An up-close look at Urban Regeneration. Cultural approaches and applied strategies for the rebirth of cities

Abstract

The term Regeneration defines new approaches to the transformation of cities, designed in such a way to move beyond traditional urban-restoration efforts centred around large-scale plans by proposing minimal, non-invasive initiatives that stress listening to the citizenry while bringing to bear creative capabilities and a knowledge of the new-generation technology that has taken on strategic importance when it comes to the development of urban areas. Emphasising an ethical awareness that the city constitutes a shared resource, and that any transformations it undergoes must meet the needs of the public as a whole, endowing the local territory with a strong core structure but a light architecture, is one promising approach to actual renewal efforts. In examining the characteristics of Italian cities, the author focuses on the potential for establishing an environmental balance of the urban metabolism through work on outlying areas, describing the technical and scientific contribution made to date by Technological and Environmental Planning and Design while identifying project design and planning as the path to be taken to arrive at applied assessment and confirmation of the hypothetical approaches explored.