New reading of geographical principles to interpret territorial realities as aware and critical citizens capable of constructively acting in the present looking to the future
Varraso ISABELLA, Dip. di Economia - Univ. of Foggia, Italy
Fiori MARIA, Dip. Economia and Finanza - Univ. of Bari "Aldo Moro", Italy
In recent years, digital resources have become very widespread thanks to the dissemination and enhancement of information technologies, and their applications, initially in the hands of a few experts, are now common in different disciplines, users and citizens. This is a transition that favors the digital democratization process, in response to current international agendas, and does not only concern the tools as such, but the approach and methods to be adopted in a necessarily territorial, strategic and critical key.
These methods, increasingly “local or place-based spatial analysis”, such as Geographic Information Systems, have enormous potential for geographic content and logic, as they allow to specify concepts, facilitating their applications. Geographers are traditionally aware that the technical dimension is not enough to understand complex realities such as territorial systems. The use of innovative technologies gives new strength to the language of geo-graphicity and also requires more skills and competences typical of the geographical method, to recognize and evaluate the present and future territorial impacts deriving from the daily economic choices of the population, administrators and politicians at different operational levels. For example, it is not enough to produce cartographic drawings to identify the presence and changes of the characters of the territories, but the process of representing the "geographical world", of "narrating" regional complexity and originality, of observation, reading and multiscalar and transcalar interpretation is fundamental, in order to understand the manifestations of local and global phenomena. A Geography therefore with educational purposes, with a social and strategic role for the future of the territories and of which, in this context, the usefulness of the quantitative and perceptive dimensions is highlighted in order to answer the question: "Why the point of view of geographers is absolutely necessary today? ".
Mots clés : geographical method|territorial impacts|quantitative geography|perception geography |cartography
A104513VI