PREMISE
In recent times urban planning has progressively lost its project capacity, limiting itself in the best of cases to guarantee passive safeguards. Today, on the other hand, after having explored research directions that have pushed it away from its original mission, urban planning must rediscover the center of its disciplinary status in the urban space project, recovering a conscious attention to the outcomes of actions and interventions on the sites of 'live.
DISCIPLINARY CONTENT
Although it is appropriate for urban planning to regain its centrality in a conscious process of governing the transformation of local space, assuming the technical responsibility of "giving form" to urban settlement, the complexity of the current dynamics of transformation of the structures imposes a new and different integration between different and distant disciplinary fields. It is no longer just the reference of the project to the context logics or to the issues of environmental sustainability that is enough to guarantee the interdisciplinary approach. The real requirement is that of introducing the techniques and methods of other disciplines into the programs of government of transformations, truly distant from architectural planning: economics, sociology, financial engineering.
In this case the integration becomes substantial: it is not enough that the functions proposed in the program are compared with the market demand, but it is the same market logic that must be placed at the base of the process of identifying the intervention programs.
Urban planning becomes "performative" and no longer "regulatory". It aims to achieve the result, identifying ex-ante the objectives of public convenience (performance) and leaving to the free organization of the actors the definition of the ways to guarantee them.
The new "urban planning" must be able to take on the choices of organization of the anthropic space at different scales, in a critical relationship with the rules of urban planning and in coherence with the general strategies of socio-economic development. We must return to work on the physical relationships that shape the spaces, in the belief that appropriate forms of spatial structure can positively influence the development of society and the quality of life.
The new urban planning is called, today, to provide spatial solutions: (i) proactive towards the dynamics of development; (ii) consistent with the requirements of environmental sustainability; (iii) congruent with the feasibility issues; (iv) compatible with market dynamics; and above all (v) responding to the needs of local communities and citizens.
THEME OF THE EXERCISE
The strategic priority of containing further land consumption is now definitely established, the theme of urban planning necessarily addresses the rethinking of the existing city. The redesign of the contemporary city is therefore guided by new development proposals that are capable of "bringing the central parts of the city back into play", which have gradually lost meaning due to the sprawl process. The theme of the design exercise is, therefore, that of the redesign of central places of the city in an attempt to entrust them with new strategic roles in relation to renewed needs of context. The urban planning of the central places, while assuming the characteristics and contents of the technical rigor, must identify virtuous forms of "compliance between networks and places", capable of making the needs of the system's global functioning and quality meet the synergistic and virtuous manner of life in urban space.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE LABORATORY
Students will be able to work in small groups, but each student will still be required to demonstrate his specific contribution to group work. The intervention project on the detailed urban planning scale will have to take the form of a detailed executive plan.
The urban project must: (i) identify the reference strategy, addressing a transversal theme of supra-urban scale in terms of guiding vision; (ii) elaborate a detailed urban planning solution, consistent with the reference strategy and effective to achieve it; (iii) verify that the proposed solution achieves the double objective of doubling the amount of the built, doubling the space available for the specific needs identified in a strategic key.
The delivery of the documents will take place via computer following seven logical steps:
1. choice of area / interpretation of the place;
2. strategic vision of reference;
3. analysis of the site / study of the project conditions;
4. quantification of the existing volume / evaluation of the demolitions;
5. project concept;
6. detailed urban planning;
7. quantitative and qualitative checks.