Urbanistica n.140-2009 by Planum II(2009) by Planum. The Journal of Urbanism

Urbanistica n. 140

September-December 2009

Distribution by www.planum.net

Index and english translation of the articles

Methods and tools

Profiles and practices

Projects and implementation

Problems, policies and research

Paolo Avarello edited by Massimo Bricocoli, Lina Scavuzzo Massimo Bricocoli, Lina Scavuzzo Wolfgang Foerster Massimo Bricocoli Lina Scavuzzo Lina Scavuzzo Lina Scavuzzo Lina Scavuzzo Agatino Rizzo edited by Paolo Colarossi, Antonio Pietro Latini Stefano Garano Carlo Gasparrini Antonio Pietro Latini Mosè Ricci Elio Piroddi

Paola Briata Ilario Abate Daga, Andrea Ballocca, Paolo Foietta Lucio Giecillo Francesco Domenico Moccia Michele Talia Elisa Grandi, Daniele Iodice Silvia Mantovani Stefania Proli Michele Talia Elisa Bertagnini, Michele Morbidoni Eleonora Giovene di Girasole Luca Barbarossa

The time of the urban project Social housing projects and policies in Vienna Introduction Housing policies in Vienna: continuity in innovation and perspectives Places and policies. Social housing under observation Innovative housing projects: theme and places Frauen-Werk-Stadt. From women to women: a project to daily living AutoFreien Mustersiedlung. The car-free housing settlements The residential complex Alte Busgarage and redevelopment of the station Nordbahnhof Border cities in the Baltic sea The liveable city and urban design Urban planning and quality New stories in the contemporary city Principles of urban design Beyond the ‘progetto urbano’? Urban design, from and architecture

Beyond safety: urban policies and immigration in Turin The soil exploitation in the Province of Turin Suburbia year zero? Subprime mortgage crisis and metropolitan development in the U.S. City planning in climate change times Some new questions in the planning research The edge of the housing problem. Reality informal in Milan, Bologna, Florence. Intervention strategies Towards a landscaping-urbanism: simple rules for a complex game Participation and urban identity The resistible rise of architectural ideology in planning agenda Il Cairo: urban and traditional social structures as a resource for development Re-planning suburbia and housing policy Small ports and new planning regulations

Focus

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The time of the urban project Paolo Avarello In recent years the term ‘urban project’ has rapidly spread and become popular also in Italy, with its content of suggestions, but also with no few misinterpretations. So that the same object, at least in theory referred or alluded to by this term, is at times interpreted as a mere ‘instrument’, more or less ‘innovative’, for implementing plans; at times as a system of rules that give (attempt to give) ‘form’ to the quantities of the plan; again, as in some way a ‘substitute’ of the plans or, more radically, as a ‘city project’. We should keep our attention on possible ‘case studies’, coming to us from other countries, and in particular from other parts of Europe, from which we have indeed already loaned a number of models, experimenting on the so-called ‘complex programmes’, launched on several occasions and with diverse variants from the Nineties onwards. Even a superficial glance at the case studies, in fact, evidences that the urban project is necessarily a process, rather than a single act, and even less a ‘project act’, or the conception of a solution to a given problem with given resources. A process, however, is lasting in time, and often changes in time, to adapt to the circumstances, if for nothing else, and perhaps, in the best circumstances, it can even produce additional resources. The urban project as a process of transformation of a more or less sizeable part of a city. The dimensions are not necessarily considerable, but must be sufficient to trigger a process: renewal, rehabilitation or replacement of one or more buildings does not necessarily constitute an urban project, if the operation ends with these. The transformation of part of a city, in any case, or a part that is already a city, and which is transformed into a different part (better and more liveable, it is hoped) of that city. In a part of a city that already exists and is consolidated, buildings in fact already exist, perhaps old ones, abandoned or in the process of being abandoned, and ‘present inhabitants’ already exist, with the corresponding split-up ownership, urban uses of space already exist, and, at times, spaces where former uses have been relinquished. The urban project must take this complexity into account from many different standpoints. From the technical standpoint, naturally: what to transform, what to demolish, what to build, what (it may be worthwhile) to recuperate, etc. From the standpoint of times and work: what first, what afterwards; what is easier, what is more difficult; what the times for carrying out the project are and how to keep the machine for carrying it out in operation perhaps for many years. From the economic standpoint: what resources, and how many of them, to be used in the project and how to distribute them over the various phases; but also what functions and what combinations

of functions, for what market, in order to produce the mix of typical activities indispensable for ‘making a city’ (and above all for living in it). And further, from the social standpoint. ‘Making a city’ is clearly not at all a trivial matter. And this complexity necessarily requires prolonged times. And here the hasty, suggestive use of the term ‘project’ really risks being deceptive. Just imagine a project whose basic object is that of transforming part of a city, necessarily fully coming to grips with the complexity of an urban situation. And lengthy times mean also multiplying the uncertainties. And then the corresponding necessity of continuous adaptations. In substance, from the conceptual and thus the project point of view, the ‘question’ of the urban project is played out between the following different requirements, often at odds with each other: – a definition ex ante sufficient to understand, and to be understood – by the administration, by the investors and if possible by the citizens concerned, and by public opinion – what it is all about, what spaces, functions and opportunities there will be, and what advantages could emerge from carrying out the project; – but, at the same time, a definition that is not so rigid that it will prejudice the possibility of responding to contingent events with the necessary adaptations, rapidly enough not to cause significant delays in the transformation process. A project that is thus far from the design of the architect, whose possible creativity also leaves the space necessary, but far removed, also, from the rigidity of the urban planning to which we are accustomed – especially in Italy.

Urbanistica www.planum.net

Urbanistica n. 140

September-December 2009

Distribution by www.planum.net

Index and english translation of the articles Paolo Avarello

Massimo Bricocoli Lina Scavuzzo Lina Scavuzzo

Agatino Rizzo

Border cities in the Baltic sea

edited by Paolo Colarossi, Antonio Pietro Latini Stefano Garano Carlo Gasparrini Antonio Pietro Latini Mosè Ricci Elio Piroddi

The liveable city and urban design Urban planning and quality New stories in the contemporary city Principles of urban design Beyond the ‘progetto urbano’? Urban design, from and architecture

Methods and tools

Profiles and practices

Problems, policies and research

Social housing projects and policies in Vienna Introduction Housing policies in Vienna: continuity in innovation and perspectives Places and policies. Social housing under observation Innovative housing projects: theme and places Frauen-Werk-Stadt. From women to women: a project to daily living AutoFreien Mustersiedlung. The car-free housing settlements The residential complex Alte Busgarage and redevelopment of the station Nordbahnhof

Projects and implementation

edited by Massimo Bricocoli, Lina Scavuzzo Massimo Bricocoli, Lina Scavuzzo Wolfgang Foerster

The time of the urban project

Lina Scavuzzo Lina Scavuzzo

Problems, policies, and research

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Introduction

Housing policies in Vienna: continuity in innovation and perspectives

Massimo Bricocoli, Lina Scavuzzo

Wolfgang Foerster

The contributions collected in this section aim at introducing and discussing contemporary social housing projects and policies in Vienna. While we aknowledge the development of a new debate on social housing in Italy, the viennese case displays a considerable range of projects and innovative which seem to allow an interesting understanding of the possible interplay between urban planning and housing solutions people can aspire to. The renown story of housing policies in Vienna dates back to one century ago, when the conditions for a massive housing development plan were posed by the city. Since then the socialdemocratic government of the city has been enforcing public and social housing as a main drive for the enhancement of welfare policies. Along the time, pilot projects have been updating and innovating the solutions offered to housing problems. The italian debate on housing policies is currently led by the attractiveness of a major role of private (profit and non profit) actors in the provision and management of social housing. In the debate, this often leads to blame the public actor as responsible of the failure of housing projects. While this attitude witnesses a widespread orientation of public policies in a post welfare time and the corresponding debate, current experiences being developed in Italy still do not witness a significant attitude of the private actors in producing quality and innovative housing developments. It is therefore of strong interest to consider how private actors can be recognized as key players in the development of social housing policies within a governance asset in which the City government does play a central role in the orientation and guidance of policies and projects. Wolfgang Foerster is offering an overview on the features and issues of the internationally acknowledged housing programmes in Vienna along the last century. Massimo Bricocoli, is focusing on the role of housing projects may play as tools for investigating and qualifying features and profiles of contemporary housing demands. Lina Scavuzzo introduces to a selection of social housing projects which are representative of recent experimentations: the Frauen-Werk-Stadt (gender oriented housing developed in 1997), the Autofrei Mustersiedlung (a car-free estate developed in 1999) and the Alte Busgarage (currently in development in the Nordbahnhof area). Recognizing the significant differences between the italian and austrian contexts, the viennese case offers refreshing references and arguments for developing a critical perspective on orientations and practices in social housing policies currently being developed in our country.

Vienna’s social housing originated from an internationally acknowledged reform programme in the 1920s and has been developing for eighty years. Currently nearly 1,7 million inhabitants live in Vienna and 60% of all Vienna households live in subsidized apartments, including 220,000 in council housing. At the end of the nineteenth century Vienna had reached its zenith in urban development. The city Government pushed through an extensive infrastructure programme after 1895, but social policies were almost non-existing. In no other area this became more obvious than in housing. With few exceptions housing was exclusively left to private capital. The first important state intervention into housing issues took place during World war I. To avoid an increasing number of evictions a ‘families a tenants’ protection law was introduced in 1917, limited until december 31, 1918. The law excluded evictions and rent increases, and in substantial parts is valid until today. The collapse of the monarchy brought a wave of refugees and increased the housing shortage; on the other hand, a revolutionary atmosphere prevailed, which evoked a radical squatter movement unique in Europe. However, the issue was not simply housing. From the very beginning the cooperative had determined to equip the settlement with relatively numerous cultural and social facilities. Settlers worked on the site themselves; the settlement, including communal facilities, was completed first, then separate houses were distributed by lot. The technical and architectural quality of these nearly 15,000 terrace houses in fifty settlements is amazing. Adolf Loos, for some time chief architect of the Vienna settlement office collaborated substantially to it. His collaborator, Margarethe Lihotzky, sketched what was presumably the world’s first built-in kitchen, Josef Frank, coming from the Austrian Werkbund, planned several settlements in a rationalistic style. After the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy and the introduction of a universal, equal and direct suffrage, the Vienna socialdemocratic Party achieved an absolute majority. In fact, impressive reforms were carried out between 1919 and 1934. Housing, however, should become the key issue of the new government. Here, in day-to-day life the difference between capitalistic ‘usury’ and socialist municipal politics should be experienced by everyone. Since the old rent tax and the land value tax did not bring enough income anymore, new taxes were introduced. Most important were the new land tax, the increment-value tax and above all the new housing tax, which was introduced in 1923. The office of Urban construction organised also public tenders for construction works and for building material, and organized standardisation and quality control. After 1923 private architects were increasingly commissioned with new housing projects, mostly by direct contracts, partially by competiUrbanistica www.planum.net

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tions. They were surprisingly independent in the external design of the buildings and this explains the architectural variety of the building programme. Apart from the rather ideological discussion about highrise versus lowrise buildings, which was pragmatically solved in favour of multi-storey housing, there was little debate about architecture during the first years. On the other hand, the city provided precise instructions regarding the size of apartments, the amount of infrastructure and the use of standardised building parts. The building programme of 1923 provided two types of apartments: 35 and 45 m2. Meeting rooms, bath houses, kindergartens, educational workshops, laundries, mother-and-child centres, health centres, special tuberculosis prevention centres, children’s’ dentist, sports halls, libraries, cooperative shops, etc. were not only a compensation for the small apartments, but actually represent an important step of societal development in housing. After closing of the Parliament and prohibition of all parties, with the exception of the Christian-social Front (the conservative party), a civil war between the Socialdemo-cratic Schutzbund and the Christian-social Heimwehr followed in february 1934. Not merely symbol-ically this led to severe damages in council housing estates by the Bundesheer, the austrian army. After 1934 only some little housing was built, including some agricultural settlements for the unemployed and ‘family asylums’ for the growing number of homeless. World war II ended with the demolition of 87,000 apartments, about 20% of the stock, more than Red Vienna had built before. In 1945 the city, heavily hit by war destruction and by famine and separated into four sectors, organized a conference on the reconstruction of the city to define the general political objectives. These included the reduction of density in inner city areas while increasing the density of suburban areas by garden cities, and the setting up of architecture competitions. The housing shortage amounted to some 117,000 units. Already in 1947 the foundation stone was laid for a large council housing estate at the southern periphery. Construction of large new housing areas at the northern and southern peripheries started with the opening of the first pre-fabrication plant in 1961. The enormous volume of construction of more than 10,000 public apartments per year relieved the housing situation in the densely populated inner city and created the pre-conditions for the vast urban renewal programme of the next decades. Vienna started what has probably become the world’s largest housing rehabilitation programme with up to now more than 170,000 refurbished apartments. In accordance with the tenants, the quality of apartments is improved without displacing the mostly low-income sitting tenants. During the 1970s and the 1980s some remarkable estates were built in Vienna within the framework of social housing. The fall of the Iron Curtain led to the immigration of more than 100,000 people and set up new challenges for the city, including the suddenly increased demand for housing. The city doubled its new housing construction to 10,000 units per year in the middle of the

1990s. A key role was given to the Vienna land procurement and urban renewal fund (Wbsf), which was established to purchase the needed land. Today the market has reached an equilibrium, which allows to pay more attention to quality criteria. Larger new housing projects are normally carried out in the form of Bauträgerwettbewerbe (housing developers’ competitions). These are based on free competition of developers for social housing subsidies. The procedure differs from architecture competitions, as the project applicants are the housing developers themselves and, in addition to the architectural quality, economic and ecological qualities of the projects are judged equally within a complex score system. Competitions aim at the reduction of construction costs in multi-storey housing as well as a simultaneous improvement of planning and environmental and technical qualities. The jury consists of architects, representatives of the construction sector and of the city of Vienna, and of specialists in the fields of ecology, economy and housing law. Experimental building, often in form of ‘theme-oriented’ estates with topics predetermined by the city, has a major share in the qualitative development of Vienna public housing. These projects are to be understood as experiments, which can help to introduce now contents and standards into social housing over a longer period. Vienna social housing thus represents a manifold system, which for decades has continuously developed and adapted to meet new challenges. In spite of its complexity, however, its primary aim should be kept in mind: to offer comfortable contemporary housing in an attractive urban environment to all residents at affordable prices.

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Places and policies. Social housing under observation Massimo Bricocoli The perspective suggested by this contribution is to explore places as grounds to proceed in the understanding of projects, processes and policies that somehow have been responsible for their production. Moreover, the assumption is that there is a relevant need of informing the development of new housing policies with a the insights that can be grasped in places. A current risk in fact is that the design of urban policies and policy tools is very much process oriented; this emphasis sets a gap between policy design and urban planning and architectural design. On the contrary, the Viennese case helps to regain the connections between issues, practices and outcomes of urban and architectural design and the design of housing policies at a city level. As the differences between Italy and Austria in housing policies are relevant, a simple comparative perspective may not be very valuable. In Italy, 73% of the population is living in a owned property, in Austria only 56%. In Vienna this percentage is reduced to 23%. In Italy, only 5% of the population is living in a social housing dwelling, while in Austria it is 21%. 59% of the population in the age range 18-35 is still living with its parents, while in Austria, 18%. In spite of these major differences, the viennese may offer several inputs and references to the design of housing policies in italian cities. While the italian debate is oneway oriented towards the involvement of private actors (profit and non profit) actors in the provision of new dwellings, the first outcomes of these new local policies targeting â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Houisng socialeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; in Italy seem to be under the expectations both in terms of architectural quality and innovation as well as with reference to the production of mixed and viable environments or to the definition of new and more effective management assets. In this respect, the viennese experience sounds as a sort of counter example. After decades of joint work with private actors involved with the provision and management of social housing, the municipality still lead and governs the process, assuming housing as a main focus whenever urban planning and urban development are into discussion. A main contribution to the development of planning tools that are encouraging and fostering innovation in the design of housing projects and policies is coming from the constant research and evaluation activity which is being undertaken on new housing developments. While in Italy, both in the academic and policy debate, we witness an emphasis on the investigation of new housing demands and social profiles, the production of new housing (both private housing and social housing) provides very conservative and standardized solutions, in terms of typologies, architectural and urban design.

The repertoire of projects developed by the city of Vienna in the last decade definitely provides a set of examples and references which could give solid reference to the debate on new housing solutions in the contemporary city as well as to the debate on planning tools which can support the development of a governance asset in which the local government may orientate and guide the provision and management of new social housing by a variety of different actors.

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Innovative housing projects: theme and places Lina Scavuzzo The city of Vienna has renewed its housing policies starting from already existing resources, transferring the tools acquired during the history of social housing to new housing policies, turning their rules of intervention from direct action to management of the processes and promotion of policies, shifting to the administration itself a role of coordination. It was also proposed to tackle the problems of contemporary living through innovation in architectural projects, with the purpose of increasing the urban and social quality of housing. This experience was consolidated in the last fifteen years and new social housing projects were designed to improve the quality of housing, to minimize the cost of construction and to save energy. This contribution proposes an overview of the complexity of housing supply within the latest programs for state-funded housing. The first argument emphasizes the ability to interpret the forms and ways of contemporary living, by the public, the tertiary sector and the private operator. The second argument regards the places where new forms of management and production of housing were tried out, especially referring to the devel-opers’ competition instrument put in by the public administration in the middle of the 1990s. The focus on forms and ways of living The first significant testing of the ‘theme projects’ were introduced in the 90s when the municipality started a research aimed at answering specific housing and social questions. The themenstädte were programs in which the project was carefully focused on specific issues, investigating problematic areas in order to improve the quality of housing, use alternative energy sources, promote the sociocultural integration and explore a wide range of planning resources. For an overview, some themes were selected, with the purpose of orienting the analysis of the experimentation’s places: everyday living, living and cultural integration, living and working, community housing. Everyday living. Several ‘theme projects’ contributed to improve the quality of social housing in Vienna, such as the Frauen-Werk-Stadt I (1993-1997), which literally means ‘the working women’s city’. However, just changing the letter, the ‘d’ in Stadt with ‘t’ of werkstatt, the same sentence could also be translated as ‘the laboratory of women’, and it’s probably this second translation that expresses more strictly the history and the nature of this experience. The result was a pilot project: the largest apartment complex of its kind in Europe, a model of success capable of applying theoretical knowledge to specific domestic space and to transfer the results achieved in the housing projects in general.

Living and cultural integration. Some of the most significant experiences in this field are the projects for cultural integration of foreigners, such as the building called Interkulturelles Wohnen, ‘Intercultural living’ (1993-96), which represents the first project of intercultural cohabitation in Vienna. Integratives Wohnen (2002-2004) is another housing project for immigrants, designed by Hanns Michael Kastner and Schluder and managed by the Gpa. The residential complex includes 112 properties, inhabited by a mix of Austrian residents (50%) and foreigners (50%) and is part of a special program for the integration of population in Vienna. Living and working. Among the test subjects, the living and working under one roof, known as the Compact city (1993-2001), suggests a new way to inhabit periphery areas favouring the character of urban settlements. The complex, designed by the Austrian-Argentine Bus architecture office in collaboration with the building developer Seg, proposed a mix of uses and functions: the housing are designed to become work spaces, the ground floor was built to be a supermarket, the first floor was designed as a huge square on which offices and laboratories overlook. Community housing. One of the most radical social housing experiments is the Sargfabrik complex (1994-96). Sargfabrik is the former factory (fabrik) of coffins (sarg) ‘Maschner and Söhne’, built in the late nineteenth century and abandoned in the ‘70s. The space reuse project developed in the mid-80s by a group of local residents: the association for the Integration of lifestyles, was organized to find a way out of the housing market logic and that could receive different lifestyles and cultures. The new building, designed by Bkk architecture, consists in 112 housing and commons services, including a bar-restaurant, a spa, a kindergarten, common laundry, a room with a collective kitchen, a guesthouse, a jazz café and a library . The focus on the production and management of social housing: the developers’ competitions In 1995 a new tool for the promotion of state-funded housing was devised: the developers’ competition. The procedure of competitions makes notice of the area to be purchased by manufacturers; it requires: the cooperation between developers and designers already under competitive bidding, the binding estimate and the cost of construction, a program for managing the social housing and an estimate of rental and sales for future tenants. The procedures differ depending on the type of competition and the projects are judged by a complex score system, related to architectural and urban quality, economic sustainability and environmental performance. In particular, the quality of architecture and urban planning is estimated according to: the design of open spaces, squares, streets, gardens, the architectural design of buildings that constitute the whole, the ability of projects to work on different scales, the use of innovative types of housing and the distribution systems capable of exploiting the paths between areas of different nature (such Urbanistica www.planum.net

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as housing and common areas, between the inside and the outside, between the green spaces and residence). The aspects which define the business plan, evaluated during the competition, are related to construction costs, including the purchase of land, the costs for end users, the cost of management and settlement maintenance, the contract terms. Finally, the elements which contribute to define the environmental performance of residential interventions include: the energy consumption of buildings and use of renewable sources; the nature of the materials of construction and life cycle of building components; the environmental quality both of the housing and the whole settlement. The juries are made up of architects, representatives of the construction market and of ecological, economic and legal specialists. The final aim of the competitions is to reduce construction costs by promoting competition for investors and at the same time to improve the quality of architectural and urban design, the environmental impact and the technical characteristics of buildings. Close up: three projects to show the housing innovation in Vienna The research analyzed the projects carried out between 1990 and 2008 which were within the program for state-funded-housing. Among them three housing estates were selected which describe some of the most significant aspects in Vienna’s projects. The selected projects were: Frauen-Werk-Stadt I, AutoFreie Mustersiedlung, Alte Busgarage (Nordbahnhof). They represent a tool to show how project experimentation is capable of intercepting hidden questions, answering to specific demands, creating new ways of living and orienting housing policies.

Frauen-Werk-Stadt. From women to women: a project to daily living Lina Scavuzzo As a result of various research activities conducted by the office for Equal opportunities of the city of Vienna (Frauenbüro), in 1992 the same office and the Housing and city planning department promoted a competition for the construction of a housing project focused on the needs of women in housekeeping. The competition. At the end of 1993 the office for Equal opportunities, in collaboration with the Department for the development of residential areas gave start to competition. The notice indicated precise guidelines regarding the expected features of the neighbourhood, a detailed description of the results of the research about daily living, 14 good practice examples, the total amount of housing and services, an analysis of a housing plant taken from the social housing scope. As builders, the City of Vienna and the Gpa Wbv (Association for the housing of employees of the private sector) were chosen by the Wbsv and by the Equal opportunities department. The City’s task was to build social housing to social rental, while the Gpa’s was to build housing for rent and sale with mixed fees. The jury was chaired by Kerstin Dorhofen, with the honorary presidency of Margarete Schütte Lihotzky, the first woman architect in the history of Austria. For the competition of urban planning 8 women architects were called: Dietlind Erschen, Irmgard Frank, Sonja Gasparin; Gerda Muschik; Elsa Prochazka; Gisela Podreka; Liselotte Peretti; Franziska Ullmann. In february 1994, the jury unanimously decided for the masterplan of Franziska Ullmann. Her project was very convincing not only due to the variety of building types but also because of it’s public spaces: the central square, the game street, the courts and green spaces. The other projects awarded were those of Gisela Podreka, Elsa Prochazka and Lieselotte Peretti. Franziska Ullmann was given the task of coordinating the urban planning project while Maria Auböck was responsible for the coordination of the green spaces project; the individual buildings project was assigned to the architect Elsa Prochazka, Gisela Podreka, Liselotte Peretti and to Ullmann herself: In particular, the two linear structures of the Gpa’s property and the Asylum were assigned to Elsa Prochazka and Gisela Podreka; while to Franziska Ullmann and Liselotte Peretti, the Prefecture’s housing and the ground floor business were assigned. It took a year since the beginning of the contest to the start of the constructions, which began in august 1995 and was completed in the autumn of 1997. Today about 1000 people live there. The project. The masterplan of Franziska Ullmann is the frame in which the individual projects are inserted. It incorporates the geometry of the lot with a combination of structures that create an articulated space rich in vaUrbanistica www.planum.net

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riations. The two structures form a linear path, oriented from south to north, designed as a ‘street game’ or ‘continuous’. The principles of the masterplan have been the cornerstones of the urban design, while for the realization of each individual building, each designer interpreted the directives in their own way. This created a complexity of spaces and architectural languages that make the district very diverse. Within the district there are 357 apartments (of which 177 of the city of Vienna and 180 of the Gpa), 1 association which takes care of people with disabilities, 4 community housing, 600 square meters of commercial area and a nursery. Open spaces. In the program of the Frauen-Werk-Stadt project particular attention was paid to the nature of the open space design which was followed by the landscape expert Mary Auböck. The outdoor area has been interpreted as a single pedestrian space (at no point accessible by vehicles) alternated by different open areas: a square, a street-square which expands throughout the whole building, a garden, two courtyards designed to be more intimate and in connection with the residence where the play areas for young children were placed. Common areas. One of the followed approaches has been to create as many interconnections as possible between the interior of the accommodations (private) and the external environment (common). The services, thanks to their size, ease of access and their placement in strategic points, play a dual role: for example, the roof terrace serves as an open space for laundry facilities and a place to relax and leisure. The attention to usability has been placed not only in the areas devoted to common activities, but also to areas of transition: stairwells, garages, corridors. The halls are wider and receive normal daylight. Housing. The notice urged a reflection on the type of housing. The most significant example (whose patterns are shown in the pictures on this page) is the family-friendly layout proposed by Elsa Prochazka: an accommodation of 85 square meters that can change depending on the needs of residents, the plans are flexible environments which can be easily subdivided or added; the kitchen is centrally located, situated in the living room and built in projection from the building (a sort of bow window).

AutoFreien Mustersiedlung. The car-free housing settlements Lina Scavuzzo The history of the project AutoFreien Mustersiedlung began in 1992 when the Vienna City council adopted the proposal of the Green party to build a residential setting in which they could experiment new ways to inhabit the city in relation to the mobility issues. The idea, endorsed by the Council was to achieve an urban settlement area in which economic resources usually devoted to the construction of garages and parking places were reversed towards the qualification of alternative infrastructures (public areas, internet cafe, roof garden, bicycle services).The Public Administration outlined a new legal and operational framework in which to experiment new design standards by introducing an exception to the building regulations for all those projects that were able to insure a large number of services and which provide forms of saving energy. The competition. The district AutoFreie is on Donaufelderstrasse only 6 km from the centre of Vienna. For the realization of the complex in the spring of 1996, the City of Vienna, along with Wbsf (the Viennese for the renewal of cities and searching for land), published a call for the developers’ competition. The design requirements focused on saving energy and achieving high environmental standards; services placement for the residences and spaces for the community, replacing parking spaces with other types of mobility and inclusion of a car-sharing system, participation of residents in the design and management of the complex. The jury, composed by experts in the energy sector, architects, engineers and economists, on the 22 october 1996 selected as winner the project Traveling, by the ‘SeS architekten’ studio sponsored by the association Gewoge Domizil. The architectural project. The complex consists of 9 buildings arranged in C that are developed around two courtyards; it houses a total of 244 dwellings, different types of spaces, 400 bicycle spaces and a bicycle repair shop. In the project several devices for saving energy and using renewable energy sources were used such as: solar energy used for heating, an electric car station, recycling, waste-water treatment system, green areas with moist biotypes and intensive plants, use of recycled material for the design of open spaces. Different forms of housing (shelter for children, housing for seniors only) and different types of accommodations were tested. The common service. Space sharing is one of the key elements of the AutoFreie district. The community service may be divided according to usage type. For example, the first refers to leisure: sauna, fitness room, kinderhaus (play area for children), room for young people, events space, gardens and roof garden. The second typology refers to work: laundry rooms and workshops for crafts and carpentry. The third tipology refers to the replacement of car parkings through the placement of Urbanistica www.planum.net

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bicycle parking, bicycle repair shop and the introduction of car-sharing. The experiment in progress. Starting from this experience in Vienna, other projects, including the recent Bike City, have taken the idea of the car-free neighbourhood. The administration has introduced an exception to the building regulations for all projects that demonstrate a high capacity to develop experiments related to the mobility issues as an alternative to cars. Even in the rest of Europe there are experiences similar to the one in Vienna. In Amsterdam (Westerpark) in 1998 the largest car-free residential settlement capable of hosting 600 residential units was built.

The residential complex Alte Busgarage and redevelopment of the station Nordbahnhof Lina Scavuzzo

The redevelopment of the North Station, with a total area of 75 hectares, is among the most important areas of urban transformation in Vienna. The project was initiated in 1993 and is expected to be completed by 2025. The area, formed by the Nordbahnhof station and the area once occupied by the freight yard, train depots and bus stations, was made available thanks to the decision to decentralize the cargo to the station Wien Kledering. The new urban area was further valued by an underground network connection (Wien Praterstern). On the properties of the Austrian federal railways (Öbb), it’s been planned the construction of a new city built in phases capable of hosting, once complete, 10 thousand housing, 20 thousand residents and 10 thousand jobs. Nordbahnhof model. The disposal of the cargo has begun a new development for the entire area promoted mainly by the Öbb and the City of Vienna, which, in 1991 came to an agreement to identify areas subject to change. Following this first programmatic agreement, it was developed, with the collaboration of experts an intervention strategy, called Nordbahnhof model, capable of indicating a phased development of the inside of a urban design unit. The overall strategy promoted by the Öbb and the City of Vienna was to divide the total area in individual compartments achievable in stages which in turn promote the project through the involvement of multiple actors (public and private). Starting in 1998, the construction phase of the areas available along Lassallenstrasse began, where a service and tertiary complex were made. Later in 2003-2004 the rehabilitation of areas located on the east boundary of the municipal Subsidized housing program began. To complete the east area’s project, in 2005 a competition for the area of old warehouses (Alte Busgarage) was launched. The area of old warehouses (Alte Busgarage) from the masterplan to the developers’ competition. The focus that accompanied the masterplan for this area was to produce housing for young people at affordable prices. The intervention has been promoted through a contest whose guidelines have been developed by the architects Tesar and Podrecca. The competition was won by the project Versunken Gärten (Lowered Garden) of the architects Lautner und Krisits. The winning project has been selected as the reference masterplan for the Alte Busgarage project in which individual residential projects will be selected through a developers’ competition between 2008 and 2011. Developers’ competition Alte Busgarage area. The Öbb, the City and Wsbf (Viennese fund for the renovation of the city) collaborated to write the guidelines of the competition for the choice of the devel-opers. The main Urbanistica www.planum.net

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issue of these principles is the proposed theme Junges wohnen und kostengünstiges (housing for young people and economic) to which the developers, along with the architects, had to propose solutions, without neglecting the basic requirements of the competition: quality of architecture, cost and energy savings. The area includes five transformation zones with seven construction sites. The complex will create 614 subsidized rental housing, 215 community housing, 42 community residences and 15 open market accommodations. The total estimated cost for the housing and services amount to approximately 98.5 million euros, of which the city of Vienna will finance about 33 million.

Border cities in the Baltic sea Agatino Rizzo In 2007/08, the Border cities kolleg, facilitated by the Germany-based Bauhaus Dessau foundation, brought together an international group of young planners, architects, artists and urbanists to explore the complex dynamics of trans-national urbanism in the Baltic sea region. Within this framework our group came together to consider the cities of Helsinki and Tallinn as a case of Eu spatial policy implementation. Region makers such as Euregio view the two cities as part of an emerging european region, one that opens an opportunity to enhance economic and administrative capacities, as well as to expand transportation and distribution networks. These in turn form or enhance a number of interweaving bonds. The focus of our group research was to see how far this notion of region building has progressed, compared with past and present common identity building processes. Our research tested the notion of an integrated regional identity formation as desired by region makers to determine whether this model, or alternate emergent forms better describe the situation of the Helsinki-Tallinn-Region (Htr). Dialogue with local stakeholders and region makers as well as local inhabitants provided both a top down and bottom up view on the development of both cities and the interconnections, and imbalances, that existed between them. When considering the distribution of services, jobs and business activities we recognized a complex area of overlapping networks without clear borders, mainly based on informal and flexible relations rather than politically governed ones. Observing that most of the implications of this relationship appeared manifest in the urban form of Tallinn led us to concentrate our further research here. This process of rapid urbanization and modernization has had both positive and negative impact on the city and the people. Estonian independence, declared in 1991, and the subsequent interest and influence from Finland and Sweden gave rise to a process of modernization of the region through economic growth, better living conditions, increase in wages and global connections. The results of this rapid development have affected the demography of Tallinn, leaving different sections of the population outside this framework. Estonians with lower income or education, or with limited language (such as Tallinn’s sizable Russian speaking population) had more difficulty adapting to the sudden shift of internal market and governance rules. This economic disparity in the social structure plays out in the urban form of Tallinn, creating spatial segregation in certain parts of the city. Kopli, Mustamäe and Lasnamäe are examples; despite their proximity to developed or developing areas, they remain unconnected to the overall development of the city. Urbanistica www.planum.net

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The cross border effects as well as historical preconditions manifest in the urban fabric of Tallinn appeared to us as an archipelago of ‘islands’, each with different economic, social, and cultural milieus; segregations overlooked or under considered by city planners and administrators. The model of the archipelago also created an inverspace between these hegemonic ‘islands’ where new inputs can enrich diversity in the Htr. These latter hypotheses were tested in Tallinn through a series of public interventions in may 2008, concluding with a discussion between city planners, architects, art critics and general public. The outcome led to following proposals developed within our program as a series of experimental urban scenarios dealing with Tallinn’s urban structure seen as an archipelago of islands, a social segregation process and new strategies to enable both stakeholders and inhabitants to influence the future of Htr. Insofar, over the Helsinki-Tallinn case of study a number of methodological tools and theoretical models have been developed and tested by us toward a transdisciplinary understanding of one of the most forgotten, but at the same time highly dynamic, corner of Europe. Within this frame we came up with a new methodological horizon which I call Urbanism 3.0. Two are the pillars supporting Urbanism 3.0, namely Open-share knowledge and Urban art intervention as practices to interface expert and non-expert knowledge.

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Urbanistica n. 140

September-December 2009

Distribution by www.planum.net

Index and english translation of the articles

Methods and tools

Profiles and practices

Projects and implementation

Problems, policies and research

Paolo Avarello edited by Massimo Bricocoli, Lina Scavuzzo Massimo Bricocoli, Lina Scavuzzo Wolfgang Foerster Massimo Bricocoli Lina Scavuzzo Lina Scavuzzo Lina Scavuzzo Lina Scavuzzo Agatino Rizzo

edited by Paolo Colarossi, Antonio Pietro Latini Stefano Garano Carlo Gasparrini Antonio Pietro Latini Mosè Ricci Elio Piroddi

The liveable city and urban design Urban planning and quality New stories in the contemporary city Principles of urban design Beyond the ‘progetto urbano’? Urban design, from and architecture

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The liveable city and urban design Paolo Colarossi, Antonio Pietro Latini “One of the characteristics distinguishing modern man is that of having long exalted the condition of the nomad; man wanted to be ‘free’ and to conquer the world. Today, however, we begin to see that true liberty necessitates belonging, and that ‘to inhabit’ means to belong to a concrete place”. One can live well (or happily) in the urban space when at least four requisites are satisfied. The urban space should be welcoming, allowing us to enjoy, in tranquillity and security, the use of the urban space and the contact between our bodies and the positive qualities of the physical world: air, light, colour, shade and sunlight, materials and landscapes. The urban space should be civic, offering us access to amenities and services of adequate quality on both a local and an urban level. The urban space should be social, allowing us access to spaces in which the encounter with other inhabitants is both possible and pleasurable. The urban space should be aesthetically pleasing, wherever possible allowing us to enjoy spaces that also have qualities that render them beautiful. Inhabiting, as a concept, implies the feeling of belonging to a ‘concrete’ place, identifiable as such, and recognisable as an area with a particular extension; a place, therefore, that is ‘comprehensible’ in its dimensions. By this we mean that it is measurable (on a human scale) at least in the mental image that its inhabitants have of it. This suggests the further requisite that our four initial conditions for good quality of life be met in the context of urban spaces on a small scale, measurable and enjoyable thanks also to their being walkable. However, the contemporary city of the kind that has been built over the last fifty years is a long way from satisfying these needs. What can be done to improve living conditions in the contemporary city and to arrive at the conditions for liveability in newly built urban areas? One possible course of action is the following: rediscover, recover, regenerate and renew the concepts, methods and techniques of a discipline little-practised in Italy, urban design; a practice dealing specifically, and I would say uniquely, with the questions related to satisfying the requirements for liveability. The following is a brief outline of some of the questions relating to four aspects in particular: the working scale of urban design, its effects on urban form, methods of implementation, and themes and places relevant to urban design. The working scale Urban design’s scale is that of the intermediate dimension between town planning and architecture, the local scale. The planning expertise particular to urban design

is an expertise used and applied in specific contexts on a local scale, and is translated from the abstract to the concrete in specific projects adapted to the singularities of specific locations. However, in as far as it is a discipline, urban design needs to be founded, formed and communicable through concepts, arguments, methods and principles or criteria that are generalisable and generalised. When it addresses questions relating specifically to the concept of liveability, this collection of concepts, methods and principles can be defined as ‘small scale urban design’. Urban design does only operate on the scale of the local dimension, but one of its functions is to address, combine, create synergy between and integrate the two different, hierarchical, levels of infrastructures, amenities and services: the local or urban level (or that of the parts of a city) and the metropolitan level. Defining urban design’s field of operations as that of the local scale demands that a renewed attention is paid to the scale of the neighbourhood (or groups of neighbourhoods), a denomination to be taken as referring to what the inhabitants recognise or might recognise as the context of their everyday lives as well as one possible articulation of the big city. The effects on urban form Urban design as an activity produces projects, and the process of realising projects produces urban forms. The question of what forms result from urban design is also to be considered and therefore also the question of beauty – a question which is certainly not a mere formality, but imperative if we are to satisfy one of the requisites for liveability. Beauty is very hard to define, but in the case of urban beauty it is not necessary to refer solely to the sublime, exceptional beauty of art. An area of a city can be considered beautiful, can be thought lovely and pleasing, if it is ‘good to be there’, or perhaps if ‘we feel good there’, and such areas are those in which basic requirements for a good quality of life are satisfied, requirements which are by their very nature anthropological and existential, and which for this reason can be considered shared requirements, common to all. This means that, by reflecting on the ways in which the urban space is used by its inhabitants, by considering the inhabitants’ wishes regarding the kinds of use and the spatial qualities that the urban space can offer, and by reflecting on the extremely ample and varied number of models and patterns of urban space that can be identified through a careful study of the long historical tradition of forms of urban space in the city, we can identify several categories of places that are commonly appreciated by inhabitants, and which, for this reason, could be called the ‘common places’ of the city. We can identify, in this way, seven types of ‘common place’ necessary for a good quality of life: places in which to sojourn, places in which to walk, natural places, historical places, panoramic places, places for amenities and rituals, and places dedicated to commerce and leisure. And the more these Urbanistica www.planum.net

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categories are present simultaneously, the better a place will be loved. Since the four requisites for liveability can be satisfied prevalently, if not exclusively, in the public space, and since the categories of ‘common places’ are nothing if not the synthesis of the places in which these requisites can be satisfied, it follows that the primary material to be used for beauty in the city is the public space, or, rather, a network of public spaces. But – and this is one of the specific and defining aspects of urban design – if aesthetic quality depends on the quality of the network of public spaces, it follows that beauty in the city can be created through operations of urban design, in fact almost exclusively through operations of urban design, and in a way that is, at least in part, autonomous and independent of the aesthetic quality of the architecture of the buildings . Methods of implementation Here I will mention only some of the aspects that characterise urban design from the particular point of view of implementation: the role of the participation of inhabitants in the planning process, the need for design codes in a project, and the long-term relationship between urban design and the city plan. The local scale on which urban design operates is the scale best suited to the participation of in-habitants in the planning process itself. This is because it is inhabitants who are most keenly aware of the problems of their own neighbourhood, and they are capable of proposing solutions. The combining of expert and local knowledge also produces the best possible correlation between project and context, even as far as aesthetic results are concerned. Participatory processes cannot produce projects, but they can produce guidelines for an urban project. In order to be useful, participatory processes must be introduced at the beginning of the design process. The need for design codes in an urban project is related to the necessity, over the course of the development and realisation of the project, to control the level of its aesthetic quality. Depending on the urban objects to which they are applied, and according to the intended results, design codes can be fixed or flexible, they can be expressed through drawings, symbols and discussions, with great thoroughness or simply mentioned in passing. One of the most important and unvarying elements is the structuring of the public space (the network of public spaces) as a primary system, capable of sustaining and preserving the functional organisation and the formal qualities of the intervention. But codes are not enough in themselves. Because of the complexity of a project, the sheer number of figures who intervene, the length of time involved, the need for an adequate interpretation and uniform application of the codes, and for the necessary completion of the various stages of the project, a technician is needed, a project coordinator who will be responsible for, and who

will guarantee the application, over time, of the design codes or of their eventual modifications. Another specific aspect characterising urban design is the relationship with the general town or city plan, by which we also mean the relationship between the general scale and the local scale. The urban design project can also serve as an instrument for the exploration, the verification and the definition of conditions affecting certain choices involved in planning, in that it can be used as a planning scenario. Relevant themes and places One further aspect characterising the discipline, and one which also opens the way to possible future innovations, concerns various themes and places that are of importance for the future of the city from the point of view of the objective of liveability. The themes are essentially two: the rediscovery of the public space and the exploration of a new relationship between the city and the countryside. The rediscovery of the public space regards both the new parts of the city and the existing, consolidated city. In the newly constructed city the requisites for a good quality of life can be best satisfied using ‘judiciously’ compact neighbourhood plans, vitalised and characterised by networks of public spaces. Compact newly constructed neighbourhoods, functioning as local centres, might also be inserted into areas of diffused urbanisation, with the resultant effects of reorganisation and articulation into clearly identifiable zones around the new centres.In the existing, consolidated city, the requisites for liveability demand that we reclaim the notion of public space, with particular attention being paid to the quality of places in which to sojourn and places in which to walk. As for the exploration of a new relationship between city and countryside: what will be the fate, over the next few decades, of those ill-defined areas, between city and countryside, in which urbanised areas (varied in their morphology, density and use) penetrate, touch, interweave and intersect with ‘green’ areas of various kinds (farmed, wild, fallow, inappropriately used, etc.)? Urban design is the discipline most appropriate (through the use, among other things, of planning scenarios) for the study of the possible processes, methods and instruments for the improvement (which often means the consolidation) of the organisation of these areas. What does the future hold? The contemporary city in its current state seems a long way from becoming a city that offers a truly good quality of life. Given the condition of modern urban culture, we are talking about the medium to long term. What can be done in the meantime? I believe that what is needed is information, education and wide-ranging debate, and that propaganda is needed in favour of the liveable city, making the question of liveability a question for everyone, because every one of us should have access to at least the basic conditions for a good quality of life in the city. Urbanistica www.planum.net

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Urban planning and quality Stefano Garano In recent years, the architectural ‘star system’ has increasingly often been entrusted with the task of translating the aspirations and unrealistic ambitions of urban policies into spatial terms, with results that do not always coincide with the objectives and, above all, are not always successful in their relationships with the context. The current discussion on the quality of the interventions is based on the connection between the construction of the plan and the architectural design so that, even in many recent experiences, there has been an attempt to redefine the relationship between the standard, which implicitly determines a physical form, and the results in spatial terms, which consist not only of the built volumes, but also of the empty spaces; we were not accustomed to paying sufficient attention to the latter, considering them merely as being created, or left, by the full volumes. These operations cannot be attributed to a single discipline, since the horizontal and vertical interconnections in the design and construction process require a broad range of interdisciplinarity. The most complex, and the one with the greatest margins of uncertainty, is without a doubt the transfer of every conceptual acquisition into the physicality of the city and its system of systems. Similarly, the problem involves didactics, the basic objective of which is to organize urban planning criteria and methods to be transmitted to future planners and designers, in order to overcome the discretion of the intuitive and gestural choices without constraining the design process within the limits of a rigid code. The expression ‘urban planning’ resembles the ‘urban project’ that has pervaded the vocabulary of the town planners and administrators of european cities for over twenty years and, for this reason, even if expressed differently depending on the operations being referred to, sometimes proves to be extremely generic and not without semantic ambiguities. In fact, terms having different meanings are often used interchangeably, while others still appear to be indefinite, thus revealing the need for a more well-defined vocabulary than that with which the theories and techniques referring to this expression have been constructed, in an attempt to indicate the operations of a city’s qualitative transformation. The most widespread meanings are procedural and methodological, verifying technical, economic, financial, and administrative feasibility. The urban project is a path consistent with a transformation process that is expressed by structural invariants and strategic variables, depending on the general conditions that influence the path as it moves toward its objectives. It is a matter, moreover, of organizing the implementation of actions, in which the execution times are long and the operators themselves, identified at the beginning of the process, may change over time.

Urban design and architectural design intersect and are integrated within the urban project, in its polysemous meaning which goes beyond the procedural and methodological aspects, to build a valid interdisciplinary hinge. Architectural design offers its contribution throughout the entire execution process, from the start-up and planning of the action, sealing its various phases, up until the moment of the spatial definition. Experiences have demonstrated that complex programmes require certain preconditions: - a management structure for technical, economic, and administrative coordination a public-private partnership, like the French Sems, the English Udcs, Berlin’s Iba or the Ruhr’s Emscher Parck, etc.); - a prestigious professional, recognized as such by the architects who design the individual buildings, who plans the structural lines of the overall project and is capable of coordinating the various design phases, up through the working drawings; - a clear definition of the objectives and, consequently, of the mission of the management structure; - a close cooperation of the management organization with the institutions of all levels, and especially with local authorities, within a framework of certainties, in which the roles are clearly defined, avoiding all overlapping of spheres of responsibility and action; - a clear relationship with the territorial context in which the operation takes place, in particular with the infrastructure, both physical (road system and transports) and intangible, with the major territorial facilities (harbours, airports, truck terminals, rail-to-road interchange nodes), with the personal services system, and with the activity areas. Lastly, it is indispensable that the political intention to carry forward the programme of actions be amply approved, without having to be subject to second thoughts every time the government changes.

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New stories in the contemporary city Carlo Gasparrini Cities not only call for urban planners and zoners to have the ability to connect strategies, regulations and projects together by applying intelligent and practical solutions but also do so by taking optimistic risks. A few pertinent strategic visions use skilful experience to negotiate the planning of the future; stringent but agile rules stimulate rather than impede transformations; a wide-ranging multiplicity of projects, supported by these rules, that consciously interpret the dense fabric of these visions so that they take shape and develop form with the passage of time. Rhetoric and practice oscillate between a variety of extreme positions. On the one hand, desperately isolated muscular architectural projects assert themselves in the surrounding modernity to produce icons in the urban landscape designed by self-referential designer architects, a type of structure that has never been built in Italian cities. On the other hand, the snobbish cultural veto on principle against the tram in historic cities or the installation of high tech elevators close to monuments. In addition to this, there are discussions on the legitimacy of contemporary architecture in our historic city centers and the opportunity to construct dangerously tall buildings presents itself in the suburbs that are sometimes paradoxical. Increasingly less is spoken of planning the contemporary city, of urban landscape in evolution, of the physical and symbolic relationships between spaces and their new users, of the need for reasoning in urban design and composition not to mention individual beautiful objects, or quantitative additions that are just as insignificant as they are confident. Beijing, New York, Bilbao, Barcelona, and Milan are just some of the paradigmatic cases in the problematic search for an attention grabbing space in the city, and in the media too. Notwithstanding the fact that several journalists have attempted to convince us that the spectacular Oma skyscraper for the Central chinese television in Beijing may be thought of as being ‘the Arc de Triumphe of the new metropolis’, as with other similar recently built objects the distance of this one from the city remains unbridgeable. Their solipsistic gigantism does not build new syntaxes, nor measure or articulate distances, nor reinforce crucial nodes in the urban design, and they do not define spaces people can take possession of. The eulogistic exaltation of Beijing’s new urban monumentality as new architectural symbols has also been accompanied by the consecration of Herzog and De Meuron’s olympic stadium. However, it is strange that in this case the same journalists should have been sodisinterested in the fact that the stadium might be an important architectural reference of an north-south urban axis that designs the whole Olympic district culminating in almost 700

hectares of Forest park, the largest park in the city. And so we have neglected to learn that this gigantic operation is measured by an idealistic extension of the historic north-south axis that runs through the ‘Forbidden city’, therefore being measured by one of the country’s major settlements, chinese culture’s most important symbol and most enchanting place. The city of New York also makes headlines for us europeans when it abandons the ground for aesthetic competition between new sky-scrapers. And yet the destruction of the Twin towers is not only remembered for the dramatic reason that we became adjusted to in 2001. Those who have followed events behind the traditional stories of the spectacular catastrophe, of the nameless victims, of the presidential rhetoric and so on, know that New York has changed profoundly in the way it collective shares its urban choices. The debate on the methods of reconstruction, the competition to plan Ground Zero, the definition of the collectively discussed ‘Principles’ represent a legacy of impressive ideas and practices. Since 2001 New York has demonstrated how the whole of Lower Manhattan can be regenerated by confirming the need for a shared relationship and by working on a richer tapestry that is also connected to tourism, culture, art, and leisure, on a new system of urban relationships, on the principles of sustainability that must guide urban redesign. The results are therefore not only measured by or compared to the quality of the new skyscrapers but above all to the sense and size of other indirectly visible operations in the context, such as the reconquest of the relationship with the Hudson river for which the East river Waterfront park is the most significant example. On the other hand, Frank Gehry’s project for the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao some years ago surely represented the paradigm of architecture’s ability to dominate and negate the communicative circuits relating to knowledge of the complex wider processes of urban transformation in which the job takes shape and matures. In this case the city council was grappling with a river separated from the city because a pervasive complex of abandoned industrial areas had suffocated it. It has not been a straghtforward sequential journey to move from the strategic plan to the architectural project and then to the ‘new cathedral’ i.e. a symbol of this renaissance. Nevertheless, the fertile relationship developed between a comprehensive town development plan for the city and the individual quality operations was certainly a determining factor in the ‘Bilbao effect’. While the planned urban motorway along the Ria was not built for the original reasons, it nevertheless represented a potent instrument of urban recomposition between the two banks of the river and formed part of the reconfiguration of the infrastructure network by intercepting the new centrality. Operation Forum esplanade in Barcelona attempted to rethink the coastal line’s arrival at Diagonal mar in a difficult space in which to get the tremendous technological infrastructure and the new exhibition and conference spaces to live together, including vertically. While Urbanistica www.planum.net

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recognizing its great importance for the consolidation of the waterfront, the sensation is one of a theme park, dispensing a great urban planning tradition able to express an urbanism and an architecture on behalf of the city’s citizen. The aim of all this was to provide space for a culture of transformation ‘through individual building’, the subject of separate and very excessive overdesign that ends up being insignificant precisely because of this design style. However, the interesting and plural experimentation in the open space on the waterfront allows a view of urban recomposition to be glimpsed. It is difficult to speak of our Italian cities in this framework. Operation ‘Citylife’ to redevelop the old fiera in Milan seems to have even more exasperating characteristics of design composed of fences and sheet glass and this in spite of the flag-waving idea of a presumed ‘hyperplace’ placing its trust in the strength of imagining the reality of towers ‘from S. Gimignano to New York’. In contrast to what was proposed in Renzo Piano’s unfairly rejected plan, the winning tender’s project completely lacked good practice in urban design to guide the transformation. In contrast to Barcelona, it has been some time since the city has discussed and internalized ideas of the city and new urban relationships or completing experimental planning projects on schedule. This makes it much more difficult for good interaction to take place between the indisputable requirement for urban visions and strategies and the quality of the individual wedgelike tower blocks, now burdened by the oversized appearance of real estate and developed in the absence of a comprehensive view of planning for the city. Consequently, in contrast to the past, our way of interpreting the contemporary city needs to be renewed through richer closer disciplinary convergence by, for example, observing the areas of superimposition and contamination working together with other adjacent disciplines with great interest and with unorthodox lines of research that can bring life-blood back into traditional urban planning and zoning: from landscape architecture to landscape ecology and several sectors of the earth sciences as well as infrastructure planning, all capable of enriching the tired discussion of the urban development plan. That is to say, by taking a comprehensive view of research into urban landscape transformations induced by infrastructural, environmental, and energy networks that have developed very fertile planning and interpretative pathways. This ‘landscape urbanism’ works along the most affected areas of contact and osmosis in the new multidisciplinary concept of urban design.

Principles of urban design Antonio Pietro Latini After considering the most recent vicissitudes of the disciplinary debate on urbanism in Italy, one may have the impression of a persistent condition of dissociation. In fact, the discourse within urbanism seems substantially unbalanced if one looks at its contributions to the construction of the disciplinary system. On one hand, at least since the first half of the ’90s, the debate on the ‘process’ aspects has dealt with all areas and products of urbanism: those related to the region and to the different thematic sectors as well as those concerning comprehensive, strategic, mostly structural plans and those regarding the implementation phases or, rather, the local area plans-programmes, that is general and local plans which have been ‘ontologically’ interrelated, more than ever. On the other hand, however, for what the ‘substantive’ aspects are concerned, the élite has fostered the debate, expressed positions and indicated judgement criteria almost exclusively regarding regional and comprehensive planning. Hardly ever, the disciplinary system of urbanism has felt the need to face the merit of the expected or achieved results at the local area level: e. g., about the actual products of the various kinds of regeneration programmes financed since the early ’90s. Most times, the mere feasibility seemed to be the only relevant goal. Nevertheless, if one looks at the situation abroad, one can find a significant debate on values to be adopted and on objectives to tend to, as well as considerable scientific production and institutional achievements. This is the result of many decades of a rich disciplinary building, which the italian culture has largely contributed to with the role of a protagonist until at least the early ’70s. In today’s Italy, it is quite surprising the general lack of interest about not only acquiring or, perhaps, defending the rationales of the matter in the relevant occasions of public policy or claiming their specificity in the professional and/or academic fields but even disproving its components, challenging the logic tenure of its scientific structure, repairing those aspects that show a need of updating. Seven principles During the last six or seven decades, urban design has produced and refined a largely shared ‘axiological system’. Its values were assumed from within the specific disciplinary evolution, most time as an opposition to the contemporary state of the art, or from other sciences such as philosophy, sociology, anthropology. They appeared sometimes on a piecemeal base, some other in subsystems and later on consolidated to become a set of elements with significant mutual relations. Here they are mentioned as seven of them, but it is unUrbanistica www.planum.net

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derstood that they could be grouped or divided in other fashion. 1. Since the early post-Ww2 years the awareness had matured that “the life of urban man was becoming more anonymous and mobile; or in architectural terms there was an inexorable movement from symbolically rich systems to impoverished ones, from cultural roles to functional ones, or just simply from place to space” (Rosenberg). This had led many designers to “attempt to re-establish the basis for urban identity: “The feeling that you are somebody living somewhere”, as Peter Smithson phrased it. The contemporary theoretical achievements of philosophers such as Heidegger reinforced the role of place, and therefore, simplifying, relevant public realm, in the centre of the disciplinary system of designers. 2. Designing by places, that is by meaningful urban elements, loaded with identity, leads, by analogy, to the search for awareness in their composition. Their voluntary, ‘non-accidental’ syntaxes are first of all a prerequisite to avoid disorienting (Lynch) and inhospitable (Mitscherlich) settlements. It is not at all an issue of style, though, since both prevalent space, and prevalent volume, systems may work. Rather, it is a question of ability to produce a deliberate and recognizable ‘figura’. 3. Choosing the syntax of elements as a central focus of urban quality assigns a key role to the context, which adopts multiple declinations. It means attention to the congruence of the project with its natural and social environment; to the continuity and integration with the surroundings, in terms of relation, not necessarily replication, of the settlement patterns; to the understanding of the conventions of cultural geography and balanced insertion in the locale; to the ‘concinnitas’, that is the harmony with the immediate morphological frame. In other terms ‘context’ means awareness of the fact that each piece of the human environment is an element per se as well as a part of a superior entity: a ‘twinphenomenon’, as Aldo van Eyck would name it. 4. The italian culture of design has contributed highly to the knowledge of the rules of association among the different components of the urban landscape. The relationship between urban morphology and building typology, the correspondence between building types and density and, more simply, the dialectics among monuments and urban fabric are the bases for the virtuous composition of the elements of the urban scene and essential references for a structured interplay among their different rôles. 5. The question of number in urbanism has been crucial for long and for various circumstances in the disciplinary debate. It implies the search and, therefore, the possibility to assess the suitable balance between unity and multiplicity. It is a controversial issue because it projects from philosophy to economics and governance. Many are the positions on this topic. Some emphasize the goal of stylistic coherence and therefore back architectural designs of entire neighbourhoods entrusted to

one archistar or to the technical office of one developer only. When one looks at the results of this attitude, though, especially the most recent ones, they are rather upsetting, boring or arrogant. Decades of urban design have shown the aesthetic quality of variety in a city where the urbs is the reflection of the civitas: ‘pro hominum varietate’ to phrase it after Alberti, but also its ability to create richness, allow for a gradual implementation and foster the participation of a larger set of actors. 6. The ideal expressed by Leibniz: ‘diversitas indentitate compensata’ confides the equilibrium between variety and coherence to the authority of a head group or to the ruling power of a sketch. More frequently, in the best practices, it relies upon an essential tool: a system of rules, codes or guidelines. They allow for designing cities without designing buildings, as Barnett has said, and control the overall quality of the whole. But they find their relevance also in the economic realm, because they guarantee investments from future uncertainties, and in the methodological one, because they force designers to clarify what is key in their schemes and what is unessential. 7. Its anthropocentric attitude is one of the distinctive characters of urban design and one of the qualities that differentiates it from building design the way architecture has been envisioned by the disciplinary discourse in the last decades. So, the spaces of the city, new and regenerated districts are, in fact, expression of the community and are supposed to be designed to the measure of man. Cities are articulated in parts each with its own characters of a city, functional and formal. They are given an image and become themselves recognizable places. Merit in urban design is a question of method In Italy there is little debate on the merit in urban design and there are authoritative members of the élite who sustain that this is a matter for ‘architects’. This is probably one of the reasons why there is very little urban design in the many regeneration programmes in this country which seem rather either zoning exercises or oversized megastructures. How is it possible to channel the resurgent interest in urban design to make sure it has an actual positive effect on our urban environment? It seems that merit is a question of method. The italian debate on urbanism in the last ten to fifteen years resembles the discussion shown in the english Pag report of 1965. Similar is the description of the situation and similar are the measures suggested such as the division in ‘structure’ and ‘local’ plans. Similar are the factors that are considered the cause of the crisis, too. Except for one: the lack of instruments that contribute to the quality of urban design and of the environment, a condition that hardly anyone seems to care about. The italian effort towards quality seems to be centred in a generic containment of land consumption and in the utUrbanistica www.planum.net

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ter application of fashionable architectural competitions, despite their disappointing results, so far. The operational plan, the way it is intended and has been used to this point seems rather to function merely as a way to withhold and channel development rights and indirectly foster inflation. Is out there anybody willing to make an effort towards more responsibility in urban development: e. g. guidelines for public buildings and processes for urban projects that are transparent, incremental and possibly participated?

Beyond the ‘progetto urbano’? Mosè Ricci There is a question that bothers me reading this new book by Paolo Colarossi e Antonio Latini. The urban situation and the same idea of the city are deeply changed in Europe in the last 30 years. Also the city forms are completely different… Does the progetto urbano theory match these changes? The geographer Franco Farinelli that always assumes a stimulating point of view about things, claims that from the moment in which computers have started to dialogue among themselves, the territory, as a category of description of the phenomena in the space, is no longer necessary. In july of 1967, the day men landed on the moon, while everybody watched the sky, the most important thing was happening on earth where two computers were starting to communicate and share information between Cape Canaveral and San Francisco. From that day on our life changed. With the development by means of instant artificial adjacency and intangible networks that bring different realities in immediate communication, or create new realities, the virtual world has conditioned our way of living, working and economizing. Cities tend to lose precise physical connotation and constantly become fields of relation. Perhaps we do not have the need of the territory to move and communicate, as Franco Farinelli states, but we always have the need for more landscapes and places to live and acknowledge. All of this significantly changes our way of thinking of the future and its forms. Urban and architectural culture struggles to accomplish these concepts. It often assumes anachronistic and elitist positions. Progressively losing the contact with the real processes of change, it risks becoming unessential. Two simple examples: the first one regards the mania of the house. In the last few years every one of us has wanted to buy a house. We have sought to reassure our future investing money in real estate because there was a wide market, because it was the safest way to invest money, because the shares or government bonds and all other forms of bank investment in some way had failed. In 2008 the total volume of construction of our country was calculated, over 300 million cubic meters. It is the ninth consecutive year that this amount has exceeded and is predicted to continue in the coming year despite the crisis. We are now accustomed to watching the satellite images of Italy at night and recognizing the infinite cities that progressively invade the geography of our local landscapes and tend to approve this nature. But what is happening at a closer scale? Or in other words, what levels of architectural and urban quality know how to convey the processes of construction development that are predominantly assailing the italian cities? Urbanistica www.planum.net

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In Rome we have disputed about Richard Mayer’s project for the Ara pacis or the one by Calatrava for the second university, but nobody has spoken enough about the 80 million cubic meters spread by the new regulating plan on the città eterna. It has not been discussed, neither much is known about the advancement of the residences, the parco Leonardo model. As if very few architecture of the star system could or should compensate the enormous weight of the city without author, that in the most extreme cases is called by the christian name of its constructor. I want to say that this incredible construction boom that deeply marks our territory and our landscape individuated by numbers, was in fact hidden by means of communication. And the italian culture of the project has almost become uninterested of what was happening in the country and in our society. In the last ten years, in Italy, the biggest planned construction massacre ever made was committed, surprisingly nobody has talked in terms of offense to the landscape heritage, environmental risks and the quality of transformations. We have not known how to object. We have done and looked elsewhere. But when, this is the second example, the new ‘house plan’ of Berlusconi’s government was announced with emphasis on the measures that regard the substantial elimination of the building permit and the partial exemption of the urban constraints, shields have been immediately lifted in the defense of the landscape and the territory. With a significant generational gap. Gregotti, Aulenti, Fuksas, Gabrielli and many others have made fire and flames (appeals, articles, references, etc.), while younger intellectuals and planners like Boeri, Ciorra, Garofalo, etc., have assumed more possible and opened positions. We are all aware with great alarm of the risks that the new regimen involves, but surely, as we have seen, we do not have a virtuous system to protect. Fortunately the crisis is restraining the avidity of the construction industry (40% of new unsold constructions in 2008) and with few money in circulation less will be accomplished as opposed to the previous years. The danger of our landscape will not be attenuated by the new regimen. The so-called house plan must be governed. To do so, it is necessary to associate simple, quick and clear planning devices (guidelines, guide projects, diagrams, concept design studies, etc.). The regional devices of execution will have to be considered along with the architects and urban designers. It should have been done like this before. We must swim in the tide of changes, as Manuel Gausa writes in the first issue of Monograph, and push it towards new targets of quality. To confront these topics and issues stands nothing but architecture and the city. These are the things that we have to deal with through projects. Kyoto, the Nobel Peace prize to Al Gore, global warming, CO2 emissions, oil prices, renewable energy, protection of the landscape values, large social migrations, racial and religious integration, issues of the eco-

nomic crisis and security that overwhelm local societies. The whole world worries and works on these urgencies. Environment and society are the major philosophical and political paradigms of this new millenium. Like economic disciplines, architectural disciplines cannot remain untouched or pretend that these problems do not overwhelm it forcing them to make profound changes. These transformations urge us to design projects deeply tied to the context. That simultaneously involve different scales of intervention, Capable of change over time; that can be modified and personalized from those who experience it; that contribute in some way to fight the environmental emergency. Projects that ultimately render the changes sustainable both by the social point of view and by the economic, landscape and environmental one. This is the ecologic role of those who explore and shape the future. This is the possible role of urbanism and architecture against crisis. Does the aesthetical progetto urbano strategies match these challenges yet? Do we really need to go back to this theoretical frame to meet the sense of contemporary age? Probably yes. In Multiple City, a recent exhibition about urban theories and experiences in the last century very well displayed in Munich at the end of 2008 by Sophie Wolfrum, the curator, Italy is present only in the Progetto urbano section with the studies by Aldo Rossi, Gianfranco Caniggia and Saverio Muratori. The abandon of the progetto urbano scientific tradition did not produce further significant innovations in the Italian urban studies culture. The first big credit of the Colarossi and Latini book is to lead us back to think about this and to study again the progetto urbano techniques and meanings.

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Urban design, form and architecture Elio Piroddi I am grateful to Mosè Ricci for having recognized the traces of a school in the work dealt with by Colarossi and Latini. This means that our group is agreed first and foremost on a crucial point: the utility and the necessity of urban design as a morphological discipline between planning and architectural projects. Colarossi is right when he states that its physiological dimension, so to speak, is intermediate, that its privileged space is the district public space. But I wonder whether a dimension of this sort does not assume a somewhat restricted visual angle. The domain of urban design Broadening the visual angle means simply identifying urban design in morphology, that is in questions of form. In the twofold aspect of overall vision and of specific projects. Starting from the fact that, when one wishes to transform, translate, materialize a programming act into concrete form it is necessary to have a technician of form, that is, a morphologist. Which is tantamount to saying, after Morris, an architect. In reality it often happens that problems of form occur only as from a certain moment in the process, leaving urban design to come at a later stage. It seems to me that this attitude leads to a confusion, to a limited conception of the role of urban design. I am convinced that if a problem of form is put, this cannot be restricted or reduced to a given dimension, below a certain critical threshold (for example, the ‘district’). Whether it concerns the project of a landscape, of a park, of a garden, of a city, of a district, of a road, or of a territory, however vast it might be, we are always in the field of urban design. From the Grand Axe de la Défense to Renzo Piano’s Vulcano Buono (Good Volcano) and to Sarkozy’s recent consultation on Grand Paris, which made the Journal of architecture write about a ‘return to urban morphology’. That the basic nucleus of urban design is of morphological type, i.e. substantially of architectural type, does not have just a theoretical value but also great practical value, for example in teaching. Whereas instead many town planners (perhaps the majority) have abandoned the questions of the form and the aesthetics of the city and therefore of architecture. Hence Garano is right when he states that ‘the townplanning project is inseparable from the architectural project’. Is there any sense in still speaking of urban design (?) I put in brackets the question mark that Mosè Ricci puts explicitly. I put it in brackets because I think that it should be removed. Ricci’s question rests, in reality, on the observation of a series of metamorphoses of the city (the so-called ex-

plosion of the city, the apparent prevalence of virtual spaces), of defeats suffered by urban design (crushed by the great media event) and of disasters (the boom of uncontrolled building, the widespread poor quality). It is difficult to speak of the city in general terms; yet, at certain latitudes, there are cities that act as samples. It seems to me that Rome is one of these. In Rome there is truly everything: well-being and degradation, quality and sloppiness do not occupy different, separate areas (East End-West End style). As in a sort of ‘action urbanism’, we find mingled, with a certain almost light-hearted indifference, luxury districts and ‘spontaneous’ housing estates, wealthy houses and poor houses, suburbs, garden villages, the gigantic volumes of huge retail outlets, and large office, hotel, sports and technological centres; objects scattered over a still half-empty territory, held together by a transport, mostly road, network always on the verge of collapse. A sort of moth-eaten patchwork in which urban design is an élite exercise. This panorama would appear to bear out the perplexities of Mosè Ricci. Instead, in many, not uncommon cases urban design can still be carried out and in fact is carried out. I am not speaking of China or the United States, grandiose workshops of urban design, where not so much was ever built before as since 11 september. I would just recall that, in the due proportions, Europe is not lagging behind: in Berlin, from the Iba (the first international relaunching of the ‘fabric’ form) to the critical reconstruction of Stimmann, in Hamburg, Hafen City, ’972017; to Stockholm, Hammarby Sjöstad, 1990/2010; to Paris, Rive Gauche, 1991/2008 and to Amsterdam, the Almere new city. Also in Italy urban design is exercised (Turin, Naples, Milan, Rome) whatever the quality might be. But the necessary condition for good urban design to be carried out is a city administration with clear ideas and the force to put them into effect, which in fashionable jargon is known as efficient governance. Having stated the above, I find an optimistic or pessimistic attitude, or even a catastrophic one, out of place. You cannot regret or dream about a city that doesn’t exist or which no longer exists. If there are maladies, the town planners-architects (as doctors for the living) have to treat them or at least report them and try to improve the situation. Aware that the hierarchy of responsibilities on the subject of urban quality is highly stratified, and the urban project sometimes intervenes when these have already been imposed by other operators. And it is this, among other things, that induces me to propose a broader horizon for urban design. Principles, quality and rules If urban design operated, together with planning, from the large dimension; if a number of simple general criteria guided the projects for new settlements (addition, complexity, continuity, diachrony) many mistakes and incongruences would be avoided. Colarossi and Latini quite rightly put the question of puUrbanistica www.planum.net

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blic space at the centre of the urban project. Very well. But what today are the ingredients of public space? No longer just the piazza, the local district road, or the garden, but the major mobility networks, the car parks, the open spaces, the spaces inside the big urban facilities, spaces for temporary or periodic use, for transit, for highspeed crossings, the spaces of the main green network (think of the territory of Rome). Gasparrini’s observations seem to me to tend rightly to expand in these directions the horizon of urban design, with all the other subjects that this involves, from landscape architecture to landscape ecology, to certain sectors of the earth sciences and to the design of infrastructures. Even exceptional architectural events should be filtered at the outset by a morphological programme that authoritatively represents collective demand. Gasparrini, for instance, correctly observes that the location and therefore the symbolical significance assumed by the Beijing Olympic stadium (the ‘Nest’) was not a casual, self-referential event but the programmed epilogue of a new urban axis, ‘the ideal extension of the historic northsouth route’. But, in general, it is the facilities of public interest (libraries, museums, theatres, cultural research and training centres, buildings for the public administration and for worship) that ought to provide the nervous system for and, in some way, give a heart to the districts and magnetize the key central offices, whose sole reason for being called this is that they are the headquarters of those specific facilities and otherwise of Auchan, Ikea and Leroy Merlin. The urban comprehensive Plan (Piano regolatore generale), for its part, sets only quantitative constraints and ones of intended use. Nothing or hardly anything about the morphology; for example about the ‘grain’, that is about the maximum and minimum dimensions of the buildings and about the tissue of the fabric: yet an absolutely decisive feature for purposes of the form. The whole distribution of the heights, in a territory that is still fairly empty such as that of Rome, appears foolhardy: big isolated volumes, districts of small one-family houses in contact with intensive settlements, buildings identical to those of the compact city in the middle of the countryside. One fails to see why a comprehensive Plan should not set out general rules that stem from an equally in-depth reflection on the morphological features of the urban territory as that on functional organization. Grain, fabric form or open form, materials, treatment of the marginal areas, of the axes providing the structures, of the central places and of the green network, etc., form (ought to form) what I refer to as morphological zoning. Which should be associated with and in some cases replace functional zoning. With regard to the quality of the single projects (‘the small dimension’) and the rules, I have some reservations about putting overmuch faith in the rules, if under-

stood essentially as meta-design rules. ‘Designing cities without designing buildings’ (Latini after Barnett) works in cases in which an urban project defined on a modular basis is combined with a high property value of the sites and hence with a demand of very high standard (e.g.: the centre of Chicago, Manhattan, Rive Gauche, Borneo Insel at Amsterdam, perhaps La Spina of Turin). That is, in exceptional cases. In the majority of cases guidelines are necessary but not sufficient to guarantee the quality of the final product. Lacking an interactive coordination the rules that the project had given have not been decisive in terms of the quality of architecture. This derives, very clearly, from the by now chronic incapacity to speak a common language. But also from the tremendous differences of level that exist in the professional class. So Colarossi is right when he states that an urban project cannot be abandoned to those executing it without the designer continuing to coordinate it also in the construction phase. Or, when the project is very complex, that there should be an efficient public management to accompany construction to the very end. Beauty The problem of rules involves the beauty of the city. Art in general does not necessarily generate beauty. That is not its mission. But we, architects and town planners, cannot remove the problem of beauty. Other artists can do this, having recourse to that ‘aesthetics of the ugly’ which is not an invention of today. But the city cannot be taken out of its context. Making a city beautiful is the intrinsic aim, implicit in urban design, not fungible with the ‘ugliness’ of other artistic practices. An ugly city cannot be a work of art as an installation or simply Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’ (urinal) can be. A city cannot be ‘horrible’. It cannot transmit a feeling of discomfort. Except that the objective of the Bauhaus, giving quality to quantity in architecture, has failed. The messages received have not fertilized mass production. The overall quality of the districts designed in the past century depends not so much on the excellence of their urban design as on the consonance of a choral discourse, of a ‘competence to build’ (Choay); in short on a culture. When too many explicit rules are needed, it means that there are few agreed, shared rules. It was perhaps for this reason that Gillo Dorfles wrote ‘It is best not to speak about beauty’. Something about which, in spite of everything, some of us cannot agree.

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Urbanistica n. 140

September-December 2009

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Index and english translation of the articles

Projects and implementation

Problems, policies and research

Methods and tools

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Beyond safety: urban policies and immigration in Turin Paola Briata The public debate on immigration in Italy is still dominated by the security issue, not to say by racism and xenophobia. Immigration policies, defined by the national government, have mainly been aimed at controlling the flows of people, the immigrants’ integration policies having completely been devolved to the ‘local’ level. At this scale, the municipalities and the third sector’s initiatives play a core role. All these preliminary remarks seem to legitimate a focus on the role played by urban policies on these issues. The paper aims at contributing to the debate on immigration and urban policies in Italy by analysing the EU urban regeneration program The Gate. Living not leaving, carried out in the Porta Palazzo and Borgo Dora areas in Turin, an initiative which may be quoted as one of the first experiences of an urban policy expressly focused on the immigrants’ integration issues in Italy. Porta Palazzo has always been a ‘port of entry’ in Turin for the immigrants, both the ones coming from the south of Italy from the 1950s, and the ones coming from the non-EU countries in most recent years. In 1995 the increasing number of immigrants led to the italian citizens’ protests: an ‘urban crisis’ which made clear that the problems were not only related to the scarce level of integration between italian and foreign people, but also to the low level of social integration of the italian citizens living in the area. This means that the public bodies’ answer shouldn’t have been based on any kind of affirmative action program, as problems of social justice could easily raise. A Council’s survey suggested an urban regeneration integrated approach which was adopted in The gate project. The gate started in 1998 and ended in 2002. Afterwards it has been updated with a series of initiatives thanks to a wide range of partners’ support. The project’s main theme was ‘inclusion’ considering this issue both from the immigrants’ and from the natives’ point of view. All the community involvement strategies have been addressed to the overall local population, considering shared problems and not shared ethnicities as a base for action. The security issue was considered, but it never had a core role, and was declined in an innovative way, investing on social initiatives to prevent youths from addictions, unemployment and crime activities. The project included 19 actions related to 5 areas of intervention: business incubator; safety net; liveability; sustainability; link-ability. The gate has always been included in the Progetto speciale periferie whose aim is to integrate a number of regeneration initiatives at neighbourhood level, imagining a strategic approach for the ‘peripheral’ areas in Turin. The Council’s high official for International relationships and EU Policies unit become the project’s committee di-

rector after its approval. After the 2006 elections, her experience led to the urban regeneration and integration department’s institution which reflects a quite innovative approach in Italy, being the immigrants’ integration issues usually devolved to the social services. The Council’s innovative approach to deal with immigration issues through integrated area based regeneration initiatives, as well as The gate experience which established a sort of ‘urban laboratory’, could be both seen as part of a mutual learning process that led to a change in the public institutions’ organization. The project’s main innovation is related to the choice of using an urban regeneration integrated approach to deal with immigration issues, investing on the neighborhood’s liveability and its economic development. Putting the inclusion issue at the center of an initiative that has worked on a multi-ethnic contest is a cultural choice in a country that still deals with immigration mainly considering the security issue. The integrated approach was still quite unusual in the italian contest when The gate was launched, confirming the municipality’s attitude to innovation. Despite this, the process’s high dependence on the political and technical leaderships’ commitment could turn down into a major weakness if the new culture won’t spread inside the overall public bodies. Finally, it’s important not to consider this experience’s interesting outcomes, as a sufficient reason to ‘close up’ in the ‘micro’ level, forgetting more general urban problems that threaten the area. The last 20 years’ recovery strategy to promote the visitor economy in Turin has given a new life to the city centre. Porta Palazzo has always been a very central area, but nowadays it’s even more central, the gentrification threat being around the corner. Only a very strong strategic vision of the future of the peripheral areas seems to be the best chance for these reality to integrate in the urban contest. A major reorganization of the peripheral areas project has been announced, but it’s still too early for an evaluation of its outcomes.

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The soil exploitation in the Province of Turin Ilario Abate Daga, Andrea Ballocca, Paolo Foietta The coordination territorial Plan adopted by the Province of Turin in 1999 and approved by Piedmont Region in 2003 is based on soil protection and conservation policies. In a historical moment of complex demographic stagnation in our province and of contraction of the industrial activity the territorial Plan shows the need of re-establishing the town urban management, abandoning the implementation process, often considered only in terms of quantity of new buildings and the resulting incomes. The territorial Plan of the Province has clearly shown its goal to the whole community and to the institutions, i.e. to stop the exploitation of the soil when different from the already existent buildings and inhabited areas, to avoid further developments of the expansion areas, in conflict with the areas devoted to agricultural use and parks. For these reasons and with this meaning in 2002 it was decided to set up the Observatory on the territorial and demographic transformations. It should not be conceived as a ‘study’, but as a valid instrument for the continuous monitoring and management of the territory. Its evolution has allowed to pass from the historical literature on territory (from 1821 to 1991) to pragmatic, systematic solutions (1991, 2000, 2003, 2006) which allow a new interpretation of the settling system (morphology), the real measurement of the soil exploitation, the control of the environment sustainability of the different territorial interventions (balance) and a new concept of the sprawl system. A first report of the results of the Osservatory was published at the end of 2008 by the Province of Turin. A synthesis of the results is presented in the following paragraphs. The current context (1990-2006) Already from the historical literature it was clear that for the first time after many decades, at the beginning of the 1990s there was a countertrend in the population curve as compared to the antropic growth of the ‘contaminated’ areas. This trend is confirmed also by the results from the studies on the most recent years (1990 and 2006). It can be observed that in 1990 the exploited areas covered the 7.2% of the whole provincial territory (6 800 km2); between 1990 and 2006 the exploited areas raised to 7,479 hectars, with an increase by 15% and a medium annual growth of 0.9%. That means that in 2006 8.3%, i.e. more than a percentage point as compared to 1990, of the whole provincial territory was exploited. Such numbers acquire a greater importance when observed in terms of the time range considered (1990-2000 and 2000-2006). It can be therefore observed that in the first period the exploited soil has risen by 265 per year

(2,656 new hectars exploited, with a growth of 5.4%); since 2000 the medium annual growth have been of >800 hectars (4,822 hectars of new exploited soils, i.e. an increase of 9.3% as compared to the data referring to 1990). The constant increase of the growth curve of the exploited soil is a clear interpretative key, alongside a parallel trend of the corresponding curve of population growth. Although the period from 1990 to 2006 is characterized by a small (0.5%)growth of the resident population, it is clear that the annual trend of the population itself is irregular; the 2,236,765 residents of the year constantly decrease and become 2,165,299 in 2001 (with a decrease by almost 50,000 units only in 2000-2001). The annual balance begins to record positive values (with a mean annuak growth of about 5,000 inhabitants) from 2002, with a peak during biennio 2003-2004 (+64,715). The overlapping curves representing the demographic trend and that of the soil exploited highlight a mismatch among the values recorded in that same period: the difference between soil exploited and population continues to increase and can be measured using 1991 as the year of reference, with 14 points. With regards to the mentioned dichotomy, it is necessary to observe and elaborate all the changes referring to the population structure and to the fluxes of the housing development demand, which now become the priority. These changes are partly due in general to the deep change in the structure of family units. In fact, if compared to 3 decades ago, even with the same population the number of family units made up of a smaller number of people is now far larger. A natural consequence of this change is the growth of housing demand, whose number represents another aspect for the study of the law of demand and offer of new buldings. The economic aspect related to new buildings is not secondary; even if it is difficult to evaluate, its quantification depends on the local administrations and their responsibility. There is a growing trend towards the housing leading to new centres far from the metropolitan areas, with a consequent dispersion. The soil exploitation is also affected by other phenomena such as the sprawl i.e. the creation of new isolated settlement centres with a monofunctional feature: residential, productive or commercial) such as in the case of the 2006 winter Olympic games which saw the construction of new infrastructures and houses, and the growing demand of second houses devoted to turism. After all these general considerations, it is important to remind that the territorial morphology of the Province of Turin is characterized by an equal distribution of mountain areas (about 55%) and plain or hill areas (about 45%). In the light of this consideration, and excluding the mountain areas from the phenomenon of human settlement and then focusing on the remaining areas, the phenomenon plays a new, important role. In this case it can be observed that the numbers mentioned before tend to double. In fact, it emerges that the soil exploited in 1990 is the 13% of the whole plain or hill Urbanistica www.planum.net

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areas, increasing to 15% in 2006 with a relative mean increasign rate of 1.15%. As for the geographical distribution of the new settlements, very few elements allow to foresee a regular trend in the urban development. Apart from few cases of completed already existing centres, which in the high density areas risk the saturation, there are more and more cases of growth of the urban grid due to the process that the anglosaxon city planners call sprawling, i.e. A random distribution as compared to the trend of the past few decades. Sprawl The urban dispersion, or sprawl, is a new common phenomenon in the european context; it defines the uncontrolled urban development characterized by a low density and high costs. In its analysis, due to some limitations of the available data, the Province of Turin has chosen to focus on the study of the cases of sprawl which have occorre after 1990. It was only after 1990 that the degree of accuracy and precision of the cartographic information allow an analysis with a detail (1:10.000 scale) useful for the territorial context considered. The definition of a ‘sprawl area’ has been done on the basis of the following parameters: – areas external to the already existent urban context; – monofunctional areas; – low-density areas; – disproportion in the development scale; The main contexts of urban settlement have been defined through the density analysis, after the following classification: – urban areas already existent, whose territory has been compromised by the development of the urban grid; – transitional areas, represented by the completing processes or the connection with the periurban fabric; – free areas, i.e. those included in mostly agricultural and /or natural territory. On the basis of the methods descrive above, it is therefore possible to define a phenomenon of urban dispersion in the whole provincial territory. The latest 16 years have been characterized by a growth of the dispersed areas. On the one hand, the historical sprawl today appears to be integrated in the already existing urban fabric, whereas on the other hand the last period is characterized by smaller aggregations apparently extraneous to the previous development urban processes. It is clear that the sprawl acquires a greater importance in particular in the free areas. Since 1990, in fact, the whole provincial territory has been characterized by thousands of new ‘objects’ which can be identified as new isolated buildings, with a total surface of about 900 hectars. That means that, in a broad sense, the sprawl represents only about 10% of the whole exploited areas. It is important to highlight that the different kinds of sprawl, here differentiated on the basis of the morphological context where they developed, represent settlement models

whose conformity to the current planning policies depend also on the territorial context. The creation of new cetres isolated from preexisting urban contexts must be carefully analyzed and differently managed on the basis of their complex territorial contextualization. Sprawl phenomenon in free areas occurring in rural areas represent in general a negative model of urbanization. On the other hand, the same tipology (occurring in very low density areas, and then free) observed in a periurban context, for example near major roads, can be easily conducted to a phenomenon of urban completion in the light of future planning policies.

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Profiles and practices

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Suburbia year zero? Subprime mortgage crisis and metropolitan development in the U.S. Lucio Gliecillo

Is the collapse of the subprime mortgage market reshaping the regional geography of the Usa? Have we reached the end of the growth model which for over half a century has dominated the urban and territorial scene in the United States? These are some of the questions that today seem to divide observers and scholars. Asking these questions, among others, is Christopher Leinberger, one of the greatest urban scholars, author of an important critical text bearing the emblematic title The option of urbanism: “Over the last few decades we’ve structurally overinvested in fringe real estate … But this time it’s different. It’s not just a cycle. It’s going to take more than two or three years to recover from this”. To better understand the sequence of events that helped shape the current situation, it is necessary to take a few steps backward. In 2000 the international stock market suffers severe losses due to the collapse of information securities. The crisis of the new economy drives investors to flee the stock market and to divert their savings elsewhere. Vast amounts of capital are poured into the real estate market, opening new opportunities for investors and managers. The Reit (Real estate investment trust) is established, while commercial banks increase offers of credit to developers and construction enterprises. In this climate of enthusiasm for the new economic and financial course, financial specialists invent the sub-prime market, a particular typology of financial product targeting clientele most at risk, in which is offered access to credit even in the absence of the most basic guarantees. The high risk credit market also secures the consent of government, as it addresses the weakest segments of populations, in particular immigrants, unskilled laborers, and families of color. The rush continues until 2006, when the cost of money begins an inexorable rise. The increase in monthly installments falls like an axe on a clientele already weak, leading quickly to an increase in insolvency and consequently a tumble in consumption and income. The shortage of liquidity due to the increase in insolvency is reflected in turn on the financial markets, banks and credit institutions which approach bankruptcy with increasingly larger strides. Some of the largest financial institutions specializing in loans such as Fannie Mae (Federal national mortgage association) and Freddie Mac (Federal home loan mortgage corporation) and other so-called Government sponsored enterprises (Gse) are taken over almost entirely by the federal Government. The banking system also shows signs of sagging. The collapse of dozens of credit institutions renders further action on the part of the government necessary, with the purpose of restoring oxygen to an economic sy-

stem semiparalyzed by the crisis of worker confidence and the lack of liquidity. The American government doesn’t wait long to respond. Since september 2007, legislative measures designed to restore a principle of greater equilibrium between market mechanisms and the protection of citizens have been intensified. A plan is approved which allows the Federal housing administration to support refinanced loans for tens of thousands of insolvent debtors crowded out by the exorbitant rise in loan rates. At the same time, the Senate approves the Building american homeownership act, under which the government allocates 200 million dollars to private welfare for its support and consultation services to citizens in difficulty. Both of these regulations express the intention of the federal government to radically revise its financial policy. It remains to be seen if and how the measures referred to above will be able to bring about recovery of the housing market and thus restore confidence in the U.S. economy. These are certainly signs that trace a line of demarcation in the relations between the government and the market from which it will be difficult to recede in the coming years. The metropolitan question The fallout of the financial debacle on the American metropolis outlines a well-constructed geography, even with quite marked differences between the situations in differing states and, within those states, between one metropolitan and another. Research conducted by the Consumer federation of America estimates an overall fall of 7% in property values in 2008, with peaks of -16% in the state of California while foreclosures during the same period will reach a threshold of 1.4 million dwellings with total losses of approximately 315 billion dollars. At the metropolitan level, the differences appear equally marked. In the five metropolitan statistical areas (Msa) with the lowest concentration of subprime loans, only 3% of refinancing occurs in the high risk market, while in the Msa with the lowest share of prime financing, the incidence of high risk financing exceeds 40%. In other words, where an already weak market exists, the incidence of refinancing with high risk loans proves to be much higher than the metropolitan areas which are more economically stable. Furthermore, the same data emphasizes an historical aspect central to the concerns of observers and scholars, that is the correspondence between the geography of ethnic concentration and exposure to the high risk mortgage market. So it turns out that in recent years over one third of african-american families (34%) have received subprime loans, as opposed to a percentage of white families with just over 12%. The combination of these factors has contributed to a gradual modification in the overall structure of the demand which has shifted to a smaller-scale housing market. The changes in household composition, the overall slackening in building construction, the growing Urbanistica www.planum.net

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affirmation of a new environmental sensitivity, have undoubtedly contributed to the acceleration of a process whose spatial effects have not yet been well analyzed. Combining diverse data such as the trend in the housing market, consumer preferences, demographic trends and other information from the construction industry, Arthur Nelson, director of the prestigious Metropolitan institute at Virginia Tech, outlined in 2006 a rather grim outlook regarding the future of suburban America. The scenario, based on a timeline of twenty years, forecasts the formation of a surplus of large-lot homes (houses built on lots of over 650 square meters) of about 22 million units, equivalent to about 40% of existing construction. Most likely Nelson’s forecasts can now be revised downwards considering that, with 1.35 million new constructions, 2007 signaled the lowest production for the construction sector since 1993. Nevertheless, this scenario emphasizes an aspect that seems crucial, though often overlooked in American urban debate, relating to the necessity for radical renovation of cultural assumptions even prior to economic ones based on the success of the suburban model.

So the question posed seems to once again call attention to the inevitability of a gap between words and things, between knowledge of reality and models employed to interpret it. It is not surprising, therefore, the call to the ancient myth of the small village and to a community which has lost its origins, by now cyclical from the time the suburban experience had its start. The hypothesis is well-known and has a large consensus, both in its ‘smart’ version as a proposed solution to the problem of suburban growth and in its more problematic neotraditionalist transcription, a disenchanted response to the necessity of providing America with a cultural background which it seems to historically be lacking.

End of the sprawl? Ultimately one of the most obvious consequences of the American financial market crisis is that of redrawing the attention of scholars and experts to the problems tied to urban growth, reviving the impetus never soothed of the so-called anti sprawl movement, the movement of opinion that since the postwar period had become the protagonist of a no holds barred battle against the process of suburbanization and sprawl. One of the most frequent criticisms of anti sprawl takes its cue from the awareness that the fibrillation (real or alleged) of the suburban model is found precisely in the crisis of factors which historically have decreed its success, first and foremost the principle of a free market and its growth. In fact, it is true that the large-scale spread of the suburban model can be explained by analysis of a few elementary economic principles: the quest for greater profits has certainly helped drive development beyond both the physical and mental boundaries of the traditional city. However, in analyzing the case of the U.S., the role historically held by the government should not be neglected as the principal player in the collective aspiration for greater standards of security and welfare. It’s too early to say what significance all of this has for the future of the American metropolis. From the point of view of settlement, consideration of the spatial consequences of the crisis seems to bring to attention some historical themes of the urban debate. The question that ensues is not a simple one: namely, whether the future of the metropolis is tied to the survival of the city, in its inevitability as a universal condition of society, or whether, as Koolhaas maintains, we are facing a post urban future, a horizon without center dominated by the logic of globalization and modeled on the periodic oscillations of the market. Urbanistica www.planum.net

Profiles and practices

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City planning in climate change times Francesco Domenico Moccia Opposition and scepticism in the public opinion fed by oil multinational and research circle close to them against warnings of the scientific community embraced by Onu and celebrated in the Kyoto protocol was overcome by Obama election to the Usa presidency. This will open a new stage. From scratch city were the less controversial issue. In the Michael Crichton’s, the well known author of the E.R. television serial, bestseller, State of Fear, there are poisonous doubts about global worming indicators, as the melting of the artic ices. More, an ecologist group try to cause a natural disaster to gain research founds. Nevertheless, in such adverse context, the scientific dispute, reported in the novel, admit only the ‘urban heat island effect’, meaning that a city is often four to seven degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the surrounding suburbs, and there are documents proving the increasing of temperature in the last century. May this is the reason why great cities are the more interested to the issue, as reported by the IV Worldwatch Institute report (2007), where is also stated that such cities have the structural features more suitable with low energy consumption while assuring their citizens a high quality of life. Ken Livingstone, during the time when was mayor of London and Michael Bloomberg, still mayor of New York are celebrated as the champions of the antiglobal worming movement. The first one owe this title to the creation of a special organization devoted to study and plan strategy for such complex metropolis running high natural risks; the second one having put warming in the general city planning, after the monitoring of greenhouse gases (Ghg) emissions and special studies. Given the large quantity of factors involved, accurate predictions are very difficult. However, it is generally accepted that a local strategy is needed and its effects will be in some way helpful. It is articulated in mitigation and prevention strategy. The mitigation strategy is aimed to the greenhouse gases emission reduction; the mitigation plans any action able to reduce risks coming from prevented change of the clime, as storms, flooding, landslides, and costal erosion. Building technology and city planning In our country, reduction of Ghg emission has being achieved with a code of building technology performance. This objective converge with energy saving and reduction of fossil energy sources which are valued to have reached the peak, at least for oil. According to that aim for the building thermal insulation many solutions are been proposed; many technologies are now available for the interior climate at low energy consumption as the heath pomp, or some other technologies using alternative sources as the solar energy, as greenhouses or solar panels. Electric appliances are more and more at

lower energy consumption while computer aided house management add other energy savings. In front of such a large innovation in the building field, in other worlds, inside the house walls, in the private realm, very few proposals we found in the public realm, in the city planning stage. Often the word ‘city’ appears in the title of books or programs, as ‘City at 0 emissions’ of the city of Rome, but you will find inside jus a catalogue of building solutions, not proposals at the urban scale. This planning sterility is so much surprising that city planning has been involved in environmental issues since a double decade, so that some authors identify this period as a special stage of the Italian city planning. I may explain this paradox with the thesis that in all the stage city and nature are been considered as two conflicting parts. From the environmental side, there was urgency in the nature preservation against a pervasive urbanism. According to this approach, a leading European program ‘Nature 2000’ had the objective to save the natural sites needed for the extinguishing species. On the city planning side, still under the pressure of a needed cultural innovation, the challenge of new urban forms meeting all the ecological requests of a low energy time is not jet faced. As appeared evident in the last Rome Fair, dedicated to Ecometropolis, now is time to make a significant effort to fill the gap, given the general reconnaissance of the city as the cross road of the global worming. Sustainable cities and ecocities Two alternative paths to the question are fighting as alternative solutions. Sustainable city is a brand for incremental approach. It works to find out mitigation devices or to add at the given city fabric some complementary equipment. For instance they propose biological sewage treatment for the small neighbourhood with large green areas, to reserve some public spaces to walking, to encourage the use of some type of paving that do not obtrude the soil permeability. This is the prevailing approach, especially in legislation, and generally in the process of Local 21 Agenda. From a different perspective, we are at a point of the crisis that a more radical approach is needed: Ecocity should be a radically different town from that we are now used to (also if the european compact city is empathically considered); it must synthesize all the best organization and urban form able to minimize CO2 emission and energy consumption. What is particularly interesting for planners is the focus on the city model, a task to which they are devoted in the century (at least from Renaissance, as history teaches). In the last time planners are prone to think the do not need any more of models for a list of reasons: for the rationality crisis, because cities do not enlarge any more, they are not achievable identically to the way they are thought, or they are not perfect. Given all the critics to models, we need them to cumulate experience, discuss proposals and correct Urbanistica www.planum.net

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mistakes. Also if any model can be found in the reality, any influence city planning had on the built environment is doe to models. It helps to share ideas and solutions. To our aim, an ecological history of city models from Filarete to Hilbers-eimer, Le Corbusier and Paolo Soleri would be helpful. Mobility and urban form Suburbs are identified as one on the main air pollutant because the generate commuting on long distances and, for the low density, public transport is not convenient more that private car. In the city planning theory sprawl is associated to cars as well as linear development to streetcar and polarized city enlargement to railway, going back to the history of the contemporary metropolis. This means that Ghg curbing involve a multicenter city model at high density and mixed soil use: the organization that minimize trips. This model is not a utopia, but the leading guide for metropolis as London and New York. The some ideas inspired some proposals as Carfree cities by J.H. Crawford or Ecocity by R. Register. We find the some basic principles in the Rogers proposal for the international consultation on After Kyoto Paris, le Gran Pari (the great challenge). Differences among these proposals are in morphology: some elaborate around megastructures, others prefer the compact city at the start of industrial revolution, others just a new combination of the urban materials of contemporary city. As you can see, urban model are already in elaboration and will be propelled by powerful forces: repenting petrol producers, polluters in search of new ways; advertising agents lying down marketing campaign for special buyers, civil servants obliged to honour international obligations. Across the world, an anti-car movement is growing, starting from depaving practices an arriving to carfree blocks or neighbourhoods building. In Milan, Legambiente asks the next Expo will be a pilot project of a carfree neighbourhood.

is important a close distance from production and consumption place to save on transportation energy dispersal. This means that we should produce energy in cities. Windmills or great solar infrastructure were tested in open space and the first prototypes of the most promising innovation technology are operating in desert or agricultural areas. In a process of mutual adaptation their introduction in cities will be possible in the close future. The size reduction of windmills has already reached the aim, letting the smaller outfit to fill better in the urban setting. On the other side, urban morphology may adapt to great infrastructures, mainly in the thermodynamic solar technology, to let this very promising energy generators to be in cities. One more task of city planning is to optimize, on the limited surface resource, its employment for the installation of the most needed technology. Market offer a wide range of energy or heat generator whose yield have to be matched with real needs, assuring balance in choices. For instance, do we need more heat or electricity production, on a surface unit? Water and biodiversity While is quite easy to reduce water consumption with simple appliances and improvement in house energyefficient electrical appliances, great capital investments are required to rehabilitate and upgrade the urban infrastructure for the water distribution. In a more general discourse, city planning must feel with greater responsibility the task to make water an essential part of public space, capturing storm water, cleaning rivers, brooks and springs. Water control and preservation in the urban environment is becoming a pervasive measure in the adaptation strategy. In addition, it will have the side effect to improve the enjoyment of citizens in open air activity and nurture the life of every species.

Energy saving and production The first contribution to saving energy is the already mentioned carfree model. On more questions scientific evidence coming from pragmatic research is lacking but based on common understanding, housing units joined together, with less surface in contact with outdoor climate, open space design able to protect from warmth or capture sun energy, filled with green and water with good effect on urban climate surely contribute on a natural building conditioning. Major achievements in this field still impinge mainly on building regulation where building (more volume than permitted normally) grants or fiscal deductions are given to passive houses or zero-energy buildings. Energy (ecologic) production more used in urban context is cogeneration and heat distribution system. Its success depends from the lack of any need to change urban form. In energy production from renewable sources, it Urbanistica www.planum.net

Urbanistica n. 140

September-December 2009

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Index and english translation of the articles

Profiles and practices

Projects and implementation

Problems, policies and research

Paola Briata Ilario Abate Daga, Andrea Ballocca, Paolo Foietta Lucio Giecillo Francesco Domenico Moccia

Methods and tools

Michele Talia Elisa Grandi, Daniele Iodice Silvia Mantovani Stefania Proli Michele Talia Elisa Bertagnini, Michele Morbidoni Eleonora Giovene di Girasole Luca Barbarossa

Some new questions in the planning research The edge of the housing problem. Reality informal in Milan, Bologna, Florence. Intervention strategies Towards a landscaping-urbanism: simple rules for a complex game Participation and urban identity The resistible rise of architectural ideology in planning agenda Il Cairo: urban and traditional social structures as a resource for development Re-planning suburbia and housing policy Small ports and new planning regulations

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Some new questions in the planning research Michele Talia In its first edition the Franco Tinti Prize, that it has been established by his wife and Tecnicoop with the aim to promote among the new generations the research activity on the dynamics of urban system and spatial planning in the Emilia-Romagna region, has contributed to submit to the attention of planners and scholars the papers of four young researchers. Even though the diversity of their starting points, such researches are joined by a not common sensibility for the most recent changes in the italian public policies. Elisa Grandi and Daniele Iodice remember us for instance that also in the traditional field of the housing policies it is by now in existence a progressive movement from a sectorial approach to a more integrated one. In this way a fundamental role is carried out by the applied research, than besides to promote an integrated evaluation of the convergent effects which different actions can produce, if concentrated in a same territorial context, it receives in many cases the further task to make so that thus disparate measures come perceived like the articulations of a same strategy. On the contrary Silvia Mantovani develops a stimulant synthesis between urban planning and landscape design, where landscaping is introduced like the model of a new style of planning. Thanks to this innovative paradigm the main attributes which characterize every specific territory can be recomposed in a complex game of successive deepenings, in which many actors, with different world’s representation and related interests, are invited to exhibit a peculiar ‘ability to learn’ that it replaces to the objective of the forecast that one of the adaptation. Passing for last to Stefania Proli, it convene to stop itself on a particularly meaningful passage of her contribution, in which the description of some important features of the contemporary city (the increasing of empty spaces in the suburbs, the weakness of the infrastructure supply, the different distribution and structure of city functions, etc.) constitutes the essential reference to argue that a new collaborative method involving interests and citizens could prevent ‘market failures’ activating business initiatives and consolidating new processes of social integration. Jointly considered, these contributions can help us to answer to some question marks whose solution has been sent back for along time. Besides the topics that we have tried to recall, other issues, like the developing of future forecasting techniques, or the search of reliable principles in legitimizing the priorities upon which public budgets would be built, can be finally faced. In the ligth of these attainments it is possible to assume a large range of possible applications, that they comprise the analysis of urban dyna-

mics with the aim to model the growth process, the sharpening of the scenery management, the evolution of simulation’ methods with which implementing a new democratic approach to engage whole populations in visioning exercises that identify the full range of issues facing a city. Of course a thus ambitious ‘research agenda’ cannot make less than to assign meaningful opportunities (and responsibilities) to a new generation of searchers, to which the Franco Tinti Prize (and the Prize Inu for thesis of doctorate and bachelor in planning, that it is reached up to now the second edition) it will try to give voice in the next few years also.

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The edge of the housing problem. Reality informal in Milan, Bologna, Florence. Intervention strategies Elisa Grandi, Daniele Iodice In the last years the illegal dwellings issue has bounced back, especially due to news and public debates about safety and legality in urban areas. Hence from the debate on the housing problem between institutions and public opinion, the project aims to analyse the evolution of illegal settlements and to understand the dimensions and potentials of the whole phenomena, as this can be the starting point of changing and reconstructing the urban texture. In some cities in particular controversial debates took place because of a large presence of unconventional settlements and hardly criticized policy. Beginning from these observations, in the first part the analysis focused on three case studies: Bologna, Firenze and Milano. The data has been collected through different means: newspapers, reportage, periodicals, pictures, through local surveys, through meetings with Ngo’s, local governments and associations (for example: Naga in Milano, Piazza Grande and Sokos in Bologna, Fondazione Michelucci in Firenze). A common feature has been observed among the three cases: a continuous and rapid nuclearization of the settlements. In fact City councils based their policy generally on the principles of legality and safety demolishing completely the existing informal settlements. Unfortunately this solution enhanced and worsens the phenomena: the more the settlement is demolished the most it scatters inhabitants on areas hindering institutions in localization, management and prevention. Even Ngo’s have several problems in helping the inhabitants of the settlements and monitoring those situations in the urban area. The settlements’ inhabitants are for the large part immigrants, especially Rumanians, Roms and Africans (most of them from sub-Sahara regions). Right now italians citizen are a minority but the statistical data about the home loans, the entries for social housing and Ngo’s reports revealed that this number could increase in the future. For that reason, the research focuses its attention on the settlements’ inhabitants as well as on people exposed to the risk of homelessness in general and tries to identify common problematic issues and correspondent reaction-strategies, each one characterized by a different degree of complexity and a specific process-timing. A preference for participatory solutions has been applied, proposing not single self-construction and self-refurbishment events, but trying to formulate development programmes for that new urban texture. Participation not only reduces the building costs, but also increases the responsibility and the sense of belonging to the new context. Furthermore participatory processes could be

an opportunity to develop innovative housing solutions, mirroring the change in the real estate demand, and to valorise coping capacities. Through these proposals the research aims to understand and face homelessness beyond the definition of ‘lack of a house’. In fact as we can read in several reports by Feantsa Ethos (European typology on homelessness and housing exclusion) is important to underline the necessity of approaching this problem as ‘a process’ in a person’s life and not just as a single event. A new interpretation of this issue could lead to a better understanding of the phenomena and a more efficient housing policy. The causes of the phenomena are different and very complex: the increasing dwellings price, the house transformed as financial goods, the un-synchronization between economic cycle and real estate cycle, the increased and changed house-market demand (connected to immigration and new forms of poverty), the lack of social housing policy and the social housing estate’s decrease. Because of the complexity of the phenomena, the reaction have to be an integrated answer that works on different fields and on the several aspects of the urban and housing context. The analysis evolves into two housing projects: an intervention in an existing settlement in Milano and in a public building occupancy in Firenze. However these two projects intend to be above all an example for the application of several integrated strategies, following the analysis of a specific context.

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Towards a landscaping-urbanism: simple rules for a complex game Silvia Mantovani The discovery of complexity, the study of chaotic systems have revealed the existence of a different logic that frightens us and sweeps away many of our certainties, but which perhaps is worth examining. In fact, after overcoming the initial panic, scientists have begun to glimpse the existence of a hidden order in chaos, which does not appear when examined with the lens of classical science, but which can be revealed only with a different approach from that used by linear science. In other words, in complex systems there is a set of different rules, capable of describing the chaotic nature of reality; even if they are not adequate for predicting future trends with certainty: rules that define what has been called the ‘paradigm of complexity’. For some time now cities have also been defined by many as complex systems, and in the last few decades there have been multiple attempts to use the paradigm of complexity for determining new patterns of urban spatial organization. Many of these attempts have been able to describe past trends and hypothesize the future development of urban expansion, in the attempt to find new measures, new reassuring formulas for establishing future certainties. Instead, perhaps the wealth offered us by chaos lies elsewhere; in emphasizing a new way of dealing with the knowledge of complex systems, abandoning the deterministic method, not only its instruments, but also, and above all, the mental attitude, the cultural approach. The existing complexity is to be welcomed, even in the urban environment, developing its potential, reconsidering the relationship between order and disorder, between man and nature, and learning from the hard sciences to recognize that the distance from the equilibrium is not only disorder and chaos, but also self-organization, evolution and participation. Thus the challenge is to use the suggestions made by the ‘rules of chaos’, to find other rules for a kind of planning able to guide order without becoming dry, finding methods that accept and give value to disorder also, as an essential component of reality, without simplistically trying to deny it or hide it. The rules of the game Once the premises highlighted by new science have been accepted (the impossibility of total knowledge and objectivity, the contradiction of predictions, the opportunity of disorder, the fertility of moments of crisis, the role of chance), the central crux of planning is that of trying to find open rules that guide the action and at the same time push towards the realization, participation of all the players and, finally, promote creativity and change, the continuous surpassing of the confines of theory and disciplinary practice. Rules not synonymous with regulari-

ty, as they have often been in the past, but with the plurality of possible alternatives, certainly not sufficient, but necessary for starting a new game, capable of provoking a useful debate from which new and different rules will be able to arise in a continuous process, in an endless game, as the planning game must be. Therefore simple rules, with complex resonance, which act as guides and at the same time as the object of planning within a continuing evolving process that pushes to overcome them, in an incessant dialectic revision of the acquired results and certainties. Multiple unit. Towards a landscaping-urbanism. Everything is landscape, landscape is everyone. We have to build a ‘third planning’, not only urban nor only landscape, but a ‘landscaping urbanism’, which puts the city and the landscape on the same level, proposing city planning that makes the landscape, through the hologrammatic inclusion of all the components and all the players in the game. Open circularity. From vicious circles to evolutionary spirals. The urban organism is an open system with a dynamic balance. We have to promote an open, evolutionary planning, instead of a deterministic, prescriptive one. We also have to replace monitoring tools, with a feedback strategy, that continuously tries to adapt the plan to reality. Evolutionary sequence. Planning space and time. Evolution is not only the achievement of balance, but also the way towards following levels of order. The plan should be not an unchanging map, but an ipertext where all the partecipants can confront each other and decide together. Recurring coherence. Fractality of landscape dimension. After reductionism, beyond holism. Landscape should be the zero grade, the simple rule that recurs at every level, the inner coherence valid for every planning action: for park design as well as for urban and territorial planning. Adaptive specificity. The rule as particular case of the application. We should create not only against rules, but also in favour ones, preferring finalistic rules to normative ones. The aim is to hit the mark, without limit the way you hit it. Fuzzy identity. From realistic to real. Rationalist planning often confused models and useful semplifications with reality. Instead we have to plan fuzzy spaces, without clear edges and unambiguous functions. This way we will be able to understand better the uncertainty of present reality, and we will avoid excluding people and functions not planned. Active welcome. Organizing uncertainty. Now it is not time for tolerance or inclusion: now it is time for welcome. We shuoldn’t only tolerate or assimilate the difference or the unexpected: we have to exalt it, improving its singularity. Emphasizeing the element of crisis, instead of fighting it, we can also develop its potential of innovation. Responsible tolerance. Let everyone play. We can fight Urbanistica www.planum.net

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the chaos, surrend to it, or reorganize ourselves. Traditionally the urban planning tries to contrast everything that denies the balance that it looks for. Instead we should learn from people’s spontaneous solutions, from informal spaces, from creative disarray, instead of refusing it or hiding it.

Participation and urban identity Stefania Proli A regenerative project for the ex macello area in Rimini, through the experience of Emilia-Romagna’s Contratti di quartiere. If we look at the programme Contratti di quartiere, participation appears as a crucial moment for the design forming process. Engaging inhabitants to conceive and define decisions is a means to assert the importance of ethic and social dimension into urban planning field. At the same time we know that public participation consist of long and tough process, so it’s seems understandable to wander: ‘What’s the add value’, ‘Is the outcome of a participatory process better than others’, ‘Can’t I face the express needs by using traditional tools’, or instead ‘Can Contratti di quartiere participatory approach enter incisively planning processes that involve public domain and become a central component of urban design practices?’ These considerations started the thesis off: a methodological analysis on planning theory reflected on a case study represented by the ex macello (former slaughterhouse) area in Rimini. From the Contratto di quartiere investigation till the case study, the entire work has been formed as an autonomous exploration on theory and urban design project, both of them essential tools for developing the final proposal. The first part has focused on the way Emilia-Romagna Region managed the programme Contratti di quartiere and the way some of their contents, expecially topics like experimentation, sociality and participation, played a part into regional planning policies. The second part is committed to the design process definition, aimed at the allocation of a new central area, located in the ex Macello site, for both the neighbourhood and the Rimini region. To build an ad hoc participatory process (a process that has the strength to engage citizens without loosing the important chance to begin a developing process for regenerating the city) has been the main objective of the design project. In fact, public participation run perfectly just if it can, at the same time, enhance social capital and be an important tool to let the planner understand the entire area deeply. Therefore, the first step has been stakeholder mapping, in order to collect several values and proposal to include into the project. Then, making use of on site inspections, city plans investigations, and other urban planning techniques, a general view of the neighbourhood has taken form: a marginal city area, hosting several dismissed places as distinctive areas or buildings that have been important in the past for the grows of the ex Macello area, but that need to assume a new role and meaning within the city of Rimini. Furthermore, approaching a masterplan for the project area, a detailed group of actions have been designed. Actions have been conceived inside a wider strategy that wants to reconsider the relationship between the Urbanistica www.planum.net

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neighbourhood and the renewal project. All the strategies have been thought in order to obtain a development process that can be shaped following an ‘urban acupunture approach’, as a means to let the city reactive and to facilitate a spontaneous regenerative procedure. So, as the main objective, it has been tried to confer on this area a new urban frame, to achieve by re-thinking about dismissed areas and public spaces (via Dario Campana and all around dismissed buildings). Moreover, strategies want to be mindful of public space system, in order to establish a ‘net structure’, a meticulous network of connections for taking public life back into the neighbourhood. The main network has to be built by the citizens who, moving and acting into the city, give to the net a big meaning in term of social cohesion and participation to public life. If we think the territory as a result of the interaction between nature and culture, neighbourhood inhabitants will assume the role of main actors in the developing process. All the actions have been thought as an inclusive proposal that has the strength to undertake stakeholders values and to understand new possible chances to improve the quality of life in Rimini. For this reasons, design proposals have been figured out as ‘open solutions’, as provisional results that have been framed under a more general and wider design strategy. Assuming that, the necessary conditions to a regenerative project based on participation and urban identity topics have been observed: participation as a means to assert a sense of belonging to a place; identity in order to found out project guide lines, thanks to the relationship that the common knowledge create between past and future. According to that, Contratti di quartiere are an important tool for trying to obtain some effective answers. The thesis has attempted to verify these answers, figuring Contratti di quartiere’s potential on a concrete case study (the ex Macello area, in Rimini) that needed citizen participation and a new urban identity as a fundamental tool for framing the appropriate Answer for the neighbourhood and for the city itself.

The resistible rise of architectural ideology in planning agenda Michele Talia The publishing of 2008 INU Prize outcomes offers a meaningful test of the research activities in which the new generations of scholars are actualy engaged. The selected contributions testify a remarkable cultural brilliance, and the inclination to combine the theoretical exactitude with the tendency to inquire on the possible solutions to the critical points which any peculiar investigation brings to light. Regarding the paper of Eleonora Giovene di Girasole the refuse of an automatic association between peripheral context and marginality seems to foreshadow an extensive urban renewal in dilapidated areas, and suggests the elaboration of “Guidelines of an urban renewal program concerning public housing and local development”. In the event of Luca Barbarossa it should be underlined the necessity to exceed the improvised strategy with which the harbour systems are governed through the discreted optimization and network strenghtening as in the coastal fringes, as in the inner areas. In addition to a razionalization requirement, this proposal tries to associate the performances guaranteed from the harbour logistics to a phisical plan, mostly oriented toward the development of urban areas with which revitalize the most deprived urban contexts. As far as the Bertagnini and Morbidoni paper is concerned, the urban outbreak that Cairo has experienced since the half of the past century emphasized the role that in such framework can be assigned to a preservation public policy with the purpose to assure as well as the protection of the old city structure, how much the improvement of the local economic base. We moreover can assume that this productive asset could represent an effective protection against the more destructive impact of the globalization. Lasting this thecnical emphasis in planning process, there is even the danger of a further weakening in the research ability, given not only the contraction of the public and private funding, but also the inferiority complex that seems to denote the attitude of many italian planners when they compete with the specialist in urban design. It is more likely that this defensive attitude can constitute an outstanding feature of the academic milieu for along time, but the transition from the conventional meaning of urban planning to the more comprehensive notion of territorial governance is probably destined to become a very strong innovative factor. Once completed such process, it is likely not only the request of a greater cultural autonomy, but also a renewed confidence in the ability of planning knowledge to support new interdisciplinary proposals and more demanding research programs.

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Il Cairo: urban and traditional social structures as a resource for development Elisa Bertagnini, Michele Morbidoni The thesis is a study on the metropolitan area of Cairo conducted through cartographic and bibliographical analysis and social-territorial surveys; it shows, inside the impressive urban and demographic expansion, the complex relationships between historical-traditional origins of the form of the Arab-Islamic city and conformation of the areas interested by phenomena of informal installation. The conclusions identify, at the base of the spontaneous housing expressions, urban and rural traditional social values, and constitute a contribution in the discussion on peripheries, marginalization, slums in Developing Countries, placing side by side, as support to the approach of conservation and improvement, to the practical appeals a theoretical support that sets in the foreground the role of the citizens communities in the formation and the management of city and suburban spaces. The research is inserted in the actual discussion opened by the Millennium declaration of the UN (2000), that puts among the Millennium development goals the improvement of lives of slums dwellers. The presentation of the results through an interactive multimedia, by virtually reproducing the study process, makes evident this relationships also for a non-technical public and allows an immediate understanding of the complex territorial reality. Objectives The theme is suggested by the evidence that the importation of exogenous economic-cultural models injures the integrity and the conservation of consolidated urban structures with high historical value; Cairo is exemplary. The investigation is based on the following concept: the urban environment, its ways of use and evolutionary processes are expressions of a given social form; vice versa the urban environment determines behaviors and social changes. These considerations led to the following questions: which are the social-urban structures, permanent in the metropolisâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; complexity, that made the historical city? Can be they exploited as resources for a new, participated and aware city development model and for conservation of the cultural heritage? The answer to this questions needed an investigation aimed to the comparison among historical districts and spontaneous expressions: a research of traditional social-urban structures to define the historical determining factors belonging to the material and immaterial heritage that remain in the actual metropolis. As constants of the social-urban pattern, they can be posed at the base of historical urban heritage safeguard strategies and of development project for the informal areas.

Methodologies Performed during a six months stay in Cairo, the investigation concerns: analysis of the historical-urban evolutions; classification of the main types of urban pattern in the metropolis; selection of six study-areas representing different types of urban pattern exemplifying the urban composition; identification of the traditional urban and social structures in the historical city; definition of keywords useful to investigate and to compare the six study-areas; search, through the keywords, of the identified structures in the spontaneous and informal urban expressions, to verify their value as constants in the social-urban organization. Results The traditional urban pattern corruption implicates the disappearance of some correlated habits, not replaced by a new system of features. Today the metropolis satisfies only the demands of a minority, while some features identifying the traditional city are reaffirming themselves as spontaneous answers to the unsatisfied necessities, by modifying morphologically the spaces of planned neighborhoods, not suitable because designed for an extraneous living way. Also some urban functions are spontaneously managed applying to ancient customs. So, around the official city, a self-managed new one grew; here lives those people for which normalcy is privilege, where social and cultural identity increases. The transfer of western planning models excludes the spontaneous pushes and the local affairs from the space production, producing planned places unsuitable to the real necessities and neighborhoods that, penalized by emergency and illegality, they donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t reach an acceptable housing quality. On the contrary, it would be desirable to have an integration between governmental managerial abilities and natural organization of traditional social structure, inspired to those realities that valorise the local communitiesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; abilities.

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Re-planning suburbia and housing policy Eleonora Giovene di Girasole The analysis of the latest years have described the suburbs according to the principles of the geographical and social distance, of the marginalization, of the incompleteness of the urban fabric, still less of the lack of quality. It is maybe useful to wonder whether these categories are still effective, whether they can, as in the past, represent the suburbs of the present Italian cities, or overcoming the commonplaces, whether a new image of the suburb comes out, as an area not always marginal, area of new centralities (embryonic or manifest) and above all area of new identities (Bellicini, 2001) and relations. Starting by the hypothesis that our suburbs cannot be considered only as places to set against historic city any longer, characterized by incoherence, by absence, by segregation, and by a varied architectural-town planning language, but also as places with physical and social resources to exploit, it seems necessary to implement routes of upgrading. To this aim it is essential to find solutions suitable to the complexity of the places, to work either on the quality of the places and on the quality of the relations. Today, from a physical point of view, the cities are composed, for the most part, of suburbs that are 30/40 years old. This is the age of the “physiological decline” of the used technologies, and for this reason they need many interventions to adapt the standards to the changed qualitative pretensions of the new generations. Living discomfort reveals itself through the market incapacity of not satisfying with the needs of the weaker users (even because of the progressive dismantling of public and national insurance real estate), and with the qualitative demand of contemporary people. The living discomfort doesn’t emerge (only) like an absolute quantitative lack of lodgings, but like a performance inadequacy of the existing living estate, considered with reference to the renewed structure of people and their needs, both at building level and at environmental, territorial and services level. Recently, in Europe, and in particular in Italy, several projects of upgrading are interesting for developing innovative and integrative solutions for areas characterized by a strong physical, social and economical decay. The main goal can be obtained by carrying out a kind of remodelling of the existing buildings, where the housing project is considered as an occasion to adjust the suburban quarters to the qualitative standard required nowadays by society; on the other hand, it can be achieved by a system of consistent works, which lies in the redesign of buildings, the definitions of new infrastructures and services and the enhancement of the old ones, the integration of the complexity of the internal relationships with the surrounding fabric of the city, and finally the involvement of the people.

In Italy, housing difficulties belong to citizens with low incomes or to disadvantaged people: policies in favor of houses have not been able to point out innovative and integrated systems and instruments able to generate a housing supply in differentiated rents, that could be a proper answer to, besides the social demand, even the part of demand coming from who, even if not considered poor, can’t afford free market rents, even when these are planned. In the 90es very little has been done, institutionally, to solve problems linked to the great housing discomfort and still now upgrading instruments are not specifically interested in the problem. Lately, experiences of research, carried out in Italy and in Europe, by committees, associations, co-operatives of solidarity field, started from ‘the bottom’ to solve access to housing problems, can be considered interesting and, for some aspects, in the forefront. The action fields of these organizations range from housing integration to supporting the purchase of a lodging, to the involvement, the restoration. It is so possible to recuperate, on the one hand, a massive under-utilized estate, that often is in bad conditions, and on the other hand, to address this part of recuperated estate to a social housing demand. The paper will try to define a methodological analysis that compares a top-down approach, related to some recent interventions of renovation in Italy and Europe, that developed integrated and innovative solutions in particularly problematic districts, with a bottom-up approach, that investigates the initiatives with which the No Profit companies faced the problem of integration, of renovation and access to a house of quality. At the same time, by analysing the recovery projects taking into account of solutions directed to improve the urban life quality, the paper explores the role of an immaterial upgrading and of a material upgrading, and their relationship. Combining the two approaches, it will be possible to define a proposal for an integrated renovation of suburbs, realizing shared interventions of good quality, where building, infrastructural, town-planning, financial, and management aspects are related and linked to the actions for the living discomfort reduction and for the right to a lodging of quality.

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Small ports and new planning regulations Luca Barbarossa The complexity of synergic relationship between infrastructural systems and urban planning can also be significantly uncounted in the logic of planning and management of coastal areas, particularly in port systems, historically characterized by conflictive relationships between ports and urban systems due to the planning and management of coastal and port areas. Planning tools have often proved inadequate in setting up development programs in areas that are conditioned by infrastructural processes managed with tools and methods different from urban planning methods. Therefore taking into consideration the complexity of the relationship between port infrastructures, waterfront lay-outs and urban planning, it is essential that an integrated interpretative of port city systems be introduced in order to determine appropriate planning tools for urban and land redevelopment, capable of rectifying the existing fractures between port and city. Small ports are particularly interesting, in terms of case studies, due to the planning dynamics, more similar to those met in urban planning, in which conflict between local authorities should be inex-istent and the objectives to be maximized should, in theory, coincide. However, in absence of adequate knowledge of port dynamics, the potential economic impact, risks to emerge as an element of disruption inducing distorted effects, greater in small ports than those in large ports. In small ports, on the contrary, the risk of total disuse of port infrastructure assets is run, in addition to negative impacts on the environment and landscape and the inability to utilize the coastal areas for alternative and increased added value uses. In numerous cases unproductive small ports continue to offload fixed costs onto the local community. This phenomenon is even less acceptable if one considers that in most cases small ports continue to manage the port through new infrastructure systems and development plans intended for new types of sea traffic. This occurs in consequence to a distorted self-promotion of small ports in accord with local authorities which continue to perceive the port as a possible source of economic growth for the community. The self-referential normative approach which regulates ports is accentuated on one hand by the guidelines for port planning regulations, not always congruent with urban and land planning tools, and on the other hand by the verification of the efficiency of the port planning regulations of which management and implementation procedures impose an institutional debate between local and port authorities, often characterized by unclear guidelines. A case study of a number of small Sicilian ports, conducted by means of a comparative study of port and surrounding urban area development plans and an analysis

of port facilities and type of traffic, demonstrates beyond rhetorical proclamations, a situation of uncertainty and contradiction. What emerged in the majority of cases was the inability and indifference in urban planning to look at the port-city interface renovation from a synergic and compatible point of view. Port planning regulations, in most cases are depicted as simple lists of public works, aimed at reinforcing the port, in consequence to analytical studies on port traffic and the level of infrastructure which often donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t correspond with reality. What is still lacking are indications that define the relationship between ports and the various aspects of urban systems. At a regional level, the plans should mainly consider aspect of infrastructural growth, endeavour to set up effective policies of integration with urban planning and introduce coordination procedures between the various ports through choices that consent neighbouring ports to reciprocally reinforce themselves, making maximum use of the respective specificity. At a local level, it is necessary to enhance the role of the city council in the implementation and development of port planning regulations so as to avoid conflict of interests. It is therefore necessary to deal with the functioning of urban planning and infrastructural growth also by means of legislative amendments, taking into consideration that port planning regulations are often in contrast with urban planning tools. In the case of small ports such regulation amendments would be particularly constructive, impeding unrealistic development planning schemes that often over-estimate the realistic potential of the port, consenting broader margins to evaluate alternative hypothesis, in some cases as drastic as the divestment of port facilities. New urban planning regulations in Sicily, have provided a number of indications to modify coastal area and port system management regulation tools and to organize integrated plans. At a regional level, integrated port planning regulations could be incorporated in strategic regional planning tools to then be carried out at an urban level through the application of city development plans or better still, detailed plans. In conformity with detailed plan guidelines, port planning schemes could be carried out, not only by city council and port authorities, but also by private companies directly involved in port facilities. Detailed plans that specify the potential utilization of the coastal areas, that identify the operative areas and infrastructure to be improved as well as classifying the different types of sea traffic. It is therefore necessary to overcome a rhetorical approach in planning and in development projects and to consider moreover alternative planning and management formats that consent improved integration between urban and port planning. Determining innovative planning and management tools for port systems can contribute to reinstating a proper urban role to small ports. For this reason, defining innovative infrastructural policies, in accordance with traditional planning policies, constitutes a fundamental step towards a new vision in port management. Urbanistica www.planum.net