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Climate Urbanism is an atelier of Urban Design within the MArch in Architecture for Sustainable Design of Politecnico di Torino. The Atelier was planned as a face-to-face learning experience, anyway the pandemics transformed it into an online learning environment, connecting 69 students from 20 countries in the world, 4 teachers, almost 50 stakeholders involved, a dozen of guests. The atelier focussed on Climate Change as a starting point for evolving future scenarios. The first stage is about Mapping CC implications, the second stage is about Tackling CC. DEVELOPMENT Europe and sustainable development
The contemporary development of European territories can’t be anymore the same of the past. Last century’s growth generated an articulated space together with an extraordinary palimpsest of human traces, economic and production models, ideals, imaginaries, norms and rights. This development process is today fragile, weak and no longer sustainable. Not only from an economic or financial point of view (as the 2008 crisis has highlighted) and not only from an environmental point of view. The un-sustainability of that development model concerns in fact a much wider number of issues, which includes social inequality and gender differences, welfare system availability and adequacy, mobility and infrastructure rights and justice, delegation and participatory processes, work and innovation, climate change, resources exploitation, energy production... Dealing today with the territories therefore means on the one hand dealing with what has been inherited
from the consequences of the twentieth century’s development such as the social fixed capital, abandoned buildings and soil exploitation, cohabitation forms and individualism, contemporary societal weaknesses and fragility. On the other hand also means coping with each of these issues by imagining how to ensure a future “that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”1.
Italies and Italian development
Since the XX century Italian development has been uneven it is possible to define more than just one territory and the whole century has been characterized by many counterposed Italies. If the first half of the century could be defined through the image of a northern industrialized and advanced Italy against a poor and underdeveloped Southern Italy2, the second half also saw the birth of a “Third Italy”3. Starting from the North-East-Center (NEC) regions, this model has been properly defined in the Seventies as an alternative, diffuse and positive economic model: “the Industrial Districts”4. Small enterprises, family-based society, communitarism, industrial atmosphere and local 1 World Commission on Environment and Development (1987), Our Common Future, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2 “Progetto ‘80” was anincredible vision to transform Italy into one only equally developed country thanks to Production, Infrastructures and the relation between nature and anthropic environment. See Renzoni C. (2012), Il progetto ‘80. Un’idea di Paese nell’Italia degli anni Sessanta, Firenze: Alinea 3 The most outstanding works are: Bagnasco A. (1977), Tre Italie. La problematica territoriale dello sviluppo italiano, Il Mulino, Bologna; Fuà G., Zacchia C. (eds., 1983), Industrializzazione senza fratture, Il Mulino, Bologna; Brusco S. (1989), Piccole imprese e distretti industriali, Rosenberg & Sellier, Torino. Nevertheless those text were not translated in other languages, they represented a milestone in European economic literature and helped in giving a better understanding of European local development. 4 In 1979, Giacomo Becattini retrieved the concept of the industrial district, originally shaped by Alfred Marshall in Book IV of his Principles (Marshall, A. (1920). Principles of Economics, London: MacMillan), to explain the agglomerations of small firms that flourished in the Italy of the late 70s. Becattini would later define the industrial district as “a socio-territorial entity which is characterised by the active presence of both a community of people and a population of firms in one naturally and historically bounded area” (Becattini, G. (1990). “The Marshallian industrial district as a socio-economic notion”, in Pyke, F., Becattini, G. and Sengenberger, W. (eds.): Industrial districts and interfirm cooperation in Italy, Geneva: International Institute for Labour Studies). From then on, the Marshallian industrial district (MID) has been the focus of a huge corpus of theoretical literature and experiments all around the world. To name only few: G. Becattini, M. Bellandi and L. De Propris (eds.), The Handbook of Industrial Districts, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA; Crouch C., Le Galés P., Trigilia C. and Voelzkow H. (eds.) (2001). Local Production Systems in Europe: Rise or Demise, Oxford: Oxford University Press; Zeitlin J. (2008), “Industrial Districts and Regional Clusters”, in Jones G. and Zeitlin J. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Business History, Oxford, Oxford University Press, pp. 219-243; Bennenbroek, N. and Harris, R. I. D. (1995). “An investigation of the determinants of profitability in New Zealand manufacturing industries in 1986-87”, Applied Economics, vol. 27, pp. 1093-1101; Boix, R. and Galletto, V. (2004). Identificación de Sistemas Locales de Trabajo y Distritos Industriales en España. MITYC, Secretaría General de Industria, Dirección General de Política para la Pequeña y Mediana Empresa (mimeo); Bönte, W. (2003). “R&D and productivity: Internal vs. External R&D: Evidence from West German manufacturing industries”, Economics of Innovation and New Technology, vol. 12, nº 4, pp. 343-360
