The Renewed City. New Settlement Principles for the "Re-Construction" of the Urban Form in the Disused Areas

Abstract

The paper will deal with the theme of "re-construction" of the urban form in the areas made available by the industrial, military or infrastructural dismantling processes. Assumed as a "resource" for the contemporary city (often for their "strategic" position), these areas offer the opportunity to focus and experiment new settlement principles capable not only to resolve (on the morphological, spatial and functional level) the relation between the parts of city that were previously divided but, above all, to combine the compact and continuous condition of the city with the presence of wide empty spaces of "nature", intentionally re-introduced into the new urban context. Accepting the challenge of re-building our cities in order to make them corresponding to the aspirations of our time (sustainability, livability, well-being), our research proposes an alternative response to the current settlement "practices". Against the principles of "dispersion", that means the "pervasive" occupation of the urban and suburban soil and the indifference to the peculiarities of the places, it proposes the principle of "densification" and "compaction" of the built volumes in morphologic units that, besides being evocative of the urban condition, are capable to confer to the empty spaces, inside or between them, the value of public places defined by their reciprocal relation. The purpose of this approach is to subtract the empty space (natural or artificial) to its destiny of residual undefined space between "solitary" buildings, in order to give it a higher value: to contribute to the definition of form of the city of our time.