INTRODUCTION

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 Italy 2 , 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

development 5 are the features of an economic model who soon became a guidance for medial European territories such as in Spain, Germany, UK. Contemporary Italian geography anyway can not anymore be described through “only” three Italies. NEC is not anymore consistent: in fact from one side Northern Italy is more and more developing around the central global city of Milan 6 , Emilia-Romagna is developing as a strong network region, anufacturing-based Alps foothill development increases its differences between single areas. The Center regions have completely different development trajectories 7 . Souther regions is also very various and its gap with Northern regions increases. Did the Third Italy disappeared? We would better propose the concept of “Medial Italy”. Not a geographical concept neither a political definition but a wider description of the multifaceted diffuse provincial territories characterizing the largest part of Italy 8 .

Medial territories as a European figure

“Medial territory” is a concept we can apply also to Europe. Instead of thinking about Europe as a network of both exploding antagonistic megalopolises and peripheral useless areas we can consider it a as a huge horizontal metropolis where the urban condition is the actual life condition. A huge territory where most of the population live out of the metropolitan areas and still cope with the future through their everyday life. We work on these forgotten and many times abandoned territories. It’s the majority (= “medial”) of Italy and Europe: places with an aging population, strong and sometimes effective manufacture production, with an impressive soil consuming, characterized by a deep relation between the green and the gray infrastructure: an exceptional natural world intertwined with an inconsiderate network of roads, rails, electricity plants, lines. A territorial majority that is the very core of contemporary Europe and that also represents an opportunity to re-think the whole horizontal European metropolis as a completely sustainable and democratic place. “Medial” refers as well to the digital condition of urbanity: in medial territories the urban condition depends more on the digital than on proximity. In fact in a medial territory the planetary urbanization enacts through a digital mediation. Pandemics and lockdown accelerated this medial condition, basically promoting a new growth for those places and

defining a new spatial emergency.

5 Pike A. (2007). “What Kind of Local and Regional Development and for Whom?” Regional Studies, Vol. 41.9, pp. 1253–1269, December 2007; Carlo Trigilia, Economic sociology : state, market, and society in modern capitalism Oxford, Blackwell, 2002; Barca F., McCann P. and Rodríguez-Pose A. (2012), ‘The case for regional development intervention: Place-based versus place-neutral approaches’, Journal of Regional Science, 52(1): 134-152; Biggeri M. and Ferrannini A. (2014), Sustainable Human Development: A new territorial and people-centred perspective, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. An incredible advancement has been done by the international collective of scholars and economists who defined the concept of “Daily Economics”: Collective for the Foundational Economy, Foundational Economy, Manchester University Press, 2018: https:// foundationaleconomy.com 6 Perulli P. (2012), Nord. Una città-regione globale, Il Mulino, Bologna; Berta G. (2008), Nord. Dal triangolo industriale alla megalopoli padana. 1950-2000, Milano: Mondadori. 7 Viesti G. (a cura di, 2000), Mezzogiorno dei distretti, Roma: Donzelli 8 The concept has been developed thanks to Cristina Bianchetti during a long debate between Urbanism scholars regarding apossible new national research on Production and Cities (2017 PRIN proposal). Thanks to the contribution of Michele Cerruti But and Cristiana Mattioli, the concept was used to better understand the actual situation of Italian Industrial District (the final essay can be found in: Cerruti But M., Mattioli C. (2019), “L’Italia di mezzo dei territori distrettuali. Casi estremi di trasformazione”, in Bianchetti C. (ed.), Territorio e produzione, Macerata: Quodlibet). Finally Arturo Lanzani used it as a description for observing the contemporary state of italian sprawl (Lanzani, A., Curci, F. (2018), “Le Italie in contrazione, tra crisi e opportunità”, in De Rossi A. (a cura di), Riabitare l’Italia. Le aree interne tra abbandoni e riconquiste, Donzelli, Roma, pp. 79-107).

SUSTAINABILITY

What are we talking about?

The main idea behind our atelier is that sustainability is not a technical issue. It does not concern only the type of windows, solar panels, insulation brand new technologies, hyper digitization, domotics and so on. Sustainability concerns futurability. The way we can understand our present times and the way we can produce our future. The relation between Urbanism and Sustainability is about at least four outstanding issues. - Sustainability concerns individuals and societal inclusion: it’s the possibility of being part of decision making processes, of living and sharing rights, of practicing real democracy, of participating in defining the present and the future. - Sustainability concerns environment. It’s the life of animals and plants together with climate transformation. Pollution of soil, air and water. Life within nature, our possibility to promote a balance in our development. - Sustainability means economic balance. That’s not only about becoming more rich, but it’s about an even wellness system. Economic sustainability means considering Inequalities and Rights as a central issue. - Sustainability concerns humans. The capability of becoming what you want to be, the possibility of living your own identity, who you are, how you live. The role our culture can have in changing reality, the openness and entangled cultural action.

Imagining and Caring

In our atelier we strongly believe that we can cope with the urgency of a societal, environmental, economic and human sustainability through two main tools:

Imaginary

It’s what we think. How we consider and understand the reality around us. The imaginary is not only a scenery or a fantastic either utopian picture. It’s the real understanding of the present and the capability of envisioning. All the atelier will work on the imaginary. This is the very core of how we intend Urbanism. The most powerful possibility design has is to transform the collective imaginary into a stunning brand new vision of space and time.

Caring

It’s not what we have to push inhabitants towards (“please, take care of this...”). It’s also not only a voluntary approach towards the territory. If we consider contemporary times as the age of a broken nature and a sick world, then we have to work and design with the highly professional approach of Critical caring. The concept comes from highly skilled medicine discipline: it means to be able to make proper deep diagnosis, and then provide attentive dispositives of change instead of straight solutions.

The core issue of the atelier is Climate Change

The way we produce, the way we live, the way we eat has already affected not only the environment but the whole socio-cultural-economic world. The construction of space and infrastructure can not anymore rely on a now obsolete Western consumerism view, but must focus on how climate alterations offer a new set of clues to adapt it. Urbanism imaginaries must follow their effects on anthropogenic landscapes and have to be aware of the agency that those images have in providing spatial and infrastructural responses to man-induced climatic events for a certain period of time. Imaginary design critically questions the geopolitical implications behind the making of climate alterations and the pressures they enforce on humans and nonhumans alike. This is what we will basically do working on the medial territories of Europe.

From Sustainable Urbanism to CLIMATE URBANISM

Within our course and thanks to our projects we promote a paradigm shift in urban planning moving from the concept of Sustainable Urbanism as the dominant policy narrative among the world’s major cities, based on actions to make “climate-friendly” either “climate-resilient” cities and territories 9 , to the approach of nism” 10 .

“Climate Urba

This shift is characterized by new policies, programs, and development initiatives aimed at: 1. considering climate alterations as a present condition instead of a future hazard and the actual implications (on society, economy, built and natural environment, mobility, digital and physical infrastructures) instead of the future possible alterations as the base for the development 2. tackling climate change through a systemic approach developing comprehensive spatial and infrastructural responses with the aim of evolving new models of living together instead of protecting the actual societal and economical conditions

9 “Neoliberal growth strategies and the principles of sustainable urban development have evolved in tandem since at least the 1980s. City leaders found useful rhetoric in sustainable development platforms such as UN Agenda 21, and in documents by development agencies such as the World Bank, UNDP, the Asian Development Bank, and others. In borrowing this language, urban policymakers engaged in the coupling of neoliberal strategies and ecological concerns until these matured into a popular rhetoric of ‘sustainable urbanism’ – a broad term that we employ as a catch-all for the various sustainable policy initiatives that popularized the urban greening of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Throughout this period, cities began implementing ambitious programs dedicated to ecological modernization, density-oriented development, and smart urbanism in an attempt to present ‘win-win’ scenarios for the economy and the environment. This materialized in different ways, and there has been extensive scholarship exploring the ways cities have coupled sustainability measures to popular growth agendas, as well as the various environmental justice and social justice consequences associated with these initiatives. (...) In short, the connections between sustainable urbanism, central city redevelopment, and the ‘creative economy’ were emphasized, as proponents and critics alike noted the increased number of environmentally conscious knowledge workers seeking green, sustainable, and livable neighborhoods. Throughout this period, the narrative of sustainable urbanism reinforced these trends. What is particularly important is that the ambiguous language of sustainability allowed its goals to be defined according to the priorities of policymakers, corporate elites, and city decision makers, resulting in multiple visions for urban sustainability. [The concept of] ‘sustainability fix’ suggest that the salience of environmental issues forced state and municipal actors to incorporate sustainability policies into planning goals. Early on, many cities saw the opportunity to use the sustainability fix to conflate economic development with sustainable urbanism, leading Krueger and Gibbs (2007: 103) to note that sustainability may no longer be an ‘obstacle to capitalist accumulation, but rather a constituent part of it’. (Long J. & Rice J. L. (2018), “From sustainable urbanism to climate urbanism”. Urban Studies, June 2018) 10 An important paper by Joshua Long and Jennifer Rice (Long J. & Rice J. L. (2018), “From sustainable urbanism to climate urbanism”. Urban Studies, June 2018) explanes how the shift from sustainable urbanism to climate urbanism is totally part of neoliberism and is based on: 1) cities; 2) carbon actions; 3) resilient infrastructures; 4) financial platforms; 5) incresing social inequalities. We think anyway that Europe has a completely different role and functioning within the environment and societies. This is why the paradygm of Climate Urbanism in Europe can be described and pursued in a totally different (and democratic) way.

3. developing a societal infrastructure of multiple private and public stakeholders instead of basing projects on institutional rethorics either privatization 4. promoting the horizontal metropolis as proper site of climate action instead of running local policies based on centers-peripheries narratives

While some relevant examples in the world underline the priority of cities in economy, GDP and production, Europe has in fact a different story. European economy is actually based on a more even distribution of richness and this “territorial democracy” can be described through the wide image of an “horizontal metropolis”. If from one side cities emerge as the leading peak of economy, from the other side natural sources, energy production and manufacturing is scattered within the larger “medial” territory. A territorial majority that is the very core of contemporary Europe and that also represents an opportunity to re-think the whole horizontal European metropolis as a completely sustainable and democratic place.

BIELLA, A EUROPEAN MEDIAL TERRITORY

The atelier focusses on the case-study of Biella. Biella is a complex territory which has been considered as the cradle of industrial revolution in Italy. It’s a strong industrial district making luxury wool fabrics which is still playing a leading role within the world fashion system, since 70% of the whole worldwide wool production for Haute Couture is made here. Biella is an incredible place that was ravaged by the economic, demographic and societal crisis. Compared to Italy, Biella has the largest amount of abandoned industrial buildings (compared to the amount of soil). The fastest ageing population. Completely malfunctioning connections. An abandoned environment devouring abandoned villages and buildings that causes hydrogeological instability. At the same time Biella is one of the most vivid territory in Italy, with an incredible number of associations and bottom up organizations. Biella hosts three incredible foundations: the one of the last Italian family-based bank, Sella; the one runned by the renowned international artist Michelangelo Pistoletto; the one of the outstanding multinational fashion corporation, Zegna; the one of the local savings bank. An unbelievable individual and societal advocacy attitude (over 1500 associations) supports the lacks and the defects of institutions and territory. What we ask is to work in Biella coping with climate change and sustainability urgency through designing a shared new imaginary.

next page: four synthetic maps concerning the phase Mapping Climate Change

FIRST PART MAPPING CC

How does Climate Change affects the territory? What is happening in terms of environment and climate change? What is really already changing? It concerns water, landslides, hydrogeological instability, soil pollution, air pollution, ecosystems, hazards. But it also concerns the social and individual perception of change, the ientifications of the actors, the stakeholders and the organizations involved, the practices of resilience local communities are developing. It concerns the effects on production and manifacture, the issue of finacial and impact investments, the economic and wellbeing risks. The first phase aims at Mapping Climate change spatial implications on Biella territory and is focussed on designing what we can call “Plan Nul”. This zero plan is not the reading and the interpretation of the contemporary time. It is instead the most perfect as possible projection of what the territory will look like in the next 5 years if nothing happens. This is already a design phase and we know that designing is one of the most powerful tool we can use to understand reality. This phase aims at defining a proper “Primer” for intervening in Biella. Mapping the forthcoming future means being able to design a trans-disciplinary approach and interpretation-key. Urbanism and architecture are the most horizontal disciplines caring of territory and future: this is why we ask urbanists to cope with as many disciplines as possible and to draw a “Big Picture” of contemporary change. In a way, this is the most stunning form of design.