Uploaded on 2014-12-09 by AlexTurco

1. Workers from nearby cities (flow) 2. City inhabitants (stock) 3. Water (both flow and stock) Cagliari is the destination of most of the workers and students from nearby cities. A large amount of people travel every day to reach their working place causing a huge amount of traffic, especially due to the lack of reliable public transportation. Trains are overpriced in relation to the quality of provided services and buses are slow and not very well organized. Luckily, something is changing with the development of a new tramway. ![metro Cagliari][1] (On the left the new tramway's first completed line) This issues are strictly connected to the large variation of inhabitants of the city. During the last 30 years Cagliari's population has ceased to grow (in the last 10 years it has slightly decreased). This was caused in part by the lack of space for new constructions but mainly by the sharp rise in houses' prices. As a result, people who were meant to live in Cagliari (being born and raised here or because of their job location), were forced to move in nearby cities while their working place stayed here, contributing to the traffic problems mentioned before. Furthermore, this partial depopulation has led to the aging of the city population due to the fact that most of the people who left were working young people. This affected both administration expenses (e.g. increased cost of public health) and commercial activities which lost a lot of actual or potential clients. ![Cagliari city centre][2] (This is a spot in the city center. Not too many years ago, it used to be one of the most popular destination for shopping, a sort of “natural shopping center”. Nowadays, a large amount of shops struggle and many of them went out of business). How can it change: This two issues are strictly connected. Trends in demographic dynamics are not going to change in the short term so it is vital to better understand and plan people movements patterns. The construction of the tramway is a good start, but I think it is necessary to promote intermodality. This can be done without huge investments (e.g. parking lots suitable for the purpose are already available), by simply revising buses routes and roads direction of travel. In the long term, an improved housing policy and a smarter management of city spaces could decrease the depopulation problem and, therefore, reduce the pressure on the transport system. WATER Being Cagliari on the Mediterranean Sea, it easy to understand how water has an important part in commercial and touristic city's life. However, I want to focus on other aspects of water as a stock and as a flow. As a stock, the city has 2 very important locations: 1) The Saline Regional Park of Molentargius, a natural park included in the Ramsar Convention because of its relevance in preserving biodiversity. This is both an important touristic attraction and an environmental asset. 2) The Pond of Simbirizzi, principal clean water source for the city. As a flow, we can mainly focus on two aspects: 1) Water supply (aqueduct) 2) Rainfall catching and waste water conveyance This intricate water system pose a great number of challenges for the management and maintenance of infrastructures. How can it change: Climate change will probably the cause of many changes in water management all over the world in the next decades. In Sardinia, we already face shore management problems due to the erosion of sand beaches and rainfall catching issues caused by the rise in precipitations. Especially the last one has proven to be a difficult challenge because the actual apparatus is inefficient: most of the precipitations flow into the waste water conveyance system overloading it and causing (often minor, sometimes major) floods. Furthermore, clean rainwater is wasted because it is not collected and get mixed with dirty water. The solution for this problem is to build a better catching infrastructure which could include collection systems embedded into buildings (usable, for example, for irrigation or human consumption if adequately treated), canals inside in city parks, and permeable paving in parking lots. [1]: https://edxuploads.s3.amazonaws.com/14181326363668535.jpg [2]: https://edxuploads.s3.amazonaws.com/14181323288841229.jpg