8 research outputs found
Integrating Resilience Concept and Urban Morphology. A contradictory merging attempt or a promising combination?
Today cities are particularly vulnerable to any kind of pressures. The increase in urban complexity requires a better understanding of physical urbanization, and parallelly a shift in how cities are linked to environmental dynamics. Tackling the urban complexity requires a socio-ecological system-view where cities appear living and dynamic systems, whose processes and structures are interacting over time at morphological, ecological and socio-cultural levels. These interdependencies can be handled by understanding the extent to which urban forms will be able to resist, adapt to or evolve under pressures and fulfil needs and functions either similar or different from their original ones. However, the explicit introduction of the element of change in the urban morphology field might contrast with the traditional image of built environment linked to order and rigidity. To this regard, resilience concept appears an interesting lens through which reading and understanding the changing urban-world.
The paper explores the combination of urban morphology and co-evolutionary resilience, considering urban form as a key factor in urban resilience. Dealing with some resilient-morphological aspects, the work discusses possible interdependencies between resilience theory and urban morphology and seeks to understand if “resilient urban form” represents a “property” of cities or rather an “end-point”
Mainstreaming Energetic Resilience by Morphological Assessment in Ordinary Land Use Planning. The Case Study of Moncalieri, Turin (Italy)
Energetic resilience is seen as one of the most prominent fields of investigation in the upcoming years. The increasing efficiency of urban systems depends on the conversion of energetic production of buildings, and therefore, from the capacity of urban systems to be more rational in the use of renewable resources. Nevertheless, the integration of the energetic regulation into the ordinary urban planning documents is far from being reached in most of planning processes. In Italy, mainstreaming energetic resilience in ordinary land use planning appears particularly challenging, even in those Local Administrations that tried to implement the national legislation into Local Building Regulation. In this work, an empirical methodology to provide an overall assessment of the solar production capacity has been applied to selected indicators of urban morphology among the different land use parcel-zones, while implementing a geographic information system-based approach to the city of Moncalieri, Turin (Italy). Results demonstrate that, without exception, the current minimum energy levels required by law are generally much lower than the effective potential solar energy production that each land use parcel-zone could effectively produce. We concluded that local planning processes should update their land use plans to reach environmental sustainability targets, while at the same time the energetic resilience should be mainstreamed in urban planning by an in-depth analysis of the effective morphological constraints. These aspects may also represent a contribution to the international debates on energetic resilience and on the progressive inclusion of energy subjects in the land use planning process
Mainstreaming Energetic Resilience by Morphological Assessment in Ordinary Land Use Planning. The Case Study of Moncalieri, Turin (Italy)
Energetic resilience is seen as one of the most prominent fields of investigation in the upcoming years. The increasing efficiency of urban systems depends on the conversion of energetic production of buildings, and therefore, from the capacity of urban systems to be more rational in the use of renewable resources. Nevertheless, the integration of the energetic regulation into the ordinary urban planning documents is far from being reached in most of planning processes. In Italy, mainstreaming energetic resilience in ordinary land use planning appears particularly challenging, even in those Local Administrations that tried to implement the national legislation into Local Building Regulation. In this work, an empirical methodology to provide an overall assessment of the solar production capacity has been applied to selected indicators of urban morphology among the different land use parcel-zones, while implementing a geographic information system-based approach to the city of Moncalieri, Turin (Italy). Results demonstrate that, without exception, the current minimum energy levels required by law are generally much lower than the effective potential solar energy production that each land use parcel-zone could effectively produce. We concluded that local planning processes should update their land use plans to reach environmental sustainability targets, while at the same time the energetic resilience should be mainstreamed in urban planning by an in-depth analysis of the effective morphological constraints. These aspects may also represent a contribution to the international debates on energetic resilience and on the progressive inclusion of energy subjects in the land use planning process
Social Equity and Urban Resilience: Investigating the capability of urban resilience theory and planning to address social equity
L'abstract è presente nell'allegato / the abstract is in the attachmen
In Search of Equitable Resilience: Unravelling the Links between Urban Resilience Planning and Social Equity
Building resilient cities is becoming increasingly vital due to the rise in urban challenges such as climate change, socioeconomic disparities, and pandemics. While the concept of resilience is gaining popularity, many scholars argue that existing resilience plans do not adequately address social equity issues. Therefore, this study investigates the incorporation of equity into resilience planning by conducting a case study analysis of ten European resilience strategies. The employed methodology is summative content analysis, and the approach is inductive. For each resilience strategy, the incorporation of three equity dimensions—distributional, procedural, and recognitional—is examined. The results show significant variation in addressing equity dimensions across the case studies. Although some plans do not effectively address equity, others integrate it more comprehensively and successfully. Thus, we argue that resilience planning can potentially contribute to social equity issues, although currently, this contribution is not sufficient. We recommend a number of strategies by which future resilience planning can enhance its contribution. These are: promoting structural transformations, considering the political processes of resilience building, adopting participatory approaches to co-create resilience plans, fostering trust and accountability between citizens and governing bodies, favouring a systemic view, and prioritising the upstream inequality factors for building capacity
Notes on Spatial Implications of COVID-19. Evidence from Piedmont Region, Italy
The COVID-19 pandemic has been studied by many scholars from a wide range of disciplines. Among these investigations, planners and regional scientists have researched the spatial spread of the contagion. Most of these studies tried to explore the spread of the disease in a fixed period, like annually, and analysed the spatial variables that are most influential on the COVID-19 spread over territories. On the same line, the chapter investigates the pattern of virus transmission in the 1.181 municipalities of the Piedmont Region during two years of the pandemic over different periods by providing 24 monthly and two annual hot spot maps using the Spatial Statistics Tools on ArcGIS. Consequently, the chapter analyses the correlation between the spread of contagion with three spatial variables (population density, annual average traffic flow, and the ageing index) by performing a statistical analysis on the municipalities which showed unexpectedly higher or unexpectedly lower numbers of contagion. The results show that the impacts of population density and annual average traffic flow are verified on the transmission rate of the cities with unexpectedly higher or lower exposure to COVID-19 contagion than their neighbours both in the first and the second year of the pandemic. For the ageing index, an association is noticed during the first year while not confirmed for the second. In conclusion, the chapter proposes that studying the disease’s variations—at different times and on a regional scale—uncovers the spatial dimension of the phenomenon and would suggest insights for both scientists and policymakers to enrich preparedness as the preferable approach in future planning policies towards transformative resilience
Building/Community Resilience: identifying relationships that reduce disaster-related building downtime, improve functionality and build capacity
Buildings, including those of historic significance, are increasingly at risk due to climate change, man-made and natural disasters. Capacity of a building to recover and adapt is informed by both internal and external factors that must be holistically considered. This paper explores related concepts of building functionality and recovery in reducing downtime and postulates that the retrofit of a building with the integrated and redundant systems, often associated with sustainable design, can enhance a buildings overall resilience. The preliminary factors needed to establish the functionality/recovery model are examined for San Francisco, California (USA), a city exposed to recurring risk of earthquakes and recognized by the Rockefeller Foundation for its resilience planning (100resilientcities.org). Two established community programs, BORP and SPUR, are analysed. An objective is to identify factors affecting downtime with a particular focus on those external to the building. The capacity of organizational and technical systems is considered thereby allowing a building to be understood in the broader context of a community's resilience. An example for building recovery is proposed that accounts for both internal functions and externalities, such as utilities, in order to inform buildings that are better able to recover and adapt in the face of future events