities is shaped by power relationships that are seldom made explicit, let alone negotiated. Here, we analyze The Gramsci Monument, a site-s…
Fictional Narratives as a Laboratory for the Social Cognition of Behavioral Change
Fictional narratives cannot be considered as mere escapist entertainment, and have a significant social cognition potential. Their study is also important in understanding the mechanisms of behavioral change, as many fictions focus on processes of personal transformation of the main characters. Romantic fictions are of special interest in this regard, as the formation of a new couple entails negotiation and mutual adaptation between partners, wit…
Kriya Bebali in Bali
In Bali, kriya is classified into three, wali, bebali, and balih-balihan. The classification is based on the nature of the sacred and profane. The sacred nature is reflected in the kriya wali and bebali. This article is focusing on kriya bebali, which is a vein of the community in carrying out their religion; simultaneously, religion is the main driver of the creation of kriya bebali because the perfection of kriya bebali lies in its usefulness i…
A Glint of Lights in the Fog
This paper examines Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities as a unique literary canvas to reformulate the relationship between narratives and planning practices. It does so from the vantage point of the Frame, namely, the dialogues between the Khan (the planner) and Marco Polo (the resident/traveler) punctuating the imaginary cities described in the book. Read through with the aid of narratological concepts, the Frame functions a mini-treatise on urban…
The power of local networking
Musicians have always established a symbiotic relationship with the urban environments in which they live and work, with a tendency to aggregate into place-based relational networks. Bologna provides a clear example of this phenomenon to the point that the evolution of its musical scene can be characterized in terms of its relational dynamics. We study a network of artists whose main common trait has been the deliberate choice of coming or return…
Studying the Covid-19 infodemic at scale
This special theme issue of Big Data & Society presents leading-edge, interdisciplinary research that focuses on examining how health-related (mis-)information is circulating on social media. In particular, we are focusing on how computational and Big Data approaches can help to provide a better understanding of the ongoing COVID-19 infodemic (overexposure to both accurate and misleading information on a health topic) and to develop effective str…
Emergence of knowledge communities and information centralization during the Covid-19 pandemic
Rethinking the heuristic traps paradigm in avalanche education
This paper will review the emergence and adoption of decision heuristics as a conceptual framework within the avalanche research and education community and demonstrate how this emphasis on the heuristic decision framework has anchored and was critical in redefining the discussion around avalanche accidents. This paradigm has been a critical and meaningful step in recognizing the importance of decision making in avalanche accidents. However, in a…
Assessing the risks of ‘infodemics’ in response to Covid-19 epidemics
During COVID-19, governments and the public are fighting not only a pandemic but also a co-evolving infodemic—the rapid and far-reaching spread of information of questionable quality. We analysed more than 100 million Twitter messages posted worldwide during the early stages of epidemic spread across countries (from 22 January to 10 March 2020) and classified the reliability of the news being circulated. We developed an Infodemic Risk Index to ca…
Understanding culture-led local development
In this paper we carry out a meta-analytic review of the literature on culture-led local development models. We identify and discuss three typical fallacies characterising mono-causal culture-led development schemes: instrumentalism, over-engineering, and parochialism. We then discuss their analytical background, and provide examples illustrating the consequences of each. Based upon this critical discussion, we make a case for a ‘new territorial …
The Social Viability of Culture-led Urban Transformation Processes
This paper investigates the relationships between cultural activities/investments and urban transformation processes, with reference to the transformation of the Bicocca district in the metropolitan core of Milan. Bicocca has experienced a radical change in its social, economic and environmental profile as a consequence of the transition from a heavily industrial development model to a characteristically post-industrial one. This case study offer…
Two versions of heterotopia
Gentrification as space domestication. The High Line Art case
In this paper, we critically examine the role of artistic locational choices and practices in the context of gentrification processes in urban renewal contexts. We characterize gentrification as a form of domestication of space, and explore the extent to which artistic choices and practices relate to such process with reference to the deontological dilemma of legitimization within the art system vs. responsible empowerment of vulnerable local con…
The contribution of cultural participation to urban well-being. A comparative study in Bolzano/Bozen and Siracusa, Italy
Studying the Covid-19 infodemic at scale
This special theme issue of Big Data & Society presents leading-edge, interdisciplinary research that focuses on examining how health-related (mis-)information is circulating on social media. In particular, we are focusing on how computational and Big Data approaches can help to provide a better understanding of the ongoing COVID-19 infodemic (overexposure to both accurate and misleading information on a health topic) and to develop effective str…
Are cultural cities always creative? An empirical analysis of culture-led development in 190 European cities
Cultural Access and Mental Health
A Conceptual Regulatory Framework for the Design and Evaluation of Complex, Participative Cultural Planning Strategies
The current hype about culture-led local development models is causing an increasing interest in cultural policies in the broader context of urban policy. This is not necessarily a transitory situation bound to fade once the hype is over. Under certain conditions, there is room to believe that culture may indeed become a main development driver of urban systems. For this to happen, however, it is necessary to abandon simple mono-causal developmen…
Independent artist-run centres
Canadian independent artist-run centres provide an interesting case study of the potential role and relevance of non-profit institutions in the contemporary arts field. Predominantly established during the 1970s, they have been founded by artist collectives typically operating within urban contexts, with the aim of providing new opportunities to cope with the physical, economic and cultural constraints that generally impede the professional devel…
Mirroring the inequalities of mainstream music platforms
In the era of digital music streaming, understanding the monetization and popularity dynamics of online audio distribution platforms is crucial for both researchers and music industry professionals. While much of the existing research has focused on mainstream platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music, we study Bandcamp, an alternative marketplace that, among other things, empowers independent artists to upload and sell their music. Leveraging a …
What does Brexit mean for UK cultural and creative cities
Cultural and creative sectors (CCS) are increasingly recognized as a driving economic force. In addition to their undisputed soft power, creative jobs are expected to prove more resilient to automation, and may therefore play an important role in the future growth cycles of advanced global economies. But how is Brexit going to affect the UK’s flourishing creative economy at an urban level? Pre-Brexit evidence from the European Commission’s Cultur…
Museum environments, visitors' behaviour, and well-being
We introduce a taxonomy of museum environments, based upon three dimensions: the auratic/non-auratic character of the environment, visitors’ cultural attendance, and level of cultural attendance of the social context. We consider a case study of a museum environment characterized by the least favourable socio-cognitive conditions, and conduct a study on 102 museum visitors about their cognitive performance in terms of attention and recall, cultur…
Network Interaction with Material and Relational Goods
We model interaction within the members of a work group, who carry on different projects and can choose to cooperate with each other or to exploit the work of the others. We focus our attention on the dynamic interdependence between their material performance and the structure of the relations among them. In particular, we assume that their satisfaction depends both upon the material outcome of their projects and upon the quality of their recipro…
A monument to whom? Artist positionality in community art-based projects
Artistic interventions in the public domain are often legitimized as opportunities for the empowerment of local communities. However, the nature of such interventions is complex and cannot be inferred from stated intentions. The interaction between agents of cultural and artistic interventions and local communities is shaped by power relationships that are seldom made explicit, let alone negotiated. Here, we analyze The Gramsci Monument, a site-s…
Pseudo-scientific versus anti-scientific online conspiracism
Attitudes of distrust and paranoia toward scientific and political institutions are increasingly identified as major troubles in online communication and often lumped together under the umbrella term of conspiracy theories. However, this term encompasses two distinct communication practices that deserve to be distinguished. Traditional conspiratorial thinking adopts pseudo-scientific arguments, while newer manifestations lack coherent theories, p…
Cultural, creative, and complex
The power of local networking
Musicians have always established a symbiotic relationship with the urban environments in which they live and work, with a tendency to aggregate into place-based relational networks. Bologna provides a clear example of this phenomenon to the point that the evolution of its musical scene can be characterized in terms of its relational dynamics. We study a network of artists whose main common trait has been the deliberate choice of coming or return…
Emergence of knowledge communities and information centralization during the Covid-19 pandemic
Proximity effects in obesity rates in the US
Shakespeare in Love
This article explores the structure of the male-female interaction in the human mating process from the perspective of the so-called Tie-Up Theory, applying it to the analysis of a cinematic fictional narrative, namely the Shakespeare in love movie. We look at romantic fictional narratives as possible simulations with a social cognition valence, and show that, in the case study under exam, the actual structure of the interaction between the two m…
The essence of smart specialization
The physical matter we are dealing with today is exactly the same that was available to our hominid Palaeolithic ancestors. What makes the difference between now and then is the way in which matter
Cognitive Keynesianism
Multidimensional Similarities at a Global Scale
Disequilibrium dynamics with naive agents in the overlapping generations model with money
The Economics of Organised Crime
This is the first book to use economic theory in the analysis of all the different aspects of organised crime: the origins, the internal organisation, market behaviour and deterrence policies. The theory of rent-seeking is adopted to help understand the origin of criminal organisations from a state of anarchy, while modern industrial organisation theory is used to explain the design of internal rules in the organised crime sector. The market beha…
Subjective metaphysics and learning from experience
Defeating the gang
This paper studies the optimal State support policy for an economy of retailers in which there is a criminal organization (called the Gang) that tries to enforce a rake‐off scheme via punishment of reluctant retailers. The State aims at reducing the cost of reluctance through a suitable support policy (protection and insurance against physical damage) in order to undermine the Gang's threatening power and eventually to defeat it. Optimal support …
Network Interaction with Material and Relational Goods
We model interaction within the members of a work group, who carry on different projects and can choose to cooperate with each other or to exploit the work of the others. We focus our attention on the dynamic interdependence between their material performance and the structure of the relations among them. In particular, we assume that their satisfaction depends both upon the material outcome of their projects and upon the quality of their recipro…
The emergence of deontological codes in public administration
We study a model of the evolutionary selection of social standards of behavior in a large public organization, in terms of the propensity to bribery of the organization's rent-seeking officers. We examine several scenarios, allowing for the existence of various types of anti-corruption sanctioning mechanisms, for the role of pro-social, interiorized value systems, for the impact of informational costs on the viability of "informationally sophisti…
The Weak Points of the General Equivalent
Social preferences and private provision of public goods
Cultural Policies and Local Planning Strategies
The authors draw a strategic framework for cultural planning at the local level. The concepts of industrial district and cluster have strengthened the role of space—in terms of external economies of localization and agglomeration—in economic development. The recent debate concerning contemporary development processes has underlined the increasing role of the cultural dimension for local development and has focused on different paths of clustering…
Creativity, Cultural Investment and Local Development
The Social Viability of Culture-led Urban Transformation Processes
This paper investigates the relationships between cultural activities/investments and urban transformation processes, with reference to the transformation of the Bicocca district in the metropolitan core of Milan. Bicocca has experienced a radical change in its social, economic and environmental profile as a consequence of the transition from a heavily industrial development model to a characteristically post-industrial one. This case study offer…
Evolutionary Selection of Socially Sensitive Preferences in Random Matching Environments
In this paper we study the evolutionary selection of socially sensitive preferences in the context of reference interaction settings such as coordination failure and cooperation. We refer to a specific class of socially sensitive preferences in which players weigh additively their own material payoff against the opponent with either a positive or negative coefficient (λ-players). Preference evolution is guided by replicator dynamics in a context …
Independent artist-run centres
Canadian independent artist-run centres provide an interesting case study of the potential role and relevance of non-profit institutions in the contemporary arts field. Predominantly established during the 1970s, they have been founded by artist collectives typically operating within urban contexts, with the aim of providing new opportunities to cope with the physical, economic and cultural constraints that generally impede the professional devel…
Culture as an Engine of Local Development Processes
Building upon the companion paper in this issue, this essay analyses five case studies that can be taken as prototypes of the system‐wide cultural district culture‐led developmental model. The research targets five cities in Europe and the U.S .: V alencia, A ustin, N ewcastle/ G ateshead, L inz, and D enver. Each presents specific characteristics but also some deep, structural common traits. The case studies are compared and their future viabili…
Culture as an Engine of Local Development Processes
Building on the early works of A lfred M arshall, analyses of local economies have emphasized the spatial function of clusters and industrial districts in terms of external economies of localization and agglomeration. Recent literature has emphasized the importance of culture and the complementarities between culture and local tangible and intangible assets. This paper aims to provide an analytical foundation for these processes with a view to de…
A Conceptual Regulatory Framework for the Design and Evaluation of Complex, Participative Cultural Planning Strategies
The current hype about culture-led local development models is causing an increasing interest in cultural policies in the broader context of urban policy. This is not necessarily a transitory situation bound to fade once the hype is over. Under certain conditions, there is room to believe that culture may indeed become a main development driver of urban systems. For this to happen, however, it is necessary to abandon simple mono-causal developmen…
Smart endogenous growth
Purpose: Despite the growing literature aimed at explaining how cultural and artistic production feeds economic growth, the causal relationships and interplays are not investigated in depth. In the attempt of filling this gap, the purpose of this paper is to examine arts, culture, and education within the framework of the New Growth Theory. Design/methodology/approach: Starting from the analysis of how culture may be at the root of a specific eng…
Understanding culture-led local development
In this paper we carry out a meta-analytic review of the literature on culture-led local development models. We identify and discuss three typical fallacies characterising mono-causal culture-led development schemes: instrumentalism, over-engineering, and parochialism. We then discuss their analytical background, and provide examples illustrating the consequences of each. Based upon this critical discussion, we make a case for a ‘new territorial …
Cultural Access and Mental Health
Culture driven policies and revaluation of local cultural assets
Self-protection, Psychological Externalities, and the Social Dynamics of Fear
We examine the social dynamics of crime by means of evolutionary game theory, and we model the choice of boundedly rational potential victims to privately self-protect against prospective offenders. Negative externalities from self-protection, as the socially transmitted fear of victimization, can influence the strategic choices of victims even with constant or declining crime rates, and this circumstance may lead to Pareto inefficient equilibria…
Beyond the rhetoric of participation
The contribution of cultural participation to urban well-being. A comparative study in Bolzano/Bozen and Siracusa, Italy
The beautiful country
Rawlsian altruism with perfect discrimination leads to social efficiency
Recent studies draw attention on the highly specialized capacity of human beings in recognizing altruists versus cheaters in social interactions. These results hint at the existence of specialized abilities that support discriminating behavior in strategic interactions. In this paper, we explore the implications of discriminating behavior in the study of the indirect evolutionary selection of selfish versus altruistic motivations in the context o…
Economics (43 works) · Political science (43 works) · Sociology (40 works) · Computer Science (31 works) · Psychology (27 works) · Cultural Industries and Urban Development (26 works) · Business (22 works) · Geography (20 works) · Law (20 works) · Social Psychology (17 works)