Urbanistica n.143-2010 by Planum II(2010)

Urbanistica n. 143 July-September 2010

Distribution by www.planum.net

Index and english translation of the articles

Projects and implementation

Problems, policies and research

Paolo Avarello edited by Attilia Peano, Grazia Brunetta Attilia Peano Francesco Puma, Tommaso Simonelli Patrizia Lombardi Angela Colucci Grazia Brunetta Patrizia Saroglia Attilia Peano Dunia Mittner edited by, Valeria Fedeli Alessandro Balducci Zheng Shiling Yongyi Lu Li Qin Gan Jing Valeria Fedeli Corinna Morandi, Luca Gaeta Remo Dorigati Andrea Rolando Antonio Longo

Methods and tools

Profiles and practices

Stefano Stanghellini Ezio Micelli Assunta Martone, Marichela Sepe Elisa Morri, Giovanna Pezzi, Riccardo Santolini Antonio Alberto Clemente Francesco Chiodelli

The Paper Plan The planning of river basin towards integrated policies Environment, territory, and landscape A sustainable future for the Po river basin. The po river valley Strategic Project Assessment of Special Strategic Project by the Analytic Network Process The planning of river basin in Europe. Aims and central issue Sea, beyond the procedure for a Po river basin valorisation project Participation in Sea: a complicated question A territory and landscape project Planning and large urban projects. Stockholm 1990-2025 Shanghai, Expo 2010. Better city, better life: a new bet on the city Spatial planning and urban development The meaning of Expo 2010 Shanghai Between the glorious past and the splendid future at the opening of the world Expo 2010 China The Regional and Town Planning of Shanghai The design process for the Expo Shanghai site planning Notes of travel. Hybrids Notes of travel. Milano-Shanghai: round-back trip Notes of travel. The flowing river Notes of travel. The framework of open spaces for the Expo in Shanghai Notes of travel. 2010 Shanghai, a profile for a changing city Equalisation, compensation and incentives as news tools Transfer of development rights and the land use plan for urban planning The responsible approach to strategic planning: the Ppes and Sga of the Picentini regional Park Transformation of the territory in the Municioality of Rimini through the diacronica analysis of the landscape City: a term at its end. Revisiting the General theory of urbanization The centre of the planning: the tecnichal rules

Focus

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The Paper Plan Paolo Avarello A plan ought to express the intentions and the objectives of the administration promoting it, at least insofar as the relevant choices entail physical transformations of the city and of the territory. Transformations that can be carried out only over lengthy periods and which therefore cannot be ‘described’ in detail ex ante. The achieving of these objectives, in fact, means the involvement of various subjects, public and private, bearers of interests, sometimes contrasting ones, which should coalesce and converge on these objectives, as it is in any case not reasonable to think that the administrations could have the necessary resources available.

A brief panorama of the most recent plans, stripped – or almost – of the incrustations of the old town-planning legislation (although still partly in force) presents us with quite a depressing picture. Territorial, regional and provincial plans mostly give, in fact, readings/interpretations of the territory, that is, its ‘actual state’, in any case readable also from the basic maps. Associated with the various parts of the territory, broken down into a certain number of ‘categories’, or of ‘homogeneous sectors’, there are therefore indications, or even ‘norms’, to which correspond more or less differentiated ‘attentions’ and ‘treatments’.

The dominant motives of these plans, drowned in the rhetoric of unlikely ‘local identities’, ‘territorial development’, and naturally environmental, social, etc. ‘sustainability’, they delineate essentially forms of ‘safeguarding’ the territory. Hence no objective, other than that of the widespread, generic ‘conservation’ of the territory and relative, generic ‘development’. Plans that seem even to avoid giving indications/prescriptions of sectoral planning: basin plans, landscape, park, quarry, etc., plans, many of which moreover ‘prevail’ by law over ‘ordinary’ planning.

The territorial/landscape plan, chosen by some regions, in some way as a ‘simplification’, is therefore a sort of ‘model’, from which in fact the generically ‘territorial’ plans differ little. And in these, generally speaking, there is hardly any mention of certain crucial questions, such as the location of important structures (hospitals, prisons, industrial areas, high schools, universities, large commercial centres, etc.), or the system of infrastructures, in particular those of transport, obviously of great importance in the organization and in the functioning of the territory, whose impacts above all often generate conflicts and/or perhaps ‘compensations’, a posteriori.

Law 142/1990, which assigned ‘territorial planning’ (formerly of state competence, but reserved for specific and not generalized situations) to the provinces and not to the regions, foresaw systematic institutional ‘concerted agreement’ between regions, provinces and municipalities (the State remaining in any case ‘superordinate’), so

as to ensure/verify ex ante the compatibility of provincial and municipal plans with the action programmes of the regions. With the spread of territorial, regional and provincial plans, what seem instead to prevail are the ‘weak plans’, or a confrontation a posteriori between bureaucratic and hierarchical agencies, based de facto on conformity (with the higher level plan, even if coming into force a posteriori.

Also municipal plans, which have always been the core of Italian town planning, and which also because of this have undergone the most evident innovations and transformations, nonetheless do not seem to express clearly concrete, credible objectives of urban and territorial transformation. Is it really sufficient to quote (in the plan regulations) the new complex programmes, conceived as ‘operative’, through planned public/private agreement, and then merely in the plan maps indicating the ‘zones’ where they will be developed? How many ‘building areas’ in the old plans have remained ‘unbuilt’? And instead how many non-building areas have been built on as ‘variants’, or perhaps more or less illegally?

What then are the choices of the municipalities, what are the readable objectives in their plans, once all the flowery language has been trimmed away? If these exist, they are generally bogged down in a morass of signs and words, which have very little to do with the concrete possibilities of being carried out by the administration, with or without private partners. And meanwhile the attributions of ‘buildability’ in the ‘old’ plans continue to weigh down on everything.

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Urbanistica n. 143 July-September 2010

Distribution by www.planum.net

Index and english translation of the articles Paolo Avarello

Projects and implementation

Problems, policies and research

edited by Attilia Peano, Grazia Brunetta Attilia Peano Francesco Puma, Tommaso Simonelli Patrizia Lombardi Angela Colucci Grazia Brunetta Patrizia Saroglia Attilia Peano Dunia Mittner edited by, Valeria Fedeli Alessandro Balducci Zheng Shiling Yongyi Lu Li Qin Gan Jing Valeria Fedeli Corinna Morandi, Luca Gaeta Remo Dorigati Andrea Rolando Antonio Longo

Methods and tools

Profiles and practices

Stefano Stanghellini Ezio Micelli Assunta Martone, Marichela Sepe Elisa Morri, Giovanna Pezzi, Riccardo Santolini Antonio Alberto Clemente Francesco Chiodelli

The Paper Plan

The planning of river basin towards integrated policies Environment, territory, and landscape A sustainable future for the Po river basin. The po river valley Strategic Project Assessment of Special Strategic Project by the Analytic Network Process The planning of river basin in Europe. Aims and central issue Sea, beyond the procedure for a Po river basin valorisation project Participation in Sea: a complicated question A territory and landscape project Planning and large urban projects. Stockholm 19902025 Shanghai, Expo 2010. Better city, better life: a new bet on the city Spatial planning and urban development The meaning of Expo 2010 Shanghai Between the glorious past and the splendid future at the opening of the world Expo 2010 China The Regional and Town Planning of Shanghai The design process for the Expo Shanghai site planning Notes of travel. Hybrids Notes of travel. Milano-Shanghai: round-back trip Notes of travel. The flowing river Notes of travel. The framework of open spaces for the Expo in Shanghai Notes of travel. 2010 Shanghai, a profile for a changing city Equalisation, compensation and incentives as news tools Transfer of development rights and the land use plan for urban planning The responsible approach to strategic planning: the Ppes and Sga of the Picentini regional Park Transformation of the territory in the Municioality of Rimini through the diacronica analysis of the landscape City: a term at its end. Revisiting the General theory of urbanization The centre of the planning: the tecnichal rules

Problems, policies, and research

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Environment, territory, and landscape Attilia Peano Environment, territory, and landscape are fields of study, skills and action with relative autonomy, but strongly related. In these areas are addressed the major international strategies that will guide territorial policy in the third millennium: conservation of biodiversity, for the life of the planet, and strongly linked to health and economy; protection of landscape as ecological resource, cultural, social and economic; and sustainable development as a guiding principle of most appropriate relationship between the human activities and the global environment.

In our country the hydro-geological risk management was always considered a sector theme of territorial planning with weak results on effectiveness of precautionary actions and ex-ante land use policies. This situation is increasingly in the frequent episodes of instability that have interested, in recent years, large portions of the country with serious consequences for the urbanized area. The planning of the river basin is of particular importance to implement the greater integration between land use planning and hydro-geological resources management. In this perspective, the Po river basin Authority has promoted an innovative planning approach. The new plan ‘Po Valley Special Project’ has introduced new integrated and strategic goals.

The following papers of the multidisciplinary researchers group discuss this new strategic vision, with particular focus on the implementation of Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) to the planning of the Po river basin.

The SEA methodology, developed and tested during the multidisciplinary research project coordinated for the Po river basin Authority in 2008, has been designed with the aim of strengthening the implementation of river basin planning at local level.

According with the evaluation methodology experimented, the Po river basin planning should move towards an innovative spatial planning process. This should be inclusive and oriented to implement shared plans and projects regarding necessary works to mitigate risk, and actions aimed at conservation and the environmental restoration included in the framework of sustainable development.

A sustainable future for the Po river basin.

The Po river valley Strategic Project Francesco Puma, Tommaso Simonelli

Foreword Valorisation and risk reduction in a defined territory can be reached only through an integrated policy in sectors related to landslide- and flood- risks mitigation, water resources protection and environment protection. Moving from this vision, the Po river basin Authority promoted the ‘Po river valley Strategic Project’ to overcome sectorial intervention approaches, and to strengthen the vision at basin scale.

The project started with the Agreement protocol to enhance and protect the territory of and to promote population safety in the Po Valley signed in Mantova on may 27th 2005 by the Po river basin Authority and the 13 riverine provinces. The ‘Po river valley Strategic Project’ (hereinafter called Project) involves different institutional levels, sharing the same principles and goals. Project strategic goals are described below.

Main objectives of the Project To enforce existing basin plans and European directives concerning the matter (EU Birds Directive, Habitat Directive, Water Framework Directive and Floods Directive), the project has set the following main objectives: – to enhance hydraulic safety conditions and recover ‘room for the river’ in the plain territories; – to promote the conservation of ecological integrity of the territory alongside the Po river and the conservation of water resources; – to increase the natural and cultural heritage value of the fluvial territories, improving accessibility for local population and for sustainable tourism; – to strengthen the overall Po river governance system and increase the level of knowledge and participation in order to improve interventions programming and realization ability, under the banner of sustainability.

For what concerns the first objective, the Flood and Landslide risk mitigation plan for the Po river basin (Piano per l’Assetto Idrogeologico – PAI) represents the main planning tool to individuate preventing and mitigating actions regarding hydrogeological risks (answering to the EU Floods Directive).

The actual risk mitigation structural system (especially embankments along the Po and major rivers), though, even if coherent with the general PAI prescriptions, shows some local criticalities.

Furthermore some evolutionary trends, man-induced, let the territory become more vulnerable to hydrogeological risks. The increasing river channels artificialization and inert-quarrying activities are indeed causing, in some reaches of the Po river, a channel deepening up to 2 meters, that produces general damages to navigaUrbanistica www.planum.net

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tion and withdrawal works, and to bridges structures. To solve these criticalities the Project aims at: – solving local problems concerning the embankment system; – re-balancing the sediment-yield transport; – deepening the knowledge necessary to manage residual flooding-risk, according to the EU Floods Directive approach, through residual risk mapping and population correct information.

The second objective deals with actions finalized at the strengthening and size-increasing of the ecological network and at a better integrated management of water resources, including environmental uses.

Along the Po river many CISs and SPZs have actually been individuated, belonging to the European Natura 2000 Network.

On these aspects the Strategic Special Project aims at promoting the completion and coordination of management plans of Natura 2000 areas, maintaining the vision of the whole river system.

The third objective focuses on the natural and cultural heritage potential value of the fluvial territories, and brings actions forth to improve territorial attractivity and sustainable economic activities and tourism.

The fourth objective crosses all the other three, and deals with the strengthening of the governance system. Jurisdictions fragmentation between different institutional levels and complexity of communication between different actors, involve the necessity to develop cooperative models to reach effective results.

Project progress update Considering the principles and objectives characterizing the project, the Interministerial Committee for economic programming (Comitato Interministeriale per la Programmazione Economica: CIPE) has assigned the project 180 milions Euro, using resources from the Fund for Depressed Areas, with the Resolution n. 166 dated 21st december 2007, which implements the National Strategic Framework for the period 2007-2013.

CIPE approved the project on the 2nd April 2008.

With the resolution dated 6th march 2009, CIPE allocated the funds, formerly assigned to national strategic projects, to a new Fund established at the Prime Minister’s Office. At the time being, institutions involved in the project are setting the base to start the preliminary implementation phase.

Assessment of Special Strategic Project by the Analytic Network Process Patrizia Lombardi Planning and management of water and river basins usually deals with multiple and conflicting issues which are concerned with territorial, economic, environmental, social components. The list of issues mentioned by the EU Directive on Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) includes, alongside ‘traditional’ issues such biodiversity, flora and fauna, population, health, water, soil, landscape, aspects related to mobility, energy efficiency, climatic change which are more closely linked to human activities and their impacts on the eco-system. These issues are often interrelated and dependencies can be recognized among the aspects involved. More specifically, in river basin district planning and management, the selection of environmental objectives is influenced by the complex reciprocal interactions between the river basin district conditions and the human (social, economic and cultural) activities.

Traditionally, the evaluation of water planning and management issues is conducted by adopting conventional impact assessment techniques and multi-criteria analysis which are based on bi-dimensional (matrices) and hierarchical schemes. These do not allow an interrelated and holistic assessment of all the components, including those within the same cluster which may led to rank reversal result findings.

The evaluation approach for the alternative environmental strategic objectives carried out in this case study, on the contrary, has been based on an innovative methodology, the Analytic Network Process (ANP), which makes possible interactions and feedback among decision elements. The ANP is the first mathematical approach that makes possible to systematically deal with all kinds of dependencies and feedback among elements. It requires the identification of a network of clusters and nodes, as well as pair-wise comparison to establish relations within the network elements.

The model consisted in four clusters: the environmental categories cluster, including Water resources; Soil; Flora, fauna, biodiversity; Landscape, environmental and cultural assets, rural spaces; Hydro-geological risk; and the three clusters of Actions described in the SSP. This model has allowed a more realistic representation and weights estimation of the complex reciprocal interactions between the water district conditions and the human (social, economic and cultural) activities. Therefore, it has been able to better reflects the spirit and recommendations included in the recent norms and regulations related to SEA. After identifying the nodes of the problem, the relationships of influence in the network were structured.

The application was conducted inside a focus group, composed by the supervisors of the Special Strategic ‘Po River’ Project (SSP) and the members of the work Urbanistica www.planum.net

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group in charge for the evaluation of the project, at the Po River Basin Authority in Parma on may 21, 2008.

The results obtained have shown a strengthened integration of the strategic environmental issues within the management of sustainable regional development policies, pinpointing the need for a deeper valorisation of landscape and cultural heritage. These findings reflect the recent River Po Basin Authority strategy to institute an integrated and coordinated policy action in the field, providing an additional aid toward the achievement of integrated policies for the long-term sustainability and resilience of the Po District.

The planning of river basins in Europe.

Aims and central issues Angela Colucci European polices: integrations versus project The two directives Europeea Water Framework Directive (WFD - 2000/60/EC) and Directive on Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA - 2001/22/EC) are two important points of reference in theme of landscape and environmental policies.

The two Directives share several peculiarities: – they insist on the possibility of creating large scale effects on the environment and on the quality of European territories; – they lead to administrative and inter-disciplinary crosssector effects (activation of institutional dialogue); – they suggest an inevitable and necessary dialogue/ communication between traditionally ‘strong’ disciplines.

The SEA Directive, introducing the strategic environmental assessment of plans and programs, provides integration between disciplines traditionally associated with physical, natural and environmental aspects with disciplines of planning, social-economic management towards sustainability goals.

Similarly, the WFD introduces an integrated approach to water resources management, in protecting and improving quality-quantity of the resource, in the management of water services, in the improvement of ecological systems and in the hydrogeological integrated risk management.

Knowledge platforms An instrument for the implementation of the WFD is the construction of knowledge platforms that aim at the integration of models, methods and technical informationspecification.

There can be found institutional platforms, researchoriented platform that focus on a multidisciplinary approach to the construction of methods and patterns and platforms aiming at sharing practice and experience.

The first kind includes institutional platforms as Water Information System for Europe, which collects data on river basins and all data related to the WFD. There are also numerous examples of research platforms, many of which were developed as follow-up of research projects or experiments, such as inter-European Harmonica, SPI-water or NeWater. An example of a consolidated platform is FLOOD-site, a common interface and information system which refers to cognitive relationships, experiences and information documents developed by a complex network of organizations on the issue of prevention and mitigation of flood risks.

Another kind of portals are those supported by professional organizations and individuals / organizations and oriented to share good practice (such as the institutional site of the European Water Association - EWA).

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Programs, plans and design In recent years the issue of planning and design of the territories along the rivers has become strategically important. Four major types of intervention can be pointed out: a. experiences linked to the implementation of the WFD: plans and programs at basin level; b. integrated river basin management projects that insist on the quality of territories through river basin management; c. integrated projects of territorial and urban development that insist on spatial planning and integrated strategic goals, thorugh the application of principles of sustainable management of river basins; d. design proposals (flood design) that aim at developing a different approach to architectural design of the river front, through mutual integration between architectural/ urban design and a renewed relationship with the River.

Experiences of implementation of the WFD Since the ‘90s the authorities of the major river basins in Europe have re-oriented the programs and measures for land-river management by integrating sustainable development goals and improving overall quality planning.

The contents of river basin management plan required by the WFD (see BOX WFD) perfectly fits to large European international basins in Europe (like Rhine, Danube, Elbe ...). Among these, i.e. the Rhine and the Danube Distric Authorities have already published their draft management plan.

spaces, drives towards the redevelopment and revitalization of the city. There are also some cases of smaller cities and projects that have adopted a similar strategy of innovation and revitalization: an example is offered by Ladenburg, Germany.

The redefinition of the relationship between land and river is also present in regional plans. For example, the region of Nord-Rhine Westphalia has developed a regional strategic plan that identifies the river Rhine as the element of identity of the whole region. The project includes different axes of intervention, all interconnected and aiming at the reconstruction of a new and different relationship with the River.

Design proposals (Flood design) The issue of integration between architectural design/ urban design and environmental (management of flood risks) has led to develop innovative and interesting design hybridization. This trend is witnessed by the architectural competition sponsored by the Royal Institute of British Architects on the ‘design flood’ which called for the development projects of residential settlements with low vulnerability.

Several urban renewal projects combine hydrogeologic protection objectives, environmental quality with the construction of buildings and urban neighbourhoods.

Projects of integrated river basin management Since 1994 the European Commission had dedicated funds to international cooperation projects on the theme ‘Fight against flooding and drought’ (INTERREG IIC) and to the issues of integrated management of water resources and river basins.

The project Cyclic Floodplain Rejuvenation (IRMASPONGE) provides coordinated interventions throughout the Rhine basin aimed at improving ecosystem and landscape quality, insisting on the degradated traits through the displacement of banks. This project also sustained the realization of the project Ruimte voor de Rivier along the courses of the Rhine, Wall, Maas and IJssel rivers from the city of Millingen to the city of Rotterdam. The park contains different environments and activities with educational tours.

Similarly other river parks were settled as a result of programs and/or water management initiatives: the Polder Altenheim Park, the Pamina Rheinpark and the Ruhrtal Park.

Combined spatial and urban development There are many examples of urban regeneration that take inspiration from the redefinition and enhancement of the relationship between the city and the river. Examples include the Basel Strategic Plan Impulsprojekt Rhine. This plan, acting on the quality of river places and Urbanistica www.planum.net

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Sea, beyond the procedure for a Po river basin valorisation project Grazia Brunetta The European Directive on assessment of the environmental impact of plans and programmes (SEA) introduces the strategic dimension of evaluation as a process to be carried out in parallel with drafting of the plan in order to gradually implement the construction of environmental sustainability scenarios.

In recent years, against a backdrop characterised, amongst others, by considerable delay in transposing the related European Directive in Italy, current experimentation have revealed a lack of integration between evaluation and the planning process.

The problem of integration between evaluation and planning is not a new issue and is intrinsically tied to the original idea of planning. With regard to this point, it is worth recalling Abdul Khakee’s well-known article, written in 1998, which defines evaluation and planning as ‘inseparable concepts’, stressing their close integration and retracing historic interrelations and forms of reciprocity between planning theory and evaluation approaches in planning systems. Design of the evaluation process is not a ‘neutral’ action, indifferent to the planning context in which it is inserted but, from this point of view, may play a significant role in redesigning the capacity and institutional role of the territorial governance (Alexander, 2005).

Strategic Environment Assessment acquires valued added if, in turn, it is interpreted as a possible (certainly not the only) integration strategy able to mainstream environmental issues in plans or programmes in an attempt to enhance the level of acceptability of decisions and to reinforce the effectiveness of territorial governance actions (Brunetta, 2008). The article proposes this interpretative perspective, illustrating the institutional and technical conditions that may facilitate this process of integration. The opportunity to discuss how to address this theoretical question in practice was provided by the proposed evaluation methodology designed for the Po River Basin Authority. This article describes the underlying principles of the design of the SEA methodology of the Po River Valley Strategic Project (PSS) in order to highlight the methods and goals of integrating strategic assessment in river basin planning.

The SEA methodology in planning of the River Po Basin Plan Two basic conditions were assumed as the main tenets for the design of the SEA methodology.

The first concerns the type of object to be evaluated: not a single plan or programme of the Po River Basin Authority (Adb) but the river basin planning, that is the comprehensive view launched by the plans and programmes (within the competence of the Po River basin Authority) that impact basin territorial, environmental and landsca-

pe resources.

The Po River basin plan is a transcalar, multi-sector planning process, launched following approval of the ‘basin plan’ (2003) and currently being revised towards a strategic approach perspective. The SEA methodology applied to river basin planning has been configured in such a way as to facilitate the planning process in the territories of the basin (from the river to local area). The second concerns the need to manage the governance process in the territories of the Po. This implies the need to manage land use conflicts, adopting processes able to increase cohesion between stakeholders and levels of governance, a sine qua non to achieve a satisfactory level of effectiveness of basin planning.

The main ethos of the evaluation approach adopted for Po river basin planning is that it is carried out in parallel with such on-going decisional process, with the aim of contributing to construction of a reference framework (consisting of selection and priority criteria) for the prior definition of shared intervention options and goals.

Structure and results of the evaluation process According to the institutional conditions outlined above, an opportunity to experiment application of a strategic process of the environmental assessment ‘inside’ the construction of the Po river basin planning process arose in 2007 when Po River basin Authority technicians started to draw up the Preliminary draft of the River Po Valley strategic project (PSS) (Interministerial Committee for Economic Programming resolution of 21/12/2007), approved in May 2008. The PSS is configured as a strategic plan that proposes a new vision of the Po river basin, based on achievement of qualifying objectives concerning four areas of action: (i) improvement of hydraulic safety, increase in the lamination capacity of the river banks and morphological reconstruction of the flood plain; (ii) conservation of the ecological integrity of the river banks and water resources of the River Po; (iii) the system of fruition and cultural and tourist facilities; (iv) the system of governance and of immaterial networks for knowledge, training and participation.

The structure of the SEA process is defined according to areas of action and key issues of the PSS: (i) water resources, (ii) soil, (iii) biodiversity, (iv) landscape and environmental assets, (v) hydro-geological risk. These five key issues become the environmental categories clusters of the SEA process. Structuring of the process takes into account the strong interrelations between the environmental categories clusters/decision-making and organizes the information according to two levels of analysis and evaluation. The first level, of bi-dimensional type, concerns identification of the relationships between the areas of action clusters (and related actions within each area) and the five environmental categories clusters. This level of analysis highlights only the hierarchical relationships inside each area of action and those within the same cluster and does not take into account the multiple, complex relationships that exist, Urbanistica www.planum.net

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reciprocally and generally, between the various areas of action and environmental categories clusters. The second level of analysis permits the structuring of the evaluation problem according to a multi-dimensional logic.

It has been decided to adopt the multi-criteria technique of the Analytic Network Process (ANP) which makes it possible to move from a bi-dimensional to a multi-dimensional type of analysis and evaluation, able to highlight the complex linkages between the areas of action of the PSS. The ANP was tested during two workshops with Po River Basin Authority technicians, inserting this in the process of preparation of the PSS as a basis for prioritising the areas of action and issues.

The framework delineated by the evaluation process configures a complex project, now in course, sustained by a system of governance based on scientific knowledge, technical training and social participation. Therefore, the process of Po River Basin planning, started with the aid of the SEA methodology, outlines a planning action perspective to be completely implemented and undeniably difficult to apply in view of its complexity, but which certainly promises virtuous results in terms of quality and effectiveness.

Participation in Sea: a complicated question Patrizia Saroglia The Directive 2001/42/EC is being introduced by the European Union requiring national, regional and local authorities in Member States to carry out strategic environmental assessment on certain plans and programmes that they promote.

This considers the Strategic environmental assessment (Sea) key tool for integrating environmental considerations into policies, programs and plans and considers the participatory process a basic element for that decision-making instrument.

In practice, however, there is constant difficulty in applying the participatory approach to the Sea instrument.

The problem is that the Sea as a process of character ‘strategic’ presents a vague under investigation object (because revolves around issues/ actions and matters in general), while the participation only makes sense if it can define precise stakes.

How to escape from this impasse then, bearing in mind the directions of the directive without reducing on the one hand, the sea a mere bureaucratic, and the other without falling into the rhetoric of participation?

To define ‘involved’ a process of Sea, then it is necessary that the object of evaluation is as limited as possible. The questions referred to the environmental assessment should address problematic issues clearly and territorially defined, few in number and at the same time understandable and relevant to the actors involved. But making the specific object of the Sea is not always possible. So when it is not possible, so to avoid falling into the rhetoric of participation, we must give up trying to define and conduct a Sea undertaking. This is not to diminish the value of Sea, but to scale down expectations.

The strength of Sea lies in its being a technocratic element fallen in the decision making process. Accepting this minimalist vision, Sea has the opportunity to overcome assessments of nature by technique alone.

Taking this path however, means that on the one hand, it stays away from the bureaucratic logic of performance, but on the other, it resizes ‘dogmatic’ type expectations able to exhaust any uncertainty about the right thing to do. The Sea aspiration should then be declined to the field of constructing information needed to define the ‘perception of risk’ associated with the implementation of the interventions needing to be assessed.

Where perception is the fundamental common element, notwithstanding the unavoidable differences in perspective, everyone subject to interventions will have to live with.

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A territory and landscape project Attilia Peano According to the Community directive, Strategic environmental assessment (Sea) is intended not only to guarantee a suitable level of environmental protection but also to contribute to integrating environmental considerations into the preparation of plans and programmes in order to promote sustainable development.

The case examined would appear to comply fully with such objectives as it has accompanied the policy-making process throughout the Po basin management policymaking and also encompasses various environmental concerns. In fact, during the works, the Sea methodology, launched with reference to the P.A.I., was applied to the Po River Valley Strategic Project (PSS), characterised by a strongly integrated territorial perspective that embraces not only conservation of water resource quantity and quality but also protection of the river banks, improvement of the safety of local populations, strengthening of the ecological network, improved fruition of environmental and historic-cultural resources and river tourism. A highly innovative vision that overarches the traditional sectorial approach, promoting coordinated, synergic action of different policies in accordance with Community Directive guidelines regarding water, protection of the land, biodiversity, and with the European Landscape Convention.

Its strength lies in integration The four areas of action of the project - enhancement of hydraulic safety conditions, conservation of the ecological integrity of the territory alongside the River Po and of water resources, system of fruition and cultural and tourist facilities and governance - configure an inseparable system of relationships between actions, objects and stakeholders linked to the territory and landscape. The policies promoted by the Po River Basin Authority encompass not only sector planning actions but also uses and activities of the territory, involving territorial institutions, park authorities, other sector representatives and, in particular, the local populations who become actors and must know, discuss, dialogue and share a complex project whose success is closely tied to joint participation in decisions and application of these. The PSS is a major national project that embraces the entire plain of the Po, four regions and all the riverine provinces, close on 500 Municipalities; the river corridor represents the natural backbone of Northern Italy, a major, also economic resource for inhabitants and agriculture, a landscape that can become a major factor of attraction able to stimulate new sustainable rural, craft, commercial and recreational tourism activities.

thodology returned a ranking, according to the evaluation criteria, that places major weight on the ‘valorising the river area’s natural and cultural heritage’ node that embraces polices for safety of the land, water management, conservation of biodiversity, land use, fruition and valorisation of resources.

The final ranking of the environmental category clusters stressed the priority of the ‘landscape, environment and cultural heritage and rural spaces’ cluster, inserting the PSS as an integrated landscape policy within the framework of the European Landscape Convention. The evaluation method reveals the in-depth innovation introduced by the PSS compared with traditional sector type river basin policies, which have often proved to be of limited effectiveness as based exclusively on sector-level actions and environmental and territorial constraints.

Recouping of landscape policies in order to develop actions addressing environmental conservation and requalification, safety of the populations and activities, suitable valorisation of fruition in order to promote balanced, sustainable development of the territory represents the new frontier proposed by international guidelines.

Landscape and territory in the future The landscape embodies values that have emerged in contemporary society and which involve collective and transgenerational interests, establishing new rights and new duties, tied to on-going in-depth changes: transit to the post-industrial era, economic and social globalisation, the advent of the digital era, the role of communication and image. Which prospects may unfold for landscape planning? What role can it play in redefining the relationship between planning and society? The landscape involves questions of ecology, of structured permanences, of perception but also addresses, preponderately, questions of territorial governance such as land use and safety, management of water, consumption of territory, depopulation, infrastructure sprawl, the conditions of rural areas, the rapport between city-natureagriculture, the local economy. Questions and policies that involve the contemporary social project and which impose the need for innovative technical, administrative, regulatory, planning instruments able to accompany transformation processes rather than being imposed, open to dialogue, to confrontation, incentivation. Landscape and territory are, therefore, inextricably linked in order to construct a prospect of ‘sustainable’ progress of society. A path fraught with difficulties as it implies overcoming the fragmentation and sectorial nature of laws, rules, financing, organization of the public administration at all levels, also encouraging private operators to take a vision of the future impacted by the effects, also economic, of improved management of the territory and landscape.

The landscape as cohesive factor of the project In the technical experimentation carried out, the Sea meUrbanistica www.planum.net

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Planning and large urban projects.

Stockholm 1990-2025 Dunia Mittner Hammarby Sjöstadt, Norra Djurgårdenstaden and Årstafältet are the most important operations of urban transformation undertaken in Stockholm during the last decades.

This text aims at introducing these projects and leaving them on a background constituted by the city’s general planning documents of the second half of the Twentieth Century, emphasizing the elements of continuity and change.

The project for Hammarby Sjöstadt (‘the city around lake Hammarby’) starts in 1990 following Stockholm’s candidature for the 2004 Olympic Games and will be finished in 2012.

Concerning Norra DjurgårdenstadenStockholm Royal Seaport (‘The city of Norra Djurgården’) the preliminary operations connected to land reclamation start in 2000 and the complete realization is foreseen in 2025.

The project that is located later in time is Nya Årstafältet (‘The new Årsta Field’); in 2008 a competition for the area’s reorganization in a new district around a park is started and the realization should happen between 2012 and 2030.

The three operations are placed within the recent capital city’s Plan adopted in February 2010, the Översiktsplan 2010 (ÖP 2010, Stockholm City Plan 2010), which proposes four strategies of urban transformation.

The first strategy consists on the expansion of the compact city beyond its historical borders, trying to create a continuity with the first outer ring, and it concerns about ten wide areas, mostly underused or not interested anymore by industrial, harbour and railway functions, to be assigned to mixed uses, residential, offices and leisure activities.

The second strategy foreseen by the 2010 Plan consists on the development of some nodes outside the compact city, five of them located South and four North. It gives a specific attention to the densification of the external urban poles in order to reach a balanced development of the entire metropolitan Region, with the aim to increase the offer of services, culture and jobs and to expand and upgrade public transportation.

The improvement of infrastructures, of cycle and pedestrian transportations, the construction of new areas close to parks and public spaces, in order to promote the connection among the different parts of the city, constitute the third strategy advanced by the 2010 Plan.

The picture of the main interventions is completed by the projects working around the subject of the creation of high quality public spaces and of spaces adjusted to technical functions in order to realize a lively and intense urban environment.

The construction of a long period’s background through Stockholm’s Plans Hammarby Sjöstadt’s district appears as an exemplary application of the Översiktsplan’s 1999 (ÖP 1999) ideas, aimed at re-drawing the extensive city through operations directly related to the central city, located exclusively on urbanized lands, abandoned or under-used, the so called ‘brown-fields’.

The ÖP 1999 places the main interventions of urban re-drawing around twelve big areas located on a ring around the centre or near it. The idea is to realize new city’s parts equipped with internal complexity and characterized by mixed functions, residential, offices and leisure, in order to take advantage of already made infrastructural investments and to bring to a higher performance the fixed capital in such a way constituted.

The previous Plan, the first document extended to the entire Municipality drawn after the Plan by Markelius of 1952, is represented by ÖP 1999, the first Comprehensive Plan of the Capital’s history, according to the directives of the National Building and Planning Act from 1988, imposing to all Municipalities to provide themselves with a Plan to be periodically updated. It’s a programmatic document, which aims particularly at regulating the system of waters and the use of land through different directives for the central areas and the suburban districts.

Concerning the Nineteenth Century city the restoration of the residential buildings and of the areas to which a historical value is recognized, such as the Röda Bergen district and the Central Business District (CBD) with the five blades of the Plan by Markelius, raised to symbol of the Functional City and of the Social-Democratic Welfare is foreseen.

The Plan faces also the problem of the further development of the external lands urbanized between the Fifties and the Sixties. It divides the sub-urban expansions considering the period of construction, by building a detailed map of the development’s phases of the city.

Five phases are identified, each corresponding to a type of suburban development, for each of which rules of intervention are defined: the garden-cities from the Twenties with single or private semi-detached houses, the districts from the Thirties, the ones built between the Thirties and the Fifties with the ‘thin houses type’, the satellite cities built between 1950 and 1965, at the end the districts built between 1965 and 1975.

The establisher action of the Plan by Markelius The main directives of attention towards the central areas on one side, and towards suburban expansions on the other, characterizing the decades between the Fifties and the Seventies are established by the most well-known document of the Town Planning history of the Capital, the Generalplan för Stockholm by Sven Markelius from 1952. It defines the city’s structure of today through the construction of a net of satellite cities around the ‘mother’ city and the configuration within it of a city as ‘pulsating heart’ of the whole body, with offices Urbanistica www.planum.net

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and commercial functions.

The main target, now reached, consists on the gradual substitution of the monocentric system of the Capital city with a polycentric system, through a policy of decentralization of working and residential activities at a regional scale. The fundamental elements of the Plan is represented by the underground’s net, constituting the main infrastructure of the Region: the satellite cities are located along it following a role defining in forty-five minutes the maximum travelling time between ‘satellites” and ‘pole’.

The directives given by the Plan by Markelius address the growth of the Capital through the construction of three generations of satellite-cities (corresponding to the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies), different among them in relation to the design principles. Concerning the settlements built during the Seventies (Norra Järvafältet Development Area) they seem to privilege the use of high densities and the research of new rules for urban additions, as in the case of Kista, conceived as a regional pole for services specialized in the electronic sector.

The suburban expansions from the Sixties (Södra Järvafältet Development Area) organize districts abandoning the use of neighborhood units characterizing the Plan from 1952 and the first generation’s towns, in favour of streets drawing a regular network.

A first aspect characterizing the districts from the Fifties is represented by the arrangement of the residential’s space in order to organize the urban space through well defined and of limited dimensions units.

In its overall order, the space built by first the generation’s towns appears almost as a ‘typological handbook’ with the purpose to favour the variety of building types and volumes, secondly located in relation to topography.

The streets’ layout is mainly curvy, following the garden city’s tradition.

moments of lack of continuity among the Plans. The attention to central areas and to suburban expansions given by the 1952 and 1990 Plans is substituted by the accent on the areas on the edges of the central city given by ÖP 1999. ÖP 2010 seems to confirm this strategy, adding a new attention towards the extended outskirts.

Starting from the observation of the projects of Hammarby Sjöstadt, Norra Djurgårdenstaden and Årstafältet a new phase in the Capital’s planning history seems to emerge. The fundamental elements of the project change: in the first two cases these are still the building block, the construction along the perimeter and its variations, in the most recent example the research seems to text new typologies and densities, able to work as connections with the city’s centre.

One more different element is related to the actors of the transformations and the methods of their realizations.

In the case of the first two projects they seem to belong to the Swedish tradition, demanding to the Public the architectural control of the entire operation, through the General Plan and the criticism of the detailed projects.

In the case of Årstafältet, the Municipality draws up the program in advance and the general goals of the transformation and demands the general project as well to external architects selected through a competition, while keeping the power to take part again in the project in a second moment.

The importance of the political and managerial continuity The importance given to public transportation and to the diversity of its offer characterizes the urban planning history of the Capital, starting form the drawing of the underground’s net foreseen by the 1952 Plan.

The attention given to open space represents the second long period element of continuity of the Scandinavian and Swedish tradition. The Plan by Markelius draws the underground’s net and the new planned suburbs starting from the protection of the wooded areas and of the existing natural open spaces; the relation between built environment and topography is very strong and a particular attention is given to the spatial distribution of the recreational equipments.

A common aspect among the Plans is the overall conception of the green areas, which is thought as a system constituted by urban parks, small green areas within the compact city, natural elements dividing the parts of the ‘archipelag city’, natural tanks outside the city’s centre.

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Urbanistica n. 143 July-September 2010

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Index and english translation of the articles

Problems, policies and research

Paolo Avarello edited by Attilia Peano, Grazia Brunetta Attilia Peano Francesco Puma, Tommaso Simonelli Patrizia Lombardi Angela Colucci Grazia Brunetta Patrizia Saroglia Attilia Peano Dunia Mittner

Projects and implementation

edited by, Valeria Fedeli Alessandro Balducci Zheng Shiling Yongyi Lu Li Qin Gan Jing Valeria Fedeli Corinna Morandi, Luca Gaeta Remo Dorigati Andrea Rolando Antonio Longo

Methods and tools

Profiles and practices

Stefano Stanghellini Ezio Micelli Assunta Martone, Marichela Sepe Elisa Morri, Giovanna Pezzi, Riccardo Santolini Antonio Alberto Clemente Francesco Chiodelli

The Paper Plan The planning of river basin towards integrated policies Environment, territory, and landscape A sustainable future for the Po river basin. The po river valley Strategic Project Assessment of Special Strategic Project by the Analytic Network Process The planning of river basin in Europe. Aims and central issue Sea, beyond the procedure for a Po river basin valorisation project Participation in Sea: a complicated question A territory and landscape project Planning and large urban projects. Stockholm 1990-2025

Shanghai, Expo 2010. Better city, better life: a new bet on the city Spatial planning and urban development The meaning of Expo 2010 Shanghai Between the glorious past and the splendid future at the opening of the world Expo 2010 China The Regional and Town Planning of Shanghai The design process for the Expo Shanghai site planning Notes of travel. Hybrids Notes of travel. Milano-Shanghai: round-back trip Notes of travel. The flowing river Notes of travel. The framework of open spaces for the Expo in Shanghai Notes of travel. 2010 Shanghai, a profile for a changing city Equalisation, compensation and incentives as news tools Transfer of development rights and the land use plan for urban planning The responsible approach to strategic planning: the Ppes and Sga of the Picentini regional Park Transformation of the territory in the Municioality of Rimini through the diacronica analysis of the landscape City: a term at its end. Revisiting the General theory of urbanization The centre of the planning: the tecnichal rules

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Spatial planning and urban development

The meaning of Expo 2010 Shanghai

Alessandro Balducci

Zheng Shiling

The Phd programme in Spatial planning and urban development was founded three years ago in order to provide english speaking education offer in the field of planning at Politecnico di Milano. A series of reason has convinced us to take this initiative for several reasons: the first is linked with the fact that Italy, as a in-between land can offer interesting contributions between the anglosaxon culture of planning and the mediterranean one, coping at the same time with the attention to process and product.

The second reason is linked with the growing number of international students attending since several years our master of science in planning and policy design and the one in architecture at Politecnico: on the base of our interest in deepening their education in planning, we have started evaluating this perspective, acknowledging the importance of their presence and contribution in qualifying our educational offer.

In our Phd program in Spatial planning and urban development we try to look at planning and urban design problems with a special attention to the issue of global cities.

In fact we believe that the standardized character model of urbanization in use throughout the world makes clear the difficulties of the discipline to cope with the problems of an accelerated urban development. Starting from the italian and european tradition we believe that we can contribute to contrast this weakness opening spaces for reflection and research aiming at understanding urban process and building new perspectives for action.

The workshop on Expo Shanghai 2010 held in november 2009 is part of this picture and has been an important occasion to know an extraordinary city, the incredible problems of development it is copying with, and to start a critical reflection on the topic of the International exhibition, going beyond the rhetoric of the event: the link between urban quality and the quality of life.

Expo 2010 Shanghai has written down several records in the history of the World exposition, among which the most numerous participating bodies; the largest Expo surface area; the largest number of pavilions; the most estimated attendances.

The key meaning of the theme Better city, better life is the sustainable urban development in a globalization context: it has been developed and expressed not only in the exhibitions and the actions pro-moted by participants but also in the overall process and concept.

Due to the World Expo, Shanghai is undergoing a total new transformation, about 2000 kmq of the metropolitan area and suburb area has been planned to a new area. Both in the sense of ecological environment but also in the preservation of urban context and identity, the city itself is also one part of the Expo. Shanghai has displayed the theme deduction with its urban reality The selection of the site itself (originally a cultivated green field far away from the city, then changed into a brown field along the Huangpu river in order to transform the industrial waterfront into a public open space and a significant green waterfront, also a business and residential district for the city) works as an investigation of the global issues of the future city and its development.

Thus continuing in a new course promoted by the city of Shanghai characterized by more attention to urban planning, where the urban construction and the city’s image are becoming the main mission. The revision of the Masterplan of Shanghai 1999–2020 is a milestone of urban construction in Shanghai, in a period of large scale of urban development which is affecting China, in which the Expo 2010 will speed up processes.

At the same time Expo 2010 Shanghai shows that an international platform for the cultural exchange is so important and creative: it is in fact also an international architecture exposition, announcing a new architecture tendency of ecological development in a sustainable urban era, it has displayed a limitless possibility for architectural expression.

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Between the glorious past and the splendid future at the opening of the world Expo 2010 China Yongyi Lu A hundred years’ dream. The opening ceremony of the world Expo 2010 in Shanghai is a great celebration of the whole country, not only for its miraculous achievements of the 30 year opening and reform, but also for the coming of ‘a long-waited dream’, that of hosting a world Expo in China, fed for more than a hundred years.

Several are in fact the historical attestations of the great interest in world Expo not only in terms of the traditional chinese ‘open their eyes to the world’ attitude and strong willing of catching up the modernization process of the western world, but also in terms of participating actively and hosting an Expo, also in time period when China was experiencing difficult moments. Therefore it is not surprising to see how proud the country is as only after less than 30 years from the last difficult participation in Usa in 1982, it can be able to host more than 240 countries and regions gathering on such a big world Expo.

Building chinese modern How to build chinese modern turned to be the central task in china at the beginning of 20th century, particularly in the architecture field. The Expo is in this sense a great challenge, where the issue at stakes are on the one side how to represent the national identity and search for an approach of ‘our time’ without losing chinese identity. The China pavilion is the most symbolic building in this sense: with its color, size and forms, it apparently represents a new version of an ancient palace crowned with a new version of the ‘big roof’. The architect, winner of an international competition of more than 300 projects among chinese architects all over the world, summarized his design as ‘both chinese character and spirit of time’: the columns supporting the continuously cantilevered structure inspired both from the form of a bronze and the timber-structure of the chinese traditional architecture; and the pattern of the structure on the roof recalling the ideal city structure in ancient China. At the same time it reveals the greateffort of the architect to present its face of the 21st century, in so far, for example, the brackets, the most representative element of the traditional chinese architecture, have been transformed into a modern steel and concrete structure. But it is more than this. The most advanced character emphasizing its ‘spirit of time’ is its ‘green’ design ideas: the huge ‘roof’ has stretched a vast sunshade to protect visitors underneath from strong sunshine and the generous opening is also good for ventilation. Energy saving design has been introduced from using special materials for storing solar energy to collecting raining water for recycling use, all strategies reducing 25% of the energy consumption than usual.

Recalling history for the future Cultural exchange becomes the dominant activity of the world expo nowadays. Actually globalization not only implies something as ‘global homogenization’ but also intensifies the willing to present different regional identities identity. The China pavilion in this sense it has had some critical response especially from the young architects, for it is a too powerful and centralized state image but still an illogical combination of the building structure and the traditional architectural form. Actually the solid platform underneath stages the 31 provinces’ exhibitions, each pavilion presenting its identity reflecting the history actually rich enough for the country to build its cultural diversity. At the same time many other buildings designed by chinese architects on the expo site are apparently close to the ‘global homogenisation’, the ‘green’ or the ‘low-carbon life style’: this has been explained not as a globalizing language but as a reference to the tradition of our ancestors of ‘nature and human being are in harmony’, well displayed in the famous ancient painting Along the river during the QingMing festival, which has been reproduced into a screen, symbolizing how the achievements nowadays can be deep-rooted in the ancient chinese culture, and how the past can be beautifully bridged to ‘better city and better life’ of our future.

Whether or not the cultural diversity and the ‘green’ of the Expo will imply an emerging new horizon for chinese architecture and urban construction, replacing the ‘manhattanized’ version of the last decades is difficult to say.

It is however important to recognize the importance of our cultural memory keeping in mind that history is not only a collective memory but also a selective memory.

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The Regional and Town Planning of Shanghai Li Qin The urban planning system in China has gone through three historic stages, since the founding of Prc. After 1949, it was regarded as a fundamental to build a new China.

Suspended during the 1958-78 period when the central government took radical political and economic policies, until 1979 when, China adopted the reform and open policy and formal urban planning efforts were restored as a tool to actualize the new dream of building modern city and modern country. At the same time several key policies decided by the central government pushed chinese cities racing off. As a result of Deng Xiaoping new course towards a socialist market economy, housing was no longer regarded as public welfare. This greatly accelerated urban development: since 1998 in Shanghai central city the averagely completed housing floor area is over 10 million square meters annual. In the meantime, plenty of old built environments were renewed accompanying the dismantlement of state-owned enterprises and demolishment of old Linong style buildings. Together with the ideology change came a gradual and continuous decentralization of authority and responsibility to the local governments, opening the opportunity for developing independently local economy. Urban land system was also gradually altered, where the land use right had to be bid openly. Over time, these use rights could be traded and quickly give rise to a flourishing property market.

Unexpectedly had become the great fortune for local governments. Shanghai history’s is in this sense relevant.

The first comprehensive planning, approved by the state Council in1986, defined the orientation of Shanghai urban development. In the 90’s, opening and developing Pudong brought Shanghai a new development opportunity. Pudong was to be developed as an export-oriented, multi-functional new zone with international standards.

Since then, Shanghai has entered a fast developing track and has been undergoing an economy booms for a recorded double-digit growth for 15 consecutive years.

In 2001, the state Council gave its ratification to the revised Comprehensive planning of Shanghai (1999-2020).

Its aim is to build Shanghai into a prospering, civilized and beautiful international metropolis and the world center of economy, finance, trade and shipping.

The municipality of Shanghai has 17 districts and 1 county, with a land area of 5.643,5 square kilometers.

The central city within the outer ring road consists of 11 districts, totaling 664 square kilometers, with an existing population of about 9,76 million people. In accordance with coordinated development of the urban and rural area, a “multi-axes, multi-levels and multi-centers” spatial structure was proposed for the metropolitan with a radial pattern along preferential corridors for future development. Space between the corridors was to be conserved as a system of greenbelt or cultivated land.

Target population for satellite cities were set at 800.000 to 1.000.000 people; with suburban central town, close to the city, at around 50.000 inhabitants; and peripheral small towns at from 3.000 to 10.000 people.

According to the master planning, the cities and towns structure is called ‘1966’, which means 1 central city, 9 satellite cities, 60 towns, and 600 central villages. The new cities and towns are intended to absorb the regional immigrants, coming from both the metropolis and other provinces in the nation.

Based on a top-down approach, the regional and town planning in Shanghai has constituted a hierarchy system, with an aim to guide and facilitate land use and construction activities. Plenty of aspects have been advanced and promoted, including economy, housing, transportation, public space, ecological environment and social facilities, substantially improving the living conditions of urban and rural areas alike. In the meantime, Shanghai has increased its role in finance, banking, and as a major destination for corporate headquarters.

Great events have been promotes as a strategy and tool to realize the goals of urban planning and urban development. While In the 1990s, the Pudong new area development highlighted Shanghai fast growth, in 2000s, the Shanghai Expo was promoted in the same direction, with an investment of near 330 billion Rmb (50 billion dollars), among which 90% expended on the city infrastructure construction. The next main event in Shanghai will be suburb construction. However, the former regional and town planning and development are mainly concentrating on physical elements. Accompanying breakthrough urban development, many social issues come up, such as affordable housing, social differentiation, floating migrants and social fair and justice. How to combine and balance both social and physical goals will be a great challenge in the future development of Shanghai.

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The design process for the Expo Shanghai site planning Gan Jing As a complex and systematic mega project, the planning and design of Shanghai Expo site intended to create a ‘process design’ based on traditional planning method, in order to be more scientific and effective to guild the overall process. From the ‘lifecycle’ perspective, this can be divided into five phases, namely preliminary scheme, planning and design, construction and implementation, operation, post-use and redevelopment. Among all these phases the phase of planning and design from may 2004 to the end of 2007 has been the core of the overall process, which specifies the objectives set in the preliminary scheme, and provide feasibilities for the following implementation, operation and post-use phases.

A Time management mechanism was produced in order to control the planning and design tasks at different times and in different levels: it was based on checkpoints, milestones and baselines. The base-lines were time points for a series of particular planning results to be formally reported, which would be the basis for the following tasks after formal review and inspection. There were two different kinds of baselines: those set by the Bureau of international expositions, regarded as the most important external requiements; and those set by domestic authorities: the central government established the Executive committee of Shanghai Expo as the official authority. On november 29, 2005 the Executive committee examined and adopted the Masterplan of World Expo 2010 Shanghai as central baselines. In addition the regulatory plan of Expo should be reported to Shanghai People’s congress for approval as a legal document to guild the following design and construction process. In terms of milestones, the first type concerned the construction period of Shanghai Metro network, according to which the plan of transportation should be completed in advance to ensure the four metro lines be constructed and operated as scheduled, and the construction period of other infrastructure and permanent pavilion, concerning the necessity to set ahead of the schedule the infrastructure construction and the most important pavilions.

In terms of checkpoints different levels were proposed to remind the coming of the baselines.

As Toolkit of planning lifecycle management a task diagram was used to establish a hierarchical structure of the tasks, and to clarify the framework for following steps and a time schedule for individual plan, to set time schedule for each individual plan and design, were provided to ensure that all plans will be implemented in time.

Among the most relevant principles, we can read that transportation facilities in accordance with the requirements of the city’s overall development, have priority to design and completion; finally together with these an annual work plan based on the time schedule table to guild the yearly task and implementation graphs including the

scope of development in each period of time were provided to manage the planning process.

The site of Expo, selected at both riversides of Huangpu river covers a planned land whose control area totals 6,68 kmq. Within the control area, the planning site is about 5,28 kmq, while the enclosed area is about 3,282.

This downtown waterfront sit is anchored within existing urban fabric, forming a triangular relationship with the Old town quarter and the Lujiazui financial centre. The Expo theme Better city, better life for the first time in the history of Expos uses the ‘City’ as theme, expressing common expectation of people all over the world for better urban life in the future. The over 70 million visitors expected at the Shanghai World Expo during its 184 exhibition days from 1st may to 31st october, will be faced with this challenge. In march 2004, the expo planning proposal of Tongji University utilized ‘H-City’ as its guideline, later accepted by the organizing committee of Shanghai Expo as the core philosophy within the planning and design. ‘Harmony cities’ refers to three dimensions: harmony between human-being and nature, harmony between human-being and society, as well as harmony between history and future. The enclosed area is 3,28 kmq wide and split between Pudong (2,39 kmq) and Puxi (0,89 kmq); it is divided in 5 zones (60 hectares) and into 12 groups (plots of 10 hectares each) reserved for large exhibition areas.

26 clusters, each encom-passing 4 hectares are the basic organizational unit of the planned Expo site. Each cluster is subdivided into approximately 35 exhibition units, each of which with 500 mq (18m x 27m) of construction space. The 5 zones are dedicated to A: east Asian and west Asian pavilions; B: Expo center, Theme pavilions, China pavilion area, Culture center, International organizations pavilion, east-south Asian and south Asian pavilions; C: European, American and African pavilions; D: Expo museum, Footprint pavilion and Corporate pavilions; E: urban best practice area and Corporate pavilions.

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Notes of travel. Hybrids Valeria Fedeli Shanghai is a hybrid. Like many other fast growing cities in developing countries, those who visit it today for the Expo 2010 cannot but realize about the fact that it is an hybrid in many ways unique and special.

We can in fact recognize a first trace of hybridization in the second half of the nineteenth century, when the city (founded in the tenth century as a fishing village on alluvial soils along the Yangtze river delta) becomes the favorite economic and cultural exchange point between east and west. The establishment of foreign concessions, following the Treaty of Nanjing and the subsequent treaties of 1843 and 1844, assigns to England, and later also to France and the United States, the possibility of settling in territories outside the historic city to conduct economical business. Juxtaposed cities and trade exchanges provide since then a process of exchange between urban cultures, as well as political, social, institutional, economic. The Lining houses, built in the late nineteenth century until the thirties of the twentieth century, in the territories of the concessions, mixed the culture of english terrace house, with the settlement rules of the chinese living. Now subject to recovery and rehabilitation, after hosting for a century the massive population growth of the city, after becoming the symbol of a past to be erased to move towards a new China, these mixed types have constituted the Dna of a city hybrid for more than a century and a half.

A second, among the many possible traces, is to be found in more recent times: with the introduction of the reforms of 1978-70 and the new orientation towards the social market economy and a global economy, Shanghai is once again the place par excellence of hybridization and exchange with the world. A special place where the market economy and private property had room for rooting and growth. The construction of Pudong, the engine of economic development on the banks of the river has brought international strategic capital for the whole country, but also new urban types and forms back to the city, that have been absorbed, reworked, modified, hybridized. They have produced parts of the city we would call globalized, reaching out spaces and forms intended to show to the world China’s capacity to assimilate and play technology and languages: on these Shanghai has built its symbolic contribution in opening China to the world.

A third form is that of contemporary Shanghai, which coexists and multiplies powerful and promising forms of hybridization. Expo 2010 can be read back as a special effort in this direction: it is a new gamble on the city, on its ability to be an environment capable of ensuring a better life. It is an important choice, namely to reverse years of profoundly anti-urban investment, but because it carries with it a renewed attention to the contradictions

and openings contained in the slogan Better Cities, Better Life, as shown in the Urban Best Practices Hall reproducing to the reality scale examples of urban fabrics and technologies considered as a possible answer to this question, in fact the whole city is now a huge area of experimentation and exhibition.

From the minute cells of the apartments of the new residential towers through the rediscovery of the historical buildings, up to the nine new satellite towns around the central city, which cannot sound but strange and in many ways distorting the idea of hybridization, we can recognize a series of new emerging hybrids, perhaps simply destined to fail, some destined to produce interesting paths of experimentation, like the great project for settlement on the island north of Shanghai, where a settlement based on the principles of sustainable growth and km zero is designed. Joined together and put into a sequence, these experiences tell us about a world from which somehow one cannot come back but with great curiosity and amazement, where the city is a wide open space for experimental projects on the hybridization, cultural, social, etc. Despite the obvious limitations and the undeniable contradictions of contemporary world, an enviable condition.

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Notes of travel. Milano-Shanghai: round-back trip Corinna Morandi, Luca Gaeta Our travel notes come from the perceived gap between two cities, both committed to host great events. Though it can be risky to compare such diverse experiences, having reflected on how Milan is reshaping its initial proposal one year after the bidding, and having reflected on the event’s expected legacy for the city as a whole, we have been looking at Expo2010 to find evidence for our hypothesis. Legacy is an elusive concept. It includes physical assets together with, i.e., the city positioning in the international ranking. From that point of view, the Chinese experience is the outcome of a top-down decision process aimed at proclaiming Shanghai’s economic supremacy in the Asian world. As a consequence, site selection was made according to a large scale and long lasting planning strategy. On the one hand the Expo site provides an urban window for rural China, on the other hand it is a Chinese window for the world. Expo2010 may be considered as the last possible link in the chain of great exhibitions since the 19th century.

The series of design proposals in Milan is perhaps leading to a different way of conceiving the role of great events. The concept masterplan by Herzog, Burdett, Boeri e McDonough is based on the immaterial value of experience as the primary attraction for visitors. Fixed spatial elements are reduced to a minimum. If this claim is confirmed it is an opportunity for the positive development of the project. It seems appropriate to consider the choice not to propose at this stage a detailed design.

However, this technically acceptable choice would become weak if not immediately supported by the political and administrative system.

On the subject of future uses for the site also Expo2010 does not seem to give clear options, beyond general information on creating a large riverside park. Legitimate hypothesis is that there are redevelopment plans for a site very rapidly reclaimed but also highly accessible.

Such plans are not made public. It seems certain at present the preservation of monumental pavilions arranged along a wide avenue perpendicular to the river Haungpu.

Of course the legacy is not reducible to the provisioning of new urban hardware. For some cities the main outcome was the listing in the upper ranks of the urban hierarchy (‘to be on the map’, as in the case of Saragoza). The case of Shanghai is amazing. The city is concentrated in using the event on several fronts. The main objectives are to outweigh Tokyo and Hong Kong, becoming the leading global city in Asia, and achieving accelerated modernization of the infrastructures. Costs and risks? Of course very high from both the environmental and the social point of view. But there seem to be other interesting legacy effects. The first is tied to the location on a large industrial site along the river, both broadening and balancing the urban core. The second is related to

spreading the attention to environmental issues and to the quality of urban life in other Chinese cities. A didactic effect of the great exhibition that would attract millions of national visitors.

Another form of legacy is the relationship with planning strategies. Two years before the awarding of Expo, Shanghai approved a masterplan with the primary purpose of making the city by 2020 a world capital of commerce and finance. We are impressed by the full integration of Expo in the implementation of the planning strategy. Expo2010 has promoted revitalization, accelerated the construction of mass transit infrastructures, aroused more attention to the quality of public space and the recovery of the architectural heritage, created a new relationship with the river so far considered an urban edge. Shanghai wants to make itself a huge exhibition hall. Even though the city cannot conceal its many contradictions, the coherence of purpose is evident from the combination of urban development with the best practices exhibited in the Expo site, first located in a very remote area, then along the Huangpu thanks to the design competition launched in 2000.

Milan has not selected the site for Expo2015 according to any urban strategy, nor the reasons for that choice have emerged from public debates. The strong thematic intentions towards sustainable development contained in the slogan of Expo2015 should be reflected primarily in land use decisions concerning the future of the site.

We hope that Expo2015 can become for Milan, as it was in many other cases, a catalyst for local opportunities and resources, including the intelligence that many people have managed to express in the past. This exceptional heritage could still be the best chance for Expo2015 to succeed.

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Notes of travel. The flowing river Remo Dorigati When, in the late ‘90s, an international workshop, coordinated by Tonji University, concluded that the most suitable area for the future home of Expo was the turn of the Huangpu River, next to the financial district of Pudong all seemed a suitable and a strategically correct choice. Other alternatives had explored the possibility of locating it near the new airport, or delta waterfront, or even in support of the numerous satellite towns to the city’s crown. The river won, in a place where this meets the city’s history, strengthening its central characters of public institutions as opposed to the centrifugal force with which Shanghai is expanding. The choice was not entirely indifferent to the ‘after use’ because a place of dismantled production site was assumed into a policy of urban renewal through a sequence of urban public spaces organized by the large area of river. It is not a small thing for a city and a culture that only now rediscovering their tracks.

The river is a fundamental strategic asset for the city: Shanghai means ‘placed over or on, or near water’.

The territory Shanghai is born is drawn from the river which feeds a network infrastructure that powers inland transport and irrigation systems of campaigns. In 1842 when the British opened the first concession opted for a city-port, an alternative to the old town, aligned along the northern shores. The Bund became the public place par excellence with a unique mix of public institutions, banks, warehouses, docks, market, houseboats, etc.

But the decisive impetus to the transformation of the city takes place in 1991 when Deng Xiaoping chose the city as Sezs (Special economic zones) as an experiment for the new strategy known as ‘socialist market economy’ with the intention of transforming the delta region of Yangtzee: the new Pudong financial district location along the river opposite the Bund proved the most direct solution to represent the new economic ‘hub’ strengthening the centrality of the river, and opposes a new image colonial vision.

So it seemed only natural that the area chosen for the Expo was along the river, continuing the process of strengthening the Huangpou as new backbone of development. The urban plan of the Expo is divided into large blocks (strategy that allows to absorb many future features), a linear park along the river on a plank and monumental bridge which would connect the parts across the river (the area of the halls of companies). It is also a virtual connection with People Square direction and with Pudong. The significance of the river as a structural public space is readable also for the role that water treatment has into the strategy of the plan: the river water is collected within the area and, after a series of purification processes, produces a sequence of events and environmental landscape (fountains, waterfalls, lakes, gar-

dens and various energy issues. The image of the river as a kind of ecological corridor that enters the lake area in the metropolis bringing with it quality and energy that attracts public spaces (because the space of the river itself is public space) is one of the most significant traces of the rediscovery of a new urban order. The territorial scale of the river is measured by the metropolitan order.

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Notes of travel. The framework of open spaces for the Expo in Shanghai Andrea Rolando The implementation of a Great event requires the solution, among others, of the problems related to the relationship between the area of the event and the urban environment as a whole. The organization of open spaces, one of the most relevant strategic action carried on by the city to fulfil the theme ‘better city, better life’ has brought to a better harmony between city and nature, according to the idea that that a better city, as such, is already a good starting point to provide its citizens with the opportunity of a better life. In this sense, though such reading has been done through an eye influenced by european-italian experience of urban space, outsider to Chinese culture, nevertheless it is possible to assess the impressive upgrading work carried on by Shanghai (also) with reference to the Expo. The same exact care has not only been applied to the specific gated area as well as to a throughout design approach to the whole city. This is due to the attempt of making at least acceptable the extraordinary process of growth of Shanghai, but also to set a standard (addressed to China and to the world), qualifying the city as an example and to a country where every year 30 million people try to move from the countryside to the metropolitan areas.

If we consider the relations between the Expo site and the main elements of the central area of Shanghai towards the Expo, there is a new a north south axis, bridging the city from the poles of Suzhou creek (place of creativity, where important buildings of industrial heritage are being brought back to city life), reaching down to Xizang road and the new Expo axis on the southern banks of Huangpu river, realizing a new direction of urban development able to connect some of the most qualified functions of the present and future city and that tends to offset the balance of the city centre, adding a third pole after the two, already existing around People’s Square and the Financial District of Pudong.

In terms of structure of open spaces within the Expo site the whole system contributes to tie very lively areas like that of Tian Zi Fang, the axis lined with the four pavilions that will remain as a legacy for the City after the Expo, together with the beautiful garden developed along the southern banks of Huangpu river, the new ecological village on the northern banks, building innovative relationships between the City and the river. It is not possible to walk the gap between the two banks (450 m) of the river, directly at the level of open spaces, but the connection is assured by bridges and under water tunnels, both for cars and for metro lines. The out and out relation, at human scale, is therefore limited to the visual one, even if it is strongly supported and emphasised by the extraordinary open space at the end of the main north south axis of the Expo, that terminate as a true balcony spanning over the southern banks of the river, looking over

the city of Concessions that grew on the opposite side, referring as a model to the solution of urban integration of the site for the 1889 and 1900 Expoes in Paris, where a positive relationship between river and city has been carried on.

In terms of relations of higher scale, in a framework of metropolitan and regional scale, the structure supporting such strategy sets a new one based upon a concept of integration of systems of open spaces (green belts, axis, corridors, parks and forests). In this sense, the area of the Expo could therefore be considered to be a pivot between the lake from which the Huangpu is originated and the new environmental resource (agriculture, forests, wetlands) of the Chongming Island, located to north of the city, on the Yangtze estuary.

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Notes of travel. 2010 Shanghai, a profile for a changing city Antonio Longo The workshop was implemented as an intensive knowledge test of interpretation of the city. The contact with Shanghai came about through a set of clues, structured information, guided visits, ‘drift’ in the city, which enabled us to identify a profile of the city of the Expo 2010 and indirectly to reflect on the contemporary European city, and Milan in particular, beyond the contingency of the forthcoming Universal Exposition.

In 2006, Shanghai had about 18 people: 13.5 million residents and 5 million migrants. In addition to this one most add the so-called floating population, 3 million people. The projection now, 2010, is of 19 million inhabitants The government’s development plan (2020), involves the construction of nine satellite towns with differentiated roles and functions, 60 new small towns, 600 villages.

The 970 km of new transmission lines form a grid system which can reshape the relationship between the city and its territory. 160 new Metro stations have been completed connected by 223 km of lines, estimated to double a system linked by intermodal hub of urban highways 9. 384 km and 1582 km of roads. The maximum enhancement of the soil surface rights granted to international companies in property development has lead to a profoundly changed skyline: over a thousand more towers a hundred meters high have been built in the last ten years and forty above two hundred meters. These transformations are perceivable for an observer the city: they provide a great visual representation, through the rhetorics of development tested in height and speed: the World Financial Center was completed in 2008 and will measure over 492m. In 2014 the Shanghai Tower will reach 632 m. The Maglev, the magnetic suspension shuttle that connects the Pudong Airport reaches a speed of 430 kmh. This representation also is part of the historical places of the city, Xintiandi is where in 1921 the Chinese communist party was founded: demolished and reconstructed by integrating old and new buildings on a new artificial soil, the neighborhood has been transformed into a center of trade and International entertainment.

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Urbanistica n. 143 July-September 2010

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Index and english translation of the articles

Projects and implementation

Problems, policies and research

Paolo Avarello edited by Attilia Peano, Grazia Brunetta Attilia Peano Francesco Puma, Tommaso Simonelli Patrizia Lombardi Angela Colucci Grazia Brunetta Patrizia Saroglia Attilia Peano Dunia Mittner edited by, Valeria Fedeli Alessandro Balducci Zheng Shiling Yongyi Lu Li Qin Gan Jing Valeria Fedeli Corinna Morandi, Luca Gaeta Remo Dorigati Andrea Rolando Antonio Longo

Stefano Stanghellini

Methods and tools

Profiles and practices

Ezio Micelli Assunta Martone, Marichela Sepe Elisa Morri, Giovanna Pezzi, Riccardo Santolini Antonio Alberto Clemente Francesco Chiodelli

The Paper Plan The planning of river basin towards integrated policies Environment, territory, and landscape A sustainable future for the Po river basin. The po river valley Strategic Project Assessment of Special Strategic Project by the Analytic Network Process The planning of river basin in Europe. Aims and central issue Sea, beyond the procedure for a Po river basin valorisation project Participation in Sea: a complicated question A territory and landscape project Planning and large urban projects. Stockholm 1990-2025 Shanghai, Expo 2010. Better city, better life: a new bet on the city Spatial planning and urban development The meaning of Expo 2010 Shanghai Between the glorious past and the splendid future at the opening of the world Expo 2010 China The Regional and Town Planning of Shanghai The design process for the Expo Shanghai site planning Notes of travel. Hybrids Notes of travel. Milano-Shanghai: round-back trip Notes of travel. The flowing river Notes of travel. The framework of open spaces for the Expo in Shanghai Notes of travel. 2010 Shanghai, a profile for a changing city

Equalisation, compensation and incentives as news tools Transfer of development rights and the land use plan for urban planning The responsible approach to strategic planning: the Ppes and Sga of the Picentini regional Park Transformation of the territory in the Municioality of Rimini through the diacronica analysis of the landscape City: a term at its end. Revisiting the General theory of urbanization The centre of the planning: the tecnichal rules

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Equalisation, compensation and incentives as news tools for urban planning Stefano Stanghellini Recent administrative judgments on Rome Local Plan have given a strong push to the debate on the use of equalisation and compensation and of the related institutes, i.e. the ‘volume transfers’, the ‘buildings credits’, the “extra charges” etc. As a matter of fact, from 1995, year of INU Congress where the equalisation was recognized as the principle to be applied in the local plans for resolving the property and building system, since today, urban regulation, local practices, regional laws have widen the equalisation’s principle and its operational domain. In general rule, an atypical right has taken form, the so called ‘building right’ that has to be intended as the volume or surface unit that can be built on the its generating land or on another one.

This year, at firts, the Lazio Regional Administrative Tribunal stated that some rules of the Rome Local Plan regulate matters - such as the property rights and the real estate taxation - that the Constitution reserves to the State and it declared unlawful the fact that the rules regulated the fields above mentioned beyond the framework of any State law. Afterwards, the State Council developed a different concept, based on two pillars; from one side, the planning power of the Administration in the frame of its planning authority and from the other the possibility of applying private law and consensus based models for pursuing public interest finalities.

The question is that in 15 years the national legislator was not able to define a modern legislation regulating the ‘building rights’ generated by equalisation, compensation and incentives, and which reorganises the planning procedures and the fiscal system supporting the urban regeneration. Hoping that soon it happens, the paper intends to clarify some technical elements useful for the ongoing planning activities.

Equalisation aims. Equal distribution of buildings’ rights Recent regional legislation attribute to equalisation the task of equally distributing building rights recognised by urban planning to land owners interested by interventions and equal charges derived by territorial equipment realisation. First equalisation profile is so related to building capacity distribution.

Technically speaking, equal distribution of building rights is achieved grouping lands to be transformed into different categories homogeneous under the point of view of their of fact and legal conditions, and so attributing territorial building indexes, properly graduated, to the defined land categories. Afterwards, land involved in a unitary planning process will be grouped into the urban division whose transformation will be given to an implementation plan. In comparison to the traditional parcelling out plan,

equalisation has some substantial differences. The first one is that buildings’ capacity is not given land by land on a discretional basis, but it is attributed to land classes according to their building’s suitability. A second one is that the equalisation previews to give to the Municipality not only lands where infrastructures and social services have been realised, but more lands.

No administrative judgements question this way of applying equalisation. On the contrary, judgements give important support to the three fundamental pillars of the examined tool. The first one is related to the equalisation index of territorial building. The second one is related to the land amount to be transferred to the municipality in order to be able to build on the remaining part. The third is related to the question of the closeness or distance of the lands part of the urban division.

In respect to the landowners complains about an index building of 0,25 cm/sm, considered to be penalising, and to the obligation of giving to the local authority 80% of total surface, so that it is considered dispossessed, State Council states that “as the building volume (...) is calculated on the whole lot and consequently also involving the surfaces object of transfer (...) area transfer does not influence the definition of the building volume”. Lombardy Administrative Tribunal calls ‘equalisation transfer’ the technical methodology through which “the land to be ceded to the administration develops its own volumetry (...) that can be implemented only on the areas where buildings rights can be used”. The urban division is so a consolidated tool not only when it groups close lands, but also in its ‘archipelago’ modality, that is when it groups far lands.

The problem of urban division and landowner’s consortium implementation still remains. The problem has both a technical and a law component. The technical one concerns the perimeter of the urban division, which cannot be done only following morphological planning criteria, but it has also to be defined considering the property structure. The law component is related to the consortium definition and its capability of acting toward inactive landowners. Difficulties of reaching an agreement among landowners become bigger and bigger in urban regeneration projects. Consequently there is the need of new rules for a major effectiveness of the landowner’s consortium creation.

Equal charges distribution Since the beginning equalisation was applied so to give to the municipality a bigger amount of areas and services than the minimum previewed by law. This is a second grade equalisation, because it is not related to equality among landowners, but to equality among the category of landowners and the whole community. On the front of the equal charges distribution, the time has brought progresses on the conceptual and operational points of view. Toscana Region has given a wide interpretation of equalisation, that requires a proportional repartition of buildings rights and economic charges for realizing Urbanistica www.planum.net

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infrastructures and services of public interest, charges related to free assignment of areas to the municipality, charges related to the compulsory shares of residential buildings for social purposes.

Urban transformation projects have a strong impact on the urban system, causing a works and services’ demand major to the one required for the needs of the population and of the new activities to be settled. Therefore the municipalities in order to finance the building of infrastructures and equipment try to regain to the community at least a share of land valorisation. As in each local system private projects are more than one, there is the need of an equal distribution of the charges to be supported for the realization of the infrastructures and services required for their urban sustainability.

The fulfillement of his need is very complex because public works to be realized are usually very expensive and not functionally sharable. When public works can’t be equally charged on private projects in the frame of implementation plans, there is the need of a private contribution for their implementation by the Municipality. In the practice ‘extra charges’ have been introduced, additional to the building charge established by national law, also known as ‘sustainability contribution’ for underlining its project finality in comparison to the taxation one.

What can be done, what has to be done with balance, what cannot be done Equalisation replaces the public plan management (public works planning, expropriation, call for tender) with the ‘Public Private Partnership’ (PPP): landowners take part to a consortium and they implement the defined project plan, in the same time realizing the public works to be ceded to the municipality together with the agreed areas and they pocket the urban rent produced by the equalisation index. Nevertheless, PPP requires a suitable set of economic and technical tools.

All the cases where the Administrative Justice is involved can be considered as failures of the PPP application. Legitimacy of the privates’ position apart, about which the Judge has to express his point of view from time to time, here we would like to underline in the sentences some criticism towards a certain technical lack in the equalisation application and consequently the break of balanced and reasonable principles and the recognition of real technical mistakes.

The request of ceding a major part of the area or the application of an high extraordinary contribution, for example, can be considered in contrast with the general criteria of balance and reasonable principle. From the economic point of view, the set of technical parameters forming the equalisation tool have to assure an high degree of feasibility through the active participation of landowners. This is the reason why during the plan implementation, the owners consultation is deemed right, following transparent procedure so to verify their willingness to cooperate and in the meanwhile to enhance the equalisation tool.

The extra changes imposition is a very difficult aspect. In

particular, Rome Local Plan previewed a financial contribution equal to 2/3 of the land plus value deriving from a major building index. Lazio Administrative Tribunal judged the extra charge as a kind of economic compensation of Public Entities activities without the necessary state legislative basis. On the contrary, the State Council deemed the abovementioned ‘extra compensation’ characterised by optional and bonus feature. The question has not been solved yet and so the Administrative Justice could take every similar tool under exam.

A controversial point is the possibility for the Municipality to assign to itself a building index on private properties.

According to Lazio Administrative Judges’ interpretation, the Municipality cannot share the building index, if any specific agreement occurred with the landowners.

In the case of Rome Local Plan, the contested norms define different building indexes for the urban areas, making a difference among private building areas and those that before were not building areas and they give, for example, ‘to the not building areas’ an index of 0,3 sm/sm, where 0,06 for the landowners, 0,06 for the landowners in the case of agreement with the Municipality, but subject to an extra charge, finally 0,18 sm/sm for the Municipality. ìInstead, the State Council deems that the tool in question has to be interpreted as follows: “the planner (...), after the static phase consisting of the attribution of the urban destination to each area and of their building indexes, intends to give a dynamic dimension to the local plan able to preview the future evolution of the town organization” and “the innovative rules (...) do not impact on the building index recognised to landowners, but on a future and potential building index, in comparison to that immediately and actually attributed to the same areas to the urban instrument”.

The right solution of the examined question is so in the definition of public-private agreements. The definition of an equalisation plan can follow this direction with decision, as the State Council argument brought to overcoming the principle of relating the building right to the area ownership.

Transfer of building rights without recurring to urban division The transfer of ‘building rights’ through equalisation models not applying urban division represents a wider problematic scenario. So for example, Lombardy Administrative Tribunal has examined the case of building rights transfer of which the plan supposes the transfer to the aim of ceding to the municipality areas for services, which are not transferable and consequently marketable due to the specific implementation tools and it has judged this condition similar to an expropriation restriction.

In the experimentation related to the building rights transfer outside the urban division institute, two possibilities have been previewed: – building rights transfer among not close areas, but linked by the urban plan; Urbanistica www.planum.net

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– building rights transfer not determined in advance by the plan.

In the first case, the plan identifies the areas where to transfer the building rights. In this case the plan has also to define the maximum quantity of buildings rights to be received by a specific area. This amount does not solve the problems deriving from the application of the examined tool.

As reference to the areas addressed to public works and services and so ceding building rights, the lack of direct link with the receiving areas can produce contradictory effects under the point of view of equity. Ceding landowners can have difficulties in finding interested buyers.

Similarly, if maximum quantity of hostable building rights represents not only a limit but also a plan’s objective, it is necessary to previously verify if owners of building rights are going to transfer them. These possible difficulties have to be previewed when the equalisation tool is defined. Therefore the plan has to preview the needed measures, such as the preliminary agreements definition with landowners, inclusion of transfer incentives or other measures.

In the second case, the free market guides the transfer.

Naturally, the urban plan defines a subset of areas hosting the buildings rights and of the ceding ones, in addition to the public objectives to pursue. But it is a duty of the landowners where the rights could be hosted to contact the landowners of the ceding areas, or the contrary. In short, this model assumes a new market of the building rights.

This is a fascinating hypothesis because it suggests an evolution of the building regime in line with the “financiariasation” of the building markets. Following this trend, we have to recognize to subjects different from the landowners of urban areas the possibility to buy the building rights and to keep them waiting for their allocation on some areas. Suitability of this hypothesis with the national civil laws apart, that now seems to be a problem, in the urban context it must rise a question mark the fact that the plan can generate buildings rights not addressed to a specific project. In these cases, the building rights become an entity apart from the project to be implemented and their value will be related to the localisation that the landowner will be able to get from the Administration.

Equalisation and incentivation In the areas of possible transformation, in addition to the building rights generated by equalisation, similar building rights can be produced by compensation and incentives.

In order to ease free ceding of areas to the administration for social housing purposes, law n. 244/2007 introduced the ‘building bonus’, i.e. the attribution of major buildings rights to private landowners. Also in the past, in order to support private urban and environmental intervention some regional laws recognized ‘building rights’ or ‘building credits’.

In particular, Veneto Region previews that ‘building credits’ are recognized if “inadequate works and deteriora-

tion elements are demolished or if urban, landscape, architectural and environmental quality are enhanced”.

The ‘building credits’ are noted in a register and ‘they are freely marketable’. Umbria Region decided that “municipality urban tools can preview the use of building rights (...) for compensations levied to landowners in the case of (...) demolitions without reconstruction on the place for urban purposes, renewal and requalification of the areas, elimination of environmental obstacles”. In addition, always Umbria Region previews that municipalities define, in the historical centres, areas for priority requalification (ARP) and that for these areas they approve requalification programmes previewing ‘building bonus’ for historical buildings owners to be used in development areas outside the historical centre.

Different regional laws preview the possibility to attribute to owners of expropriated lands some building rights or building credits instead of an expropriation indemnity.

A recent project of law of the Umbria Regional Council focused some aspects of the ‘building right’, till today in the shadow and it clarified the different genesis and use of the building right according to its derivation from the equalisation, compensation or bonus.

The ‘building credits’ derive from a financial municipality need (compensation instead of indemnity payment) or from a land quality (environmental obstacles elimination). In both the cases the relation is with a monetary value (indemnity or expropriation, demolition costs) and it is attributed to the landowner. Building bonus, instead, is linked to the project’s quality and it has to do with the major value of the planned buildings and the major costs afforded for their better quality. The ‘building credits’ so generated are mixed, in the municipality territory, with ‘building rights’ deriving from equalisation.

All these are new problems, not fully examined yet. An aspect still not well known is the fact that bonus and compensation generate additional building rights, affecting the size of the planned urban development. Another aspect is that these ‘additional buildings rights’ take part to the building market: if they have a relevant quantity, with the same demand on the market, this causes a decrease of the building land’s value and of their own value, with the risk of lowering their effect. A crux problem is that the value of a building right transferred from an area to another varies consistently. This can be solved trying to a suitable association among ‘taking off’ and ‘landing’ areas, or thanks to the definition of criteria and procedure so to making equal the market value of the total rights to be transferred.

Planning and market: need of a synthesis in a renewed urban plan From the urban planning point of view, the possibility to have ‘building rights’ to be transferred requires a deep knowledge of the kind of city that the ‘landing’ of this rights will define. If the plan is organised on urban divisions, the areas where the rights will be allowed to ‘land’ and the quantities to be received will be defined togeUrbanistica www.planum.net

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ther with technical parameters of the urban division. The market functioning is so finalized to the implementation of the city’s idea decided during the plan definition trough the procedures previewed by laws.

If the urban plan is based on wide areas whose transformation is not predetermined, the definition of the kind of city is given to the private developers and to the negotiation’s capability of the Administration. As the real estate markets have not a competitive structure, but can be seen as an oligopoly, it is clear that this structure would affect the urban regeneration, which would be guided by the strategy and the contractual power of the operators became owners of ‘rights’ packets’. With worsen circumstances in respect to the ‘negotiation-based planning’ that equalisation wanted to oppose: the concrete risk is that negotiation has place in a weaker and less effective way thanks to the sophisticated juridical and financial instruments that could be defined for managing the abovementioned ‘packets’.

The examined problem could assume an original solution in the new plans that distinguish the strategic-structural dimension from the operational one. In these cases the property and building system is outlined by the ‘structural plan’, it is detailed in the ‘operative plan’ and it is concretized thanks to the ‘detailed plans’. Only in the ‘operative plan’ building rights transferable to development areas are attributed to the land. Recent regional laws decided that ‘operative plan’ is defined with the landowners involvement within a competition and consensus-based procedure. The ‘operative plan’ has to have the designing capability and the social responsibility to build a project of a city of public initiative, making the most of the possibility of using the generating ‘buildings rights’ according to the collective interest.

Transfer of development rights and the land use plan Ezio Micelli While the transfer of urban development rights has been the object of a wide body of critical literature, the same cannot be said of the relationships between this planning tool and the nature and the contents of the land use plans.

Many of the most recent land use plans are based on the notion that the transfer of development rights (Tdr) does not modify the nature and the contents of the plan itself. Following this line of reasoning, the Tdr is limited to providing a different way of implementing the land use plan, traditionally based on the assignment of restrictions and constraints and the successive taking of land for public use, without calling into question the contents of the plan itself. A more precise analysis, however, puts into evidence that the development of increasingly sophisticated Tdr mechanisms has actually been determinant in the planning process: the Tdr is not independent from nature of the land use plan and its use alters the very nature of zoning.

Tdr and the traditional land use plan The way in which the basic Tdr tool works is well-known.

Areas undergoing urban redevelopment are attributed the same development amount without distinguishing between the areas designated to private development and those that are to be expropriated for public use.

The appreciation of the land designated to urban development changes significantly: not just some, but all of the properties whose interests are at stake benefit from the land value growth determined by the local government’s choices.

As far as implementation is concerned, the local administration and the developer agree on the areas that have to be transferred to the community for public use.

What is new, therefore, lies, first, in the attribution of the same development rights to all of the properties undergoing urban development and, second, in the parties’ conveyance of the areas exceeding the legal standard to the state.

As in the traditional planning process, zoning can still establish the location of the areas designated to private development and to public intervention, as well as the norms for regulating development. There is, however, one important difference: the urban plan no longer resorts to differential zoning determined on the basis of public or private use.

The increasing reliance on highly flexible urban land-use plans reflects a trend that is more and more common in regional laws for zoning reform. The Tdr tools appears to be compatible with the development of this sort of plan, which is more evolved than the traditional so called substantive plan. The delimitation of the areas subject to the Tdr and the attribution of a development rights to all Urbanistica www.planum.net

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of the areas of urban transformation are, nevertheless, independent from the specification of the contents and the uses of the public and private areas of the city.

The rules for the Tdr are nevertheless coherent with more flexible zoning, in which less prescriptive zoning rules are balanced by the identification of invariants or by the some constraints in relation to the specific nature of the development sites. Among the many examples of Tdr programs in which the development of different areas grants considerable room for landowners and for developers to originally promote land use rules, the Reggio Emilia urban plan is worthy of mention.

Tdr and flexibility in land use planning The Tdr mechanism becomes more complicated when the plan allows the transfer of the rights between areas that are not spatially contiguous. This can stem from the local administration’s wish to take over areas allocated to the public domain without permitting any private building development on these sites. The plan therein attributes development rights to the area without granting any effective possibility of private building. When the private development potential is transferred to another suitable site, the areas allocated to public domain are transferred to the local government domain. Compensation, therefore, parallels the basic Tdr programs, where the term is understood as the attribution to a property of a development potential to be used on another site than the one in which it is generated so as to compensate the property otherwise subject to taking.

From a theoretical perspective, the most important aspect lies in the possibility of transferring the development potential in a class of areas instead of just one single area predefined by the urban land use plan. The owner of an area with a development potential that is subject to transfer can choose from among various landowners with which to negotiate an agreement. The freedom of choice fosters the possibility of an effective use of the development potential attributed by the Tdr mechanism, thereby broadening the number of different combinations through which the land use plan may be effectively developed.

Applying the development potential of the Tdr at a distance is an innovative management tool that is capable of modifying the plan’s constituent features. Planning no longer projects a single spatial and functional configuration on receiving areas. Since the landowners in sending areas are granted the possibility of using their development potential in various areas, the development of the receiving areas becomes a function of the preferences and opportunities formed by the parties’ interaction.

When the urban planning tool does not predetermine the Tdr between areas, the land use plan ceases to plan and limits itself to regulating the way in which the attributed development potential is used with the goal of compensating the property, by accepting that projects can be achieved through the interaction of supply and demand.

This management solution alters the nature of the plan

itself and modifies its constituent features. The land use plan now grants a vast range of possible cities, the form of which can only be determined probabilistically in accordance with the characteristics of the property and the real estate market. Real estate market values and, eventually, transaction costs are what determine how the land rights are distributed and, thus, how the effective density and the form the urban development will take.

Tdr and the development of a land use plan through rules In some regions of Italy, urban planning laws allow municipalities to attribute development rights to compensate a landowner for the taking of an area or a building, or for interventions that are coherent with the planning objectives. According to the regional laws of Lombardy and Veneto, for instance, rights can be attributed to landowners and are ‘freely marketable’. This is innovative with respect to the Tdr previously discussed in that the development rights may be used freely in all the urban development areas except those allocated to programs of collective interest.

By attributing development rights, the plan ceases to prefigure the form and use of each development area and becomes a regulatory vehicle for all authorized development. Once the amount of development rights is determined in accordance with the available infrastructures and services, the market acts to develop the opportunities offered by the plan, by turning them into projects. Entrusting the management of the plan to this sort of planning tool means limiting recourse to prescriptive land use norms in favor of more general regulation of how the market for development rights functions.

The city of Milan intends to adopt a non-restrictive plan that promotes interaction between the supply and demand of rights, the use of which is subject to regulations aimed at creating a quality urban development. The role of the local administration remains crucial in implementing the infrastructures and the public domain, to which it has entrusted the strategic framework of the city’s development, that private supply does not structurally produce.

Innovations of this sort are not void of problems. The real development rights market can turn out quite differently than the perfectly competitive markets of the economic theory, resulting in an excess in the supply or in the demand for rights. Moreover, the transaction costs can be burdensome and render the new modes of urban redevelopment less efficient.

Beyond the difficulties of applying these mechanisms, the conceptual discontinuity of a land use plan that promotes regulation and renounces the systematic design of the city nevertheless remains. It would be mistaken, however, to hold that the use of these sorts of mechanisms is the antithesis of urban planning. The very aim of planning lies in identifying the infrastructural framework and the public domain, which are prerogatives of the administration, and in defining the general norms through Urbanistica www.planum.net

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which private real estate development can take form.

The land use plan: between command and control tools and new rights markets What ties all these different examples together is their taking leave from the use of traditional zoning tools for governing the city’s redevelopment and the taking hold of regulations based on the liberalization of development rights, with varied degrees of limitation. From the perspective of public economics, the plan can be considered a tool for regulating highly significant urban externalities.

The crisis of the traditional tools for plan implementation has made necessary to revise the planning mechanisms that control the transformation of physical environment.

If it is possible to organize a market in which the entities subjected to externalities and those producing them, it is the main Coase’s lesson, can buy and sell rights corresponding to these externalities, efficiency in the use of resources can be reached without the direct intervention of the government.

The real estate markets function in ways that contradict the possibility of a free interaction between the supply and demand of rights, and a need for regulation seems nonetheless insuppressible. This is the case of the norms regulating urban form such as, for example, height and alignment, which limit the free use of the rights themselves. In most cases, the mechanisms adopted have been a compromise between traditional systems of authoritative regulation and the variously liberalized rights markets.

The Tdr tool and its evolutions prefigure new relationships between the local administrations and the private sector, modifying the attitude towards the uncertainty affecting the city’s evolution. It is a possible, though not necessary, route. Other forms of evolution of the land use plan can be based on other tools, such for instance, the systematic recourse to Ppp agreements between developers and the local administration. Nevertheless, the success of such tools is important and appears to be coherent with the new approaches to urban planning.

In such a perspective, the new management tools for urban land-use plans foster significant relationships with the nature of zoning, defining possible routes in the evolution of its effectiveness and efficiency representing an area of unquestionable importance for future research.

The responsible approach to strategic planning: the Pppes and Sga of the Picentini regional Park Assunta Martone, Marichela Sepe The Picentini regional Park authority, supported by the Naples-based multidisciplinary team of Irat-Cnr, Institute for service industry research of the National research council, started in 2008 a process of responsible land planning, developing the Multiannual socio economic planning for the promotion of compatible activities (Ppes) along with the Environmental management system (Sga). During the experiment in the Picentini regional Park the Irat-Cnr research group set up a method to implement responsible strategic planning processes structured in a manner consistent with the logic of accountability of environmental and social responsibility.

In this paper we present the method and its application to the Ppes and Sga of the Park. In this regard, research was mainly devoted to the process carried out with the stakeholders (administrators, associations, schools, citizens) to identify contents of the plan, which was adopted in 2009.

The method The method consists of an engagement process that authorities, involved in strategic planning, can follow to develop shared and measurable targets, starting point for effective behaviour.

The method is realized through repeated feedbacks in a procedural flow and is made up of four wide working areas (Ao) (see the Method scheme in figure). The Aos are described separately, though often realized in parallel, and their results merge into the matrix structure of figure; their development, explained below, needs continuous change and adjustment to conform to circumstances.

In the first working area named Ao1 Socio-economic and environmental analysis the authority investigates on peculiarity of the territory in which will act, pointing out problems, drawing the development phases, identifying trends that are able to engage sustainable growth. The goal is to define and measure, according with stakeholders needs, a framework of meaningful data for strategic planning. This area, like the others, proceeds according with the results of Ao3: the authority, through key stakeholders listening, realizes which information have to be searched and how to combine them. It is useful to start collecting at first the primary data that are available from different data sources, so as to shape the components of the territory structure (e.g., population, employment, local enterprise, social services). Then it is usually necessary to integrate this background analysis by gathering secondary data through interviews, questionnaire, etc.

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territory transformations is to define the complete framework of constraints to be taken into account in the use of territory resources. These information highlight the conditions under which it is possible to use land resources and then influencing authority strategy, so it is crucial to reach understanding and awareness in a continuous dialogue with internal stakeholders (e.g., citizens) and external stakeholders (e.g., other authorities). In protected areas a common restraint derives from Natura 2000, a european ecological network, based on Habitats directive and Birds directive that established the so called special protection areas and special areas of conservation.

The process explained in Ao3 Stakeholders engagement consists of engagement, participation and involvement of key stakeholders that is a distinguishing part of strategic planning process ad help the organization in constructing liaisons of trust. A mapping of stakeholders and their preliminary involvement conduct all other Aos, and set up a common language in an ongoing learning path that leads to the strategic matrix (see below) and the survey on financial resources (Ao4). All these information are collected in a preliminary document which explains to and informs key stakeholdes on the plan impacts on territory, allowing them to form an accurate opinion.

Several meetings, a standing committee, phone calls, emails, a web site set up a community network facilitating the process to achieve a cognitive alignment on strategic goals.

In this Ao4 Financial resources identification the authority identifies and measures the needs of financial resources to pursue development opportunities and possible funding instruments. The private and public opportunities of funding are compared with the potential requirements in a matrix which highlights links among them. The fund research (Ao4) is developed along with the analysis (Ao1 and Ao2) and stakeholders partecipation (Ao3), in an ongoing process as already explained: the result of Swot analysis and of fund ricognition together with the identified relevant topics for territorial development are summarized as in the figure on p. 91.

During the process the authority, together with stakeholders, conceives and selects the possible development actions, coherent with the different Aos and continuously updated so that matching of all information improves over time.

In the matrix the selected hypotheses of development are shown in a hierarchy from long term to short term options: strategic priorities, priority axis, specific objectives, actions.

In the figure on p. 93 Sga and governance structure ovelap the matrix, to point out that they influence other activities and are influenced by them.

The Ppes of the Picentini Park The Multiannual socio economic planning (Ppes), supported by the Environmental management system (Sga), in line with the aims of the park authority and after broad

analysis and consultation, identified the following general objective: “To enhance the attractiveness of the Park and improve access to information, financial and technological resources in order to protect biodiversity, combat desertification and depopulation and improve the overall quality of life”. This overall objective is the basis for defining the strategic priorities. The first priority is ‘to enhance the attractiveness of the Park’.

By closely linking action targeting Park resources and action targeting its population, the priority embraces the spirit of the plan. The focus of such action is to improve the level of conservation, enhance particular natural, cultural, ethno-anthropological, economic and social aspects, and heighten the awareness of residents, and area users, so that they know what assets they possess and realise the need to conserve them for area development. This awareness concerns particularly local population, a resource in their own right to protect and enhance, as witnesses of traditions and ways of life closely linked to the area itself. The second strategic priority involves improving access not only to financial resources, but also to knowledge and technology. Development opportunities are to be created by making investments at the public, private and public-private levels. Improved access to knowledge entails raising the level of awareness on the part of the public administration and the entire resident population, while through the enhancement of It infrastructures the Plan will allow large numbers of people to access information with considerable savings both in time and energy.

The third priority is “to protect natural, landscape, environmental and biodiversity values”, a priority to be pursued through the creation of a balanced relationship between economic attractiveness and the ecosystem to achieve sustainable development and, finally, to improve the quality of life of residents, to which the plan attaches high strategic priority, avoiding the creation of a process that would lead to environmental degradation.

The strategic priorities outlined above are to be achieved along five axes. The first concerns the particular cultural and natural resources of the region. The strategic objective is knowledge, enhancement and promotion of the heritage of this area by developing tourism compatible with the environment in order to place resources on regional, national and international circuits.

The pivotal importance of energy and risk issues leads to the strategic goal of the second axis, aimed at implementing integrated action for environmental protection, as well as risk mitigation and management. Specific objectives and lines of action in the axis take into account the diversity of environments and land use, aiming at protecting and preserving areas of high environmental value, with species and habitats to be protected, and in respect of principles of environmental management, in other areas. Axis III focuses on agriculture and mountains, characterized by significant innovation and a widened role of entrepreneurs. Targeted actions here Urbanistica www.planum.net

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include the start-up of tourist, social or educational activities alongside traditional farm activities, the growth of the entrepreneur along the production chain, organized into short marketing circuits, and crop conversion as a result of changes in Eu agricultural policy.

Accessibility, related to the presence of adequate infrastructures for reaching the area, and usability, in connection with regional heritage and its possibility to be enjoyed, are the key elements of axis IV. The focus is both on transport infrastructure and modal interchange so as to allow access only to vehicles with lower environmental impact and on conservation and sustainable fruition.

The axis also identifies the construction of It infrastructure for the exchange of information and data as a suitable solution to reduce transportation within the area and to promote local products and tourism services. The strategic objective of axis V Governance, social capital and human capital aims at reinforcing institutional dialogue within the Park through the enhancement of human capital and social networks. The promotion and preservation of social heritage ensures the maintenance of regional identity, which may be further strengthened by the cultural baggage of individual knowledge and skills.

The specific objectives and lines of action of this axis integrate the criteria of various approaches, setting up interventions to enhance human capital within the economic, institutional and social process. All this involves a necessary simplification of administrative procedures.

The peculiarity of this plan is to build up a strong link between actions referred to material resources (e.g. landscape) and to intangible ones (e.g. human capital); the leitmotiv that conduct the research work is the awareness of ‘common good’ on one side and related responsibilities on the other one.

A remarkable and innovative intuition of the research group is to support exploitation of financial resources by constructing a coherence matrix for each funding instrument (e.g., Fesr) where columns are associated to various lines of the instrument and rows are related to lines of actions of Ppes. This tool requires frequent updating but proved to be very effective for Park administration in getting orientation in the complex framework of european funding, e.g. within the 2007/13 Community programme. In particular the schedule for drawing up the integrated rural Plan for Park areas (Pirap) and its extensions on resources from the Esrf and Esf turned out to be quite straightforward.

The communication activities took a prominent part in the strategic planning process, with attention to trasparency toward internal and external stakeholders, to facilitating the comprehention of correct meaning of words in all documents, and even to the graphic design of online and printed documents featuring pale blu as the color of water, the dominant element of Park, and an origami bird, easy to make yet a symbol of ancient culture.

Transformations of the territory in the Municipality of Rimini through the diacronica analysis of the landscape Elisa Morri, Giovanna Pezzi, Riccardo Santolini The reconstruction of the recent history of the landscape provides a base of knowledge for predicting short term modifications and planning future landscape management. Land use and land cover changes over the last 50 years within the Rimini municipality have been assessed by comparing 3 maps (1955, 1976, 2003) derived by interpreting remote aerial photographs and satellite images. Urban sprawl and changes in agricultural techniques over the period led to an almost completely disappearance of heterogeneous agricultural areas (seminativi arborati) and land use intensification (soil consumption). In particular, the period 1955-76 was subject to the major ‘soil consumption’. Since urbanization and intensification in land use decrease both in quantity and quality of available resources (e.g. soil, water), they modify the possibilities of landscape to provide Ecosystem services.

Introduction Landscape composition, structure and functions change over the time (Forman, Godron 1986) as a consequence of co-occurrence of natural processes and human impacts.

From mid XX century, flood plain transformation concerned agricultural sector with both an increase in homogeneous agricultural areas (due to agricultural mechanization) and urbanization and spread of infrastructures (Antrop 2004).

In particular, urbanization and the associated infrastructure, determine landscape fragmentation, an irreversible soil consumption, a decrease in ecological resilience of ecosystem to human impacts and, most of all, alter natural resources and ecosystem services used for human well-being.

Urban planning, so far used with ‘consumption approach’ of natural resources (renewable and non renewable), must now evaluate natural capital and point to the sustainable use of resources to maintain ecosystem services.

Analyzing changes in the environmental mosaic and highlighting areas at different level of criticality, as can be done by overlaying maps of different years, may suggest criteria to planning tools. We chose Rimini study area because it represents an increased urbanization model that involved hinterland too. We analyzed landscape changes in Rimini municipality by comparing 3 maps of land uses (1955, 1976, 2003). The thresholds we chose correspond to important socioeconomic changes at local scale. In particular, before the fifties of XIX century settlement organization corresponded to historical one.

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has changed both in agricultural techniques and hinterland urbanization.

Study area Rimini municipality (134,52 kmq) is located in the southern part of Emilia-Romagna region.

It is mostly flat; hills rarely reach 200 m. Climate is between sub littoral temperate and sub temperate sub continental (Blasi 1996).

Agricultural landscape is predominant with a very few and scattered forested areas in hilly parts and along the main (Marecchia e Ausa) and the secondary river. Residential, business, holiday activities are along the main roads (A14, Ss 16, Ss 9).

Material and method We analyzed Rimini landscape using three maps of land uses (1955-1976-2003) on a scale 1:25.000 by interpreting aerial photographs and satellite images.

Nomenclature corresponds to the third level of Corine land cover legend, to which we added roads (local and highway) and scattered buildings. The study area was divided into the Rimini Ptcp (Provincial coordination territorial Plan) units and sub-unit based on territorial and physiographic features.

Rimini maps are analyzed with landscape metrics shown (Fry 1998).

The overlaying pairs of maps (1955-’76, 1976-’03, 1955’03) allows to evaluate direction of changes and persistence either in the whole area and in units and subunits.

Quantitative data were shown in a transition matrix.

Results In 1955, Rimini was an agricultural landscape, dominated by heterogeneous cultivations (i.e. arable land associated with permanent crops: seminativi arborati) and almost maintaining the features of the mid nineteenth century.

In 1955-’76 period arable land (e.g. non irrigated arable land) (1955: 12%; 1976: 48%) and permanent crops (e.g. vineyards or fruit trees) replaced agricultural heterogeneous which halved their areas (1955: 68%; 1976: 27%). On the other hand continuous urban fabric and discontinuous urban fabric doubled their extent (from 4% to 8% and from 2% to 5%, respectively).

Landscape matrix of 1955 was characterized by few extended typologies (Shei: 0,43), while in 1976 a Shei value of 0,66 indicated an uniform distribution of land uses.

From 1976 to 2003 period heterogeneous cultivations further decreased and were transformed into arable land (18%), urbanized area (1%) and industrial areas (1%). In 2003 arable land made up the landscape matrix (47%).

On the whole in the period 1955-2003 heterogeneous cultivations had almost completely disappeared: in 1955 made up the landscape matrix (68% of total study area) while in 2003 covered just the 7% of the total landscape area. This land use were replaced by arable land (39%),

permanent crops (6%), urban areas (9%), industrial areas (4%), and roads (3%). In the present landscape heterogeneous cultivations can be found as residual patches which lie on marginal zones and have small size and regular shape.

Agricultural areas were transformed partly into continuous urban fabric (from 4% to 9% of total study area), discontinuous urban fabric (from 2% to 7%) and roads (from 3% to 6%).

As to units and sub-units: – in Marecchia and Uso agricultural flood plain the main transformations involved the agricultural patches and the industrial and urban areas near Marecchia river and n. 16 Ss road, which spread out; – in Ausa, Marano e Melo low hill heterogeneous cultivations were replaced by arable land and urban areas; – in Marecchia and Uso low hill permanent crops (vineyards, fruit trees, olive groves) replaced arable land associated with permanent crops; – urban areas of the coast was almost stable because the sprawl of continuous urban fabric had already happened in the fifties.

In the period 1955-2003 urban areas spread out, as for example in particular Rimini town and coastal villages which at present form a continuous urban belt.

Coastal urban areas gradually saturate the territory and cause soil waterproofing and ecological fragmentation of the study area.

Conclusions Landscape change analysis shows a loss of original characteristics of the territory. This analysis showed that planning tools didn’t consider ecological characteristics of the natural capital in changing soil resource.

In particular the unsustainable use of resources results in ecosystem autopoiesis and in higher demand of energy to maintain production balance: this way to act adds higher fees to population increasing debt for future generations.

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Urbanistica n. 143 July-September 2010

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Index and english translation of the articles

Projects and implementation

Problems, policies and research

Paolo Avarello edited by Attilia Peano, Grazia Brunetta Attilia Peano Francesco Puma, Tommaso Simonelli Patrizia Lombardi Angela Colucci Grazia Brunetta Patrizia Saroglia Attilia Peano Dunia Mittner edited by, Valeria Fedeli Alessandro Balducci Zheng Shiling Yongyi Lu Li Qin Gan Jing Valeria Fedeli Corinna Morandi, Luca Gaeta Remo Dorigati Andrea Rolando Antonio Longo

Methods and tools

Profiles and practices

Stefano Stanghellini Ezio Micelli Assunta Martone, Marichela Sepe Elisa Morri, Giovanna Pezzi, Riccardo Santolini

Antonio Alberto Clemente Francesco Chiodelli

The Paper Plan The planning of river basin towards integrated policies Environment, territory, and landscape A sustainable future for the Po river basin. The po river valley Strategic Project Assessment of Special Strategic Project by the Analytic Network Process The planning of river basin in Europe. Aims and central issue Sea, beyond the procedure for a Po river basin valorisation project Participation in Sea: a complicated question A territory and landscape project Planning and large urban projects. Stockholm 1990-2025 Shanghai, Expo 2010. Better city, better life: a new bet on the city Spatial planning and urban development The meaning of Expo 2010 Shanghai Between the glorious past and the splendid future at the opening of the world Expo 2010 China The Regional and Town Planning of Shanghai The design process for the Expo Shanghai site planning Notes of travel. Hybrids Notes of travel. Milano-Shanghai: round-back trip Notes of travel. The flowing river Notes of travel. The framework of open spaces for the Expo in Shanghai Notes of travel. 2010 Shanghai, a profile for a changing city Equalisation, compensation and incentives as news tools Transfer of development rights and the land use plan for urban planning The responsible approach to strategic planning: the Ppes and Sga of the Picentini regional Park Transformation of the territory in the Municioality of Rimini through the diacronica analysis of the landscape

City: a term at its end. Revisiting the General theory of urbanization The centre of the planning: the tecnichal rules

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City: a term at its end. Revisiting the General theory of urbanization Antonio Alberto Clemente It’s synchronic: the discipline of urban planning is born and the idea of city dies. In 1867 Ildefonso Cerdà publishes The general theory of urbanization (from now on Gtu). This is the incipit: “I’ll introduce the reader to a brand new, untouched, virgin knowledge. Because everything is so new, I have had to search out and invent new words to express new ideas for which explanations could not be found in any existing terms”. The founding act of urbanism as a discipline was not based on building programs, plans, street sections, and design theories but rather on ‘new words to signify new ideas’.

It is a complete reformulation of the metaphors, lexis and boundaries of the whole discipline. And it starts from this need: “the very first thing to do is to give a name to this mare-magnum of people, things and interests of all sorts, of thousands of diverse elements that appear to function independently of the others … called city”.

Why does Cerdà feel the need to delete the term city from the vocabulary of urban planning? Is it just a matter of semantics? Or rather an impossibile coexistence?

Furthermore, should the Gtu be considered such an outdated historical text? Or does it contain a cultural heritage that makes it worth reading again?

The answer to these questions brings out this need: to put aside the Barcelona built by following Cerdà’s plan to focus on the Gtu as a reading and on the historical period in which it was published.

Therefore, if Cerdà’s writing is such a privileged point of view then we can sustain the hypothesis that some of his ideas still represent an extraordinarily valuable conceptual heritage. Worth reading again.

Metaphors Just three statements build up the background. The first one: “the urbanization that is generally believed to originate and develop according to random patterns, on the contrary, submits to immutable principles and fixed rules”. The second: “urban planning has its place among the sciences that are teaching man how to achieve perfection”. And lastly the role of the urbanist who: “lives estranged from his existing background, putting himself completely in the hands of science and blindly obeying it, so as to submit every achievement to its uncontested principles”.

“The city as a body is the metaphor that has synthesised knowledge and the urban condition up to the beginning of the modern era” (Rosario Pavia). The urban organism idea imposes a conceptual tranfer, which radically modifies the concept of the human body, changing the way of meaning and perceiving space, with relevant operative consequences: the closed shape idea of the city, in which all the single parts are correlated and in proportion, is set aside.

The human body is transformed from a symbol of perfection to a biological organism that the science of urbanization will have to describe via direct observation.

Even of its depths. The urbanist may no longer stop at the exterior aspect of the city: he will now have to deal with what is underground as well. And this will be extremely important since below street level there is: an abundance of masterpieces, vaults, large and small “pipes which, forming “the venous sytem of a mysterious being of colossal dimensions … allows the development of urban life”. By sectioning, scrutinising and investigating the inside of the organism we can understand and plan “all its alimentative, digestive and excretive functions”.

The city becomes an aggregation of parts and urbanists ‘’the cold anatomists of the urban organism’, whose mission is to comprehend ‘the active germ of the serious disease that erodes the viscera of mankind’. A disease that turns the urbanist into a doctor for the city.

Etymologies For a newly born discipline, the main effort in identifying its sphere of action lies in adding new terms and specifying their meanings. It is the desire to give an independent language to a brand new subject. It is the need to emphasize the gap between the past and the present.

And this is the context within which Cerdà declares, on the one hand, how ‘it became clear that the word city would not do’ and on the other hand he stresses the exigence of finding “a new word for a new subject, so general and comprehensive that it would encompasss all the diverse and heterogeneus elements that … constitute what we call a city”.

In the Gtu the word city disappears; it becomes a noun without any existing direct reference; a symbol of an extinct language; the last remains of an exhausted, conceptually unproductive and ineffective vocabulary. The subject of the new dicipline is called Urbs due to the need for a new terminology, since “I found that our language does not possess terms adequate enough to describe the concepts to which I refer”. This new age would eventually render obsolete, useless and sterile every instrument that had previously, for centuries been used to plan cities. With a retrospective view, Cerdà favours a definitive expansion into the surrounding hinterland.

Not only because the walls have been knocked down but also, and above all, because of the indifference to demographic measurement and to any boundaries that could possibly limit urban expansion. The administrative borders of each commune will be superseded: through the Ley de irradiacion, Cerdà suggests the necessity to extend the planning act to the whole of the province.

Dismeasures To Cerdà “urbs is a knot in universal viability”. What was yesterday a simple intuition, way ahead of its time, is today widespread knowledge “the city is an anachronistic object belonging to the past; the current process Urbanistica www.planum.net

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of urbanization involves us in posturbanism” (Françoise Choay).

Extending continuously towards lands without any horizon, cities are such extensive entities that they result incomprehensible to our minds. Unimaginable areas. That can be given a shape and form only by a satellite view.

Cerdà understood that the relationship between spatial structure and context, topography and territorial identity, forma urbis e genius loci would be weakened. What was then just an eventuality, has now become reality. It is well know that “some cities - New York, Tokyo, Londra, San Paolo, Hong Kong, Toronto, Miami and Sydney among others - have developed in trans-national market ‘spaces’ and prospering in this way, have ended up having much more in common with each other than with their respective national and regional areas, many of which have gone on to lose their importance” (Saskia Sassen).

There’s a certitude that guides the thoughts about the historichal evolution of urbanization: “locomotion will be, in every urban age the starting point of our researches and the means of control for our observations”. This transformation has reached its fulfillment. The city is, increasingly so, a space for transit; traffic; transportation. So much so, that all the programmed projects have became “abstract in that they are no longer bound to a place or a city: they act within the orbit of the site offering the largest number of interconnections” (Rem Koolhaas).

By continuing to call the current urban phenomenon city, we risk misunderstandings and controversies that “arise from the oversight and sloppiness with which words and signs are used and understood, a sort of ‘language plague’. Carelessly casual about the weight of meaning that every term unavoidably carries, we stick to one rather than to another meaning and thus raise phantoms against which we fight heroic but useless battles” (Bernardo Secchi).

The future: a retrospective The distance between words and actual facts has widened out of all proportion. And with that arises a certain difficulty in having a future vision, given that in global urbanization there is the coexistence of two opposing but inseparably linked concepts.

On the one hand the world is turning into a global city, thanks “to the communications networks that link the large directional centres found inside megalopolies” (Marc Augé) and to the system of large financial and economic firms invading markets everywhere, with the same products and services. On the other hand, the large city now symbolizes a world within the world, with the coexsistence of contradictions and conflicts that are created when various ethnic groups share the same urban space. Often within short distances, there are various combinations of different living conditions, cultural differences, differences in ethnic origins and in economic conditions. “There is a confluence of violence, exclusion, ghettoism, different genterations, youth and the elderly and immigrants, legal and illegal. In other words all the

complexities and inequalities present in larger world” (Marc Augé).

Urbanismis is running into trouble with regard to these processes: the reasons for which the discipline was born are antithetical. To Cerdà, the term urbanism “means the whole of the acts that tend to form a grouping of buildings and to rule their funtions, it appoints a set of priciples, doctrines and rules to be applied because buildings and their grouping, far from repressing, weakening and corrupting physical, moral and intellectual capabilities of the man living in a society, should contribute to encourage its development and to increase individual and public welfare”. These very founding assumptions are now in crisis. And urbanism itself is in such a conficting situation that “the systems to govern and control the phenomena that it postulates, no longer exist. This has many different implications. The fact is that a deep divarication exists between how professionals perceive their role (convinced as they are, as tradition would have it, of acting for the public and general interest) and what we are actually going through nowadays, that is to say a totally opposite logic, that of the market which, by definition, does not leave any room for these kind of concerns” (Rem Koolhaas). And this is why it would be useful to revisit the Gtu. Cerdà revises the metaphores, vocabulary and boundaries of the urban discipline. He strives to reconquer the future. The present situation is asking for a similar effort but In a much more critical condition. This is because if yesterday Cerdà could say: “the coming age will produce a generous and prolific civilization” today ‘a contemporary idelology is raging through the world’ that renders “the lessons from the past as outdated and obsolete as the desire to imagine the future. Over the last two decades the hegemony of the present has meant that the future no longer seems difficult to predict” (Marc Augé).

This is especially so for those practioners of the discipline, that for conceptual inertia, continues to be called ‘urbanism’.

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The centre of the planning: the technical rules Francesco Chiodelli Nowadays planning seems to be confined to an (irremediable?) aphasia (Bianchetti 2008). There are lots of causes for this situation. Some of them can be traced back to precise responsibilities of the discipline.

According to my opinion the main problem of it is that planning was not able to interpret the (difficult) connection with politics in an effective way. As a consequence the planning has been overwhelmed by politics.

A solution for coming out from this condition is, as a matter of this paper, to find the heart of the planning and to realize both its limitations and its areas of action. These have not to be intended as static borders, but rather as a substantive space to be reinforced. And that is however in the preservation of all the hybridizations and the disciplinary contaminations that have always marked the planning knowledge.

As I illustrate in this paper, it is my conviction that this centre of the planning has to be put in a substantive technical knowledge related with the connection between spatial and social organization.

The search for this centre it is not an academic exercise de stile. And it is not a self-preservative jump of the category, either. But rather it is the statement of the importance of a technical knowledge about spatial planning: one of the actions from which also the postmodern societies cannot evade is, in fact, exactly both subdivision and spatial regulation.

Lefebvre and the planning The planning politicality. Among lots of authors that can be useful in this searching operation for a centre of the planning one of them is Henri Lefebvre. His thoughts about both urban space and planning suggest in fact a little explored search direction. The starting point of his reflection seems like that of planners who, exactly in sixties and seventies, started to refuse of being confined to a merely technical role. What they asserted was instead a no neutral outlook on the discipline (Taylor 2006).

Just like them, also Lefebvre starts from the consideration that the space is by definition political and as a consequence strategic (Lefebvre 1970; 1976a). The planning is for this reason a discipline that is constitutively related with the political sphere.

All the same, in his opinion, in the twentieth century the planning has been overwhelmed and exploited by politics. We have witnessed a political use of planning knowledge (Lefebvre 1973), that just only aimed at the realization of the power dictates. An obvious example is the presumed neutral technicality of the proposals of the rational-synoptic planning.

His criticism is not at first sight very original. All the same Lefebvre suggests a different solution from the leit motiv proposed, however with different shades of meaning,

starting from Davidoff (1965) and confirmed over the years by advocacy, radical, pluralist, communicative and collaborative planning (that of a political activation of the planner).

It is true that the government’s operations of the territory have an essentially value importance. Nevertheless this does not mean by force of circumstances that planning has to undertake political tasks in detail.

The planning acts as intermediary between political will and space. Lefebvre highlights how are not the planners to decide the settlements disposition (Lefebvre 1973).

The planners only are ‘spatial translators’ of the political choices. The french philosopher draws here his attention to what planning really is: the right intermediary between political will and space.

All the same what he contests to the planning is not this function. The problem is that the planning tries to conceal this function. Instruments of this concealment are, according to Lefebvre, the principles of the rationalsynoptic planning just contemporary to him (Lefebvre 1973: 177-78). Particularly the idea that it is possible to study and recognize the population’s necessities and to give them an answer too, in a consequential connection between description and city plan.

The struggle that he carries out against the ‘planning ideology’ is in this way completely turned to refute these theories. Firstly Lefebvre demonstrates how the space has not been created by both planning and planners, but by both productive forces and production relations (Lefebvre 1976b). There cannot be any deterministic connection between description and prescription. It is politics which creates the space, knowledge and planners’s creative acts do not create it (Lefebvre 1973).

To depoliticize the planning. By Lefebvre does not come any ‘reform’ proposal of the discipline. Unlike Friedmann or Davidoff, he doesn’t attempt at politicizing the planning just to make it as an instrument for disadvantaged groups. If the planning is the ‘translation’ in a spatial way of the wills for power, it has simply to be unmasked. It is the power that needs to be defeated, through the different types of social mobilization.

From Lefebvre’s reflections we can deduce the following theory: if the problem is an instrumental use of knowledge that power does of it, the solution can be a depoliticization of planning knowledge. The purpose of this depoliticization is double: to recover both autonomy and disciplinary specificity (Lefebvre 1970, 1976b); to take explicitly back to the political sphere the final responsibility of the value choices related with the space. As we can express with a slogan: to depoliticize the urban planning for repoliticizing the space.

Politics and technique In his own reflections Lefebvre expresses in a personal way the thesis of the division between value and facts.

At first this theory has been also supported by Davidoff: nevertheless this distinction has been gradually set aside in the advocacy planning practice. And, finally, in Urbanistica www.planum.net

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the communicative ethics perspective by Forester it has been completely reversed. In fact, according to Forester, it is necessary to accept the ‘no-neutrality axiom’, that is to say the “overcoming of a rational-style distinction […] between the possibility to discuss rationally the facts and the impossibility of doing as much about values” (Borri 1998: 332). Thanks to this overcoming the planner, according to Forester, can carry out his own both mediation and negotiation functions, and so the planning can become rational management of the ‘communicative quarrel’.

This ethical principle is a base for all the different politicized interpretations of the planning. The planner can be considered as a sui generis actor, different from all the other subjects involved into the process, just because he associates some peculiar competence of ‘technical judgement’ with an element of political judgement. All the same the legitimacy of this position is debatable. In a division context between assertive and normative sphere (McIntyre 2007) there cannot be any more competent judgement about value. Every judgement is equally both competent and legitimate. When two incompatible value judgements collide it is difficult to find a ‘solution’ in the communicative ethical field. It is easier that this solution, although it is like an inter pares consent, actually comes from the power field (Milroy 1990; Schmitt 2008).

neither on an analytic-descriptive knowledge (more related with geography or sociology, for example), nor on a judicial-value knowledge (more related with the political sphere, in a broad sense understood). The planning is a technical-substantive knowledge. Its own purpose is to express the connection between spatial actions and social-spatial results, that is to say between the spatial and the social regulation. This does not mean that planning is only and simply what we mentioned, and that the hybridizations and the contacts with other disciplines should be broken off. And all the same we cannot forget that in the reality of their own professional activity the planners are constantly involved into some political judgement degree, so that it is difficult to divide clearly descriptions from judgements. To draw the disciplinary competence line it does not mean to build a fortress within to be retired. It only is intended as for recognizing some stable anchorage points, some common bases all around which to organize both the discussion and the attention of the discipline.

The planning competence sphere: the technical rules As the value choice belongs to the political sphere, the planner should not think that in the centre of his work there is the judgement. A logical consequence that should come from this statement could be in fact that there is no distinction between planning and political activity (Mazza 1993).

The planning, on the contrary, should ‘be satisfied’ to be circumscribed to the world of statements expressing a need: if you want X, you have to do Y. It is what Azzoni (1991) defines the anankastic sphere (from the Grecian word, that means need). What it has to create is a knowledge made up of technical rules. A technical rule “is a statement that prescribes not a behavior in itself, but rather a behavior as a condition … for achieving a contingent purpose” (Azzoni 1991: 13-14). Not all the statements made in planning are technical rules. All the same that of the technical rules seems like the substantive field of major interest (and complexity) for the discipline.

The technical rule goes into action (such it is) only in the presence of a contingent purpose subjectively given by the agent (x), as an objective condition (y) for achieving the aim itself (Conte 1983). The agent who subjectively defines x is, in the territory government sphere, politics.

Spatial planning should investigate and express y, that is to say the (spatial) means that allow to achieve the socio-spatial purpose.

The heart of the planning: the technical rules Therefore the technical rules are, in my opinion, the heart of the planning. The centre of the discipline is based Urbanistica www.planum.net

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