Voids / Uterus

At the beginning of this new century, cities appear to us to have changed profoundly. Underlying this profound change is above all the drastic redefinition of the relationship between solids and voids within an urban condition in which the presence of emptiness becomes pervasive and characterizes large parts.

On the other hand, however, not infrequently, emptiness constitutes at least in power an important resource for cities, working with which it becomes possible to redefine urban welfare apparatuses, to produce innovation and environmental sustainability, to regenerate individual spaces reverberating positive effects on neighboring contexts, and to reconnect previously interrupted settlement plots.

In this perspective, it becomes essential to precisely identify the resources (often scarce and not immediately available), their possible uses, the timing of their activation, and the actors that can be involved or those potentially interested in defining some possible interventions.

Under these conditions, more and more frequently, landscape and tactical urbanism interventions prepare highly contextual solutions, defined from time to time - in the best cases - concerning local needs and ways of living. These are generally interesting experiences for the attempts at the innovation of urban space that propose.

VVoids are perceived as inhospitable and inaccessible spaces, abandoned by the city that grew up around them. In their being a “nonplace,” the voids appear suspended and undefined, often enclosed and hidden, unidentifiable from the outside.

However, materials and life still flow within them, interacting with the other functions of the city-organism. They can indeed be compared to those cavities in our bodies that are not visible externally but provide fundamental services, such as the uterus, which accommodates the developing fetus during gestation, giving birth to a new life.

Voids can be identified as disused industrial areas where brambles and brushwood grow, wastelands, heaths, bogs, and swamps, or smaller and diffused areas.

The intangible essence that links these non-places is the absence of humans, allowing nature to develop and take possession. Weedy, wild, and unspoiled vegetation constitute great potential for the urban nature in the city of the future.

Like the uterus, these spaces assume new vital functions in the city-organism, regenerating themselves and configuring as new stepping stones in the urban ecosystem. The emptiness thus becomes a response to contemporary needs, an oasis in the city jungle, a resting place from hectic life, a cool island in summer, a biodiversity spot, supporting change within a resilient perspective.

Voids are therefore not really empty: this “third landscape” (Gilles Clement) is an opportunity for rethinking the human/ nature relationship and the importance of the landscape approach in contemporary cities to accommodate the flows of nature rather than overwhelm them.

VVoids are holes in the fabric of the city that are cordoned off for public use for an indefinite period of time.

Depending on size and conditions, active mobility around voids tends to decrease over time as well, as regular users begin to reroute their trips to avoid passing by these dormant spaces.

In the public realm, voids both exist and do not exist at the same time: they exist in the sense that they occupy valuable physical space around which people inevitably travel - adding to their trip lengths and often reducing their sense of comfort along the way; but they also do not exist in the sense that they fail to take part in the common functions of public life and therefore, fail to contribute in any way to the aims of public space either as a facilitator of movement or as a destination for social encounters.

They are wombs awaiting the potential for transformation, reinvention, and the reproduction of public space. With the right plan in place and under the right conditions, voids have the capacity to breathe new life into the city, revitalizing whole neighborhoods in its course.