SOURCE - Sustainable Urban Cells: outcome of a bilateral survey Italy-Sweden

Abstract

The survey SoURCE was jointly elaborated by the Inter-Departmental Center CITERA and the Royal Institute KTH; the findings were tested in different contexts, one of which was a municipality in the Lazio region with which it is currently collaborating to support planning interventions and facilitate European funding applications. The methodology that is interdisciplinary at the various scales was designed to enhance both horizontal and vertical subsidiarity and to allow to locate shares of the urban fabric – urban cells – providing for an energy balance between consumption and production from renewable sources in a predetermined range. Then by adding more urban cells the energy network was optimized and then integrated with other service networks that were then put in place into a system constituting the network of networks creating an efficient urban cell as per the service supply system. The model designed as such can be addressed to a specific territory to be consequently integrated with its specific characteristics (historical, cultural, social). This would then become an appropriate plan and/or requalification module to apply to urban settlements for the purpose of creating the basis for a smart city.