The Future of the City in the Name of Proximity: A New Perspective for the Urban Regeneration of Council Housing Suburbs in Italy after the Pandemic

The concept of ‘urban proximity’, which has returned to the limelight with the promotion of the ‘15-min city’ developed and re-proposed for the post-COVID city, cannot simply be associated with the concept of physical proximity to the essential activities of daily life but must concern reinforcement of the social interactions that some places are able to activate better than others. This article focuses on the regeneration of Italian council housing neighbourhoods that lack relational proximity, even when functional proximity has been painstakingly achieved. It describes the fundamental steps of a working method that aims to strengthen the ‘relational performance’ of public spaces, using an interdisciplinary cognitive and assessment process and co-planning with the local community based on the issues of inclusiveness, safety, and climate vulnerability. The experimentation made in an economic and social housing district in a city in Central Italy revealed the need to ‘hook’ the space node onto the node of local capacities and resources, recognizing the local community as the bearer of desires, capacities, and planning will, capable of orienting and prefiguring the complex process of regeneration in the post-COVID city

New scenarios for large-scale territorial governance in Italy

Book of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Definite Space – Fuzzy Responsibility, Prague, 13-16th July, 2015The last twenty years have seen a general erosion of trust in the efficiency of local-scale planning and its continued use alongside new planning tools to coordinate large-scale policies. The solutions developed in the Provincial Territorial Coordination Plans (Italian: Piani Territoriali di Coordinamento Provinciale, PTCP) have seemed able to control the main criticism, which is linked to various aspects, including: land consumption and the compromise of natural resources; the drastic worsening of the energy balance and the changing landscape; infrastructure network congestion; and the aggravation of hydrogeological risks. The increasing economic crisis and the need to cut governmental costs have accelerated the process that led to Law 56 in 2014 (regulations regarding metropolitan cities on the union and fusion of municipalities). This law redefined the roles and function of the Province, and the importance of the PTCP will therefore possibly be degraded in the future. Cutting back the political heft of the Province has sparked a reflection on how to redesign the map of territorial planning without triggering traumatic solutions to maintain continuity. The strategic plan of the Province of Teramo represents one of the first experiences in this direction in Italy. This tool aims to define a new model of territorial governance that is capable of ensuring a substantial equilibrium between responsibility and self-determination of the subjects most directly involved in territorial transformation.Published Versio

Città, salute e benessere. Nuovi percorsi per l’urbanistica.

Il testo tratta della connessione tra pianificazione urbana e obiettivi dell'OMS (Osservatorio Mondiale della Sanità)

The DSS and Its Possible Applications

Acting amid uncertainty is a perennial situation in territorial planning, having always dealt with the inevitable relativity of assessments and choices regarding settlement transformations (Camagni and Lombardo 1999). Today, however, the complexity of territorial government when facing insecurity on different scales characterizes the historical period in which we live and requires a rethinking of the ways of carrying out territorial government activities that must deal with a continuous evolution situation. This not only requires rapidity and a capacity for updating and deciding between different options but also the willingness to address a multitude of new actors that have recently entered the decision-making process

L’ordinanza 39/2017 e la ricostruzione (complessa) di Arquata del Tronto

Il breve saggio, all’interno di un vasto quadro di riferimento sulle prospettive di sviluppo del territorio marchigiano interessato dal sisma 2016, ricostruisce le complesse vicende dell’ordinanza 39/2017 e i suoi effetti sulla ricostruzione di Arquata del Tronto attraverso la definizione del Documento Direttore della Ricostruzione (DDR), con il compito di fornire un inquadramento a carattere strategico per orientare le azioni delle amministrazioni locali, evitando la frammentazione degli interventi di ricostruzione. Il saggio restituisce le difficoltà e le opportunità di questo strumento