Edizioni FrancoAngeli - Last issue of TERRITORIO (60/2012)

The new departmental project and the role of Territorio

Fri, 15 Mar 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Gabriele Pasqui
Milan Polytechnic has set in motion a process to redefi ne its organisational structure, which will lead to the formulation of new departmental projects by the middle of 2012. In this context, the Diap is currently considering the construction of a new department in the fi eld of architecture. The department that we have in mind is of a ‘polytechnical’, by subject and cross-disciplinary nature. It will focus on interpretation, design and the governance of forms of settlement and dwellings in contemporary urban and regional areas. It is an open and ambitious process in which the journal Territorio can play an essential role, through the cultural evaluation of design, reports on unique research and design experiences and the provision of an open space for discussion and dialogue, both within and outside the department.

The just city and the new age of mega-projects

Fri, 15 Mar 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Susan S. Fainstein
In recent years large urban development projects (mega-projects) have become frequent in European, American and Asian cities. Surprising physical similarities can be seen between the types of project and in the orientation towards the market and the private sector. However, the ways in which the objectives of physical and social transformation are pursued are different. This paper investigates recent mega-projects in New York, London, Amsterdam and Singapore, cities which represent a wide range of variables in the capitalist ownership regime. The comparison shows that public-private partnerships can bring public benefi ts, but also that these mega-projects are risky for both parties and produce environments of poor urban quality. Further more the fair distribution of the impacts of these projects is the result of government commitment to the production of social benefi ts.

Urban agriculture: an undisciplined debate

Fri, 15 Mar 2012 8:00:00 GMT

A cura di Maddalena Falletti
Once reorganised by subject matter, the contributions of this service highlight a few contradictory aspects of the debate in progress on urban agriculture. The introduction provides three alternative keys to interpretation for this purpose. The fi rst reproduces the debate in its ‘sealed compartments’ and nevertheless attempts to compare, by juxtaposition, contrasting attitudes. The second aims at shedding light on a transverse conceptual dichotomy with strong repercussions for planning (urban agriculture as a remedy for city problems vs the urban countryside as a new urban plan). Finally, the third challenges the debate on the subject in the context of Milan.

Agriculture, city and development styles in the evolution of the world institutional agenda

Fri, 15 Mar 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Andrea Calori
The worlds of agriculture have been an integral part of the urban planning policies of many cities and international institutions for some years now. Despite this, agriculture and rural development subjects have only formed part of the debate on planning for a short while, suffering from delays connected with a more general development of planning as part of that ‘overcoming the rural’ made explicit by ‘modern’ development. The essays states and connects some fundamental passages with which the role of the rural has been reconstructed at global level in recent decades, providing new contents for action plans. Key words: urban agriculture; development; sustainability The worlds of agriculture have been an integral part of the urban planning policies of many cities and international institutions for some years now. Despite this, agriculture and rural development subjects have only formed part of the debate on planning for a short while, suffering from delays connected with a more general development of planning as part of that ‘overcoming the rural’ made explicit by ‘modern’ development. The essays states and connects some fundamental passages with which the role of the rural has been reconstructed at global level in recent decades, providing new contents for action plans.

Urban farming nel food desert

Fri, 15 Mar 2012 8:00:00 GMT

In the context of the inner cities in decline in the United States rustbelt, we have seen growing interest in food deserts (i.e. those areas with few or no opportunities for quality food supplies) and their effects on the diffusion of diseases such as diabetes, obesity and cardio-vascular disorders. Despite its controversial character, the discourse on food deserts has become popular in the fi elds of research, policy-making and social activism, thereby causing opposing policies to emerge which range from the attraction of distribution chains to the development of urban agriculture. By presenting the basic features of two urban farming projects oriented towards solving the problem of food deserts in Milwaukee and Philadelphia, the paper discusses forms and the relevance of the convergences between food culture and food justice and it also relates these to the debate on the future of urban forms in the inner cities of the rustbelt.

Milan, urban cultivation and shared life paths. Notes from a research project in progress

Fri, 15 Mar 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Francesca Cognetti, Serena Conti
This paper brings to light a depiction of Milan made of small areas connected with the theme of urban agriculture and ‘spaces to care for’ within the city. They are projects of different types which have in common the idea of connecting the practice of cultivation with the construction of shared life paths. Thinking which interprets horticulture as a device for ‘cultivating others’ is therefore central here. It is a system for social promotion and inclusion, an instrument to practice forms of dissent, a platform for strengthening bonds, a common space for everyday life. In this sense the English community gardens defi nition, which although it places a perhaps excessive emphasis on community aspects, seems apparently more appropriate for referring to this type of experience connected with forms of social participation and a new relationship with the local community.

Edible public space. Experimenting with a socio-environmentally just urbanism

Fri, 15 Mar 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Chiara Tornaghi
This paper presents an English case of urban agriculture, the Edible Public Space Project in Leeds, contextualised in a context of urban agriculture initiatives committed to social-environmental justice, to the reproduction of common goods and the promotion of an urban planning which promotes the right to food and to the construction of urban space from the bottom up. The case study emerged as the result of action-research at the crossroads between urban planning policies, community work and critical geography. As opposed to many similar initiatives, the Edible Public Space Project is not intended merely as a temporary initiative hidden within the tiny folds of the city, but rather as an experiment which imagines and implements alternatives to current forms of urban planning within those folds and it contextualises them in the light of the ecological, fi nancial and social crisis of the last decade.

Dodo farming urban vegetable gardens in Helsinki

Fri, 15 Mar 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Vilia Larjosto, Paivi Raivio
Dodo is a Finnish Ngo which works for the environment and has been interested in urban agriculture since 2009. Since then, the practice of urban agriculture has become widespread and has become an integral part of the city landscape in Helsinki, as it has in the whole world. Dodo works as a catalyst for selfmanaged ‘urban farm’ projects and urban gardens, encouraging citizens to reclaim areas in their neighbourhoods and in abandoned areas of the city. The initiatives carried forward so far have generated greater community cohesion and triggered the birth of new systems of local and biological production. In Scandinavia, where the growing season is very short, the climate represents the most interesting challenge, but so far it has discouraged neither the experts nor the beginners. This paper recounts the origin and the spread of this movement through a reading of three examples in the city of Helsinki.

Skyland. Vertical farming in Milan

Fri, 15 Mar 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Maddalena Buffoli, Paolo Carli
Skyland is a design for an urban eco-building for the production of biological foods cultivated in a controlled indoor greenhouse environment. Within it the whole food chain will unfold ranging from production, which will take place on 30 terraced fl oors, to retail sales, located on the ground fl oor of the building. The whole process will follow specifi c sustainability and health promotion criteria, principles which today are inseparable from urban development.

Local community workshop for the design of services. The case of "Nutrire Milano, energie per il cambiamento" (Nourish Milan, energies for change)

Fri, 15 Mar 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Giulia Simeone
This paper starts from a defi nition shared by the design of services and the «territorialist school» (Magnaghi, 2000), according to which a place is the bearer of a series of values, meanings and capital resources which are the result of interactions between the communities which exist in it and the surrounding environment. It then tries to shed light on the specifi cities, instruments and duties of the discipline of design, through the case of the Nutrire Milano, energie per il cambiamento project. After describing how design works in this community workshop, the paper expresses the desirability of integration between urban planning and design, so that with the respective expertise of each of them, local communities might evolve in favour of sustainability.

Empowering local food connections for resilient city-regions. Planning through foodsheds or terroir?

Fri, 15 Mar 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Rositsa Todorova Ilieva
This essay explores two antonimic approaches adopted by planning to describe food production and supply systems deeply rooted in local communities. The fi rst is based on the concept of a ‘foodshed’ and puts the accent on sustainability and ‘resilience’, while the second refers to the notion of ‘terroir’, with the emphasis on oneness and the intrinsic value of locally produced food. Through a reading of English and Italian case histories, the essay critically analyses the two approaches, their feasibility and the different results achieved in terms of effi ciency and effectiveness. The analysis is organised in two sections, each of which introduces the case history with a brief theoretical introduction. In the conclusions, the antynomy between the two approaches is re-examined and possible research developments on the subject are identifi ed.

Sustainable by necessity. A short history of urban agriculture in Cuba, Alberto Graglia, Giulia Mazzanti

Fri, 15 Mar 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Alberto Graglia, Giulia Mazzanti
The success of urban agriculture practices in Cuba and the signifi cant role they have assumed in the development of cities, their environment, the economy and in local communities (Koont, 2009) make it interesting to refl ect on the conditions that have allowed it to spread so rapidly and on such a large scale that it has made this Caribbean Island an emblematic example of experimentation designed to reduce dependency of the economy on oil. These conditions appear to be strictly connected with the particular history and the economic and political affairs of the country.

The idiography of agriculture

Fri, 15 Mar 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Paola Viganò
Agriculture is designing cities today, not just in the sense of resuming its constituent rules in the construction of urban space, but by investing the condition of extended urban areas which we have been accustomed to calling cities for decades. The issues of réservoirs and of the relationships between biodiversity and agricultural areas and between the rural matrix and public areas are addressed in the two cases presented here (a study of the Durance Valley and the river park along the River Ripoll in Barcelona). They explore, even if only partially, the ‘idiography’, the unique individuality, of agriculture, a specifi c design capable today of interacting again and differently from in the past in the construction of urban space on different scales.

Rethinking peri-urban outdoor space. Scenarios for the Milan context

Fri, 15 Mar 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Alessandro Fea
This paper refl ects on the future of peri-urban outdoor spaces. A construction of a brief picture of the general background and a description of the dynamics of the regional system of which the Milan context forms part is used to formulate important questions for the purpose of imagining possible confi gurations for cultivated areas within heavily urbanised environments.

Peri-urban outdoor spaces and new agricultures in Brianza

Fri, 15 Mar 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Arturo Lanzani
Brianza is a prototype of recurring situations in the relationship between residential spaces and agricultural spaces in contemporary towns and cities. Described in terms of their differences, these show the evolution of the historical landscape, the reasons for its deterioration and new planning possibilities. The simplifi ed fabric of the Vimercate countryside, the strings of woodland and built-up areas in the hills, the clearings in urban areas and the woodland and countryside of the Groane open up prospects for new and different types of urban agriculture linked to local specifi cities. The future proposed is plural and examines different relationships between agriculture, collective spaces, the redevelopment of existing settlements, choosing the path of a halt to urban growth and the reconstruction of infrastructure and landscape quality in the Brianza area.

Multifunctional agriculture and natural infrastructures in the clearings of central Brianza

Fri, 15 Mar 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Daniela Gambino, Federico Zanfi
The outdoor spaces in central Brianza tend to assume the appearance of islands, now separated by portions of built-up land and they are subject to continuous processes of building and the compromise of the land. These processes are particularly risky because today the ‘clearings’ of rural space not only fulfi l an agricultural function, but also play social and environmental roles connected in particular with the hydraulic equilibriums of the entire Milan urban region. A project for the redevelopment of the landscape in those spaces cannot be limited to adopting a perspective of protection associated with a generic idea of ‘park’. It must make an effort to develop new models of agricultural management that are capable of combining the economic sustainability of crop production with a more marked multifunctional role and activity to maintain and reclaim agricultural forms of landscape.

Forms and strategies for the urban countryside: ideas based on the Vimercate area

Fri, 15 Mar 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Anna Moro, Christian Novak
The Vimercate landscape rests on two geographical constants which shape the natural and man-made structure of the area: the river and valley corridors which cross the area from North to South and the dense network of agricultural paths which form the framework of the agricultural plains running from East to West. These features become the support for a potential reticular public space consisting of routes, natural areas and services, a reconstituted margin between the city and the countryside, an agricultural space which becomes once again a builder of landscape quality. The construction of a new ‘geratio’ is therefore proposed, based on productive and ecological infrastructures in the landscape, thereby attributing a social role to agricultural areas as a multifunctional space of agricultural production, but which is also for leisure: a space where urban services, inhabited centres and natural and agricultural environments meet.

Nonpassive grounds. Refiguring the residual landscape: a case in Milan

Fri, 15 Mar 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Beatrice De Carli
The text considers the role of residual outdoor spaces in the construction of planning in the Milan urban area. The thesis presented is that it is possible today to equip the Milan metropolitan area with new structural forms able to address complexity in a dimension of the whole by planning residual space, that huge and very varied quantity of outdoor spaces that can be surveyed and classifi ed as ‘residual’. More specifi cally, the paper discusses two types of consideration. The fi rst regards those processes of which the ‘residual’ is the outcome. The second addresses the subject of forestation, defi ned as a horizon of meaning for planning outdoor space capable of grafting onto transformations in progress in the area.

Between Martesana and Villoresi: urban agriculture experiences

Fri, 15 Mar 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Antonio Longo
The article describes an experience of surveying and planning agricultural outdoor spaces between the Villoresi and Martesana canals, a part of the Milan metropolis rich in landscape and environmental resources and parties interested in various ways in caring for and using them. The project was the result of a competition held by the Cariplo foundation, designed to create effective conditions for the results of the work to take root. There is then a local opportunity offered by two neighbouring towns Cernusco and Bussero, where farmers and local government administrators work, who knew how to experiment with new forms of managing agriculture within towns. The project, which was deliberately simplifi ed in terms of the form and management, tried to interpret these conditions, characterised by practices able to produce landscape over time and to generate long term physical and spatial results by means of actions with no immediately visible results.

R/Urban trends in Beijing. Three cases from the city’s periurban periphery

Fri, 15 Mar 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Annelies De Nijs, Pei-Chun Wen, Wu Di
In contemporary China, the evolution of productive land is related to specifi c government policies and the changing spatial conditions of the nation. Urban agriculture is particularly developed in the friction area between the (ever growing) urban and (threatened) rural territories. Different ways of cultivating the peri-urban areas are described in the paper, through the exploration of three cases of urban agriculture in Beijing. Whereas the fi rst two - Liuminying and Xiedao - show a major concern for sustainable production and agro-tourism, with a less embedded relationship with their respective contexts, the Taihu project is more rooted to its locale and provides a strong answer to the ecological sensitivity of the site. It can be argued that the Taihu case study exemplifi es an alternative to China’s ever-booming amount of and seemingly randomly placed agro-tourism sites.

Kahn and his archetypes

Fri, 15 Mar 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Fabrizio Zanni
The inclusive principle, and the wall principle in particular, constitute one of the foundations of Louis Kahn's theoretical and construction work. From the primordial meaning of delimitation and the separation of different regions of space, the "wall' in Kahn’s works acquires further and more sophisticated qualities, becoming a diaphragm, consisting of sequences of different wall principles: an ‘inhabited’ or inhabitable wall, a spatial interspace. In other cases the wall principle is a device which determines the "poetic" relationship between "light" and "silence". In other works and theoretical thinking, the wall principle is deformed to the point where it accommodates inhabitable spaces within it, genuine "rooms", with or without roofs, based on the original idea of a column which expands to include space. For Kahn, a column, a sequence of columns, and a wall all belong to the same device and principle.

Louis Khan. Search for Order

Fri, 15 Mar 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Andrea Di Franco
The famous phrase ‘Order is’, reveals a conception of order that is relative to a path of research, rather than to a defi nition of absolutes. Kahn’s order could be identifi ed with the unfolding of his experience, with the unwinding of his constantly dialectic compositions, structurally antinomic, consisting of drawings, materials and words: ‘order and design’, ‘order and form’, ‘not measurable and measurable’, symmetry and asymmetry, centred and fragmented, ‘silence and light’, nucleus and envelope, memory and a-temporality. Although all completely different one from another, his works are unequivocally parts of a single grand project which unfolds and comprises every experience and every substance to the point of implicating himself and his private sphere, so fatally absorbed by the superior order of his architectural research.

The Room: the wonder of the beginning. Architecture and archetype in Louis I. Kahn

Fri, 15 Mar 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Like a shining shadow, Louis Kahn’s poetry is found in all his works, both built or just designed. In his conferences, Kahn formulates thoughts that often touch on notes of poetry, the sacred, or a mystic science of cosmos where the architect becomes a narrator of our origins. It is not, however, a question of simple cultural ornament, or a search for consensus, but a free inner necessity which produces expression, creation and design, and which translates into categories that literally materialise as architectural forms. ‘The Room’, a 1971 sketch which shows the mind of this great ‘Philosopher by nature’ like a stage, is an emblem of the original node that joins matter and spirit, which binds architecture and thought, architecture and archetype, well beyond the limits of Louis Kahn’s personal experience.

Worthless houses. The progressive dwelling in the Chilean experience

Fri, 15 Mar 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Emanuel Giannotti
Elemental has recently reproposed the progressive dwelling as a means of addressing the problem of urban poverty. In Chile, this type of answer, based on the idea that a house is a process and not a fi nished object, has been experimented with since the 1950s and it has been implemented in numerous versions in relation to different social conditions, political demands and with respect to different background values. The progressive home is in fact open to various interpretations, not just with regard to the motivations which have supported it (which have ranged from pragmatic reasons to those of an ideological nature), but also because of the criticisms of it that have been made, which has raised doubts over its social effectiveness and the quality of the results. On the basis of various Chilean experiences, the paper considers the progressive dwelling in the light of certain critical issues that distinguish it.

Social self-organisation practices. Two cases of Empresas Recuperadas in Argentina

Fri, 15 Mar 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Ida Castelnuovo
The question of empresas recuperadas has existed in Argentina since the end of the 1990s. These are fi rms ‘recovered’ by workers who, in a context of political, social and economic crisis, and faced with the risk of structural unemployment, have opposed the closure of factories and have set in motion a process of recuperación in which the space of a factory and its relationship with the city is transformed and where the workers’ collective reinvents itself as a ‘new’ social organisation. Experiences are generated in this fashion which transform local communities, where the political dimension is closely connected with the dimension of action and collective action. The objective of this paper is to discuss the importance of considering social selforganisation practices in terms of their capacity to generate policies and to reinvent the use of land and the community by generating public effects and by providing adequate answers to solve collective problems.

Rio de Janeiro city of mega sports events: plans, urban policies and social impacts

Fri, 15 Mar 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Giuliana Costa
In the next two years, Rio de Janeiro will host the two largest sporting events on the planet, the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games. This article illustrates the context factors which led the city to enter the global scene through this strategy of events and it critically reviews the stages that led to this choice, explaining how it used the 2007 Pan American Games to gain accreditation in this market and how it was inspired by the experience of the Barcelona Olympics. An illustration is also given of the urban plans and policies that are taking shape for Rio 2014 and 2016, showing the existence of a gap between the rhetoric of the window of opportunity for the city as whole, the result of having acquired these events, and the heavily selective nature of their possible positive impacts.

Sustainable and resilient urban and regional planning; the outlook for ecosystemic services

Fri, 15 Mar 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Rocco Scolozzi, Elisa Morri, Riccardo Santolini
Through the delivery of eco systemic services (ES), the ecosystems of an area provide irreplaceable support to the quality of life of its inhabitants and the basic factors for lasting economic development. These services constitute the natural capital of a geographical area and also a sort of insurance policy against extreme events. The fi rst results of an original and fast method are presented here. It was found that each year Italian eco systems deliver goods and benefi ts equivalent (if their absence is hypothesised) to euro 71.3 billion. The trends for these values are more important: in just ten years some provinces seem to have lost more than 3% of their total value and up to 18% in the case of specifi c Ess. The prospects for Ess integrated in geographical assessment and planning could be supported by development strategies that are more aware of ecological processes and that are more farsighted.

Landscape, plans, design: lexical and other problems

Fri, 15 Mar 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Marcella Aprile
The notion of landscape and the techniques for landscape design must necessarily be based on two principal regulatory provisions, the European Landscape Convention and in Italy the law on cultural heritage and landscape. Consideration must also be given to what is meant by the term ‘landscape’ in normal and specialist parlance and to the nature of the training of landscape architects, because it is from all this that the ambiguities and misunderstandings that surround the notion of landscape originate. Consideration must also be given to the relations between planning and real and local transformations, because the contents and procedures for the formulation of designs depend on them. Landscape design must in fact construct systems of complex relationships, attribute new iconographic and economic values to places, put together natural and artifi cial, mineral and vegetable, material and intangible, real and virtual elements together.

Contemporary planning matters. The just city

Fri, 15 Mar 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Massimo Bricocoli, Davide Ponzini
What are the social reasons for urban planning activity? How can we discuss issues, principles, values and guidelines in urban planning action today? The title of these notes is drawn from a series of three seminars which we organised and held between 2011 and 2012, with support from the Diap. These notes accompany Susan Fainstein’s essay at the beginning of this edition of the journal. The expression ‘contemporary planning matters’ with its double meaning is both a reference to the reasons for contemporary planning activity and a pointer to the challenges of the subject and issues which urban planning action must meet today. It is on these big issues that we have invited Susan Fainstein, Tim Rieniets and Jacques Donzelot to dicuss the conditions to which urban and regional planning is subject today.

Recensioni

Fri, 15 Mar 2012 8:00:00 GMT

Guilherme Aquino: "Il Complexo do Alemao, Rio de Janeiro. Territorio conteso"

Fri, 15 Mar 2012 8:00:00 GMT

A cura di Francesco Infussi

Abstracts

Fri, 15 Mar 2012 8:00:00 GMT