Urban regeneration and ecological continuity throughout two complex landscape systems.
The idea stems from the desire to link the urban project with the city project in a single multi-scale vision, working on morphology and landscape: it consists in the definition of a methodological approach that can reread urban and rural sub-areas dialoguing with the existing. The potential is the possibility of acquiring a structuring role for urban regeneration by generating common goods at the service of the city.
Local
Italy
Country
Italy
Region
Tuscany
City
Florence
Municipalities
Florence, Sesto Fiorentino, Scandicci
Fiesole, Bagno a Ripoli
Localities / Districts, West side
Careggi, Castello, Serpiolle, Montughi, Rifredi, Novoli, Isolotto, Soffiano, Bellosguardo, Torregalli, Mantignano.
Localities / Districts, East side
Fiesole, Monte Ceceri, Maiano, Poggio delle Tortore, Poggio Gherardo, Vincigliata, Montebeni, Ponte a Mensola, Settignano, Rovezzano, Gavinana, Sorgane.
It addresses urban-rural linkages
It refers to a physical transformation of the built environment (hard investment)
No
No
As an individual in partnership with other persons
First name: Gioia Last name: Romani Gender: Female Age: 26 Please attach a copy of your national ID/residence card:
By ticking this box, I certify that the information regarding my age is factually correct. : Yes Nationality: Italy Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: via Sano 6 Town: Montecatini Terme (PT) Postal code: 51016 Country: Italy Direct Tel:+39 333 540 9169 E-mail:gioiaromani6@gmail.com
First name: Filippo Last name: Marconi Gender: Male Age: 26 Please attach a copy of your national ID/residence card:
By ticking this box, I certify that the information regarding my age is factually correct. : Yes Nationality: Italy Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: via Bulgaria 18 Town: Livorno (LI) Postal code: 57128 Country: Italy Direct Tel:+39 334 788 1496 E-mail:filippo.marconi1996@gmail.com
The aim is to provide multi-scale and multidisciplinary interventions that are able to contribute to the theme of urban regeneration, working on the existing urban and landscape components. The strategic vision is combined with the transcalar process, in order to build urban polarities and reconstitute some portions of the landscape structures through the ecological, urban and social link. The proposed methodology lays the foundations for application in multiple contexts, from local to European, since it is based on a deep understanding of the territory and its potential. This case shows an application of the method in urban and rural areas of the metropolitan city of Florence.
The idea of renovatio urbis establishes a dialogue with the landscapes of the Florentine system, working on the potential of the dominant factors, starting from some identified tension lines that present an aptitude for transformation.
The most recent operations on the Florentine urban fabric have led to the simplification of the hilly landscapes. The new building has produced a saturation of the fertile agricultural areas of the plain, erasing the plots of the historical agricultural mesh.
On the west side there is a north-south urban and industrial system of historical and landscape importance and on the east side an highly natural north-south system whose historical matrix, together with the agricultural and rural character, is strongly characterizing.
Starting from minimal operations on the fabric linked to the territorial dimension of the city, we propose metaprojects in strategic places defining their working methods through scale: This makes it possible to re-read the priority spaces of the urban and suburban areas of the city.
ecological continuity
existing landscape structures
urban polarities
local community
everyday life event
The regeneration process provides guidelines to link the design of the individual space with the vocation of locations in relationship with the past, especially in terms of sustainability and active and dynamic conservation of existing landscapes. This happens through the understanding of the structuring elements of the natural landscape, in order to re-establish a continuity with the sequence of open spaces of the most recent areas and identifying strategic nodes that become the new polarities.
In particular, it is planned to:
- increase ecological connectivity through urban forestry operations in order to increase biodiversity, contributing to the expansion of existing ecological networks, defining a sequence of public open spaces spread throughout the territory;
- protect existing wetlands and water bodies by working on the consolidation of buffer strips at the edges of river beds, also through the maintenance and consolidation of embankments;
- decrease the impermeable surfaces and increase the portions of connective tissue to give back a high amount of public land to the citizen, in terms of new public spaces. This involves the improvement of the micro-climate by reducing the heat islands, increasing the micro-fauna system, improving walkability and reducing residual areas;
- encourage the use of sustainable mobility by extending the network of cycle-pedestrian paths and equipped and shaded parking spaces through low-maintenance tree structures;
- work on the densification of the urban tissue, through the recovery of strategic areas identified by urban planning tools, avoiding the construction over virgin soil and considering them as a system in dialogue with existing realities. It is planned to operate locally on portions of fragmented tissue, proposing the typology of compact block, to operate locally on the building incongruous with the theme of the envelope, to recover buildings of disused industrial archeology.
The vision of the urban system identifies and welcomes as pilot projects a sequence of sub-urban spaces that can become part of the morpho-typological fabric of Florence: areas of transformation, residual areas and systems of waterproof surfaces.
Priority are the qualitative aspects of the places, the perception of the pedestrian, the urban walk, the ecological continuity, the focal points and the landscape views that increase the value of the experience. We work on improving the indicators of walkability and sociability, on the renaturalization of soils and on new permeable and vegetal surfaces, on the reduction of roadways and road parking.
The result is the drastic decrease of waterproof soil that becomes public space: squares and equipped gardens, parking spots, public toilets.
The volumetric grafts are designed to accommodate a percentage of parking, an integrated system of activities and services and social housing. They will be divided into lots and entrusted to several designers ensuring the typological and aesthetic variation.
In terms of landscape and natural places, we work on the active and dynamic conservation of the historical landscape through the construction of a sequence of silent interventions: exaltation devices that enhance the consolidated historical presences and landscape structures. The project invites the user to rediscover the lost dialogue with micro-landscapes through devices designed as intermediate destinations within the paths, suitable as resting places or as visual frames. They collaborate with the ecological system in terms of material compatibility, safety and accessibility of the tracks.
The recovery of these places, in addition to improving the functional and ecological aesthetic of the peripheral areas, makes these spaces livable again by the citizen and allows to increase the attendance of the areas also thanks to the adoption of a flexible functional program.
The project therefore identifies relationships, its deeper operational dimension. We believe that social values are reflected in the organization of public space: the search for a specificity of places, develops a new semantics of public space. Systems are then structured starting from specific local realities, through a hierarchical articulation of open spaces, according to the degrees of social interaction, capable of reactivating portions of the city.
The idea is to generate a sequence of places of everyday life. The project identifies in the polarities considered, an aptitude for transformation, given by the strongly connective character of the tissue. This allows to identify the most intimate spaces, with a domestic and relational character, of the urban and suburban areas of the city, producing a sequence of spaces of relationship in continuity with the existing realities.
The project considers the indications provided by the urban tools and integrates some aspects related to the landscape and the system of natural areas. What changes is the functional distribution of the areas, through the partial displacement of SUL in neighboring areas and equalizing interventions.
The theme of inclusion is central: the sequence of new public volumes are positioned at intervals reachable in 10 minutes and punctuated by the new green urban paths totally accessible.
The plots of the historical agricultural landscape, meet with the plots of the relationships of everyday life, giving rise to an intertwining of activities for children, shady areas, reading spaces, small gardens with botanical species to be discovered.
What allows to reactivate those areas waiting for redevelopment is the economic engine, but above all it is the definition of an inclusive public space, the weaving of a network of spaces and paths, which are a link between the landscape and relationships, through porosity, permeability, accessibility and affordability.
The portions of the connective system are punctuated by the railway infrastructure barrier, by large urban nodes, by major roads. The methodological approach allows to characterize the lines of tension qualitatively, re-reading in part, some design guidelines indicated by the urban tools. These spaces are sparsely frequented, inaccessible and devoid of a function, but we have grasped in them the potential to play a structuring role and the possibility of returning them to the citizen.
Once the strategic areas have been defined, the project can welcome and involve the local community. In fact, it is the user protagonist of daily life, knows its territory and relates between the spaces of the built, is the primary component that lives the places of everyday life. The idea is to launch competitions for the regeneration of selected urban and landscape structures and open a two-way dialogue with citizens, from the drafting of the competition to the choice of the functional program.
It is then a matter of identifying an effective reference model based on the realities that work. Targeted participatory interventions can allow durability and liveability at different hours of the day but above all the resilience of the place, the ability to accommodate the transformations dictated by new needs. This approach prefers the public dimension to the private sphere and teaches the community to take care of its city again, becoming an active part.
The process of knowledge of the users of the places of daily life can also allow you to drive investment on specific issues but in particular can also be beneficial from the point of view of social inclusion: Involving the community can help people get to know each other and help reduce inequalities.
We believe that one of the fundamental aspects of the role of architecture is the mutual collaboration between individuals.
The working method developed embraces the idea of being able to relate to the figures who cover and coordinate the structures of our system. The involvement of local and municipal actors could be of extreme relevance for the knowledge of places and highlight the criticalities but also the qualities to be preserved and enhanced.
At the metropolitan scale it could be useful to establish a dialogue with the strategies in place, particularly with regard to aspects related to the protection and biodiversity, ecological corridors, the protection of wooded areas and agricultural hill systems. agricultural hill systems. This could contribute on the one hand to the fluidity of the realisation and on the other hand to the achievement of the challenges and objectives set at European level with regard to sustainability, inclusion and aesthetics.
The idea is to generate a stronger and more multidisciplinary urban economy, capable of weaving a network of economic, ecological, ecosystemic relations at both local and territorial levels, with a view to reading diversity as a valuable resource and different spatial resources as a complementary complementary wealth.
The research integrates the contents linked to the components of the landscape and morphology of the city of Florence, defining an integrated working method incorporating different spaces and times, capable of narrating the places of the contemporary city but also the components of the past, bringing interactions, ecological dynamics and public space back to the centre.
The project's potential lies in its ability to establish a profound dialogue with current strategic visions, in particular for the UNESCO Buffer Zone Management Plan.
The project systems fit within the Buffer Zone and are capable of responding to the objectives, to solve the problem of gentrification in the historic centre and to generate an system of alternative places to it.
The methodology on landscape systems was developed from ideological references contemporary European approaches to town planning but also to the Italian and radical Florentine approach.
The complexity also lies in the multiplicity of disciplines. Documentation was studied historical iconography, texts and current cartography; knowledge of the landscape through the study of the Piano di Indirizzo Territoriale (Territorial Addressing Plan) with the value of the Region of Tuscany's Landscape Plan for the management and protection of heritage and structural invariants, in which Florence plays a central role in the Tuscan central role in the Tuscan ecological system.
The thematic visions of the Metropolitan Strategic Plan 2030 and the other urban planning tools have allowed us to link the peculiar aspects with the integrated design of inclusive systems hybrids in order to provide medium- and long-term intervention criteria with improving effects for the surrounding territories.
We paid attention to relational aspects related to the perception of city spaces to the proxemics and the beneficial effects on humans of the contemporary design of public spaces and green spaces, as well as active and dynamic conservation techniques of historical landscapes and the positive effects of nature and biodiversity on people.
For living spaces, the idea revolves around the concept of density so that it can once again to be an art, as it was in the historic city, working on the sum of chronological layers, on the fabrics that refer to a suburb dimension, in which the entire layout has a clarity of the whole.
The design extends to the detail: we propose multiple hypotheses of plant groups and specifications for planting and maintenance. We study thresholds and materials in detail, from wooden planking for the furniture to the chrome-plated steel of the kerbs, to the rammed earth for the paths.
Every local area, every region, every place has areas of suburbia, derelict and remnants of fabric that interrupt the ecological and spatial continuity of places, which, together with intensive infrastructure interventions limit ecosystems and the development of biodiversity. The methodology is able to regenerate these areas in a single overview that takes into account the different contexts on which intervention can take place, rethinking them as a system, rather than as a sum of punctual identities to be regenerated.
We consider it important to emphasise the overall vision of the methodology as it is not to date present in any urban planning instrument. Guidelines for regeneration often look at the regeneration of individual spaces using concrete and asphalt and limiting the inclusion of greenery.
Defining a design approach that is able to bind and coordinate plans in the various disciplines can be a useful tool for the intelligent governance of our cities and would bring benefits for nature, sustainability, the economy and mankind.
In recent years, Florence has been paying special attention to liveability in the historic centre and the enhancement of the city's heritage in relation to the intense tourist flows that animate the historic centre.
In accordance with the UNESCO Plan, we see the urban context of Florence as a metropolitan unicum, in which the various spatial planning instruments work together to increase the liveability. The key points of this work that are reflected in the design indications are: increasing the usability of the neighbourhoods, enhancing social spaces, making citizens aware of the care of green areas, protecting the agricultural sector, managing regeneration areas, identifying new alternative cultural and natural itineraries, defining shared policies for the use of public space to solve the problem of gentrification in the Core Zone.
The idea takes into account the different scales of design, from the metropolitan scale for urban and landscape planning, to the municipal scale for design guidelines, to the detailed scales of individual spaces and projects.
The multi-scalar methodological innovation is based on the idea of the public city. The phases are outlined below:
- reading of the metropolitan region to establish a dialogue with the realities;
- identification of areas of work and isolation of specific critical structures;
- definition of distinct typological structures to regenerate portions of the city.
It is possible to work in different contexts, because the idea is based on a deep knowledge of the context, which is the starting point on this issue. We believe that working to re-establish a connection with nature, without losing the peculiar dimension of our cities, which, as the attached images suggest, is that of a micro-neighbourhood, is only possible if we are able to control the tools and disciplines that deal with land governance.
How can the methodology improve everyday aspects? The ULTRA project is in short a process: it manifests itself in different forms that insist on and aspects of the community. It finds its highest form in the public space and is a suggestion to re-read the conditions of the urban structure and investigate the connection mechanisms of architecture in relation to the existing fabric, acting at the intermediate scale of the urban project.
The process acts on several fronts in an extended time line, through localised acupunctures that, starting from the existing fabric, with systemic interventions on porosity are able to reactivate public spaces.
The technological aspects, material components, and products used will be selected on the basis of sustainability, the character of the location, local availability, costs, and local construction techniques of the past in relation to the project.
The renovatio urbis finds its logic with the strategic indications of the Metropolitan City of Florence and with the Action Plan for the intelligent management of Unesco Site Buffer Zone.
The project proposes a sequence of new urban polarities with a hybrid character which are flanked by a system of alternative places of a naturalistic nature. It is not just a physical project, it is an engine of economic development in dialogue with the consolidated realities of the city.
The metaprojects we propose show how these are closely connected with the areas waiting for intervention, but also with the ecological system that defines the structural invariants. We summarize below the global challenges that we could achieve at local/municipal level.
For ecological structure:
- protection and maintenance of riparian areas
- protection and maintenance of existing open spaces
- increasing ecological permeability
- new East-West ecological networks
- denaturalisation of former productive areas
- renationalisation of rail margins
- rows of trees by road
- rows and plant structures in capillary plots
- tree groups contributing to ecological continuity
- sequence of open plant spaces, small gardens, vegetable squares and public courtyards.
For relationships tissue:
- increased accessibility (economic and spatial)
- increased visual permeability
- services integrated into the system of public spaces
- measures to slow down road flows
- increase in the number of slow roads
- reduction of the carriageway
- urban demineralisation
For urban tissue:
- rehabilitation of abandoned areas
- design guidelines for processing areas
- information on the homogeneous distribution of services
- redefinition of the constructed edges and angles
- commercial ground floor reactivation facilities
- time schedule for the management of public spaces.
