Mediterranean Urban Campus for Regeneration at the Dubai 2020 Expo

Adaptivity of the urban open spaces to face the climatic, socio-ecological, multicultural and health challenges, raises questions with multiple design implications, which cannot be solved only with the functional, formal, and technical rethinking of the space. A real adaptivity of the urban open spaces can only result from an informational redirection of the project aimed at raising the integrated capabilities of nature, individuals, organizations, and spaces. This is an interpretation of designing that involves a substantial rethinking of scenarios, visions, and concepts, in terms of plural projection of multiple, flexible, and reversible responses. It is also a new condition of the design experience that can only develop through an interdisciplinary and choral practice, based on comparison and continuous dialogue between different design knowledge and living cultures. This volume collects the results of the Mediterranean Urban Campus for Regeneration project, that was selected by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs among the initiatives carried out at the Italy Pavilion of Expo 2020 in Dubai. All the activities were conducted by an international universitarian team of professors, researchers, and PhD students. Today, the metropolis of Dubai is characterized by an extreme climatic-environmental conditions and, at the same time, by an almost infinite capacity to regulate the living spaces through the most innovative technologies. The theme of adaptive design of open urban spaces has been contextualized in some case-study areas of Dubai. The results of the metadesign, debate, workshop and comparison process between the participants outlined a complex framework of different development trajectories, both for the designing innovation of the urban open spaces, and for the launch of new teaching methods of architectural, technological, and urban project. This experience has made it possible to identify issues, approaches, and design criteria – on urban and building scale – potentially replicable also in the Mediterranean contexts that are today affected by an exacerbation of climatic phenomena, such as the rise in temperatures and the consequent need to overturn the consolidates axioms and design practices. For these reasons, the experience of the Mediterranean Urban Campus for Regeneration can represent a useful anticipation of operating methods to be transferred on the Italian urban territories. Reflecting on these issues means understanding how the university research can take an active role in the development of studies and scenarios to support the operational actions at the land and local level

The Role of the Public Municipality in Urban Regeneration: the Case of Genoa

The conditions why processes of urban regeneration can be developed in modern-day cities have changed enormously over the last decade. Unlike the recent past, where the reuse for urban uses of former industrial areas was only based on maximising the amount of space, after the housing bubble began in 2008 and the pandemic crisis, the profit margins for operators were reduced, and today, they faced to a sharp contraction in demand and a surplus of supply. Consequently, the framework within which we carry out the investment decisions is increasingly complex and is characterised by the opposition of a potential conflict between two forces. On the one hand, the public administration which seeks to take full advantage of the urban transformation processes to improve the quality of life for citizens; on the other, the private entity that has the aim of maximising the profits obtainable from the intervention and to minimise business risk. Therefore, to ensure the overall feasibility of an intervention, urban viability must correspond to economic and financial sustainability. The paper analyses the role of public strategies in urban regeneration interventions through the analysis of a case study in the city of Genoa. Currently, in the city some urban transformation interventions are being implemented; most of them (and the most relevant) are all aligned along the border between the city and the port. The role of the public administration is not limited to that of regulation, but the local municipality also acts as a financier (of public works) and as owner of the areas (which it makes available in concession). In this way, an attempt is made to make the city more competitive in the international real estate market. It is essential to reduce risk and cost factors compared to the private investor. The question then arises of how to evaluate the potential public benefits of these transformation operations

MIAW 2014. Re-Forming Milan

In the contemporary age, the city is increasingly seen as an experiential field. The new transformation processes are asking architects to become more culturally aware and sensitive as well as to read, interpret and implement the system of opportunities offered by the urban scenario. Participants to the Miaw workshop identify spaces in Milan that either have unexpressed potentialities either lost their characters, for several reasons. Leftovers which are marginalized and excluded from everyday life. From the smallest corner in the dense fabric to the large areas on the city borders, the Workshops worked to envision possible strategies of re-forming and revitalizing these dormant places. In a century that is overwhelmed by image, information and dynamism, it seems particularly important for architects and policy makers to recognize and assume the special role of the creative recovery of forgotten spaces

The Central Park in between Torino and Milano

This paper aims at discussing a possible legacy of Expo Milano 2015 by proposing a new idea of park based on different layered landscapes in the Region between Torino and Milano. This works is part of a wider research program developed at the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies of the Politecnico di Milano. The first research phase is focused on the analysis of the Region – moreover similar to most italian human landscapes - where: the cities and the villages (especially in their historical centers) are characterized by an outstanding spatial quality; vast portions of the open spaces, both natural or exploited for agricultural uses, are well set, maintained and already considered as parks, either by being formally protected or by being in fact used as leisure areas and therefore included within public and private actions of informal attention and care, responding to a more and more pressing demand from inhabitants (insiders) and “users” like the tourists (ousiders); several fringe areas like those between the built centers, their peripheries and the countryside, the borders of the infrastructures, the industrial settlements, the areas surrounding shopping centers are dramatically lacking in terms of spatial design. The case study is of particular interest, for the presence of two of the major cities of the Po valley, emerging from a system of medium sized and small cities, and where different entities are overlapping to create a complex layered landscape: • a bundle of infrastructure belonging to the “long and fast” network of European corridors, intersecting just in the middle of the area; • a thick network of “short and slow” regional railways conceived and built in the years 1850-1930s; • historical paths across the Alps (via Francigena); • a system of parks along the rivers and other unique protected areas like those of the morainic landscape around Ivrea, the Baragge, the remains of the planitial forest emerging from the rice fields nearby Trino, Ticino river, Groane Park, the agricultural park around south Milano and others; • close connections with Unesco sites (vineyard landscapes, Sacri Monti, the candidate site of Ivrea and Olivetti); • canals for irrigation and energy production (with the monumental Canale Cavour among all); • strongly structured agricultural landscapes (rice fields, orchards, vineyards); • important super-places like factories (Pirelli in Settimo Torinese), shopping malls (Settimo Cielo, Vicolungo Outlet), logistic poles, Malpensa airport, Fiera Milano and the Expo 2015 site. Considering the fact that the whole system, including the infrastructural network is today mature and complete in terms of infrastructure and settlement, the whole Region can be considered as an ideal ground of action, to improve its spatial quality by enhancing a system of inter metropolitan parks, well innervated in terms of accessibility. There is a concrete opportunity to re-connect and rethink the whole landscape, by producing a new kind of public inter metropolitan “Central Park”, considering the infrastructures and the in between left-over spaces as the most meaningful places where to intervene, even with light projects based on the improvement of the existing physical asset. To achieve this goal, two main perceptive and design approaches are proposed, to re-think of the role of the infrastructural system as a positive element of a complex human landscape: • to consider the landscape of infrastructures as it is perceived by travelers moving along it and by the inhabitants of the crossed territories improving in both cases their experience; • to improve the spatial quality of the places of interface between infrastructure and its environment (natural, agricultural and built) like the “banks” of the highways and railways, the stations on the regional railways network and the service areas placed along the main road and highways and to be considered as gates to this system of parks. • To consider the Torino Milano Region as a place of experimentation of a new kind of inter metropolitan park is possible, also considering that the event of the Expo 2015 in Milano has produced, as a positive legacy, some landscape design approaches and solutions (waterway through the Groane Park, parks and other linear open spaces around the site) that could be applied to other, somehow similar, areas like the logistic poles of Novara, Biandrate or Abbadia di Stura, the Vicolungo and Settimo Cielo shopping malls and others. As a framework, to support this idea could also refer to recent developments of the idea of smartness, extending it from the urban scale to the regional one, by experimenting the use of the ICTs and of specific digital services in marginal places as a tool to integrate the traditional spatial design actions, so to create better living conditions and contribute to better relationships between people and places

CON-TEMPORARY LIVING. UNEXPECTED HOUSING SOLUTIONS IN PUBLIC SPACES

In this book we will analyse the meaning of the word temporary in relation to the change between space and time, time and use, use and memory. Specifically, we will look at the value of the temporary nature of design as applied to the world, the city and its inhabitants, the temporary urban solutions (Fassi, 2012), and finally the key place designed to host people’s life: the home. Although it can be said that today the meaning of the term “living” is broader and indicates more than a place to sleep, and therefore to the small domestic space of a house. This is shown by the fact that today we live at work, we live on the go, we live in the movement, but, the house still plays a central role (Galluzzo, 2018). We will then draw up a categorization of the different types of temporary housing. Examples that in the world of design are multiple and, especially in recent years, have increased exponentially. Temporary design has become an excellent instrument to occupy peripheral, degraded and underutilized areas of the city, to give them a new personality and new value, and to then find a more permanent form of use for them. In this sense, the temporary city is one that takes its least used areas and aspects and transforms them to accommodate new uses, new identities and new inhabitants

Creative Cities in Italy: new scenarios and projects

Reflections on and experimentation with urban creativity as a competitive factor put together in recent years, starting with the works of Florida and Landry, gave rise to further theoretical/operative reflections aimed at providing a greater territorial dimension to the creative city, lessening the rhetorical character and increasing that of the concrete effects on the quality of life. In 2007 my book \u201cCreative City: Dynamics, Innovations, Actions\u201d identified the need for concrete evolution and pointed out the factors that make it possible for urban creativity to become a launch pad for new economies and a creative force for new cities and not simply an attractive force for intellectual resources. Today the paradigm of the creative city calls for a further evolutive leap forward \u2013 the third \u2013 because it is capable of producing multiplication and regeneration effects on urban development. In the current crisis situation, with the world\u2019s GDPs dropping, the strong flows of financial, social, and relational capital that powered urban redevelopment over the last fifteen years are no longer available to be tapped in on in an indiscriminate manner as it seems was the case until just a few months ago. The most dynamic cities in the near future will no longer be those that are able to attract urban projects driven by the real estate market, but the cities that have extensive cultural and identifying resources and that are able to use them as the basis for creating new culture and new urban value. Revitalising cities is no longer easy opportunity for long-term investments or for using the financial capital gains of multinationals or sovereign funds, but the new creative city has to provide precious opportunities for real development \u2013 not only quantitative but more and more qualitative \u2013 that is able to produce effects in both the domain of collective assets and that of private capital

Regeneration of the Built Environment from a Circular Economy Perspective

This open access book explores the strategic importance and advantages of adopting multidisciplinary and multiscalar approaches of inquiry and intervention with respect to the built environment, based on principles of sustainability and circular economy strategies. A series of key challenges are considered in depth from a multidisciplinary perspective, spanning engineering, architecture, and regional and urban economics. These challenges include strategies to relaunch socioeconomic development through regenerative processes, the regeneration of urban spaces from the perspective of resilience, the development and deployment of innovative products and processes in the construction sector in order to comply more fully with the principles of sustainability and circularity, and the development of multiscale approaches to enhance the performance of both the existing building stock and new buildings. The book offers a rich selection of conceptual, empirical, methodological, technical, and case study/project-based research. It will be of value for all who have an interest in regeneration of the built environment from a circular economy perspective