From urban fringe to regional hub: re inventing Milano Porto di Mare - Exercises from Urban Plans Studio - School of Architecture at Politecnico di Milano

Abstract

This book is about the results of the Urban Plans Studio course, first semester of academic year 2015 / 2016 at Politecnico di Milano, School of Architecture, held by Marco Facchinetti. The aim of the course was to learn urban planning theories and techniques, studying recent and most contemporary urban transformations around Europe and US. Urban transformations became, since decades, a way of reinterpreting the existing cities, focusing on the unique value of living within the city and its boundaries. In recent years, after a first wave of changes that followed the end of extensive industrialization in western world cities, and not mentioning the early attempts to re invent cities through urban renewal programs (and simultaneously not considering how they failed in many cases), urban transformations became one of the tools that urban planning has to re invent cities. By themselves, they reinterpret the concept of scale, they create a different balance between interior and exterior of urbanized areas and they become new occasions of ‘urbanity’ even where relations and distances are not at an urban scale. Learn how students developed their analysis and their projects, opening interesting and unexpected views over the future of the area and the relations between city and region